• Wytch@lemmy.zip
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    6 days ago

    I must be weird because I grew up in the 80s, in the heyday of marketing this shit to kids, I had all the violent action figures, and I was skeptical of the military to the point it caused a rift in my family.

    And I grew up to be an anarchist. 🤷‍♂️

    Did I learn the wrong lessons from G.I. Joe?

    • Sundray@lemmus.orgOP
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      6 days ago

      I didn’t watch G.I. Joe until I was much older so I can’t really judge – I grew up wanting to be a Gargoyle, though.

    • DagwoodIII@piefed.social
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      6 days ago

      I managed to get my pacifist mom to buy me toy guns. I had a space gun, a spy gun, a cowboy gun, and a military gun. Played with GI Joe.

      When I got old enough to want to look ‘adult’ I put away all those guns and never wanted to have a real one.

      I think we’d have fewer adult gun collectors if they’d been playing with guns as kids.

      • Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 days ago

        Not so sure about that, this probably heavily depends on your individual character and perhaps even more on who likes weapons when you were really young. If someone you intensively hate as child preached pacifism (or vice versa, people you looked up to being gun nerds) you’d be drawn towards weapons I’d assume.

        You probably learned a lot from your mom, both her values and that she apparently trusted you to explore stuff she might dislike herself (even if you had to nag her to death for it). Sounds very healthy to me. 😉

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      6 days ago

      Did I learn the wrong lessons from G.I. Joe?

      Sounds like you learned EXACTLY the right ones and it’s the “normal” kids who learned the wrong ones 🤷🏻

    • CADmonkey@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Another 1980’s kid here… My parents flatly refused to let me watch GI Joe or have any of the toys. It was the only media franchise my parents ever forbade. Reason given: “It’s too violent”.

      I’ve still never watched it.