You don't really see people chewing gum anymore.

PP_GIRL_@lemmy.world to Showerthoughts@lemmy.world – 120 points –
93

This seems like a case of "I don't see it, so others don't either"

Been thinking on this lately and I get OP. People used to chew gun in the 80's and 90's, a lot. Now it would be weird to see someone doing so.

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Do you want to see me chewing gum? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

I can never see that face the same again ever since I was in a 9 month relationship with a girl whose snapchat name was the lenny face and eventually I forgot her name, was too embarrassed to ask her to remind me (because it had been like four months), so I spent the next ~5 months of my life with a psychoromantic connection to that fucking emoticon.

I forgot her name, was too embarrassed to ask her to remind me (because it had been like four months), so I spent the next ~5 months of my life with a psychoromantic connection to that fucking emoticon.

That's hilarious. What a time to be alive

The one saving grace of Facebook, everyone using their real names so you can find them.

But in the end, not worth it - the younger generations have made the wise sacrifice by not using it and just guessing everyone's names lol

Are you a living episode of Seinfeld? This sounds like a scenario George Costanza would get himself into.

My whole life I thought I was Costanza... turns out... I'm Kramer.

Nightcall by Kavinsky (Bineural Remix) plays

Did you ever figure out her name? I hope it was Linda.

Don’t see ads for it anymore either. I kinda miss the old “how it feels to chew 5 gum” ones

I smoked one of my buddies out on DMT and when he came back to reality I said "that's how it feels to chew 5 gum" and it was pretty funny.

Its really interesting how wirgleys fucked up the marketing on that one even though they had something great out of the gate

The (very old) Jucyfruit jingle will always and forever be burned into my memory.

I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum.

Not only is the plastic gross, but the artificial sweeteners are nasty.
Some of us don't taste sweetness, we taste the chemical.
Gum stopped being fun.

Doesn't help anything that most "gum base" has PLASTIC in it.

Yea I loved gum right up until the recent study clearly linking microplastics in the body and chewing gum.

Really? I am not entirely surprised but did the study say how the plastic was getting in there?

Turns out the flavor crystals were just ground up spoons

I'm just gonna go ahead and believe this without further research, that's too good an explanation to let go of, lol

Yeah the microplastics in gum thing really threw me off when I found out about it.

Well your bowl of ice cream has carbon in it. Does it matter? No

You'd probably mind if your ice cream had lead in it. Microplastics will be the lead poisoning of the new century. They're carcinogens and endocrine disruptors and we don't even know the full extent of the effects they have.

Well, it's in their mouth, duh.

Well I guess when there's a species of giant people eating gum-chewers we really should have expected a decline in its popularity

Wait - if the ones who chew gum are also the ones who eat people, shouldn't we see MORE gum chewers, since they'd be a proportionally larger part of the population the more they eat?

So, actually what's happened is people have stopped blowing bubbles.

I feel like the consumption of gum has shifted from just chewing it to being a more glorified mint/on the go way to brush your teeth.

I chew gum

I chew gum every day.

So do I, for the Xylitol to keep my teeth healthy.

Hard to find decent gum now as many switched to Sorbitol as it's cheaper but not as good for teeth.

I got offered some gum on the a plane ride the other day and it really made me to stop and think how I went from doing that every time to not doing it for years.

Why is all made with fake sugar now. That shit hurts my stomach

You can still buy the stuff with sugar. Just buy the ones for kids.

It's me. I'm singlehandedly keeping the gum industry alive.

Im not big on chewing literal microplastics… I used to love chewing gum before I learned that though

Oh my! I thought it was made from some kind of tree sap! Apparently those do exist, but all of the ones you find in stores are platic based!

I see it occasionally. I wonder if it dropped in popularity when cigarettes did. And everyone has their heads up their phones. So they are less observant of what's going on around them, and maybe there's less demand for walking-around-diversions like gum.

So this is far from scientific, but I was at a shopping center I used to go to a lot as a kid recently and I noticed that the sidewalks were free of gum. As a kid I remember it always being covered in discharged gum, i used to talk about it with my mom, the sidewalk was practically polka-dotted back then.

Of course there's a lot of possible explanations besides people just not chewing gum anymore. Could be that people have gotten better about disposing of gum properly, newer gum formulations could be easier to clean up, or we've gotten better at it how we clean it, or there's the fact that teenagers used to just kind of hang around outside of stores and don't/can't really do that so much anymore so there's less people loitering around and spitting their gum out.

I don't want to willingly keep eating micro plastics.

Good idea, macro plastics are where it's at. Chow down on that Tupperware.

I'm sorry but I'm not laughing about this. Microplastics are virtually everywhere and it's incredibly worrying.

https://hsc.unm.edu/news/2024/02/hsc-newsroom-post-microplastics.html

Unfortunately there is virtually nothing you can do about it or any of us. I've replaced just about everything in my kitchen with stainless steel. From plates to cups to bowls cookware measuring cups Etc you name it I've got it in the stainless steel.

I've got a 10-stage water filter faucet at the sink that I use for cooking and drinking but at the end of the day the only thing I've done is perhaps mildly reduced my exposure. It's in every last bit of food I prepare whether I cook everything myself or not There Is No Escape

I have a coworker who does. Into her mic during meetings. I hate her way more than I otherwise would because of that

Chewing gum is great for you

That's because gum has less flavor and is unreasonably more expensive, at least in my case.

My bjj instructor rolls with gum in his mouth lol. I don't chew it because I have a pathological need to swallow it.

Was watching a Steve Ramsey video on YouTube today and noticed he was chewing gum through parts of it. Made me think of this post again. You definitely don't see a lot of YouTubers chewing gum!

People still chewing gum, but chewing gum is no longer a fashion trend. So they don't purposely show to you that they are chewing gum.

I do chewing gum when at work, to help me stay focused. I don't chewing gum while hanging out with friends to look cool, because it no longer a trend. Beside, it is not comfortable to speak while chewing gum.

I smoked for about 10 years and replaced that with vaping. Then I replaced vaping with chewing gum in January.

I chew 2 pieces of Extra 6-7 times a day and Blockheads multivitamin gum twice a day.

I also carry strips of foil I can spit into if I'm at my desk or not near a bin.

I went to school with a girl who chewed gum everyday, she ended up in hospital with a stomach ulcer.

When you chew, your brain sends signals to your stomach to produce acid to break down the food that is incoming, but if you don't actually consume food, the acid will just continually build until there's a problem.

Basically just saying be careful, though I'm not sure if there is any warning signs you can watch for.

I see it pretty much all the time. You probably live somewhere where people are more likely to do stuff other than chewing gum, or, in the worst case scenario, somewhere where it's literally illegal (ie Singapore).

I see people in this thread complaining about fake sugar and someone mentioned chewing gum with real sugar. I'm just wondering do they sell xylitol gum in America? I see no point in chewing gum if it's not even healthy for teeth.

I keep some sugar-free mint gum in my carry-on bag to chew during take-off and landing to help with ear pressure. But otherwise I’ve largely turned to Binaca or Listerine spray for breath freshening, which for me is the major purpose of gum.

The other major purpose is the blowing of bubbles

I was never down with gum to start. Chewing something until its flavorless and then spitting it out is just a strict downgrade from snacking.

The pro is no calories. The problem is if I'm not chewing gum I'll chew my lip, or eat or drink something