this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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[–] [email protected] 286 points 8 months ago (5 children)

More people using sunscreen and lotion on the regular prevents skin damage. More people are eating healthy, working less physically demanding jobs. Also there's a pretty huge bias with seeing pictures of older people and seeing them as older than they actually look. It has to do with seeing older styles of clothing and how people tend to keep their core styles longer. This makes people in the present see past photos as "older people" regardless of how young the faces look.

Also the microplastics are preserving us from the inside out. We're all deli-wrapped now.

[–] [email protected] 124 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

People also smoke way less now. See the skin of someone at 30 who started smoking at 15, to see someone who looks like 40.

[–] Tar_alcaran 78 points 8 months ago

And everything around us smokes less too.

In 1950 cars had basically no emission standards, factories didn't either, and a LOT of people heated their homes with coal or wood.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago

Specifically, top panel man is smoking, bottom panel isn’t. That’s why they look like that. Mystery solved.

[–] Zipitydew 18 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's very much the smoking. That V Sauce video about it being clothing wasn't convincing. Comparing just faces negates that possible perception issue. And when constrained to only faces people in the past still look older.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago

Hair styles also make a difference. And it's all of the things, individually, that add up.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago

Each cell wrapped for our protection.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago

Also smoking was banned indoors

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[–] [email protected] 110 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 56 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Okay but it actually is. I look younger at 29 and on my 3rd year of HRT than I did when I was 24.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (10 children)

yeah i'm in my 30s and i get routinely carded at events and people place me in my late 20s still.

a lot of it is genes, but i also: have a good skin care routine, use sunscreen every day, rarely drink alcohol, and use nicotine rarely. those are big factors that shouldn't be discounted.

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[–] [email protected] 87 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Sunscreen probably has something to do with it.

[–] [email protected] 67 points 8 months ago (1 children)

And cigarettes. Plus personal grooming and style.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (3 children)

No doubt on smoking. Plus people didn't even care about second hand smoke around kids until after the 80s.

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[–] [email protected] 76 points 8 months ago (12 children)
  1. Smoking
  2. Smoking
  3. Smoking

There are already a lot of good answers but I want to highlight this. Chronic tobacco smoke causes increased aging due to multiple mechanisms. Moreover, environmental tobacco exposure from second hand and third hand smoke prior to the 1990s was MASSIVE. So even if you didn’t smoke you got insane daily exposures to the same chemicals.

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 35 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 33 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 58 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I don't see any links to Vsauce's video on this so I'm going to assume every response is wrong. TLDR: Styles become associated with eras and people in those eras become associated with our perception of that age bracket.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Also, because of increased healthy lifestyle awareness, we are actually ageing slower than we used to. The clue is in the cigarette the top cartoon smokes. Today we smoke less, we exercise more, we use more sunscreen and we eat healthier, all allowing our bodies to produce more firm collagen in less damaged skin cells.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (3 children)

This. Remember the cool kids from high school smoking, drinking, taking drugs? Yeah they look like 50 in their 30s now.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Appropriate username.

Also with names. Like picture a Mildred or even a Vicky, and you probably conjure up a person of a certain demo

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 8 months ago (4 children)
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[–] [email protected] 55 points 8 months ago (2 children)

The micro plastics sustain me

[–] MeDuViNoX 45 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I put that shit on everything!

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I crave the certainty of PLASTIC

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

One day the crude biomass you call the temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved, for the Plastic isn't biodegradable… Even in death I suffocate turtles.

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

We're a lot sadder now, so we don't smile much. The lack of smiling saved us from face wrinkles which keeps us looking young.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 8 months ago (5 children)

It is because when you look back to old pictures of people from when they were younger, the people in it have clothing styles and hairstyles that we today associate with older people.

Look up a video on YouTube from VSauce called "Did people used to look older?". They explain this phenomena well.

[–] Zipitydew 26 points 8 months ago (9 children)

That argument isn't convincing. Crop photos to compare people to negate the clothing perception. People in the past still look older after doing so.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 8 months ago (2 children)

It’s because of the WEF using hormones to turn the frogs gay, obviously.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 8 months ago

For me it was the hormone therapy

[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Perspective. You were a kid in the 80s and they looked way old. Now you're in your 40s and those little whippersnappers look like the babies they are.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Lots of good answers here. Another minor one is Hollywood bias - older male actors got starring roles in romantic films. Random example, Cary Grant was 59 when he played the lead role in Charade opposite Audrey Hepburn who was 34.

Add to that the low quality of TV broadcasts, different styles of filing and lighting in movies, and less subtle use of makeup and people in film and TV from stuff from the 90s back have an other-world quality to them if you look back at that compared to the high definition world were in now. Even older magazines and pictures can be available at lower quality to us on the Internet than at the time, as we don't get to see the true originals but lower quality scans on the Internet compared to modern digital photographic.

It's amazing looking at old film from the 1800s that has been well kept or restored - not just people but the whole world actually looks real unlike what we're used to.

We're so used to looking at history in low definition or the artificiality of old fashioned TV/movie techniques and biases.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

Plus everything has filters on it now. Movies, online and magazine pictures, even the selfies you take at home have heavy anti-aging filters. After looking at all your selfies, go look at an actual mirror and you'll be surprised at how rapidly you aged.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I had that same beard, hairline, and sunglasses when I turned 30 in 2011

I still do now at 42 honestly, but my facial hair is just less pointy lol

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Cowboy Bebop came out in 1998.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

What it was really like being 30 in the 80's: (It's a metaphor for being afraid of AIDS)

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Neon Genesis Evangelion came out in 1995.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago

We've finally reached the next stage of evolution

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

Give me 30 year old Jet any day. Dude is the perfect ship mom/dad combo rocking a bald and beard.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

The curse of Eva. Duh.

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