I think it’s impossible to make a comparison. People will always compare their day to day current experiences against their memories of a particular period of time filtered through years of cultural stereotypes and biased mental images.
There is always a temptation to say, when something we’ve known for a long time changes, that it was better before. The human mind simply doesn’t like change, and it sometimes takes awhile to adapt to, even when the change is good.
I read Playboy through the late 1960s and into the 1970s, and it taught me that I wanted a real stereo system, single malt Scotch, a nice car, fashionable clothes and a beautiful woman in my life. I won’t pretend that my stereo, my liquor, my car, my clothes and my wife are all exactly like what I saw in Playboy … but I’m not complaining! Playboy had a powerful cultural influence on me, and I think it still influences young men. Tastes and fashions have changed, that’s all.
I think the reason that Playboy was so highbrow back in the day was that it had to be. Hef used high culture as a way to legitimize what was otherwise just a skin mag. He had no real competition so guys who wanted booby pics bought it or went without. Nowadays, Playboy is no longer in danger of being put out of business by the Moral Majority and so it doesn’t need to elevate it’s non-booby features quite so high. And like others have posted, there’s low-brow lad mags out there now that Hef has to contend with. It’s funny that Hef created the market that he is now having to compete in.
Hold on there, stranger. As a member of a college fraternity, I’d like to ask: Stereotype much?
Playboy has articles? :eek:
Huh. I never noticed.
Absolutely. Based on empirical evidence.
The simplest explanation is this: The Highbrow Pervs (yes, band name, I know) that used to buy Playboy find the siliconed bottle-blond jizz vixens in Uncle Hugh’s Harem a tad boring.
On a side note: The audience for just about every genre of everything is much more fragmented than it used to be. There is less agreeement about anything than there used to be. I think that’s the reason we don’t see any more runaway hit albums. Blockbuster movies seem to be the only general-consensus item left in the free world, and a good many of them just don’t merit my attention.
So Playboy was the poplar magazine that gave me a woody? 
Did you ask anyone how they “liked the outcome of game” today?
(Meaning the superbowl).
The Super Bowl has what to do with this?
Playboy was featured around Hugh Hefner’s interests back in the day, and we’re lucky that that trend has been discontinued unless you like articles about naps, fiber, and blond chicks who laugh like donkeys.
Nah, it’s just moved out of Playboy and into niche magazines. Guys who would have bought the old Playboy for the articles are now picking up Home Theater Magazine and Outdoor Life and Debonair and Men’s Fitness and Scientific American - whole volumes devoted to the topics of *their *interest that used to get a couple of pages in Playboy.
GQ is probably the closest not-ladmag general magazine for men. Scantily clad ('though usually not totally nude) beautiful women, expensive fashions, bartending lessons, artsy fartsy stuff…it’s pretty much all there 'cept the centerfold.
I dunno about that, I think Esquire is a damn fine example of an all-in-one that remains at the top of its’ game. Sure, they’re aloof, cynical wiseasses, but they do a fine essay and have some of the hottest women/cars/clothes etc. going. Even Maxim has stepped up it’s game in the composition department. The look has changed quite a bit in the past few years, and I’ve started reading it again after a hiatus.
As for the OP, well, it can be wrapped up in a single word, IMO. Homogenization.
Things are more the same now than they’ve ever been. There’s an ever thickening coat of corporate vanilla all over everything we do, buy, wear, etc. That same thing was there before, in those days you spoke of, but it was far better hidden. The other word this whole phenomenon can be addressed by is, discretion.
More precisely, a lack of it.
We need the world to hear our smallest, darkest thoughts and mundane opinions. We now believe, or were taught, that there is inherent value in everything we think, do or say. We possess such a need to be heard that more often than not we fail to hear. The failure of society to keep up with “the things that matter” is actually a win for the corporate machine that doles out the drivel we’re forced to take in. You can chalk up the demise of the American culture to the desire for the American Dollar. If nobody bought stories about Britney Spears, she would cease to matter to the people who insist on shoving the poor woman and her various and sundry problems in our collective faces.
We’ve become a nation of small minds, and eventually it will come back to haunt us.
hijack
Someone in the thread, (Zebra, I think) said “Jazz is dead”. To a degree, it’s true. Where we once had freeform composers, soloists and those fluent in vocalese, we now have pastel tinted saccharin saxaphone jizz from the likes of Kenny G and David Sanborn. It’s a talent to play the instrument, but the music is uncut shit. Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Von Freeman, all of these passed on the torch, only the public was far too interested in the Beatles to care. Actually, you can blame the beginning of the downfall of modern culture on two acts, Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Fair artists, both, but none as steeped in the culture of their own art than any single one of the aforementioned Jazz masters.
In fact, much of the Brit invasion was predicated on the music that men like these made. Frankly, while I’m on the subject of the Beatles; just go away already. As much as the Beatles we’re an influence on the country as a whole (god knows why, the music is, like today’s pop, sugar coated shit) they can no longer be relevant, except to those who “remember when”.
/hijack
For what it’s worth, Playboy is still one of the hardest magazines for a freelancer to break into. They require that their writers have a LOT of experience, savvy and ability.
The primary sell of Playboy is obviously the boobies, but still, the decent writing is a nice bonus.