Some things never change...

[ninwa]

www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/71496

I started collecting found snapshots a few years ago — at swap meets, antique shops and the like — but the thing that got me started wasn’t the photos themselves so much as the writing I’d sometimes find on the backs.

...

One thing I’ve found a lot of is photos where people have written deprecating things — usually about themselves — on the back. “I look so fat here!” is a shockingly common theme; I guess people were as concerned with their weight (and as self-conscious about pictures of themselves) fifty and sixty years ago as they are today. I want to share some of these with you, not so much to laugh at (although they are funny) but to demonstrate how little our attitudes about ourselves have changed over the years.

[MuggedByReality]

   Someone I know who did Eng at Oxford said there are common recurring themes throughout literature; an ubi sunt or nostalgic longing for a supposed bygone paradise; an atavistic notion that "our" generation will be the one that directly precedes the coming of the "end times"; the idea among the middle generation of the time that their youth are completely losing it; to name but three.