Uh, same as it ever was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabulous_Furry_Freak_Brothers
We’ve always had the flamboyantly bizarre among us.
Institutions (and involuntary commitments), selective and aggressive enforcement of loitering and nuisance laws, and frequent applications of rough street justice used to reduce their visibility as well as curb the more extreme behaviors among them.
We are more tolerant and accepting now. YMMV as to how much of an improvement that is.
I think that it's best for me to avoid the freaks: watch tv programs that avoid freaks and continue down this road I am taking: daily Mass, walks at the beach, tend and water my yard, eat and exercise judiciously and PRAY, PRAY, PRAY for mercy to our good Lord.
The punk rock fans from the 70’s. Spiked multi-colored hair, pins in their faces.
Excuse me! Do not call fungi an ‘old timer’—we have been around before you were born.
Ironically
Freaks was a term coined by who knows honestly
The 1970 cartoon of hippies....
David Crosby in Almost Cut My Hair sang of letting my freak flag fly....
I was born in 1957 and I know of you smoked weed and had long hair and considered yourself somewhat counterculture ...even though that is quaint by today’s standards...you were indeed a “freak”
That hamfisted movie Joe with Peter Boyle mentions Freaks.....as does Arlo Guthrie addressing Woodstock
I think Garcia also speaks of freaks as counter culture folk much earlier
I honestly don’t know.....it was there as I came up
Another word in the same vein....cool....is someone cool.....as in do they smoke weed or are they ok with it
These distinctions...however silly now...were paramount from say mid 60s to late 70s ....
Another thing about freak.....freak shows at fairs....we had real one then.....lobster boy, bearded lady, slug boy, tall man, midget and so on....it was sad to me even then honestly
I think the freak hippie thing started in Los Angeles ....Zappa speaks of it very early....and hippies didn’t call themselves hippies
They called each other freaks....even in Mississippi though we were usually a few year down the arc
Back then fashion moved inward from the coasts....music was universal but clothes took a few seasons
Now everyone shops same stuff from Boise to Boston and Marta to Manhattan
I was in Manhattan two summers ago...people dressed same as Nashville
It was far different 35-60 years ago that way
You have to understand. The young folks today view the young people with NO tats and NO piercings and naturally-colored hair as the “freaks”. Soon, it’ll be frowned upon if you stick with the gender you were born with and are not in a biracial relationship.
When I was a kid baseball was played in the daytime, the men wore white shirts and the women stayed home.
I am appalled and sickened by the idiots with piercings, tattoos and clown-colored hair. I didn’t realize how many Generation Whatever Dolts there were until I took a part time job (post-retirement) and found that half the workers are “tattooed circus freaks”.
Sad to say I spent part of Independence Day with a tattooed cousin of mine.....and his tattooed second wife. They are half my age, thus the disconnect in what we find to be acceptable behavior. My husband and I discussed our dismay at the stupidity of it all on our drive home last night. That level of tattoo coverage is ridiculous, and career-limiting. Just creepy and gross.
No Freaks,
You had Goofy an Dopey types but it seemed you did the Best you could with
what You had.
“Old timers”?
What?
These people are doing this primarily as a scream for attention. Parental neglect. From the old timers. Baby boomers
It was baby boomers who started this crap putting their kids in day care. These people were raised by people other than their mothers. What do people expect society to look like after that?
Old timers. Wimps.
Back in the 1970’s when I was in high school I did not notice except the occasional doper at school.
I remember just 1 fat kid who later slimmed down.
Society allows what you see today.
Society wouldn’t have let it go years ago.
What is society?
It’s a percentage of somewhat influential people who would not let dumb, irreverent, way off... go on untouched by opinions.
It’s hard to let go of discipline, responsibility, honesty, modesty.... what is allowed today is what is tearing us down..apart..
There is no one to say NO.
One more thing.. I had 5 to raise... there were absolutes.. there was consistency... there were high expectations... there was fairness and understanding.
Somewhere... some good things were lost.. today is not good.. you all know it.
I remember the characters in the first Mad Max movie 1979 that thinking society will never go that far. Those characters are tame to what I see today
If you’ve ever gone to Downtown Hollywood where the Chinese Theater with the Stars footprints are , THAT has always been ground zero for the freaks.
Hippies, Patchouli oil, stoners, acid freaks, Dead Heads. Complete derelicts.
In all though, back then there wasn’t a continual parade of weird and mentally ill people. There was some sort of etiquette and some morals in public places.
People seemed to be content
fifty dollars paid the rent
freaks were in a circus tent
Those were the days
Narcissistic People have been with us forever. “LOOK AT ME!!! I have to be the center of attention!”
If you don’t affirm their behavior by noticing them, they will continue to get more and more outrageous.
Just ignore them. That’s what they don’t want.
Most freaks lived underground or on a kind of show circuit. Gays met in secret. And most of their proclivities were done discretely.
What doesn’t exist, as much,in modern times is the idea of public decency.
The idea that “adult” type activity was kept separate from the public.
They protected children and women.
.
I think it becomes like a game of one-upsmanship over time and trends towards freakier.
Guys getting earrings was still new in the 70’s when I got one ear pierced, the left, because piercing the right back then meant gay. Then society saw piercings move to belly buttons, lips, tongues, eyebrows, nipples and even the Prince Albert. Me, my one ear piercing eventually closed up and I never had a tattoo. The next weirdest thing I did was bleaching my hair one summer.
When we finally got internet a new world of weird opened up, at least for me after growing up in a pretty slow, old-fashioned area of the south.
I think the boundaries just keep getting pushed to be more and more strange.