@bitterblossom It was so weird watching the Elvis movie because the white people then were mad at Elvis for acting black. Made me think, if black people still acted like that today I'd feel much more comfortable with black culture. Black culture was turned into clownery in the 90s and hasn't recovered since. With the ridiculous clothes, puffy jackets in summer heat, gigantic diamonds and chains, it's just laughable. If black people were super smooth today, if they had progressed along the same skilltree they were going down without branching off into the 90s ultraviolent negro (who came around as an answer to the call of the black revolutionary of the 60s and 70s) I would be at ease around black culture. Once upon a time black culture was about fitting in, being well liked, being helpful, now it's about muhdick and how much money they can swindle people out of before getting caught.

@Jazzy_Butts that stuff isnt really black culture, that's a focused attempt by the media industry (mainstream record labels shilling all the offensive "gangster rap" bs) to undermine and manipulate black culture into being offensive. That was literally shit that white CEOs and their lackeys came up with just so they could turn around and say to other white people, "look at these psychotic heathens, they should all be killed or treated like inhuman, devolved monkeys."

its grown and spread beyond the control of those labels now, and it isn't limited to blacks anymore, but has become a generic sort of overlay on the culture of the peasant classes. it's the poverty-stricken forced into situations where their only viable options are to live those criminal lives, regardless of skin color. and, because music is music, certain aspects, especially the slang, spread even to the higher classes, albeit slower.

but the puffy vest and bling aesthetic, that isn't black culture or even legitimate gang culture. that's corrupted media, designed to be tacky and to flaunt the wealth of the "successful" scum who sell out and work for the system, which the ignorant and desperate youth gets indoctrinated by.

you go out into the real world in america now, and the only people who still buy into that sort of aesthetic are kids who think it looks cool, and the minority of extremes who are trapped inside that microcosm of gangster bullshit. ...with some traces here and there that have just wormed themselves into fashion and society at large.

then there's local demographics to consider. You dont have to travel far north or south, or even east/west, for the local "culture" to shift dramatically towards or away from that stuff. In my state alone we hit every extreme of typical american stereotypes.