It can be rough watching older TV shows and movies. Sometimes, jokes that were funny 30 or even just 10 years ago come off as horrifically offensive now. When this happens, people use the expression: “This didn’t age well.”

It’s tempting to write off outdated media altogether. But sometimes, some of our all-time favorite pieces of fiction can make us cringe and laugh at the same time. We can be enthralled with a plot despite it being offensive, and we can find ourselves rooting for reprehensible characters.

Are we allowed to enjoy things that don’t hold up to our modern moral standards? Are we bad people for laughing at offensive jokes?

A bold take on ‘this didn’t age well’

Olayemi Olurin is a writer, lawyer, and cultural commentator who goes by Olurinatti. Her humor and sharp insights into pop culture have earned her over 250,000 subscribers and a Webby Award nomination.

In a recent YouTube video, Olurin took on a new cultural epidemic:

“A lot of my and your favorite shows, movies, and characters have all been hit with the dreaded ‘This didn’t age well,’” she began. “But what if I told you that they age exactly how they needed to because we need problematic media?”

She explained that if she mastered anything in law school, it wasn’t case law. Instead, she learned how to think about things, how to know what she doesn’t know, and how to see the bigger picture.

“Every day it becomes clearer and clearer to me that motherf***ers really do not think critically…and everyone is worse off for it,” she added.

Olurin claimed that in the modern social media landscape,........

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