5

Body Piercing Was The Dangerous New Sex Trend

"What is happening out there?" ask the anchors of UPN News 13, a Los-Angeles-based Fox news affiliate, as they peer into the world of body piercing in the early '90s:

Honestly, it's hard for me to make fun of the reporters' shocked reactions. After all, if you'd never heard of it before, the idea of paying others to stick sterilized needles into one's face and bad-touch areas is kind of bizarre. What's less easy to understand is why the reporters decide that piercing must be a sex thing.

The investigation opens with a clip of a pierced young man saying that piercing is "like an orgasm." Soon after, a reporter interviewing a heavily pierced young woman awkwardly prompts her to talk about how the piercings feel during sex. One male anchor remarks that piercing seems like it's a "very erotic experience," while another informs us that the people he spoke to told him that piercing involved no pain, just "euphoria" and a sensation like "warm water being dumped on your body." Christ, with news coverage like that, it's a surprise that a single unpierced genital remains in America.

Body piercing peaked in the '90s, although it's currently enjoying a popularity boost thanks to the unfortunate resurgence of fashion from that decade. The piercing trend didn't, however, lead to an epidemic of sex fiends orgasming in Claire's. Nor have good American mom-and-pop vibrator stores gone out of business as consumers learn they can achieve endless sexual pleasure via their septum rings.

muldoon/iStock
Be thankful this photo cuts off where it does.

4

Emo Was Going To Mutilate And Kill Everybody

Are you ready for an old-school teen phenomenon that "involves self-mutilation and suicide"? Surprisingly, it didn't involve Satan or Satanism. Nope, the Prince of Darkness can go sit this one out -- perhaps spend his time inventing a new kind of paper cut. The thing killing teens all over America was this:

ABC 4 Utah

Were you expecting something scarier than emo music? Well, that's where you're wrong, bucko, because nothing is scarier than emo music, and I've got this Utah ABC affiliate report from 2007 to back me up:

The brave investigative reporters hit the streets of Utah, asking parents if they've heard of "emo." One mom calls her son in a panic, interrogates him about the subject, then asks why he'd never told her about it. I don't know, Mom, maybe because you just wouldn't understand? We learn that "advanced emo kids" cut themselves, and that the next level after that inevitably involves suicide, because the only career path after graduating from emo college is the grave, baby. What else are you going to do? Take off that makeup and get a job?

3

Breakdancing Was About To Cause An Epidemic Of Sexy Hospitalizations

Back in the 1980s, KWCH 12 out of Wichita, Kansas, warned viewers of a dangerously hip new dancing style:

Breakdancing, known by breakdancing hipsters as B-boying, was taking off. The report features the rampant diversity that can only be seen in a breakdancing team based in Wichita, Kansas:

KWCH-12

Health specialists in the report warn viewers that breakdancing moves can damage connective tissue and lead to long-term back issues and arthritis, and recommend that breakdancers wear elbow and knee pads. But the Wichitan breakdancers don't care. They continue breakin' without protection, because "the girls like it." Truly, a dark portent of things to come.

In this case, of course, the Wichitans were completely right. Three decades later, Kansas' health system strains under the costs of the millions of long-term neck injuries caused by irresponsible B-boys. Women are accosted at every street corner by head-spinning white men. The skies darken with the lofty feet of lust-crazed youths, with nary a knee pad in sight. Well, almost. Despite a still-dedicated fanbase, breakdancing faded from the mainstream, although it's currently huge in South Korea. So if you're ever looking to expand your knee pad export business, there's a new market for you.

2

Video Games Were Breeding Violent Slackers

I don't want to shake your world to its foundations, but America's media sometimes has a problem with video games. Even before they started causing school shootings, these dangerous bundles of pixelated evil were destroying the world in other ways. The video below features two different news reports. In the first segment, we learn that arcade games have popped up all over Boston, and that the city's youth are flocking to them, stepping on several people's lawns in the process. The next segment complains that America's young people are now addicted to one particularly violent game: Mortal Kombat.

At the time of its release, Mortal Kombat was controversial because of a sequence in the game in which you rip your opponent's head off and watch as he vomits a large amount of clams out of his mouth:

Fox News

Oh wait, that's supposed to be a spinal cord? That's ... almost as disturbing as clams, I guess. The report worries that Mortal Kombat's state-of-the-art graphics might make it hard for children to separate the game's violent fantasy from reality, with one father worried about kids "trying to make it real" when they find themselves in a fight.

I did a quick google search for "American teen rips out a spinal cord," and got nothing except a news report about doctors reattaching a teenager's head after it was almost severed in a car wreck, plus a few old news reports repeating the concern about Mortal Kombat's violent graphics. For some reason, the spinal cord removal trend never took off. Presumably, the youth of the '90s were simply too lazy, and lacked the dedication of previous spine-ripping generations.

jochenpippir/pixabay
Back in their day, they didn't need any "safe spaces" or "Pokemon Go's" to neatly remove a man's vertebrae.

1

The Internet Was Creating A Self-Policing Wonderland

You might assume by now that whenever the media gets something wrong, it gets it wrong in the same way: by exaggerating how scary and dangerous something is. If teenagers tomorrow decided en masse that they were into a harmless habit like cross-stitching, the news channels would light up with warnings about teens stabbing each other with tapestry needles, followed by infographics detailing what to do if your child cross-stitches a picture of a giant penis and shows it to their principal.

Occasionally, however, we see the exact opposite mistake. Look at this 1993 CBC report assuring viewers that this new thing called the "internet" is a bastion of politeness:

The internet is anonymous, the "internet enthusiast" featured in the report tells us, but despite this fact, no one is rude to one another. "There's not a lot of cursing or swearing," he asserts. Although you might expect users to use insults like "go to hell," nobody does, because the internet has a "sense of community." And we believed him. Oh dear god, we believed him.

Well, this one is easy to check. Let's just go take a look at the internet, and ...

Via facebook

... Yeah, I bet that "internet enthusiast" is doing a lot of drinking these days.

C. Coville has a Twitter here.