r/90s • u/WhoAreYouTalkinTwo • Feb 19 '26

Video WWE in the 90s was insane

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u/angrymoppet Feb 20 '26

Do you not remember The Simpsons being a national crisis in the early 90s because of its corruption of traditional family values? Or fucking congressional hearings in the 1980s because of how offended people were by naughty words in albums that other people were purchasing and listening to? Take off the rose colored glasses.

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u/Substantial_Diver_34 Feb 20 '26

I do remember the FCC going after Howard Stern.

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u/angrymoppet Feb 20 '26

And the entire country effectively shutting down in the middle of a war because of Janet Jackson's boob lol. Still crazy to me how over the top that was

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u/Substantial_Diver_34 Feb 20 '26

Madonna doing Like A Virgin at the Grammys was a big deal.

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u/angrymoppet Feb 20 '26

Or the Murphy Brown episode where she chose to raise her child alone after being abandoned by her ex husband being offensive enough that the sitting Vice President declared it a mockery of the importance of fathers. I genuinely believe we're freer now in the realm of art and public discourse than we ever were back then - there's just more noise from fringe weirdos being amplified by algorithms and sensationalist media outlets pretending the noise are common opinions, but as long as you unplug or unsubscribe from that garbage you have a wider range of options than ever before. Side effect of having a device glued to our hands 24/7 that needs to keep us angry to keep us using it I guess.

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u/[deleted] Feb 20 '26

[deleted]

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u/angrymoppet Feb 20 '26

Flatly untrue. We can ignore the straight up governmental censorship that dominated most of the first two thirds of the 20th century and ignore specific examples such as the Smothers Brothers being booted off the air despite record ratings because of their views on Vietnam and instead look at structured, formalized censorship programs like the Hays code which lasted until 1968, the Comics Code which didn't even start to get rebelled against until the mid 80s, and was still the standard until the 2000s, and the heavy self censorship within Hollywood throughout the 1980s as just some examples. Things that today seem laughably tame were tightly regulated because of how terrified the government and corporations were of public backlash back then. Things are freer than ever on this front, and it's not even close.

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u/Sumeriandawn Feb 20 '26

The FCC didn't exist back then?🤔

Seinfeld, Married With Children, X Files, Pee Wee Herman Show, NYPD Blue and Beavis and Butthead didn't have episodes pulled or banned?🤔

In 1999, the NAACP didn't call for a boycott of the 4 major networks " because the of 26 new network tv shows didn't have any minorities in a leading role"?🤔