Who was the wit who dismissed the internet as "the CB radio of the 90s"? (S)he should be properly recognized in the bad predictions hall of fame.
I remember someone telling me a very similar joke, but the punch line was that the person turned French Canadian. Highly offensive!
This version also offends me. Betty Ford was a CBer!
We had two portable CBs when I was a kid. They're probably still in the basement.
I think it's kind of amusing when the make-fun-of-stupid-group gets turned on a very small group in a way that is completely nonspecific.
Eg, a Texas Aggie asks another Texas Aggie, "Whatcha got there?"
Aggie #2 says, "It's a thermos."
Ag 1, "What's a thermos?"
Ag 2, "It keeps hot things hot, and cold things cold."
Ag 1, "Wow! Whatcha got in there?"
Ag 2, "Two popsicles and some coffee."
That sure says a lot about Aggies!
I thought the IQ-sucking helmet was the internet, which seemed weirdly prescient.
Except twitter users won't even have a useful skill after the zombie apocalypse.
When I heard the joke in the OP, the punchline was "Go Blue."
Should I tell the joke more slowly?
Hacker lingo has some substantial overlap with CB lingo -- pseudonyms are known as "handles", for instance -- in part because the CB radio scene and the ham radio scene overlapped, and computer nerd hackers are a pretty direct evolution from ham radio nerd hackers. So the sort of late '70s redneck stereotype doesn't really capture the full flavor of the scene, I don't think. I also wonder if there was something of an anti-labor bias in contemporaneous anti-CB stereotypes, since CB gained its cultural currency via its use in labor actions.
since CB gained its cultural currency via its use in labor actions
Like in the song "Convoy"?
I thought CB was used mostly by truckers coordinating their serial killing.
That's just in the movies. Real trucker-serial killers work alone.
There's some interesting country songs from the 70s that are so pro-labor/working class. They're clearly the ancestors of the songs now that fetishize calloused hands and a hard day's work, but the piece about being exploited by the boss and having to unionize has been lost to the culture wars.
The only one I can think of right now doesn't quite work - it's the Alabama song "Forty Hour Week" but it still somehow sounds like something that couldn't be written today by a country musician.
Even when they elaborately ambush honeymoon couples?
"Working 9 to 5" probably launched a fetish of being tied-up by Dolly Parton.
I think the problem is from "They Live." The white working class thinks it's Roddy Piper and must beat the non-white working class into submission before the combined working class can take on the aliens/wealthy.
computer nerd hackers are a pretty direct evolution from ham radio nerd hackers.
And model train enthusiasts . . .
There's some interesting country songs from the 70s that are so pro-labor/working class.
I should be able to think of some of those. Though the first thing that comes to mind is "Dark As A Dungeon" which isn't country and isn't from the 70s.
WHILE ALL THE TIME BEING NOTHING BUT PUPPETS FOR THE JEWS WHO RUN HOLLYWOOD.
Frank probably had a whole different pair of metaphorical sunglasses that could have opened Nada's eyes about racism. Instead of a quid pro quo on sunglasses-wearing, Nada opts for a big fight. Not that the fight didn't make for a great scene.
Back in the 70s everyone agreed that the working class was white so it was easier for them to be pro-labor. It got more complicated when minorities started asserting that they also held jobs.
Isn't the OP punchline more about truckers than CBers generically?
27: I think that's a lot of it. Especially since all the crab about government workers being lazy really amped up about the time the government starting hiring black people for jobs above janitor.
The crab was spreading lots of crap.
That's just in the movies. Real trucker-serial killers work alone.
Because otherwise they'd be parallel killers, and while you can have a parallel bus, there's no such thing as a parallel truck.
Not exactly politically pro-labor, but the sort of country song where you can see pro-labor from there.
23: My takeaway from "They Live" was that bubblegum is the true opiate of the masses. Roddy Piper wouldn't have started kicking ass if only he hadn't run out of bubblegum.
Also not quite politics, but closeish.
That's deep. I used to be much less concerned about politics when I was a teenager who chewed gum. Now that I'm middle aged and do not chew gum, I worry about it all the time.
But I've lost track of why I'm finding working-class anthem country songs.
Things you do without quite knowing why explicitly is a good definition of "culture."
A different oldtimer was complaining about the bar scene downtown, and how all the sidewalks get covered with black disks from the gum-chewing college kids.
I associate sidewalks covered with blackened gum with high school, and had never noticed the downtown sidewalks until it was pointed out to me.
This has to be a side-effect of the decrease of smoking, right? Like, we're going to get our oral fixation by hook or by crook, dagnabbit?
I think of blackened gum on the streets as steady-state. There was plenty when I was a teenager and NYC was entirely hidden by a layer of cigarette smoke.
And also this.
I thought of that, but also not from the 70s (which matters a bit in that it's coming out of union music in the 40s).
Tom T Hall, "Ode to a half a pound of ground round" (1971) -- not pro-labor but definitely working class.
Going further afield from actual working class politics, but I always thought Hank Williams Jr's "A Country Boy Can Survive" was the epitome of valorization of the ethos.
Does "Copperhead Road" count? It's too recent, I guess.
I had some experience with CBs in high school because I was part of a club that offered safe rides home from parties as an alternative to having them drive drunk or ride with a drunk driver. In the days before cell phones, we used a CB to keep the car in contact with the dispatch office. Of course during the time when the car wasn't out on a run, we played with the CB and made fun of truckers going by on the highway a couple miles away. We received a not insignificant number of threats in return.
I guess this doesn't say much about CB culture but says more about the fact that I was the kind of kid who sat in the school office Friday or Saturday nights from 10-2 offering rides home to peers who were out getting drunk.
41m 42, 43: Yeah, looking at the lyrics to that, that's not working class, that's survivalist/prepper. And super creepy.
I just want to say there's a bear taking pictures because I'd feel this thread would be incomplete without that line.
My serious hacker friend who started in the eighties and still does smart radio said once that he had thought when he used it that cb would spread to the masses and become the kind of thing the conversational internet has become. I suppose that works out as"a bigger minority interest"
My serious hacker friend who started in the eighties and still does smart radio said once that he had thought when he used it that cb would spread to the masses and become the kind of thing the conversational internet has become. I suppose that works out as"a bigger minority interest"
The internet may have become bigger in the end, but CB radio inspired more movies and TV shows involving trucks and chimpanzees.
Herrenvolk Will Survive.
I laughed out loud.
I had a friend in high school who had a CB in his car for a while and used it to talk to random truckers. I don't remember any details beyond that.
A highschool girlfriend had a CB in her car. It was weird.
It was ok, apparently real serial killers don't actually use CB at all.
re: 43
Earle is a self-professed socialist, so I think reading some pro-labour feeling into his songs wouldn't be crazy.
I remember CB radio. I never had one, but I did like the movie "Citizen's Band". The whole anonymity thing was very internet.