In the 1980s perfect strangers drove you places.

I remember "It's 10 pm, do you know where your children are?" being asked every night before the local news.

'Stand By Me' was a movie about four boys disappearing for a weekend and not one parent was arrested.

It’s 10 pm, do you know where your children are?
I TOLD YOU LAST NIGHT, NO!
Wasn’t that to remind parents that they had kids since most were taking drugs or alcohol to cope with life?
You say the first one like it’s a GOOD thing, that campaign has led to ridicule of an entire generation, and you point to that like it’s a good thing…?
Dude without thar ad don't think my parents would have come looking for me.
- My parents didn't come looking, it was just if you came in the door after they got that announcement they knew to beat us. If we were in before it they didn't have to do anything in their mind

My dad tells stories of snowstorms back in the 70s & 80s where they would leave their truck at the end of the driveway with the keys in it and unlocked.

We live very rural (my grandparents were my neighbours growing up), and snowstorms could get bad. So everyone left their vehicles out with the keys in case someone broke down on the side of the road so that they could hop in the truck and turn it on to stay warm. Never had a vehicle so much as damaged, much less stolen.

Yes but also dirty old men tried to grope you in parks and your parents didn't care.
- Are you sure that changed?
- Definitely not disagreeing with that. I made the comment after reading the title, but before I saw the associated image.
- Honestly that just sounds like an indictment on your parents.
I did that well into the late 90s when I was staying with my grandparents. Nothing to do with snowstorms. If someone was stupid enough to risk walking that far out of the way, and getting shot, they probably deserved that old Honda.

I still pick up hitchhikers. I consider it a nice thing to do if you are heading in the same direction. It may get me killed one day, but at least I'll die doing the right thing.

Hell, when I was a little boy in 2001, you could still accept a ride from strangers. I mean, sure, you could end up in the car with a wannabe John Wayne Gacy, but more often than not, it was a kind stranger offering a ride to a kid walking home in the 105 degree Texas heat.

(If the US had adequate public transit/micromobility infrastructure, worrying about random strangers picking you up – let alone for intra-city travel – wouldn't be a thing.)
- Rural
I'd argue that's still the case, and always has been, and likely always will be. I don't think there's a larger number of evil people intent on harming hitchhikers, just that it is a dangerous habit and the cases that end violently are the only ones that make the news. It's more that we're better educated about it now, and so less people are willing to hitch or pick up hitchhikers now
- Are we better educated if it's almost always safe?

I don’t remember Balki driving me anywhere in the 80s

Your dad is Balki Bartokomous?!? I have so many questions.
Did you grow up in the states or on Mypos? Is your full name Semi_Hemi_Demigod Bartokomous? Do you have your own place, or do you live with cousin-once-removed Larry? Do you know the Dance of Joy, and can you teach me?
- No, but he is like a close uncle.
  Sadly I have never visited the motherland.
  My full name is Semihemidemideus Bartokomous.
  I have my own place but Uncle Larry and I are restoring his old Mustang.
  Of course I know the dance of joy and would be so happy to teach you I would do the dance of joy!

Leave your phone at home?

"It was on the charger! I forgot!"

Not sure that would work.

In the 1980's Perfect Strangers was a TV show.

(And it was funny)

If they really wanted to reach me at all times they could have paid for a pager. I wasn't going to.

Perfect strangers in the 1980s?

So glad it wasn't just me, hah,

Taxis still exist.

Now we give perfect strangers a star rating based on how little they talked.

And few of us were murdered.

(Some were.)

Everyone is going to die.
The obsession with safety to the exclusion of all else has taken the life out of life.
Example: Can't have trick or treating anymore, having neighbors meeting and forging goodwill with neighbors under it, "they might have poisoned your candy." despite no prior epidemic of candy poisoning having led to this.
People are so obsessed with making the highly, highly improbable happening with others impossible, that most seem to just be surviving. That isn't living.
Not gonna change, really sad though. The information age turning every random crime with an interesting aspect that happened a thousand miles away from you with the perpetrator arrested into a Netflix docuseries with viewers declaring they're surprised it hasn't happened to them because they went on a walk alone once and NEVER AGAIN!
Weird everyone is so obsessed with dying at a feeble age with a shit filled diaper, senile and confused.
- And people generally just ignore how much we trust each other every day. Like every single other person could kill you if you don't expect it. Push someone on the street, they fall and die. That's it. Or have something sharp and purposefully poke it into another person. We walk past hundreds if not thousands of people while walking in the city. The amount of trust humanity requires just to function is insane. And some people think all of that suddenly goes out the window on halloween etc?
  Fucking moronic cowards.
- You don't have Trick or Treating?
  Dang, it really is great for building relationships.
- If you really want trick or treaters, what our old neighborhood did was petition the city to block off a couple small residential streets, everyone got a little too into the decorating, then we let the local newspaper know. We got about 1500 folk the first year, and when we moved out it was around 3000. Spent a hell of a lot on candy, but for the holiday it was worth it. I haven't been by since 2019, but my old neighbors and I are still in touch and they still throw the block party.
- I wonder if lower infant mortality and less need for family manual labor -> fewer kids -> more protective of those kids.

[laughs in not having cell ever charged]

A practice that has served me well ever since high school

I'll still give hitchhikers a lift if I'm on a long drive and I'm having trouble staying awake.

Balki Bartokomous?

You've been watching too many movies

werent mobile phones pretty cheap in 98?

No, they weren't particularly cheap. And they weren't anywhere nearly as reliable connectionwise (functionwise they were way more reliable to be honest), and the expectation to always be near it wasn't anywhere near it is today.
- ok. i got the "hagenuk global" with my contract back then and it was working well all the time. that was before 1998. and i won a nokia communicator in 97. still have it. was mind blown as a kid. sms was free back then.. so i still dont get the meme really.
Devices were getting cheaper, not quite to mass adoption but getting there, however service wasn't nearly universal like it is today. There were whole towns and even some suburbs that didn't have coverage yet. It wasn't until the introduction of 3G (around like 2006, if memory serves) that phones got cheap and service became blanket for most people.
- Yea I didn't get a cell phone until like 2004/5 and I only had coverage for like half the places I spent time at in my town. All my friends lived out in the country so I was unreachable most of the time until several years later.
In the US, not really. Even if the phone itself was cheap, the plans were high. We moved my last year of highschool and my mom got a phone for me to keep in the car. It was only to call 911 for emergencies because the cost per minute was crazy.
- in the EU short messages were still free of any charge at that time. nokia started booming. life was good in the EU and plans were affordable.