It is because when you look back to old pictures of people from when they were younger, the people in it have clothing styles and hairstyles that we today associate with older people.
Look up a video on YouTube from VSauce called “Did people used to look older?”. They explain this phenomena well.
That argument isn’t convincing. Crop photos to compare people to negate the clothing perception. People in the past still look older after doing so.
It’s almost like you cropped out the other half of the argument
I’ve watched that video and seen it reposted dozens of times. Michael talks about doctors finding people are aging slower in the intro. Then goes down a completely different path to claim most of this is due to clothing and style perception. Veering off into some weird pseudoscience junk even.
What he could have done is check medical studies of twins that prove smokers age faster. Overlay smoking rates then and now. Come to the medically accepted reason for why this phenomenon exists.
If you’ve truly watched that video then it must be a long time ago and are remembering it wrong. Because it does say exactly what you’re saying early on in the video, explaining the studies that show how people are now younger from a medical point of view. You then clearly see that the age difference reported in the study from a medical point if view is not nearly wide enough to explain the magnitude of the difference of we perceive in real life.
This is why video then shifts away from the purely medical perspective towards the more subjective reasons that could affect how we perceive people’s age. Of course it’s not gonna be backed by medical research to support this because the other reasons for this phenomena has absolutely nothing to do with medical science. Medical science doesn’t give a shit about the evolution of fashion in haircuts, makeup and clothing. But that doesn’t mean that it cannot have an effect on people’s perceptions of other’s age. It is obvious in the examples provided in the video that this has a far greater effect on the perception of someone’s age than the medical explanation alone.
The meme itself is obviously about people’s perception of people’s age, which is affected by both medical and subjective factors like the evolution of fashion. Trying to pretend that only the medical factor counts is, essentially, ignoring the other half of the argument just to make yourself sound right.
Let’s play a game then. I know people right now today. Who dress and have facial hair nearly the same as Richard Dreyfuss in this image. They’re all late 30’s or early 40’s.
Go ahead and let me know how old you think he looks. And yes he was a smoker.
Ah yes. Cherry picking an example of recurring fashion. That definitely proves that fashion and style never changes or evolves ever. /s
These ladies are twins. One of them smoked. One did not.
Michael was so right though. It’s all just perception tricks.
I don’t see any links to Vsauce’s video on this so I’m going to assume every response is wrong. TLDR: Styles become associated with eras and people in those eras become associated with our perception of that age bracket.
Lower testosterone is probably a big part of it. Look at 23 or 24 year old enhanced bodybuilders. they look like theyre 35. For whatever reason peoples T levels have been going down about 1 percent per year for the last 50 years. Its bound to have an effect.
