Dumb

At 9 PM, Cartoon Network exploded and TNT began. It was also the signal to us kids that we were up past our bedtime, which was 8PM. If we stayed up till 9PM, it was scandalous.

As was TNT. To this day, I don’t know what kind of TV Channel TNT was. But I firmly believe it was a grown-up channel. Mostly because it came after the children channel Cartoon Network, but also because it was on only at nighttime. I could Google or Wiki it, but why, tho? It’s not like I’d go back and watch TNT now as an adult. I have my smartphone.

I do remember one time we watched the old-timey Titanic movie (the one before the Leo-Kate one) on TNT. So I also associate TNT with ancient beige movies. Maybe they showed technicolor but it probably was all beige. Not Black & White, you understand. Just not a lot of pop. I mean, Titanic was set in the ocean. Which should ideally be blue or white or black. But I remember the movie as beige. I don’t think I stayed up to the end of it. Or maybe it was also because I was up way past my bedtime.

There’s nothing that really sets children and grown-up channels apart anymore these days. Parents often tell me they put up parental blocks on their phones so their kids can stick to only those irritating, high-pitched, loudly-coloured sing-alongs on YouTube. But I also know from Twitter that there’s a lot of hentai and cartoon porn that parental blocks don’t often get. A lot of pervs out there. So supervision of online content is incredibly difficult.

My friend Goldie’s kid used to like PBK-a on YouTube who was this man dressed like a pastor and dancing clumsily along to his really traditional Mizo gospel beats. Very tame. Very safe. If only more kids liked that, it might be easier on parents. As it stands, content is extremely hard to control. Even Aubrey has moved on to shinier videos and artists like Young Fella and Mary Dawngi. As all of us do. Sawisel Bo, us.

So much of online content is sus anyway. Even cartoons need to be realistic these days. People even get angry over races of half-fishes. During the CN/TNT days, cartoons were just a whole lot of mindfuck. Or at least something someone extraordinarily high dreamed up and then coloured in and then delivered in primary colours. Cartoon logic defied physics and it was awesome. And so much adult jokes inserted in innocent cartoons. Why? Because the people who made them were sus. But innuendo flies past kids’ heads so we were more or less OK as far as preventing naivete was concerned. Today? Everything in the media? Very woke. Very in the lines. Lowkey boring. And somehow the end result is even the littlest of kids knows what coitus is. Very disturbing. What did I know aged 9? Nothing! And I seem to regress every day recently.

Or maybe my generation was (is?) just dumb.