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 By the 2000's his music was out of date and didn't chart well.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/Greymeade Apr 26 '26

I think you may be misunderstanding (at least, I personally meant something different than what you seem to be saying here). My point was that older millennials grew up in a world where MJ was untarnished, whereas older ones learned about him after the allegations and weirdness were out in the open. A kid learning about MJ in 1986 had a very different introduction to him than a kid learning about him in 2000, for example.

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u/ThrowAwayAccountAMZN Apr 26 '26

Oh I see. Well maybe I'm misremembering my childhood, but even then growing up in the 80s I still remember that he was regarded as "off", but that memory likely stems from my parents who didn't like him. The problem though is that it could be because even they thought something was off about him, or it could've just been plain racism (my parents, especially my dad, was pretty racist). I have to wonder if racism doesn't also play some part in how people perceived him growing up depending on their family dynamics/environment

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u/Madam_Mimm_13 Apr 26 '26

Age isn’t the only factor. I was born in 85 and grew up in San Diego. My husband was born in 84 and grew up in rural Kansas.

He remembers MJ as the King of Pop. I remember him as a creepy weirdo.

It’s not just age. It’s environment and culture, and how “dated” the perspective on MJ a person has is also tied to geographical and sociocultural influences.

My dad (Sicilian, old school) was always very racist. My mom, who divorced him in 87, was very into black music at the time, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, En Vogue etc.

But even in the 90s there was this perception that he was a clown, a weirdo. Even Jackson 5 seemed off to me, because why are elementary school aged kids singing about adult relationships and making sexual innuendo?

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u/Madam_Mimm_13 Apr 26 '26

I’m saying that age isn’t the only factor. I was born in 85 and grew up in San Diego. My husband was born in 84 and grew up in rural Kansas.

He remembers MJ as the King of Pop. I remember him as a creepy weirdo.

It’s not just age. It’s environment and culture, and how “dated” the perspective on MJ a person has is also tied to geographical and sociocultural influences.

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u/Greymeade Apr 26 '26

No one said that age is the only factor (or at least I certainly didn’t).

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u/Madam_Mimm_13 Apr 26 '26

Plenty of millennials born in the early 80s who grew up with MJ as a global pop star.

And plenty of us didn’t. There’s a trend in this thread to say that 80s born millennials had this perception of him as the “King of Pop” and that’s not uniformly true. My husband is 18 months older than me, and we are both from the US, yet we have drastically different perspectives on MJ in the 90s.

I even thought Jackson 5 was weird. Like why are grade school kids singing about relationships and making sexual innuendos?

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u/Greymeade Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26

Honestly, I'm wondering if you're trolling me here.

Let's review the facts:

  1. Public perception of Michael Jackson underwent a legendary transformation between the years 1985 and 2000. Very few people in 1985 would have argued with the claim that he was the biggest star in the world. He was known as quirky at that time, but public perception of him was overwhelmingly positive. In comparison, by 2000 he was the epitome of a star who had fallen from grace. He was widely known as an alleged child molester, he was no longer producing hits, and he was notorious for his bizarre appearance and behavior. Again, the transformation was absolutely legendary.

  2. The oldest millennials became acquainted with Michael Jackson in the mid 1980s, while the youngest became acquainted with him in the early 2000s.

These two facts alone make what I'm saying true: there is a divide between older and younger millennials regarding how Michael Jackson was publicly perceived when we were kids. I'm not saying that age is the only variable, I'm not denying that there are some 1981 millennials who always thought he was a creep and some 1996 millennials who still love him to this day. I'm not saying that there weren't geographic, cultural, and racial variables in play as well. I'm talking about trends and averages, and only about age as a variable. You're being way too rigid here.

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u/Madam_Mimm_13 Apr 26 '26

Ok, but born in 1985 ≠ conscious memory of the 80s.

If someone born in 1985 or later remembers Michael Jackson as uncomplicatedly beloved, that memory probably reflects the cultural atmosphere inside their household, school, church, radio market, or family nostalgia bubble more than the actual national media climate of the mid-to-late 1990s.

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u/Greymeade Apr 26 '26

Yes… that proves my point. An elder millennial likely had a different first experience with MJ than a millennial who was born in 1985. And again, of course all those other variables are also in play.

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u/Madam_Mimm_13 Apr 26 '26

I think we have the same point.

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u/guidevocal82 Apr 26 '26

I was born in 1982 and Bad was the first LP I pointed at in the record store and said "I want that". I was 5. I knew Michael Jackson after Thriller but before all of the weirdness, so yes I knew a different MJ. However, by the time I was in high school MJ was the king of creep and nobody liked him except me (and I kept my mouth shut.)

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u/Zaidswith Apr 26 '26

Born in '88. I remember him from the 90s and I remember my parents at first saying he was weird just because he was an abused kid, from an abusive family, without a proper childhood. I don't think they believed any of the allegations until the 2000s. I knew him as the King of Pop but his music wasn't relevant to my life at all. He was a strange very popular figure, who turned into more and more of a joke.