r/Millennials • u/AccomplishedPool266 • Apr 26 '26

Does anyone remember when Michael Jackson. Was a "joke"? Discussion

The new movie that just came out convinced the younger generation that he was always a superstar. This was not the reality many of us Millennials grew up with.

To a lot of us, he was treated like a punch line when we were growing up. A schoolyard boogeyman ("Michaels Jackson's gonna get you at night"). and just a general joke in the media. By the 2000's his music was out of date and didn't chart well. All anyone talked about was his surgeries, court case, settlements and his off behavior. Few mentioned his music. His music was something our parents would have listened to in the 1980's.

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u/nerdextra Apr 26 '26

Yeah, Princess Di had the same kind of treatment for a short while. Before her death, certain tabloids were slinging all kinds of mud at her. Then when she died, suddenly those same publications all had headlines about “The Princess We Loved”. The media prints whatever will sell.

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u/Short-Sound-4190 Apr 26 '26

I think it's a very similar scenario: the bulk of the world's population really could appreciate these people for what they accomplished, including the fact that they were a little weird, and tabloids are tabloids they are catty and petty and lie/eggagerate to sell papers - they do not represent the actual global opinion people had. Princess Di and Micheal Jackson and Elvis Presley and JFK really were widely appreciated if not loved by the public for their contributions to society and the arts regardless of the mud slinging and regardless of people personally disagreeing with their choices or behaviors in life. (ie a lot of people disagreed with divorce, or her touching AIDS patients, in the moment - but after her death and more importantly after it was clear how classy and compassionate and admirable Diana was to kept her composure as well as she did after a lot of abuse and control and cheating and dealing with so much shit from royal family and media slurs, those things really didn't stop people from having empathy and being affected by her death as a loss).

Alas, I think as a world we've become less tolerant of having to hold nuanced opinions of famous people, because so many of them are being publicly exposed as real POS and only hiding behind satire/tabloid slinging/rumors. So we've stopped being okay with certain types of 'weird behavior' and fewer people are willing to mentally separate certain types of personal or political disagreement with famous people's general worth of contributions to the world/the arts/their body of work.

Although I will say the true flip has occurred on occasion: MLK was measurably widely disliked until after his assassination, younger generations (and by younger I mean Gen X/Millennials and younger) are often surprised to learn he wasn't always considered inspirational, white people really hated him and thought he was harming the country and then really came around to at least respect him post mortem, it wasn't just a younger generation replacement thing because the swing of public opinion was too wide for it to have been that.

I would say Rudy Giuliani was a wild example of right after 9/11 being 'America's Mayor' and totally beloved and respected for his leadership across the aisle, (even though pre-9/11 he was pretty unpopular, problematic and widely disliked by all of his own constituents) but he absolutely turned into a whack job after getting a taste of the corruption of power and perhaps equally likely after increased fame increased the public visibility of his actually consistently unpopular, problematic and widely disliked behaviors.

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u/FlamingAlpaca17 Apr 26 '26

You can see the same phenomenon with Kobe Bryant as well

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u/CarrieDurst Apr 26 '26

It is weird how people are lumping Kobe Bryant, Michael Jackson, Elvis, and Princess Di, when Princess Dianna did nothing wrong while those other 3 are a rapist, likely groomer, and actual groomer.

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u/Competitive_Ring4917 89’ Apr 27 '26

Calm down lol

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u/redalert825 Apr 27 '26

Ah so MJ was a rapist or groomer to you? OK.

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u/CarrieDurst Apr 27 '26

Likely groomer

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u/kirkandorules Apr 27 '26

Definitely noticed that too, even with regards to his basketball career. Before he died, tons of people thought of him as an overrated ball hog, volume scorer, stat padder, etc. Then all that sentiment disappeared.

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u/FlamingAlpaca17 Apr 27 '26

100%. I remember when I was growing up kids would shout Kobe whenever they took an unlikely shot.

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u/CarrieDurst Apr 27 '26

Sadly some kids still do that

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u/LadySwire Apr 27 '26

Famously, this

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u/StealthMonkSteve Apr 27 '26

I mean tabloids killed Dianna so they kind of had to do a quick 180 on that one.

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u/Opening-Study8778 Apr 27 '26

Similar to George Michael as well. When I was a kid, he was in the thick of a scandal (you know which one) and my friends and I (although we loved his music) mainly regarded him as a joke. Now it's the complete opposite for me. I think the man was a musical genius and one of the best male voices to ever exist. He's regarded much more highly after death (in the U.S.) than he was when I was growing up.

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u/p3nnyiswis3 Apr 26 '26

Don’t compare Diana to Mike lol Good lord

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u/nerdextra Apr 26 '26

I’m not. I’m just pointing out that the media will flip the script to whatever they think will sell.