people make jokes about how people who weren’t allowed to watch spongebob as a kid are always talking about how they weren’t allowed to watch spongebob but as one of the aforementioned people who wasn’t allowed to watch spongebob my insight on the matter is: you would not BELIEVE the amount of times spongebob comes up in normal adult conversations. i don’t often think about him of my own accord but people reference him and i have to say. what? and they say. it’s from spongebob?? and i say. oh i never watched spongebob. and they say why? and i say. i wasn’t allowed to. and then a few weeks later it happens again
What's really interesting to me about it, going through the notes of this post, is the number of former SpongeBob kids who are now SpongeBob adults who believe that you missed some kind of formative, foundational-pillar-of-youth experience (and/or you were abused or purposely socially isolated by your parents) if you didnt watch and love their cartoon.
We didn't have cable when I was a kid because we were poor. I watched Fox Kids on Saturday mornings for Digimon, and that was my cartoon. Instead of watching lots of tv, I spent a lot of time reading, imagining, and playing outside. This seems to have been really common among my childhood friends; I didn't know any kids in my neighborhood that had cable. We played outside and imagined things together instead. When I DID see cable programming it was at my grandparents' house. My cousins loved SpongeBob. I would see episodes when I was at grandma's house, and I didn't like watching it.
I've made no effort to go catch up on watching what I "missed" as a child because honestly I don't think I missed anything. The cartoon still doesn't mean anything to me. I found it yucky to watch as a child and I'm no more endeared to it now. 🧍 But if you say that to a SpongeBob adult They Will Get Mad.
























