Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/12/17/watch-this-bizarre-80s-canadian-news-segment-about-punk-rock.html
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Look like normal kids to me, but that’s me talking.
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One of the most vexing parts of being an adult is hearing people my age crabbing about their/others’ children and how “back in my day”, “kids these days” blah, blah, blah.
Seriously, do you not remember what it was like being that age? Do you think draconian measures like Mr “Take Back Control” will work somehow when they didn’t work for you?
Teens want to be seen and heard (and sometimes alone and private). All you really have to do is listen, trust them and give some baseline guidance on how to survive and not be an asshole. If you think clamping down is a solution, you’re in for a very lonely period when they move out.
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Any complaint that is in its essence “kids these days” can be ignored.
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These are always amazing and in hindsight are so hilarious… but these punk panic stories also had real consequences for punk rockers whose parents who were freaked out by this and then cracked down hard on their weird kids.
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I remember W5 being one of the more serious news shows in Canada but I guess my memories are faulty.
Growing up through the punk is scary age. It always surprised me when adults were so scared. The punk subculture in my local experience was one of the more inviting and generally supportive / come as you are groups.
Sure there were bad subgroups (Nazi punks, as the Dead Kennedys said, they can F off) but there were also subgroups like straight edge so it’s too broad to generalize completely.
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This report was awesome! So overblown that it’s ridiculous.
My 18 year old has been into the old school LA punk scene for years and even has his own punk band. He’s also in honors classes and gets nearly straight As… I just think it’s cool that he’s found a way to express himself.
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Pretty much from the hysteria around the Sex Pistols on, it was punk panic that drove a lot of that. This is around the same time as stranger danger and satanic panic, too. Oh, and people freaking out over D&D… It’s always just a subset of adults, but it’s always a vocal set of busy-bodies… in the 90s, it was more focused on goths and some young people getting into neopaganism like Wicca.
To be fair, in some cases, the straight edgers could be real assholes themselves. Some would pretty violently go after people they saw drinking or smoking or doing drugs at clubs. It’s kind of wild that that ended up happening. And pretty much every single punk scene had some trouble with neo-nazi skins! Hell, that was even in true in East Germany, FFS. You’d think that any punk scene would be free of such bullshit it would be a very left-leaning scene inside a communist state, but nope… the East German government cracked down hard on left-wing punks, and let the right wing nazi aligned skins have free reign in the late 80s…
But there are so many news programs and talk shows on punk rock from the 80s. It’s kind of crazy. It seems silly now, but like I said above, it did real damage to some kids who were actually much better off hanging out in a constructive scene like punk rock than doing other things.
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Well said.
Funny thing about the other groups is that my experience with Satanists, D&D players and other “scary” religions has also tended towards more pleasant, inclusive, and intellectually stimulating conversations than with many self identified “good people” (good because they are Christian, not their behaviour).
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My cousin was deep into the punk scene when I was a kid. He is currently retiring from his tenured position as a math professor. That was one end of the admittedly broad spectrum of people I knew when I enjoyed punk.
I have a vague memory of watching this specific show when I was a kid. W5 was a regular thing in our house, and it wasn’t like we had a lot of other channels.
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Maybe they did the story because it upset one of their own? 
pretty sure the accent coach for Bill & Ted used this footage of Razor to train Keanu Reeves.
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Little bit of the BFG at the end for the CanCon. Legends. I never got to see them play, but I was at a house party that got raided by skinheads looking to rough them up.
\H/
Ott
/C\
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I got to visit Goofworld before they closed it up, total chaos but so much fun.
Or how the music’s not really music. Same thing I’m certain my parents heard from theirs.
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