a formative internet experience for me was going on a writing livejournal thread and seeing “i hate when people romanticize telekinesis. the victorian women and girls who were haunted by poltergeists did not think it was fun, it was tremendously traumatizing and not something to make light of.” if i could find the thread i would but i am not lying.
the fact that there had been a turn-of-the-century pre-Freudian synaesthesia fad was something I had full awareness of since adolescence and that's something I took for granted but now I'm appreciating the post-Cold War 90s dropping of veils
Plus the 70s ESPer thing we kept alive to laugh at, Zener cards in the beginning of Ghostbusters, crystals and that, we processed “gifted children” through post-Sputnik advanced education so we didn’t have to admit the notion started off as Carrie/Firestarter indigo children