fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5441 ]

[ SECRET POST #5441 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5441 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 35 secrets from Secret Submission Post #779.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It wasn't the real estate bust that killed malls, it wasn't helicopter parents, it wasn't Amazon, it wasn't woke lazy teens on their cellular telephones screens, it wasn't the pandemic, it wasn't the boomers getting too old old to mall walk, it wasn't any of that; it was forty years of running the global economy into the ground with stagnant wage growth that killed it. But also it was totally ALIENS!

Wage stagnation was an important part of it but it was definitely also Amazon

DA

Internet in general tbh. Malls used to be hangouts for young people because they had food and arcades and movie theaters and other fun things to do. But why go all the way there when you can do all that at home now?

I hate to be the one to tell you that teens had video games, movies and food at home in the 80s. Being with your friends somewhere that wasn’t at home was kind of the point.

I mean, having been alive in the 80s, access to VHS was a lot harder than popping onto Netflix. Going over to someone's house was way more annoying than dropping into a game lobby or playing with them online from all over the world.

I get you're trying to be clever here but you missed the point that it's not access I'm talking about. It's ease of access.

But if you want to believe I don't think consoles existed in the 80s uh you're free to do that.

Plus, it was way easier to get like 5-10 people together in a mall arcade or theater than in someone's house. Simply due to size and space issues. But since you can all stream shows at home and hop in voice chats together, or play together online, no need to go anywhere to get the same experience of casually chilling with your friends.

I say this as someone who used to be a mallrat. It was the practical choice for a friend gathering because it had everything and didn't need 1 friend to prep everything at their home. But now there's no need.

There's a reason people no longer have LAN parties.

Yes but for the kind of social activity AYRT is talking about, leaving the house is the whole point. You're tired of sitting around the same place, if you're a teenager you probably live with your parents and they're annoying. You want to go hang out with your friends in a physical space that isn't your home and you don't have adults breathing down your neck. Malls were a very good space for that. It doesn't even matter what games you're playing at the arcade or what movie you're seeing. The point was to be somewhere other than home.

I would buy this as the reason if teens were still going to malls for that reason which should not have changed so drastically. Except they aren't. So that couldn't have been the major driving factor.

That wasn't why me and my friends hung out there either, but sure, you speak for us all.

Well you certainly don’t speak for us all either.

Right. They never leave the house now.

That's why I keep seeing them hanging out at the local hypermarkets. They were especially bad during lockdown, gathering in large groups throughout the store and not wearing face masks, chasing each other around on the power scooters and generally fucking everything up. They were doing this because they have the internet and do everything at home these days.

Yeah the thing is that being a place for teens to gather is a social function of malls, but not actually a major way for them to make money

Yeah during the first month or so of lockdown the streetcorner near my house was always full of teens hanging out, bitching about being stuck at home all day with nothing to do and nowhere to go, since even beaches, parks, and hiking trails were closed. I'm betting their parents were glad of the respite while they were out, too.

No, they do all the things they'd have done at the mall, at home now. They go out to do other things because teens are capable of doing more than those things.

I'm talking about malls, specifically, functioning as social gathering places for teens in the 80s by offering very specific things that weren't widely available to groups pre-internet. They've lost what they offered to other, more convenient places and non-physical venues post-internet.

Nowhere did I state teens never go out or do anything else outside. Only that the main offerings of malls, specifically, have been replaced by other things.

People are reading far more into my comments than they actually stated, but that's FS for you.

DA

I think you just didn’t state your point very well. No need to blame everyone else for misreading or reading too much into what you’re saying. Especially because you did basically state that “now that there’s a way to do all the things that made malls what they were at home, why bother to go to them”? And then you get snippy when people point out that the social gathering aspect is still reason enough for teens. Which is something you do bring up separately, but only in the framing of 80s mallrats for some reason, even though mall culture was still going strong in the 90s. And only started dying down for indoor galleria type malls in the late 2000s. Which is definitely because of the internet making online shopping a breeze, no question. And now, malls are a shadow of what they used to be, and it’s a sad thing for this almost 40 former mallrat. They’re good hangout places, but that’s not enough for a sustainable revenue on the whole. So I do agree with you in that assessment.

But despite acknowledging that the teen gathering aspect is still a good enough reason for going to malls(even though you get unnecessarily snarky and defensive every time you do), you still keep framing it as “why would anyone want to go to the mall when they can do and get everything the mall offers in a more convenient way?”. Like I said, you’re not stating your point well, or at least not as clearly as you could. So there’s no need to blame everyone else or get persnickety at everyone replying or trying to clarify. Especially because the majority of those people were being perfectly polite, and were completely undeserving of your snide attitude.

DA

How about teenage aliens who can’t find work at malls?

Nah, aliens. The answer is always aliens.

But which ones?

Inquiring minds and the tabloid press need to know!

I think internet shopping is probably at least 50% of what's "killing" malls, but I do agree with you that running the economy into the ground has also played a pretty significant part. I mean, according to CNN about 1/3rd of new stores that opened in the US in 2021 have been dollar stores. Fucking yikes.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #5441 ]

Re: Hot spicy bad take!

Re: Hot spicy bad take!

Re: Hot spicy bad take!

Re: Hot spicy bad take!

Re: Hot spicy bad take!

Re: Hot spicy bad take!

Re: Hot spicy bad take!

Re: Hot spicy bad take!

Re: Hot spicy bad take!

Re: Hot spicy bad take!

Re: Hot spicy bad take!

Re: Hot spicy bad take!

Re: Hot spicy bad take!

Re: Hot spicy bad take!

Re: Hot spicy bad take!

Re: Hot spicy bad take!

Re: Hot spicy bad take!

Re: Hot spicy bad take!