When Trump brought the cat and dog thing up at the debate, I thought he was cooked and that nobody in the right frame of mind, not even the average chud, would believe it, but the next day people at my work were talking about how true it is and that it needs to be stopped. It's amazing and scary how easily people are quick to believe something without a shred of evidence.
Even my mom texted me a mugshot of a woman who was arrested for killing and trying to eat a cat. But when I replied that it happened in a completely different city and the suspect was a US born citizen with mental issues, she said that the suspect was actually Haitian, it happened in Springfield and the police are pretending it happened somewhere else to make their town look good.
I don't even know how to respond to a take like that. Just a year or so ago she was happy to see Alex Jones getting canceled for threatening families of the kids who died at Sandy Hook. Now she's believing and forwarding Jones-grade conspiracy shit, and she couldn't care less about school shootings anymore. It's depressing as fuck.
I'm old enough to remember when no one would eat sushi because it was gross. Also distinctly remember going to a generic meditteranian place when I was a young child and having to be coaxed to try anything. The food situation in America was dire forty years back.
In one of the first episodes of the original TMNT, April O'Neil goes ”ew, gross” when Splinter offers her sushi. That's probably even more dated than the turtles' surfer lingo.
(back when everyone thought sushi automatically meant raw fish too)
I still speak like a ninja turtle
Cowabunga
Lol, there really was a period of a few years where the hollywood line on asian )mostly japanese) stuff went from "this character is eating sushi because they are sinister and foreign" to " this character owns a bansai tree because they are cultured and well-travelled and not afraid of the sinister foreigners, one or two of whom might even be his friends."
I’ve noticed that too. Specifically with how westerners addressed anime and also pokemon in the 90s/2000s. It was usually hit or miss but way too many times anime/video games from Japan had some weird orientalism strapped onto it when discussed….like because it was Asian there just had to be something malevolent going on.
I even remember as a kid in kindergarten wearing my favorite Pokemon t-shirt at the time and one kid did the meme and told me “you’re so lucky, my mommy doesn’t let me watch those Chinese cartoons.”
Holy shit, seeing how everyone and their mother in Hollywood at the time needed to address sushi was hilarious.
So many sitcoms had to have an episode where the suburbanite white middle-class family spent half the episode afraid of sushi, eventually tried it, and had a lesson of “hey, maybe some of these weird brown people aren’t so scary after all!”
I mentioned it before but one thing I think has improved tremendously in the US is the food scene. For the most part this attitude on stuff like sushi has stayed in the past. thank God.
My partner and I always have a laugh comparing the food our kid eats vs what we used to eat when we were growing up
Take it from someone who is older Gen Z. One of the few things I can say that has genuinely improved in the US, even in middle america, is the food scene. Surprisingly too in such a relatively short amount of time.
As a kid, even risotto got me a few weird looks from other kids who just had lunchables and goldfish, but now that I’m the substitute teacher sometimes I see grilled veggies that look like someone seasoned them….and I’m stuck in some podunk suburb in a RED state.
As recent as 2018, I’d get boomers in line in the grocery store look at my almond milk funny and actually quiz me on why I don’t like dairy. Before I knew it those questions died real fast.
It’s a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.