SNEAKO - Why Did People Look Older in the Past？

00:00:00.000 did people used to look older hey vsauce michael here at the age of eight don't remember this

00:00:05.840 guy hey whoa whoa whoa whoa legendary youtube intro hey look at my keyboard god damn it vsauce

00:00:15.960 at the age of 18 carl sagan looked like a teenager but it doesn't take long in an old

00:00:23.820 high school yearbook to find teenagers who look surprisingly old these people are all in their

00:00:32.280 20s but so are these people this is elizabeth taylor when she was just 17 and here are some

00:00:40.640 high school students from the 70s did people used to look older brandon mccarthy asked on twitter and

00:00:48.080 evidence poured in people shared photos of their parents in their early 20s bro they were 23 they

00:00:55.760 look like they're 50 i'm older than these people and i look like i'm 10 their dad at 21 their mom

00:01:02.940 at 18 or 19 their dad at 45 one user shared that's 45 their husband at 27 and what his father looked

00:01:14.120 like at 23 and there's pretty much an entire subculture around how old footballers looked

00:01:20.960 decades ago 24 31 33 29 27 it's not uncommon to think that there's something more grown up about

00:01:34.980 the way people used to be to look back and think that people seemed older at a younger age than they

00:01:41.700 do now let's call it retrospective aging it doesn't happen to everyone people do not and never have

00:01:50.500 aged similarly and there's even the opposite observation that kids these days grow up too fast

00:01:56.980 but it's a popular question and subject of numerous means so is it real or is it an illusion fueled by

00:02:08.360 cherry-picked examples that feeds rosy nostalgia for a time when people were tough and didn't have

00:02:15.020 it as easy as you kids have it now well as it turns out both humans today really are aging more slowly

00:02:25.820 than their historic counterparts michael here so why did people look older and today we're gonna

00:02:34.620 change changes in lifestyle nutrition smoking habits health care early life conditions and skin

00:02:42.120 care particularly the use of sunscreen are a huge part of it by comparing measures of metabolic

00:02:48.780 cardiovascular inflammatory kidney liver and lung function across time researchers at yale and usc have

00:02:55.660 found that we are in fact staying younger for longer than we used to so does that mean 60 is the

00:03:04.480 new 50 soy milk iced lattes chat what do you think i've heard this a lot but why the fuck do i still look

00:03:09.740 like i didn't go through puberty and i'm 23 about to be 24 almost their results suggest that between

00:03:16.560 the early 90s and the late 2000s 60 became the new 56 40 became the new 37 and a half and 20 became the

00:03:27.840 new 19 oh also during the last century dentistry and orthodontics have played a huge cosmetic role in the

00:03:36.480 kinds of faces we see in parts of the world but interestingly when faces in magazines are measured from the 1930s to

00:03:46.540 to today the only significant change has been that across all ethnicities the media is now exposing us

00:03:54.620 to larger lips also retroactive aging can occur over short time spans when i was a freshman the seniors in

00:04:02.780 my high school seemed so old to me but by the time i was a senior myself i looked in the freshman look like

00:04:10.060 babies and you bro he also he looked like he was 45 for 45 years and at my peers and i was like

00:04:16.620 we're them now but we don't seem as old as they did what's going on is it's probably a combination

00:04:23.580 of the food of plastic surgery of what we see on social media and also the fact that when back in the

00:04:33.020 day when you were 23 you could work at a factory job and that was just the end of your life like that was

00:04:37.660 middle age you started settling down but now we're in our whole phase till our mid 30s

00:04:42.220 so we still act like we're 18 until we're vsauce's age isn't just about bodies

00:04:48.620 first of all the seniors i looked at when i was a freshman truly were older than me at that time

00:04:55.100 they graduated and went away and later when i was a senior i saw myself as i was but in my mind's eye

00:05:03.660 i saw the earlier seniors as they appeared to me when i was younger retrospective aging seems to also

00:05:12.300 be about perspective let's go back to this tweet this is george went playing norm on the tv show cheers

00:05:20.620 jesus now when cheers premiered went was indeed 34 but i looked it up and this image is actually from

00:05:29.740 episode 24 of season 5 when went was 38 so we're not comparing apples to apples here however this is

00:05:38.140 an image of george went at 34 and ashley fairbanks made some alterations and a good point

00:05:47.340 men are just kind of more man children now this dude on the right the millennial version of him

00:05:52.300 the 2022 version doesn't look like a guy who still has vcrs and a bunch of mario posters in the back

00:05:57.740 however here's the rub this guy he looks like a guy that does a youtube tutorial about how to

00:06:05.820 how to fix your internet ashley and then spends two minutes at the beginning like hey so welcome

00:06:10.220 back to another video if you guys and you're just like oh my god can you get to the point about

00:06:14.060 the internet and he's still advertising his twitch channel fairbanks made some alterations

00:06:19.740 and a good point however here's the rub these alterations don't make went look

00:06:27.180 more like a 34 year old they make him look more like a 34 year old today yeah similarly giving the

00:06:36.140 golden girls modern day hairstyles and makeup drops their apparent age a lot superficial styles and

00:06:42.860 mannerisms can often make not just a big difference but all the difference which supports the hypothesis that

00:06:51.180 retrospective aging is often an illusion modes of self-expression are always change people are

00:06:59.340 having kids later we're maturing later we do everything later people are 25 now still have

00:07:05.100 no idea what they want to do with their life but back in the day in the 70s you got a factory job when

00:07:09.420 you were 21 and that was it you were set you got married and that was your life clothing hairstyles

00:07:16.300 accessories makeup mannerisms language body language now modes can come back but never exactly the

00:07:26.140 context is always a little bit different and from what's available or acceptable at any one time we

00:07:33.180 each draw ways of appearing or being in the world and even if you don't care about how you look or think

00:07:41.420 about how you act what options you even have are dictated by what's currently popular or normal or being

00:07:49.340 pushed on people like you few of us stay at the stream drawing what's new all our lives for various

00:07:57.580 reasons we often wander away with our catch perhaps it's because we settle into an identity we're comfortable

00:08:03.740 with or fear the taboo of not dressing our age or simply run out of time to care but when we're gone

00:08:13.660 the stream keeps changing and we get older and continue to use the mannerisms and styles we grabbed a

00:08:20.460 while back eventually to whatever those styles initially evoked a new connotation is added old person

00:08:30.700 not because the look or behavior is intrinsically for the elderly but because those who use it us

00:08:39.660 became old ourselves if you want to look older what do you do well you can dress the way older people

00:08:48.380 dress and the thing is that's often how they used to dress we can all play sims now in real time with

00:08:55.340 social media with the clothes you wear we all play a character every day you gotta do i feel like i'm this

00:09:00.220 today sometimes i'm gender neutral i'm a guy today a girl tomorrow we're all in this video game two

00:09:08.460 we think people looked older in the past because they look the way old people do today

00:09:16.620 dale irby a gym teacher at preston wood elementary school in dallas texas posed for his first yearbook

00:09:23.180 photo in 1973 the following year he accidentally wore the same outfit again he says he was embarrassed

00:09:31.900 at first but his wife kathy challenged him to do it again so he did and he never stopped what he gave us

00:09:41.180 is a great exaggerated example of how what once connoted youth comes to be associated with old age the people

00:09:49.100 we keep seeing a style on get older and older themselves until we think of the style itself as

00:09:55.100 being for old people retrospective aging then is double pronged both real and illusory people in the

00:10:04.060 past people really did age faster than us because of differences in nutrition and lifestyle and medicine

00:10:10.460 but much if not most can be chalked up to the fact that we think people like this are dressed like old

00:10:17.740 people but that's an anachronism they're dressed like old people from the future the old people they

00:10:25.580 would become has anyone ever dressed like a young person from the future well it happened in 1941 at the

00:10:36.380 reopening of the south fork bridge in canada a crowd came out to celebrate and photos were taken in 2010

00:10:44.860 the photos were digitized and placed online that's when this guy was noticed a time traveling hipster

00:10:55.180 yo you want to get a cold brew let's just go like i found this cool little like indie little coffee shop

00:11:00.220 in 1941 after we go beat the nazis let's go get an ipa why a time traveler wouldn't bother to blend

00:11:08.780 in and why with all of history to visit he chose the reopening of a bridge in the 40s no one knew

00:11:17.500 the photo was confirmed to be undoctored and researchers put forward the idea that this man

00:11:23.420 was not in fact a time traveler that his shirt wasn't an ironic screen print but simply bore the

00:11:39.260 logo of the montreal maroons a nearby hockey team at the time they said his sunglasses and knit sweater

00:11:46.060 were not unusual for the 40s nor was his portable camera the only thing that was unusual about him

00:11:53.020 was how casual his attire was and they're probably right but this all raises the exciting possibility

00:12:01.020 that someone out there right now possibly even you is unknowingly dressed like people in the future will

00:12:09.020 and your appearance in photos will someday freak them out unless you just wear white tees crispy white

00:12:14.220 tees every single day should never gets old should never gets young you just look like you

00:12:17.740 okay you know it might be fun to start dressing even more casually or in some other odd way on the

00:12:23.900 off chance that you happen to nail it and years from now you are worshipped as a time traveler

00:12:29.980 oh that reminds me of today's sponsor ah hi i'm michael ah bsauce hey michael things i won't spoil

00:12:39.740 this foil painted by pythagoras it's good for everyone is it we've got a special treat for you oh yeah

00:12:59.740 what right now if you'd like

00:13:08.220 l internet jesus christ who's that guy i don't know wow okay okay okay whoa who's that guy

00:13:17.020 does he look like a bill a mark a justin or a josh pause right now if you'd like to think about it

00:13:25.500 mark that's a mark

00:13:35.020 according to research from milsaps college to be honest he could be any of those four names in

00:13:38.940 miami university this is mark oh i'm a scientist i am literally a harvard scientist or at least this is

00:13:51.100 what we think people named mark look like why why is that why does he look like mark

00:14:00.140 that's creepy oh w sauce okay you couldn't it's okay get your bag by asking people to make and rate

00:14:07.820 digitally created faces researchers were able to put together prototypical faces for a number of

00:14:13.740 different names this is apparently what we think a josh looks like yeah a bill a justin bill does have

00:14:23.740 a long he does have a wide head bill a dan a brian a tom and andy the idea that names might conjure certain

00:14:34.860 face shapes in our minds isn't that strange for example there's wolfgang kohler's famous finding that

00:14:41.740 when asked which of these shapes is named booba booba is obviously the curvy one and uh one on the

00:14:48.220 left is going to be like something like banker like kinker and which is named kiki

00:14:57.740 people of all different ages and cultures and languages overwhelmingly assign kiki to the spiky one

00:15:05.180 and booba to the blobby one and sure enough it certainly seems to work with names too which one

00:15:12.140 of these men is tim and which is bob bob is the bald tim is the hair it's just it is what it is well

00:15:19.740 almost unanimously people feel like this is tim and this is bob yeah but are these men actually named

00:15:28.780 tim and bob yeah well there's the rub just because we associate certain names certain sounds with

00:15:35.820 certain shapes doesn't mean we're right there's no such thing as a biological name if a person still

00:15:43.660 goes by the same name they were given as a baby long before anyone knew what they would look like as an

00:15:48.700 adult well surely there won't be a connection but as it turns out there is believe it or not in a

00:15:58.140 multiple choice setting i love this huh believe it or not michael fisa's here he's so good at that

00:16:04.620 guess a stranger's name just by looking at their face more often than we would expect from luck alone

00:16:10.540 it's called the face name matching effect here's a stimulus from zwebner's research do you think this

00:16:18.540 man is named something middle easterny jacob dan joseph or nathaniel no joseph with an f

00:16:27.900 for show by just randomly picking a name people should get this right 25 of the time joseph three

00:16:35.340 three three but zwebner found that people picked the correct answer dan nearly 40 of the time

00:16:44.540 what's going on can names actually cause us i'm two for three to grow to look a certain way

00:16:51.100 well apparently they can it has been called a dorian gray effect in oscar wilde's the picture

00:16:59.180 of dorian gray a portrait of the protagonist ages and grotesquely reflects his evil deeds while he

00:17:06.300 himself remains young and pure looking in a similar way it seems that in some cases this song brings back

00:17:14.460 so many memories of like the golden age of youtube this is making think of 2012 youtube

00:17:19.820 before everything fell apart our own appearance can come to reflect the name we were given

00:17:27.020 but i kind of think it's really more of a reverse dorian gray effect i mean in the book dorian's

00:17:32.380 reality affects the appearance of his portrait but the face name matching effect goes the other way

00:17:39.100 i remember this song reminds me of when the science teacher was too bored to teach class so that they

00:17:43.580 would play a vsau song and then i was realizing oh should i just learn more in 10 minutes than i

00:17:49.020 learned in five years of science class why are we in school when all this information is available

00:17:55.340 online we learn more from this dude than we did in school and when the teachers got bored they just put

00:18:02.220 him on because he's better and faster and more informational and funnier and cooler

00:18:05.580 a inanimate sign a name influences our actual physical appearance well anyway it's not news that a

00:18:16.460 person's name can lead others to have certain expectations of them and treat them accordingly it's

00:18:21.900 been found for example that multi-racial faces given european names are rated as looking more european than

00:18:29.420 the same faces are when presented with non-european names the expectations a name carries a self-fulfilling

00:18:38.780 i don't want to do it again because my my whole keyboard's fucked up in prophecy whereby as a person

00:18:43.900 grows up they're motivated to fulfill those expectations carry themselves in ways people think

00:18:49.980 someone with their name should and even like dislike accentuate hide use and avoid different parts of

00:18:57.180 their face and body depending on whether or not those parts match their name it's been found that

00:19:04.300 faces and names that match are emotionally liked more than faces and names that don't match analysis

00:19:12.220 of voting data has shown that senatorial candidates earn 10 percent more votes like why is your name

00:19:19.100 preston you don't look like a preston i hate you all right preston fuck on in their names fit their

00:19:25.820 faces very well than when they fit very poorly now with that in mind part of the effect could

00:19:32.780 literally come from the fact that although parents don't know what their kid will look like as an

00:19:37.740 adult the parents do know what they look like and without knowing it tend to prefer names that match

00:19:44.780 their faces which are likely to resemble their child's face as well but not always if the dissonance is

00:19:53.020 too great a person not anymore people are naming their kids after scorpio braylin like every kid

00:19:59.580 looks like braylin and and every celebrity's naming their kid after like they have like an album drop

00:20:06.540 always magic the gathering my kid's name is magic the gathering name either completely or by simply

00:20:12.860 choosing a nickname if i had been just a little bit different i michael could have always gone by mike

00:20:19.820 the fact that people can adjust their names to fit them of course merely strengthens the face name

00:20:25.420 matching effect by studying whether the correct name could be guessed when different parts of a face were

00:20:32.060 occluded researchers were able to develop heat maps showing which parts of the face different names are most

00:20:39.340 most characteristically associated with apparently looking like an ann is all about the tip of the

00:20:46.300 nose it's the bridge of the nose and sucks i hate and for arthur's and the philtrum or snot trough for

00:20:54.860 benjamins aurelies are recognized by their face spiders let's go back to old people how old is an old person

00:21:06.380 73.7 that's according to results published in the journal of american geriatrics last year it's the

00:21:15.180 average age people gave when asked when does old age begin people under 65 on average said 71 and people

00:21:25.580 over 65 on average said 77 women said old age began three years later than men did white people said it

00:21:34.540 began eight years later white privilege y'all live longer non-whites did and people who felt healthy

00:21:42.860 placed old age later in life than those who felt less healthy but how old do people want to be well that

00:21:53.900 depends on how old they already are in america the only people who are the age they would like to be

00:22:01.820 are 21 year olds people younger than 21 wish they were older and people older than 21 wish they were

00:22:08.620 young

00:22:09.020 damn did i peak in 2018 younger people who are 20 oh i don't even know how old i am 29 40 wish they were 30

00:22:20.540 people who are 60 wish they were 40 and people who are 90 wish they were 60. when people are asked if they

00:22:27.740 could be one age forever the average american picks 36 which is actually how old i am right now funny

00:22:35.420 enough w here's low-key though i thought you were 45 v sauce i ain't gonna lie to you bro something else

00:22:43.100 that's funny old people are more likely to think they dream in black and white not because it's part of

00:22:50.780 the aging process but because they are veterans of the great black and white dream epidemic of the

00:22:56.860 20th century prior to the 1900s aristotle descartes freud everyone who wrote about the topic reported

00:23:05.420 that dreams contained color check you thought he was like 60 yeah 36 i don't know white people live

00:23:11.740 longer but you also age quicker but as humanity moved into the 20th century the number of people

00:23:18.220 reporting color in their dreams dropped just as quickly as the popularity of new black and white

00:23:24.380 movies and tv rose by the 60s as color tv and movies became more and more common reports of colored dreams

00:23:32.860 started going back up and today people who grew up with black and white tv continue to report more black

00:23:39.740 and white dreams than those who didn't and later studies across china found the same thing the frequency of

00:23:46.700 black and white dreaming correlated strongly with how common black and white tv was in a person's area

00:23:53.020 remember those kids who would watch old-fashioned black and white movies and they thought that

00:23:57.260 everything back then was black and white so did black and white movies and tv literally change our dreams

00:24:06.780 well first of all it's not clear whether dreams themselves actually changed or if people just started

00:24:13.660 thinking differently about their dreams we're trying but we still haven't found a way to get direct

00:24:20.620 access to dream content eric switchable has pointed out that as far as we know dreams may not be in color

00:24:29.180 or black and white or sepia or anything they may be primarily indeterminate in color as they happen

00:24:36.700 and only later during recall do we confabulate details about color he compares dreaming to reading

00:24:45.100 is a novel in color or black and white as you read a story what do you see in your mind it might be the

00:24:53.580 case that dreams vaporous as they are are something we simply have a terrible grip on and that movies and tv

00:25:01.420 shows have given us the illusion of understanding them in fact switchable has speculated that

00:25:07.660 smells and what does this have to do with people looking older touch sensations are rare in dreams

00:25:13.500 today but future people with smelly touchy feely vr shows might think that they dream with lots of

00:25:21.820 textures and odors and find it strange maybe even frightening that few of us seem to

00:25:28.380 to do but why would we think that dreams were like moving pictures and not normal waking life

00:25:35.260 images are uncanny things a person in an image is frozen in time but yet can seem to grow old

00:25:44.300 our own image can depend on what we are called and they're the closest thing we have to what our mind

00:25:52.220 does when we're away do you get the picture or does the picture get you oh and as always

00:25:59.980 visas

00:26:04.220 yeah

SNEAKO - July 12, 2022

Why Did People Look Older in the Past？

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript