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Euphoria started a really messed up pattern
Posted September 18, 2022 by 17throwaways17 in Television

I get that the "point" is these fucked up teenagers who are obsessed with drugs and sex and trans characters but now every single teen show is following suit and its really disturbing.

This weekend I watched Do Revenge on Netflix as well as Heartbreak High... Both shows featured heavy drug use and not just weed but KETAMINE... super casually.

Not only were the teens were sex and porn obsessed, they also were super QWEER in heartbreak high and idk. I'm noticing a sick pattern.

48 comments

[Deleted]September 18, 2022

I don't understand the appeal of those shows - but I had a sane childhood and teenage years with accepting parents that loved me.

I mean, shit. My parents told me I could drink, smoke pot or have sex as long as I did so SAFELY! (If I drank, do it at our house or a friend's, never drive, can always call for a ride if I need, if I did smoke pot please do it at home just in case, if I wanted to have sex let them know so I could get on birth control and have condoms etc.)

Hilariously that took the rebellion out of everything and I never had any issues. Didn't have sex until college because without the rebellion I saw that all the boys I went to school with were incels and idiots and not worth risking pregnancy. 🤣

#1 Mom award for my mom for sure!

[Deleted]September 19, 2022

writes down furiously in case I ever have kids

Alias_RosieSeptember 19, 2022

Lol hard same. I was such a square though that I never got up to that. I knew a few kids who were stoners and I'm sure there was some drinking and sex, but I went to a pretty rigorous high school, in the AP track, so pretty much all the people I was surrounded by were about academic achievement. Some were definitely more popular than others, but ultimately, we focused on our GPAs.

chai_teaSeptember 18, 2022(Edited September 18, 2022)

One show I liked as a teen was Gilmore Girls

It's a somewhat realistics representation of life as a teen, going to school, doing homework, reading, hanging out with friends and family...

I could never related to "debauchery" type shows like euphoria (or skins/kids back in the day). I didn't have time or money to party every weekend.

Killer_DanishSeptember 18, 2022

Oof, I remember seeing Kids (1995) way back when and thinking authorities needed to check Larry Clark’s house, because there was no way he wasn’t a pedo… the praise he got from the likes of Scorsese and Roger Ebert made me want to puke…

[Deleted]September 18, 2022

Same. I remember seeing ads for Skins and feeling sick to my stomach at what the kids were doing.

MoralTerfitudeSeptember 18, 2022

I always liked Derry Girls for that, too--those are characters I can see myself and my friends in at that age.

Killer_DanishSeptember 18, 2022(Edited September 18, 2022)

BDSM/kink/drugs used to mostly be the domain of gay men and adult weekend warriors, but the media in recent decades has helped market it to children as a “fun and progressive form of sexuality.” Kids are encouraged to partake in high-risk activities: Drag sex shows for kids, magazines like Teen Vogue telling little girls to do anal, teen celebrities flaunting their drug use, and now shows like Euphoria, with big stars like Zendaya, modelling this bad behaviour for kids (“Everybody is doing it — why aren’t you?!”)

The pedo-left has made me far more conservative than I have ever been at any point in my life!

[Deleted]September 18, 2022

The pedo-left has made me far more conservative than I have ever been at any point in my life!

Yup, same here. Just changed my voter registration because it truly feels like the left has lost its mind. I'd rather be around conservatives than leftists at this point in my life.

[Deleted]September 19, 2022

I would never vote Republican I just straight up changed to unaffiliated. I'm going to look at candidates more closely without looking at Rep/Dem shit anymore and just their policies.

[Deleted]September 18, 2022(Edited September 18, 2022)

I think this has been around for a while - at least the drugs/partying stuff, definitely not started by Euphoria.

Skins had mad amounts of drugs, teen sex, real teenage actresses being in sexual scenes (Effy oral sex innuendo scene in season 1 or 2 of Skins when the actress was 14 IRL?). Also Gossip Girl in 2006 had an attempted rape scene on an actress who was 13/14 playing age 13/14 in the first episode. Plus movies like Kidulthood which is bad enough to give you PTSD - teenage rape, prostitution, graphic oral sex scenes, drugs, gang violence.

This stuff has always been around, just not had the kweer bend it does now.

aaardvarkSeptember 19, 2022

I was going to bring up Skins. I remember there was a bit of backlash about it when it came out. I think the problem is that there's less and less backlash about Euphoria. Are they hiding behind "queer" to escape criticism?

It's incredibly creepy how Drake is one of Euphoria's executive producers.

pennygadgetSeptember 18, 2022

Ugh. I never liked teen shows because, even in the 90s, they portrayed ALL teens as sex obsessed dipshits who only cared about getting laid, getting high, or getting popular enough to score more lays and more drugs. The only "teen shows" that had a variety of characters into different things were the ones aimed at children like Saved By The Bell or Spiderman or As Told By Ginger.

KataraSeptember 20, 2022

Well... I don't know about the 90s... But later on we had teen shows like

Veronica Mars (2004), Kyle XY (2006), Suburgatory (2011), Make It Or Break It (2009), Nine Lives of Chloe King (2011), Switched At Birth (2011), All About Us (2001), The Inbetweeners UK version (2008), Smallville (2001),

And shows like

Reaper (2007), Being Erica (2009), Ugly Betty (2006), Dead Like Me (2003), Scrubs (2001), Melissa and Joey (2010), Portlandia (2011), Jane The Virgin (2014), Supernatural (2005), The Office UK version (2001), The Office US version (2005), Younger (2015), Hollyoaks, House of Cards (2013), Dexter (2006), Helix (2014), 8 Tage (2019), Colony (2016), Counterpart (2017), Covert Affairs (2010), Crisis (2014), 24 (2001), The Last Ship (2014),

which were more aimed at adults but can also be enjoyed by teens and the fun thing is you can still watch them as an adult and enjoy it. You could easily watch them with your family. (Maybe some episodes are inappropriate for small kids. But teens can watch these just fine.)

[Deleted]September 18, 2022

I miss As Told By Ginger...

KataraSeptember 20, 2022

LOL that cartoon made me deathly afraid of triangle bikini tops... XD I kept thinking some idiot would come up behind me and untie my top like it happened to Courtney Gripling in that one episode of As Told By Ginger (season 1, episode 9). Took me years to get over that irrational fear LOL.

I tried rewatching that cartoon more recently. And I was put off by all the outdated humor and blatant sexism and other fads that really 'date' this cartoon. But back then I liked it a lot.

MechaWitsSeptember 18, 2022

We have to create Aldous Huxley's Brave New World somehow.

I watched Euphoria, I've watched Degrassi, I was a teen at one point. I don't understand why adults create this romanticized version of kids with adult problems. I would like there to be some wit there but mostly it's likely pedophilia.

pennygadgetSeptember 18, 2022

Its definitely pedophilia. There's no reason Euphoria can't be about young college kids instead of teenagers. But the people making it get off on filming nude/sex scenes of characters who are meant to be underage (even if the actors are over 18)

TaxidermySeptember 18, 2022(Edited September 28, 2022)

Wow, thank you for mentioning Brave New World because a family friend with a huge library recommended that book to me two nights ago and naturally I forgot the title as soon as I left. I didn't worry too much because I knew something would randomly remind me of it at some point, but I did not expect that reminder to end up being a direct reference here.

MechaWitsSeptember 21, 2022

I usually will referenced Brave New World as pleasure, 1984 as Pain and The Machine Stops as something close to what we currently have

Brave New World is a great read.

Sailor_ParadiseSeptember 18, 2022

Can we have an actual show based around teens who don't party and are socially awkward shut ins who struggle to make friends. Why does nobody make shows it would be relatable considering there are loads of kids just like that. That would be more realistic than a show like euphoria

JineraSeptember 18, 2022

I mean, it is fantasy ish, but I think stranger things actually does this really well. Teens just being teens, instead of all being drugs addicts. And monsters lmao

PorangeSeptember 18, 2022

Have you seen the new season? They had to make one of the characters a stoner already. It really made me think that the normalization of drugs in these shows is leading to kids thinking it's no big deal. In fact a lot of these shows encourage underage drinking as a rite of passage as if everyone does it and you're a weird outcast if you don't. Meanwhile not that many high schoolers drink and do drugs like that.

kalinaSeptember 19, 2022

Maybe we went to different schools, but most high schoolers did in fact drink and smoke weed in my experience.

JineraSeptember 18, 2022

I mean.. firstly he is an adult, not a high schooler, and making one of the characters smoke weed is not exactly unrepresentative of real life.

KataraSeptember 20, 2022

There is a lot of anime about kids like that. Japan produces a wide range of animated shows for various audiences. Including teen audiences just like this. The genres I'm referring to are shounen and shoujou slice of life anime and fantasy anime. This is possibly why now with the internet making these shows more widely available, a lot of teens flock to anime. Because there's actual relatable content to be found there. (I'm talking about Teen rated anime: like Naruto, One Piece, My Hero Academia, A Silent Voice, Given, Haikyu, Free Iwatobi Swim Club, Classroom of the Elite, Charlotte, No.6, the Morose Mononokean, The Devil is a Part Timer, Chihayafuharu, Hikaru no Go)

RegularFeministSeptember 18, 2022

I liked Ruby and the Well, it's fantasy, but a nice and warm one

pennygadgetSeptember 19, 2022

Can we have an actual show based around teens who don't party and are socially awkward shut ins who struggle to make friends. Why does nobody make shows it would be relatable considering there are loads of kids just like that

Ironically, the "teen" shows made for young kids are better about showing a variety of personalities and interests in the characters. Probably because they don't have the option of using constant sex/drugs as a crutch to hide shit writing

[Deleted]September 18, 2022

I was really into this type of stuff as a teen. I had zero media literacy and a very sheltered childhood and I was really drawn in by the romanticizing of drugs and promiscuity. (My favorite book as a young teen was Go Ask Alice, which is a fictional story presented as a real teen girl’s diary and is meant to be a cautionary tale but I loved it lmao.) As an adult, I do not want to see teenagers having sex and I wonder about the adults that do. Also when I turned 18, I fell pretty hard into that lifestyle so I know first hand not just how damaging it is but how pathetic it is.

[Deleted]September 18, 2022

Also when I turned 18, I fell pretty hard into that lifestyle so I know first hand not just how damaging it is but how pathetic it is.>

Me too. When I was 15 I started using class A drugs, stopped at 19 with an amphetamine addiction and liver damage. Don't smoke, drink or take anything now and it's been the same way for the last decade... I see drug use in shows as majorly embarrassing and cringe, can't believe that was once me.

sohhSeptember 19, 2022

Me too, 100%. I’m thankful I was able to turn my life around after a few years of absolute craziness when I first became an adult and left home.

BlankandPitilessSeptember 18, 2022

Totally agree. I’m watching Tell Me Lies and although it follows college freshmen, the sex and casual drug use is over the top. Not quite euphoria but still. Most freshmen girls are not having sex like Samantha from sex and the city.

[Deleted]September 19, 2022

It's brainwashing

otterstromSeptember 18, 2022(Edited September 19, 2022)

Oh yeah, there are ketamine clinics popping up left and right. They claim that it is for “treatment resistant depression “which is just a fancy way of saying life is really hard I wanna do drugs, but I’ve tried all the other ones/I don’t want to do the real work/I want to be special/ I’m a victim of “we’ll fix all your problems” marketing. Because it’s a TRANQUILIZER! It makes you not be real. Ffs

wishforsanitySeptember 18, 2022

I've tried it in a clinic. I think there's more to it than "just a tranquilizer". It gave me the ability to think about things in a different way. It was too expensive for me to continue, but, it's a worthy treatment. Ultimately no drug can fix your life.

FeminineMistakeSeptember 18, 2022

It has tremendous promise for treating some forms of depression and complex PTSD - I've seen it work wonders in veterans with serious problems. But the use of ketamine under supervision as a psychiatric treatment is lightyears different than recreational use, just as the appropriate use of opiates to control post-surgical pain (eg) is lightyears different than people crushing oxy and snorting it.

I'm glad you found it helpful - with luck you'll find a way to get it covered, as it becomes better understood it's coming under the umbrella for coverage with more US insurers (not sure if you're in the US, though.) For one thing, quite apart from the humanitarian aspect of treating people, if it works, a few sessions of that therapy are cheaper than a decade of pills and psych appointments.

wishforsanitySeptember 18, 2022

Thank you! Yeah, I'm in the US. I'm assuming (from the descriptions of the Ketamine experiences I read online) that some people taking it illegally are taking really, really large doses. I also DIY'd (bought off the street) Mushrooms/Psilocybin and it was a TERRIBLE experience. Legal, safe, regulated drugs are where it's at. As for this TV show, they glamorized teen drug/sex stuff in the '90s too. It just sounds like they are going too far with the sex scenes with this show.

FeminineMistakeSeptember 19, 2022(Edited September 20, 2022)

I’ve considered it for dealing with PTSD, and the protocols are (I know I don’t need to tell you) radically different from recreational use. A friend suggested I try it at a party to see if it helped; I had trouble explaining it well, but the very fact that it’s used to process traumatic memories means that the last place I want to try it is in a social setting with well meaning but clueless and possibly inebriated friends, rather than in a controlled setting, with people who know how and when to intervene if either the physical or psychological reaction goes badly.

I’m friends with someone who’s doing research on LSD and related compounds for PTSD treatment in veterans, and it’s the same thing - it can be very safe and effective, but buying something from your cousin’s neighbour’s friend and using it in “who knows?” doses in a social setting is um not a good plan. Horrifying if that’s being normalized or glamourized on a show aimed at teens. I’m not in favour of going full on Nancy Reagan with the culture wars, but come on.

otterstromSeptember 18, 2022

Drugs do that

wishforsanitySeptember 18, 2022

Do what

otterstromSeptember 18, 2022

gave me the ability to think about things in a different way.

They do this because… they’re drugs. Your thoughts are drug induced.

wishforsanitySeptember 18, 2022

Right. Then you process the ideas when you're sober. It can be helpful. Sunshine, meditation, Jesus and exercise doesn't work for everyone.

Ave_LucifugeSeptember 18, 2022

This is...a really bad take. I encourage you to actually research what happens in these clinics.

otterstromSeptember 18, 2022

I have done.

[Deleted]September 18, 2022