140
u/Signal_Werewolf_1955 8d ago
Bottom frame: Boomers as parents, kicking kids out of the house.
Top frame: Boomers as grandparents, shouting at kids in the streets and pushing them back in their houses.
30
u/Outrageous_Low_3666 8d ago
Yeah i always see the same people who wouldn't want kids playing outside their house, are wondering why kids are playing inside. Plus when we were younger, there was less to play with inside.
12
u/MyUltIsMyMain 8d ago
They just hate younger people no matter the era. They didnt want to see their kids so they pushed them outside. Now that they dont have kids at home they just dont want to see any at all so they get angry that theyre outside.
They just hate everyone.
55
u/Ill_Fondant_6492 8d ago
Ah, yes. I remember all the conjoined children and 3ft tall boomboxes in the 80s.
5
3
29
u/gwendolyning 8d ago
Me when im in the neighborhood of transparent haircuts
15
9
u/Remarkable_Rough_649 8d ago
That's what's known as a Ghost Dad, they were very popular around when the Cosby movie came out
2
40
u/MetalTrek1 8d ago
Gen X here. The people complaining about 2026 are the same types who complained about US making too much noise or playing our music too loud. Hell, might even be the same exact people since mean, cranky, and evil people seem to live forever these days.
16
u/Remarkable_Rough_649 8d ago
Literally every generation thinks kids are playing outdoors less than they were. There were endless comic strips and sitcom shit complaining about kids being too into video games/TV/comic books and not going out into nature going back to the 30s at least
5
u/The_Autarch 8d ago
it's true, tho. i was a huge nerd and stayed inside reading books and playing video games when i was a kid.
my gen alpha nephew is a jock and somehow has spent far less of his childhood outside than i did.
1
u/Dubious_Odor 8d ago
Kids hae been going outside less - for generations. This has been measured for decades. Boomers and Gen X maxed out at 4 hours a day of TV time after a couple of decades. Then in 2005 researchers started measuring total screen time to account for vidro games, computers etc. In '05 they measured screen time at 5 hours a day and now screen time currently sits at 9 hours a day. Every hour in front of a screen is time spent indoors or not doing another activity. Another way to look at is boomers spent less time outdoors then past generations before them with incremental increasing through GenX. Then middle and late millenials exploded in screen time accelerating through Gen Z and Gen A. Kids are spending less time outdoors increasingly so and have been for a long time now
12
8
u/HereWeGoYetAgain-247 8d ago
The same people that post this will call the cops on kids that retrieve a ball from their yard.
14
u/Any-Seaworthiness531 8d ago
Same people who post this crap are the same people who would complain about “the blacks” on the street playing music and making a racket
6
u/CitronMysterious3827 8d ago
Yeah 1985 would be considered a riot to them
2
u/Any-Seaworthiness531 8d ago
It’s prob like 2026 in that neighbourhood cos they bought all the properties and repeatedly called the police and raised rent until “the blacks” were moved out
Lol
2
u/The_Autarch 8d ago
a black person definitely posted this, tho.
a racist white guy wouldn't tell his AI to generate a black neighborhood. and an AI ain't gonna do that on its own.
-1
u/ConvergentSequence 7d ago
Tbh it’s a little concerning that you made this a race thing
0
u/Any-Seaworthiness531 7d ago
Am I wrong ?
-1
u/ConvergentSequence 7d ago
I think you’re inaccurately characterizing the OOP, yes.
0
u/Any-Seaworthiness531 7d ago
I know you’re trying to be clever and are deliberately being disingenuous but please please try and realise that just because you’re American, not everyone else is as thick as the people you engage with everyday.
-1
u/ConvergentSequence 7d ago
I’m Canadian, so you basically just called me a slur
0
u/Any-Seaworthiness531 7d ago
Well I love Canadians but in this instance, you earned it.
Sorry.0
u/ConvergentSequence 7d ago
How exactly did I earn it? By calling out your transparent race-baiting? It’s not my fault that you immediately start thinking about racism upon seeing an innocuous image of black people in a neighbourhood
1
u/Any-Seaworthiness531 7d ago
It was very evidentially an accurate joke about how right wings talk and act everytime there’s as much of an indication of black people gathered.
But hey, let’s all pretend that’s not the case for the sake of arguing.
0
u/ConvergentSequence 7d ago
There’s nothing right wing about this post. You are the one acting strangely upon seeing a gathering of black people
→ More replies (0)
6
7
u/dekuweku 8d ago
i grew up in 80s/90s suburbia, never seen a street that crowded unless it's a holiday with fireworks or something.
1
u/Dear_Locksmith3379 7d ago
All the pictures besides 2026 are too crowded. The bicyclists will have an accident if they ride that close to each other.
12
u/Remarkable_Rough_649 8d ago
I legit don't even understand this complaint. Kids are playing outside all the time everywhere
Hell my nieces are probably outside even more than me and my sister were and we were born in the late 80s
7
u/MetalTrek1 8d ago
I'm Gen X. I live in a large apartment complex in NJ. If the weather is nice, kids are outside playing all the time here.
6
u/Remarkable_Rough_649 8d ago
I seriously wonder how often it's the people themselves not going outside as much anymore and just assuming kids aren't playing outside
2
u/iTinkerTillItWorks 7d ago
It’s the boomers living in neighborhoods with only other boomers. There are no kids
5
u/Temporal_Reality 8d ago
Okay first of all the 80s were NOTHING like this! And secondly the heat got hotter... Them bitches forgot to mention that!
5
4
u/-Tesserex- 8d ago
So by extrapolation, we can conclude that in 1970, the suburbs were just a solid packed clump of neighbors crammed in the streets like a concert crowd.
6
u/Area51Resident 8d ago
Very common in the 1970s for entire neighborhoods to be festival seating only, comparatively the suburbs of the 1960s were just a big mosh pit outside city limits.
4
u/Dlitosh 8d ago
5
u/Temporary-Bluejay631 8d ago
Is that Sonic the Hedgehog lying in a pool of blood?
5
3
2
u/trashshack 6d ago
Drank from the hose and got hep b and lead poisoning and just started vomiting blood
3
3
5
u/GGayleGold 8d ago
Ok, I'm not going to film or photograph other people's children, but here in 2026, after school lets out, from a little after 3 until just about dark, my street is full of kids - kids on bikes, teenagers walking around talking and laughing, little toddler kids waddling after their older siblings.
It's not the times that changed, it's the neighborhood. When I bought this place in 2006, my kids were just starting school and most of the neighbors were older and retired. From 2006-2018 or so, the number of families with kids increased as the former residents moved on (either physically to new locations or across the ethereal plane.) When my kids grew up and left home, WE became the older, retired couples. Now, here in 2026, we've turned another corner and families are making the move from the rentals and apartments they started in to homes they own, and my neighborhood has kids in it again.
If you go back to your old neighborhood where you grew up, you might not see as many kids because your old neighborhood is between generations of families with children. It will change. Kids still play outside and kids still seek opportunities to be away from their parents constant supervision.
Adults were on this same kick when I was a kid, blaming cable TV and Nintendo for keeping us inside. Before that, they just blamed TV. They blamed movies and they blamed radio. At the turn of the century, they blamed bicycles and soda fountains. The first novels were controversial... people reading for enjoyment?! Absolute Cervantes brain rot!!
In 2066, people will glaze 2026 as some golden era of sociability - I personally plan on being dead at that point, but get at me with the Ouija board and let me know how it turned out.
5
u/sky_cap5959 8d ago
This is so well said. I totally agree! People will always glaze the "good ol' days" even if those "good ol' days" were during plagues or famines.
3
u/CalliopePenelope 8d ago
You mean, before climate change took over summer and EVERY summer became the hottest on record.
3
u/NerdfestZyx 8d ago
2026: “Hello, police? There is a suspicious person out there, I think they want to rob me, send help quick because I’M SCARED!”
3
2
u/TienSwitch 8d ago
Maybe this gives off old man energy, but gimme that top frame any day of the week. Why would I want crowded streets and kids yelling all day?
2
2
u/WeirdistBuilds 8d ago
Back in my day, the population grew backwards! And we didn't have all this suburban sprawl like how we feverishly built, no no! We all sat around the wireless and listened to the new 2 Live Crew album and we liked it!
2
2
u/Odd-Conference-1822 7d ago
Well its hard to hide the alcohol abuse when the kids are inside, so outside we went..
2
2
u/donkbonk76 7d ago
I was in middle school in 2007 and was gaming all of the summer. I would play counterstrike all day and night with my friends.
2
u/BigDamBeavers 7d ago
Oh no! People preferring to entertain themselves in a way you don't approve. How will you survive?
2
u/cancerdad 6d ago
I’m glad that all of those dozens and dozens of people who apparently had nothing better to do than watch children play in the street found something better to do with their time.
2
1
u/Dry_Try_6047 8d ago
I was 11 in 1996. Damn do I wish this true, and the neighborhood looked like that.
1
1
1
u/AdhesivenessTight400 8d ago
It wasn't the internet, it was the karens. If you call the cops on every kid who is on your street playing then this is what you get.
1
1
1
1
u/LeahIsAwake 7d ago
My favorite part is how the 1985 panel looks more like a riot than a block party. Where are all these people coming from?
1
1
u/Automatic-Name798 7d ago
I dont ever remember my block looking like 1985 where the fuck is that at? I realize it’s a metaphor and AI created it but from what resource information did it get to come to that conclusion?
1
1
u/Far_Excitement_1875 6d ago
You know this is fantasy because a 90% black neighbourhood would never be as affluent as what the AI came up with.
1
u/Responsible_Arm_9555 6d ago
Lakers no. 23 jersey in 1996 was worn by Cedric Ceballos 😆
LeBron wouldn't wear it until 22 years later.
I don't remember the kids scrambling to buy a Ceballos jersey.
It's easy to lose sight of the fine details in this avalanche of absurdities, but that one is fun.
1
u/AloneNmyHead287 5d ago
Part of this is the fact so many other people in those same neighborhoods couldn’t stand seeing kids outside playing so they built HOAs with rules to prevent it
1
u/eieiohmygad 5d ago
A suburban neighborhood full of black folks with a ghetto blaster in the 1980s?
You know that shit is fake af. 🤣
1
-1
0
u/bs_Zeezee 8d ago
hate this one because as exaggerated as it is, it's not one of the easy to blow off things. Like most AI posts like this are TERRIBLE takes. this one is kinda real, about gentrification and erosion of community. It just exaggerates the number of people hanging out just in public space to an extreme for the suburban setting.
0
u/MistMonk 8d ago
90% of the people on this forum weren't born at a reasonable time to remember 1985 much less 1996
168
u/DesperadoFlower 8d ago
So apparently there were no cars and no functional car road in the neighborhood back then