'Struth. But I wonder if intelligence is the real problem. I feel like it's a massive increase in the acceptability of acting like a child that's the bigger problem. I was a kid in the golden age of Marvel Comics. I remember my Dad tearing up the whole stack (including Spiderman #1). But here's the thing--along about age 11 you were old enough to be embarrassed to be seen reading one. It would have been unthinkable for a 15 year old to say, read one on the bus or at school because people would think you were not only stupid, but a baby. Today, they're mainstream adult culture for much of America. Likewise rock music. I can remember when the Rolling Stones were new, wondering what rock and roll people would do when they were old. It didn't seem possible that some 30 year old geezer would be making hard rock. Or playing army. You stopped at puberty. The idea that millions of grown men (and women) would be playing army and making army-like weapons a central component of their emotional life would have been unimaginable. We couldn't have imagined a culture of grown ass men arguing endlessly about how bad-ass is one kind of gun v another and how powerful they are. It would be like them arguing about whether superman can beat batman. It's not just these particulars--the whole culture seems childish. Grown people spending all their time on video games and never settling down to having a family. Or if they do waiting until they're forty-something. It's pretty weird to me because when we were kids, it was all about becoming an adult, not about staying a child.