Sunscreen probably has something to do with it.
And cigarettes. Plus personal grooming and style.
- Smoking
- Smoking
- 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.
No… I hate to tell you this but you are completely wrong. I smoked since i was 18 and even grew up with parents that smoked. I eventually stopped daily smoking when i was 25 years old. I only smoke every once in a while when i get together with my friends. About 2-3 packs a year now if we have to put a number on it.
I am not even 40 yet and I TOTALLY HAVE HAIR, TRUE MAN I DO. I HAVE HAIR, AND LOTS OF IT. “I have the most hair anyone has ever seen” end sentence with index and thumbs together touch each hand in an ‘okay sign’ pointing at each other
I mean you basically don’t smoke then. Most of the effects of smoking are based on pack-years, which is the number of years you’ve smoked a pack per day. So two packs a day for 10 years? 20 pack years.
You have barely any pack years, and you stopped so young that the adverse effects are definitely reversed (10 years of cessation to reverse risk of lung CA/COPD).
Yeah, I am glad I essentially stopped. (In case you couldn’t tell I was joking with my tone)
Glad you are bringing up some of these points because most people don’t actually realize it ages you.
All real talk aside it’s now time to start rewatching Cowboy Bebop. Hahaa
Ha ha so true. I thought you were joking but you never know with the internet.
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.
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.
yep! but the difference is only a couple of years in apparent age. so really, nope.
exercise more
X to doubt
I saw something speculating that Americans still age faster than other countries due to all the hormones they consume in animal products.
I saw something speculating jews shot space lasers to start forest fires. Luckily, I understand speculation isn’t fact.
Why is this?
Smoking.
The micro plastics sustain me
I put that shit on everything!
I laughed way too hard at this. Thanks, I hate it.
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.
Because we were 6 in the 80s.
I have bad news. You’re in your 40s.
…I’m aware
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.
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.
It’s almost like you cropped out the other half of the argument
I’ve watched that video and seen it reposted dozens of times. Michael talks about doctors finding people are aging slower in the intro. Then goes down a completely different path to claim most of this is due to clothing and style perception. Veering off into some weird pseudoscience junk even.
What he could have done is check medical studies of twins that prove smokers age faster. Overlay smoking rates then and now. Come to the medically accepted reason for why this phenomenon exists.
If you’ve truly watched that video then it must be a long time ago and are remembering it wrong. Because it does say exactly what you’re saying early on in the video, explaining the studies that show how people are now younger from a medical point of view. You then clearly see that the age difference reported in the study from a medical point if view is not nearly wide enough to explain the magnitude of the difference of we perceive in real life.
This is why video then shifts away from the purely medical perspective towards the more subjective reasons that could affect how we perceive people’s age. Of course it’s not gonna be backed by medical research to support this because the other reasons for this phenomena has absolutely nothing to do with medical science. Medical science doesn’t give a shit about the evolution of fashion in haircuts, makeup and clothing. But that doesn’t mean that it cannot have an effect on people’s perceptions of other’s age. It is obvious in the examples provided in the video that this has a far greater effect on the perception of someone’s age than the medical explanation alone.
The meme itself is obviously about people’s perception of people’s age, which is affected by both medical and subjective factors like the evolution of fashion. Trying to pretend that only the medical factor counts is, essentially, ignoring the other half of the argument just to make yourself sound right.
Let’s play a game then. I know people right now today. Who dress and have facial hair nearly the same as Richard Dreyfuss in this image. They’re all late 30’s or early 40’s.
Go ahead and let me know how old you think he looks. And yes he was a smoker.
Ah yes. Cherry picking an example of recurring fashion. That definitely proves that fashion and style never changes or evolves ever. /s
These ladies are twins. One of them smoked. One did not.
Michael was so right though. It’s all just perception tricks.
Hey Michael
Vsauce here
Where are your fingers?
Clichael Clichael Michael Clichael
For me it was the hormone therapy
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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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.
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.
Cowboy Bebop came out in 1998.
Give me 30 year old Jet any day. Dude is the perfect ship mom/dad combo rocking a bald and beard.
People are aging more slowly than in the past, we have better information on how to take care of ourselves. But there is wide variation when you get older. I will say though, that I still feel really good in my mid 50s, nothing hurts, I am still strong and healthy and think that would have been less usual even just 20 years ago.
The need to use animated characters probably explains it and that is, it is really not true.
