Sometimes you just have one of those moments where the progress we've made as a culture get thrown into stark relief. You look at something and go "Holy shit, that would never have happened when I was a kid."
Today, I had one of those moments when I realized that the teenage boys I'm working with are just. genuinely, openly enthusiastic about going to Build-a-Bear for their outing.
These are sixteen and seventeen year old boys! They just had a whole conversation about what to name their "cute", mostly new squishmallows! They're genuinely excited that they're going to Build-a-Bear this weekend and asking other kids to pick up specific accessories for them!!
Holy shit, that never would've happened when I was 16. None of the boys would have dared to be visibly interested - and neither would most of the girls! There would have been a million gay jokes and "Haha, you're a girl" jokes and "What are you, a baby?" jokes. Teenagers weren't even supposed to care about anything back then!
Less than 15 years later, and I'm watching three 17 year old boys treat all that as not even worthy of comment.
So let's call that a reason for hope. Even when the kids aren't alright, in some ways apparently they are alright. Go Gen Z, honestly. It's so lovely to watch you guys just openly doing and saying stuff that, when I was a teen, would've been a social death sentence.
[ID: the Gotta Be One of My Favorite meme, an image of a man standing in front of a car, looking to his left, and holding his folded hands up to his chest.
The top of the image has text that's been edited to say "Shout out to physically affectionate m/f platonic friendship fr 🤞🏿" And the bottom text says "Gotta be one of my favorite genders."
Throughout the meme are 11 images include:
Marceline kissing Finn from Adventure Time
Brett hugging Reagan in Inside Job
Erza hugging Gray from Fairy Tail
Katara and Zuko hugging from Avatar the Last Airbender