Because now you get a lifetime label as a registered sex offender if you get caught.

Additionally, those of us who grew up in the 80's had the absolute fear of AIDS drilled into us. IMO, the AIDS epidemic blunted the libido of at least one generation.

I'm in my 30s so remember the AIDS epidemic. I can't say it featured on my list of fears as a teenager, and I'm sure modern teenagers even less so.

The idea that HIV/AIDS is primarily of concern only to gay men is completely false. At the Whitman-Walker clinic in Washington, DC, which was for years primarily an HIV/AIDS clinic serving mostly gay men, the majority of new HIV/AIDS patients has for some time been straight African-American women. Every sexually active adult needs to be concerned about HIV and take appropriate precautions.

Maybe at one particular clinic? But that's not true in the general case. I remember when I first discovered that AIDS was both rare and overwhelmingly affecting the gay community (where I live). I was pretty upset because having grown up in the 80s and 90s I'd been left with the impression that HIV was everywhere and even just one heterosexual hookup was a gamble (condom or not). But that's not an accurate view given the tiny, tiny number of people who have HIV.

Looking back at the 80s/90s AIDS hysteria now, it was the same as COVID hysteria. Same people even, guys like Fauci. They were telling people you could get AIDS from drinking water fountains and similar crap. No wonder people were crazy about it.

Incidentally the whole concept of a virus that primarily targets gay people doesn't make much biological sense, does it? Nothing the size of a virus can detect your sexuality, nor is there any evolutionary reason to select for such a thing even if it could. That's why the 'experts' predicted it would quickly stop being primarily a gay disease. Nope. That rather makes the theory that a lot of AIDS cases were driven by drug abuse more plausible, doesn't it, especially because this preference for gay men mysteriously vanishes in Africa.

At any rate, the public health community has pretty consistently and for a long time misled heterosexual people about the risks of any disease that's known to primarily affect the gay community. They're doing it again now with monkeypox. It almost exclusively affects gay men which is why the official CDC guidance is to - no kidding - hold socially distanced gay sex parties. But to listen to the early announcements about this you'd not have suspected this reality. There is of course no question of the state enforcing any measures against the at-risk community to "crush the curve", like banning pride week sex parties: the LGBT community is special. For the rest of us, we get lockdowns. For them, nothing. It's this sort of thing that destroys the credibility of public health (not that they had any left after COVID). It's just one long string of ideological driven "science".

It's not a big deal, we know that now. In the 80's when I was a teenager, the fear-tactics and abstinence only education were strong - I'd even say at their peak. Those patterns get embedded in your brain.

I’ll never forget seeing Oprah on tv in 1987, "Hello, everybody. AIDS has both sexes running scared. Research studies now project that one in five--listen to me, hard to believe--one if five heterosexuals could be dead from AIDS at the end of the next three years. That's by 1990. One in five. It is no longer just a gay disease. Believe me."

By the time I was a teenager that fear had subsided, but that’s was a pretty dramatic thing to hear at a young age.

We know that now because it's true now. In the late 80s it was a very big deal and an almost certain death sentence. We had no treatment options for years.

Almost nobody got laid in the 80's. Fact.

People who grew up in the 80s were by definition not getting laid until the 90s for the most part.

As one of those people, well, it didn't stop me. But the terror was real.

In the 80s AIDS was the gay disease. Also people live longer than a decade.

That, and most are still holding people in their 20s to the same standards as generations able to start a family with the credentials of Homer Simpson.

People in their 20s having their own digs is, I think, a decidedly American phenomenon. In most of the poorer parts of the world (including, for example, Central and Eastern Europe), 30+ years ago younger crowd managed to have sex just fine, using dorm rooms, snatching time while parents were away, etc. My 2c.

Aren't we talking about people in their 20s? You seem to be describing teenagers. For people in their 20s, it's always been quite normal to have a job, a home, and, at some point during their 20s, to get married.

Again in the United States and to a lesser extent in the rest of the developed world. It's very common in many parts of the world for kids to live at home until they get married, unless they have to move for work.

Yeah, but it was also common to get married in their 20s and move out after they got married.

A job -- sure. But a common situation in cities would be for a 20-something to live with their parents until (and sometimes after) they got married due to the very limited housing. When I came to the US in my mid-20s I was absolutely stunned that it was possible for someone working an unskilled job (which is what I did for my first year) to rent a small apartment of one's own (in a sketchy part of the town, sure) and invite whoever I please whenever I want.

I think that was a phenomenon relatively unique to US/Canada in post WW2 decades up until maybe the 90s.

I strongly doubt that. It was quite common in western Europe too. My parents got married in 1970 and did briefly live with my grandparents (who had a gigantic house that was still dirt cheap when they got married directly after WW2), but moved out soon after that.

As far as I know, people moved out either when they married, or when they went to a university in a different city. Around 1990 I knew one guy who had a job and still lived with his parents, and I thought that was odd (he spent all his money on fancy audiophile equipment).

Normal off what metric? Your metric?

I am 29 and was finally able to purchase my first home. I am one of if not the only person in my large friend group to purchase a home without assistance from parents

If you think people in their 20s are buying homes and starting families en-masse well I've got bad news for you

But that is now. I'm talking about how it used to be. Look at the GP. Here's what I'm responding to:

> People in their 20s having their own digs is, I think, a decidedly American phenomenon. In most of the poorer parts of the world (including, for example, Central and Eastern Europe), 30+ years ago younger crowd managed to have sex just fine, using dorm rooms, snatching time while parents were away, etc.

I think them not having their own digs is much more an American phenomenon, at least recently. Though houses have gotten ridiculously expensive in a lot of countries. Still, back when I was in my 20s, it was quite common in Europe for people to at least rent their own place, and possibly even buy a small apartment. I've got an entire branch of my family where everybody married at 21 and moved out at that age. In my parents' time, it was not much different, though they did live in my grandparents' massive house briefly after their marriage, and bought their first home when they were 34. But it was definitely common for people to move out of their parents' home when they got married. Once going to university got more common, that became the time they moved out.

Apologies - you're absolutely correct. I think it was standard practice prior to everything going down-hill. The only reason I even have this ability is through my career. I think most people are not so fortunate and are fed up so the cycle of not trying starts to kick in.

There was socialism in CEE back then. So nobody and much less people in their 20s could afford their own home. After my parents got married, they lived in a 3-room apartment (+ kitchen, 65m2 in total) together with both parents of my mother, her grandmother, and her sister (who had a child) also sometimes showed up.

By CEE do you mean the European Economic Community? Or are you referring to eastern European communism? I don't know how the situation was there, but in western Europe, people could absolutely afford to at least rent in their 20s. My grandparents, who weren't rich at all (my granddad was a nurse) could afford a very large house, and my parents could afford to buy a fairly large house when they were 34. And I know that in Germany (central Europe), houses tend to be cheaper (at least today; not sure if it was the same back then).

CEE refers to Central and Eastern Europe, so countries such as GDR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland.

The situation was bad. It wasn't legal to rent.

Fair enough. But communist countries, especially towards the 1980s when they were basically bankrupt, is rather a special case. In western, northern and much of central Europe, the situation was quite different.

For sure, but that means the original claim

> People in their 20s having their own digs is, I think, a decidedly American phenomenon. In most of the poorer parts of the world (including, for example, Central and Eastern Europe), 30+ years ago younger crowd managed to have sex just fine, using dorm rooms, snatching time while parents were away, etc. My 2c.

is true then. It's only talking about the situation in the poorer parts of the world and not elsewhere, and gives CEE in 1980s as an example.

Only partially. It's not decidedly American, because it's also true in western, central and northern Europe. And probably many parts of the world. Most of the world is not communist.

"People" meaning banks really. The games with credit are effectively driving the housing shortage by making buying the small number of already built homes effectively more affordable than building new ones in the massive amount of permissibly zoned empty space we have. We're only exacerbating it by bringing in tons of legal and illegal immigrants and having the government pay for their housing. It's not surprising there's a conspiracy theory about intentional replacement of the native population with that going on.

Combine that with the value extraction from rent/debt (everyone has to own a car and since they probably can't afford to just buy one most are in debt over it) and no one can afford sex.

The awful part of all this is that young people blame women. Women are just the messengers.

I actually meant the people, not banks. Banks exacerbate the problem, but you don't need to hold everyone to the same standards as 30 years ago. People in family homes in Southern Europe date, too. Many Japanese people get married before they leave the parental home. This was pretty standard in most of Europe and America a little less than a century ago.

>The awful part of all this is that young people blame women.

I don't want to blame women in particular, but from personal anecdotes, women in particular place huge importance on a guy having his own car and place, despite both being massive wastes of money here and actively hurting one's ability to get housing later. The opposite, not so much. This in a country where even rent is now mostly a dual-income market.

The Japanese buy and large aren't having sex, so I'd disagree with you that they're a good example of women having lower standards. Their desire for men to have things and a stable life is probably biological and immutable.

You can see their role as messengers of the truth pretty often. I saw this one video that I thought was pretty great where a group of three women were out. The videographer/interviewer had the two friends call up the first's boyfriend and ask to "hang out" behind her back as a sort of joke. The first woman then freaked out, not at her boyfriend for wanting to cheat but at her friends for showing it. If you watch carefully this sort of thing happens pretty often.

>The Japanese buy and large aren't having sex, so I'd disagree with you that they're a good example of women having lower standards.

This is a phenomenon in most of young generation US and EU too. Both housing and the ability to get on with someone are far cheaper and easier in Tokyo in particular, than most metropolises in the developed world. If that doesn't tell you there's more going on than "just your own place bro", I don't know what will. If women are continuously taught and telling each other that a guy must have their own place or they are bad / deadbeat, the entire thing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Given our species as a whole has been procreating with less for most of our existence, I'm more eager to place my bets it's a cultural phenomenon rather than "biologically hardwired".

>You can see their role as messengers of the truth pretty often.

You can just as well say men are "messengers of truth" because they don't want to marry single moms. The only thing you're showing is that their words mean jack compared to their actions, as is the case with every human being under the sun.

>You can just as well say men are "messengers of truth" because they don't want to marry single moms. The only thing you're showing is that their words mean jack compared to their actions, as is the case with every human being under the sun.

Yup. It flips when everyone gets older.

> already built homes effectively more affordable than building new ones

The reason people buy instead of build is that the house is already there, whereas building anew takes a lot of time.

As interest rates grow, it becomes more expensive to do so, and waiting starts paying off.

But inflation is still high in spite of the high interest rates. And then, maybe the central banks will overshoot the interest rate, which will lead to another crash...

Other than that, living in a walkable area has its advantages, and codes are much stricter in high densities, so you can't build.

Is that the same Homer Simpson who has a highly skilled job in the nuclear industry, earning well above the median.