In that vein:
Romeo and Juliet II: Friar Lawrence Strikes Again

That's a more recent phenomenon. These folk were retiring just as that culture was taking off.

You have a point, but it got lost in the assholery of your reply. I too long for a little more of the hard SciFi and morality tales of Star Trek. The writers/producers try too hard to explore characters & relationships rather than the cool things that we can see/learn while exploring the galaxy - - all those strange new worlds.

I'm a bit older than you and gotta disagree one one point. The 50s was NOT an optomistic time for American SciFi. With the exception of "Forbidden Planet", which heavily influenced TOS, 50s SciFi was dominated by paranoia, repression & fatalism. There were monsters under every rock. Our inability to control ourselves and our technology was dooming our future. The early 60s TOS was an optomistic breath of fresh air. Maybe we wouldn't blow ourselves up after all

I gotta disagree with you on one point: Facebook was never cool.

Unfortunately, there's not enough of them even 8f they do disproportionately more harm.

How do you feel about i am actually chatbots?

Yo. Zz-up?

Block chain is still a really cool solution in search of a problem to solve. Money wasn't it. NFTs isn't it. What is? Sports betting, maybe?

Are you saying that this doesn't sound like ???????? to you?

The AI was trained of Reddit comments, so what do you expect?

Alfalfa & Spanky?
I haven't thought about them in decades.