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Opinion|Enough With the Sneering About ‘Aging Poorly’
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/opinion/language-musuems-history-age-well.html
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There are few epithets more smugly dismissive than the declaration that something — a novel, a TV show, a political movement, a prediction, an opinion — did not “age well.”
The criticism is a double condemnation; just being factually wrong is not enough. The thing in question, when held up to some contemporary standard, however construed, must not only be wrong — it must be so egregiously wrong as to constitute an embarrassment, even an ethical lapse. Implicit in the censure is the critic’s amazement that it was ever considered correct or acceptable at all.
Not all errors, however famous, merit this critique. When, for example, the Yale economist Irving Fisher asserted shortly before the market crash of 1929 that stocks had seemed to reach “a permanently high plateau,” he was wrong, for sure. But to say that the statement aged poorly would be pointless; it barely had a chance to age at all before its shortcomings became apparent.
In its typical use, the “aging poorly” gripe supplants yesterday’s wisdom with today’s — and is oblivious to the possibility that we may add something new to that wisdom tomorrow.
TV shows are a frequent target. In a hilarious and well-constructed bit, a comedian recently explained how Looney Tunes cartoons have “not aged well,” considering how frequently disability, racism, sexism and violence are played for laughs. Pepé Le Pew holds women against their will. Other characters scheme to murder one another. Speech impediments are mocked. And as for Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny: “This hunter wants to kill the bunny — except for when the bunny puts on women’s clothes! And now he does not want to kill the bunny, no. He is sexually attracted to the bunny!” The comedian decides that turning on “Bluey” and learning about empathy “is probably a better use of our Saturday morning.”
Writing in early 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement, a Washington Post journalist looked back on once popular shows like “The West Wing” and found that, with the benefit of hindsight, some of the romantic relationships no longer appeared sweet or cute but rather inappropriate or, in a popular pejorative of the time, problematic. It was a thorough and persuasive case, and it ended with a perfect distillation of the aging poorly logic: “These days, almost everything made before 2018 feels as if it needs some kind of disclaimer.”
