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Pop Culture

What's accepted now but will be embarrassing in the future? Our readers shared 21 things.

Today's trend is tomorrow's cringe.

via Atypeek Dgn/Pexels, Kevin Bidwell/Pexels, Teknorat/Flickr

What's accepted now but will be embarrassing in the future?

We can all be sure that as society evolves, many things that seem normal today will be cringeworthy to people in the future, whether it’s our fashion, politics, civility, or how we treat the environment.

If we look back just 30 years ago, same-sex marriage was illegal, people routinely smoked in bars and restaurants and it was fashionable to wear platform sneakers.

So, when we look back on the world of 2024, there are bound to be many things that we’ll be embarrassed about in 30 years, especially when we are forced to live with the repercussions of the decisions we make today. On a lighter note, we’ll all also have clouds full of photos of ourselves wearing hairstyles and clothes that look utterly ridiculous in hindsight.

We asked the Upworthy community to share their thoughts by asking a big question on Facebook: "What's something that's accepted now that we'll be embarrassed about in the future?" Our readers responded with funny takes on current fashion and concerns about technology use and how we treat our fellow human beings.

Here are 21 things we accept today that we’ll probably be embarrassed about in the future.

More than a few current fashion trends will look silly in the coming years.


"Yoga pants. I love them to death, but I can easily see them as the parachute pants of tomorrow." — Deborah

"Barn doors in your house." — Joyce

"Tattoos all over the body." — Vicki

"People wearing socks and sandals." — Jeremy

"Wearing pajamas in public." — Ivy

"Huge, over-sized false eyelashes." — Patricia

Hopefully, people in the future will be more considerate when using technology than we are today.



"Walking around with your eyes locked on your phone. Or eating at a table with 4 people looking at their phone. One day, we will either fall off a cliff or realize life is what is happening off the screen." — Elise.

"Texting in the presence of another person." — Kate

We can also hope that in the near future, we will be able to solve many of today’s pressing public policy issues so that the next generation will live happier and healthier lives.



"Lack of healthcare for everyone." — Sharon

"Making the planet unlivable for human beings." — Karen

"Spending hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer's money to build a sports arena for a billionaire. Then charging the taxpayers outrageous amounts to attend events there." — Stacy

"How the US is systematically clawing back women's rights to decide what they do with their bodies. It's beyond shameful." — Jason.

"Allowing guns everywhere." — Amy

"That we drive fossil fuel-powered vehicles." — Heidi

Some people are concerned about the way students and their parents behave in modern-day America.



"Parents trying to run schools: yelling at teachers for their child’s poor performance, yelling at principals when their child gets in trouble, book banning based on an individual’s religious ideologies, etc." — Beth.

"Entitled children talking back to their parents and teachers." — Connie

"Cry rooms at universities where students can go and work out their anxiety and cry and be upset if their professor uses words that are too difficult for them. Universities are institutes of higher learning, not institutes of babysitting. That will be an embarrassment in the future, as it is an embarrassment to me and many others now." — Della

In 30 years, we may be embarrassed to look back on the level of general civility in 2024.



"Panic buying of toilet paper during the pandemic." — Tony

"Ageism. It’s everywhere, all the time, and no one seems to mind. No one is defined by the amount of time they’ve spent on the planet but it’s used as an identity and as a weapon (ask any teenager, 40-year-old woman, or retiree…). I can only hope that one day it will be a source of embarrassment that we were all so dismissive and judgmental." — Rosy.

"Human beings living on the street." — Andrea

"Torturous killing of animals for food." — Mae

While this list may seem like a litany of complaints people have about living in the modern world, it should give people hope. If we’ve overcome past embarrassments, today’s can be fixed as well.

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Family

Woman explains why having quadruplets resulted in a $4 million hospital bill

Here's how she paid the bill.

via Mikhail Nilov/Pexels

A man and woman looking over their bills. Representative image.

The United States is the second most expensive country in the world to give birth, after Japan. In Japan, it costs around $61,000 to have a vaginal delivery, although those costs can be offset by government health insurance.

In the U.S., it costs around $14,000 to have a child without insurance, although there are a lot of factors that affect the price, including where you give birth, the type of insurance you carry and if there are any complications.

While $14,000 is a lot of money for most people, Hanna Castle from the Columbus, Ohio, area received a $4 million hospital bill after having quadruplets and that didn’t even include the delivery. All 4 of the children needed to spend time in the NICU for lengths between 64 and 147 days.


Castle explained the costs in a video that has been seen nearly 8 million times.

That hurt 🤣 

@hannacastle

That hurt 🤣 #Quadruplets #nicu #america #healthcare

The 4 children, Atlas, Dominic, Magnolia and Morgan, were all born at 28 weeks via Cesarean section and were treated at separate NICUs. According to Investopedia, a stay in the NICU can cost anywhere from $3,000 to $20,000 a day in the United States.

The smallest child of the 4, Atlas, weighed just 1.5 pounds but had the shortest stay in the NICU of 64 days. His total bill came to $714,747.15. Next was Magnolia who stayed 74 days at a cost of $728,625.56. Morgan stayed 86 days for $976,415.69 and Dominic stayed the longest, 147 days, for $1,626139.55.

All in all, the total bill for the NICU for the Castle Quads was $4,045,927.95.

Commenters on the video couldn’t believe how anyone could pay such a massive bill. "To put this in perspective, it would take $500 a month for 675 years to pay this off," Gouda wrote.

The good news for the Castle family was that Medicaid of Ohio picked up the entire tab. Knowing that the babies would need extensive care after being born, the couple quit their jobs to qualify for financial assistance. "At 16 weeks pregnant, I decided to quit my job to get some of that assistance because there was no other way," Castle told Good Morning America.

"I moved my mom in with us to kind of help financially for the first year and see how the kids were going to be,” she added. In Ohio, adults with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level and children with a household income of 211% of the poverty level can qualify for Medicaid.

In a recent Facebook post, Castle discussed the tough challenges of being the parent of multiples in America.

“You can believe that you’ll have 1 full-term child, but every pregnancy is different. A lot of us do not believe in terminating healthy children because of finances. Things happen. No one wants to live off of government assistance just to be able to survive and frankly there’s a lot of shame behind it,” she wrote. “But other countries don’t even have to worry about that. Do they truly think that a 1-time tax credit per year is enough to get us to keep having children in this economy? With the type of medical bills we rack up here? With the lack of financial medical assistance we have here?”


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Health

Most expensive fart ever. Woman shares massive hospital bill she got for having gas.

If you're going to have gas, you better have insurance.

via Will C. Fry/Flickr and Nataliya Vaitkevich/Pexels

A woman is blown away about the charge for her medical care.


Even though the number of uninsured Americans has been on the decline for over a decade, the cost of healthcare is still astronomical, especially if you are uninsured. A perfect example of this story was recently shared by TikToker Cinthanie McAllister, who told a hilarious story about a bill she got for having a nasty case of gas.

Obviously, high healthcare costs aren’t funny, but sometimes, a good laugh can make the pain a bit more bearable.

"I bet you didn't know that you wanted to know how much it costs to fart without insurance in an ER in the United States," McAllister starts her video from the kitchen.

"A little while ago, I woke up in the middle of the night with the most excruciating abdominal pain I have ever experienced in my life," she said while doing her best to hold back the laughter. "I was doubled over. I couldn't walk. I had to literally crawl across our bedroom floor to wake my husband up to get him to take me to the ER. They had to come out to the car and wheelchair me into the ER because I couldn't walk because I was in so much pain."

i have to laugh to keep from crying because this is insane

@cinthanie

i have to laugh to keep from crying because this is insane #storytime #ervisitstorytime #emergencyroom #fyp

The pain was so severe that healthcare workers tried to give her morphine for relief. But McAllister didn't want any. "I was like, 'No! I don't want any f*cking morphine; I just want to know what's wrong with me.'"

The staff had McCallister take a CT scan because they were concerned, as were the McAllisters, that she may have a ruptured appendix. If not, then why would she be in such terrible pain?

While she was waiting for the scan results, nature called and McAllister went into the restroom. It was there she realized what was causing all of the abdominal distress.

"I let out the world's fattest ripper you've ever heard in your life," she said, trying to keep it together. "It was so ungodly smelling. It was so unwomanly. It was so wretched. Like, I'm positive that if there were bugs in the walls in that hospital, they were bug-bombed out. It was so f*cking bad."

"Anyways, needless to say, after letting out the world's biggest ripper, I felt pretty good," she admitted. "They ruled it as gastrointestinitis. The CT scan came back clear and they sent me on my way with some suppositories."

"How much do you think it cost me to let out that fart in the ER with no insurance? I'm telling you right now, you're wrong. It's more. It's more than what you think," she says. "This fart cost me $8,621.10."

"The price of gas in this country is outrageous," Sarah Staten wrote. "Happened to me once… spent hours in the ER for the Dr to say I had a 'fart stuck sideways,'" D added.

Many people gave her advice on how to avoid paying the bill.

"Get an itemized bill and tell them you are a cash patient. That should cut it in half or more. Then, just tell them you’ll make payments. Send them $20 a month. They’ll take it and do nothing," SeaChelleAviatrix suggested.

Upworthy has contacted McAllister for comment and has yet to receive a response.

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Health

The percentage of Americans without healthcare coverage has hit an all-time low

The uninsured rate has been cut in half since 2010.

Photo via -ted/Flickr

The health insurance reform bus tour, 2009.

At a time when it can feel like America's most pressing problems aren’t being addressed, there’s some very good news on the healthcare front that everyone should know. The percentage of Americans who are uninsured has hit the lowest point in American history.

A report from the Office of Health Policy earlier this year announced that the uninsured rate hit an all-time low of 8% in the first quarter of 2022. To give some perspective, in 2010, before the Affordable Care Act (ACAalso known as Obamacare) had been fully implemented, the uninsured rate was twice as high at 16%.

To add to the drop in the number of uninsured, more Americans have purchased health insurance during the recent Open Enrollment Period through HealthCare.gov and state-based marketplaces than ever before.

“The historic 13.6 million people who have enrolled in a health insurance plan so far this period shows that the demand and need for affordable health care remains high,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement.

A major reason for the increase in healthcare coverage has been the American Rescue Plan’s enhanced marketplace subsidies, state Medicaid expansions and an increase in enrollment outreach by the current administration.

Health insurance

The uninsured rate has dropped since the ACA passed.

via Office of Health Policy

Approximately 5.2 million Americans have gained health coverage since 2020. The new numbers were cause for celebration at the White House.

“From November 1st to December 15th, nearly 11.5 million Americans signed up for insurance on HealthCare.gov—about 1.8 million more people, an 18 percent increase, over the same period last year,” President Biden said in a statement. “That’s an all-time record, with enrollment still open and not counting people who have signed up for coverage through their state marketplaces. Gains like these helped us drive down the uninsured rate to eight percent earlier this year, its lowest level in history.”

Health insurance, doctors

​The ACA has gained popularity in the US.

via Pixabay

The drop in the uninsured rate is a great example of the benefits of smart policy-making in Washington. The ACA wasn’t the most popular piece of legislation when it was passed in 2010. Critics on the right demonized it as a state takeover of healthcare that would result in death panels, sky-high premiums and socialized medicine. Many on the far left thought that the ACA was bad policy because it stopped short of offering full coverage for everyone like Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All proposal.

But over time, the ACA has become a cornerstone in American healthcare policy that has changed the lives of millions. Former President Barack Obama knew it wasn’t perfect when it was passed, but he saw it as a strong foundation to build on. Now his Democratic predecessor has done just that and we’re seeing the results.

The American public has developed a much more favorable view of the ACA since the GOP’s 2017 crusade to “repeal and replace” the bill that failed in Congress. Now, 55% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the bill versus 42% who disapprove.

“I think it’s probably here to stay,” Republican senator John Cornyn recently told NBC News, referring to the ACA.

The numbers for healthcare sign-ups during this Open Enrollment Period are definitely encouraging but things may get even better. This year’s HealthCare.gov Open Enrollment Period has been extended until January 15, 2022

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