Males that watch Soap Operas

[Khan]

 

Same.  Watching GL crawl slowly toward its' demise like a horny teenager who's just been attacked by a hatchet-brandishing serial killer is an experience I never want to repeat or wish upon any soap fan, ever.

[titan1978]

My attachment was to GH, DAYS, OLTL and Y&R in that order.  I only check in to GH on occasion now, and read about the others still in production here.  I watched every soap airing in the 1990’s and 2000’s for periods of time, including a few years of Hollyoaks,  except B&B.  Never been able to get into that one.

 

GH for sure hooked me in the 1980’s as a kid because of all the action and intrigue storylines.  Anna Devane is to this day my favorite character.  DAYS had that action thing too, but DAYS played up the epic romance more than GH did during that time period.

 

As a gay man I was way more into the strong women on the shows than the men.  Even the hot ones.  I appreciated someone like Jimmy Lee Holt on GH, but I wasn’t watching for him.  Even when Jagger arrived (though there is no denying I found him super hot), it was Brenda and Karen I was in to.

Edited May 27, 2019 by titan1978

[beebs]

I would say "my" shows were DAYS (obviously), GL, OLTL, GH, and Y&R. When I first started watching soaps, it was GL that hooked me first, and then DAYS that really stuck with me. I was never a traditional male, and frankly, I was never bothered by it. My mom and grandparents were fine with just letting me be me, bless them.

I don't really watch DAYS as much as I used to (frankly, Ron's writing exhausts me), and Y&R bores me to tears, I can't sit through an episode. But I check in, and love to read about what's going on.

[juppiter]

Bunch of freaks, all of you 

[Broderick]

In the days of only three main television networks, a LOT of men watched a soap during their lunchbreak.  In my office, all of the men watched either All My Children, Days of our Lives, or Y&R, because those were three choices at lunch.   Some dudes watched in the office; others went home and watched with their wives.  It was just a habit.  If someone went out to a restaurant at lunch, he'd usually ask a co-worker later that afternoon what he missed that day regarding Erica Kane, Marlena Evans, or Victor Newman.   But when ESPN began having better offerings, a lot of guys dropped their soap.  By the mid-1990s, when many offices began having Internet access, there was even less soap viewing.  By the time smart phones arrived, there was even less.  I think I'm the only guy in my office who still watches Y&R.  No one watches Days anymore, and obviously AMC is off the table entirely.         

[BetterForgotten]

Initially as a kid, it was male characters like Roger Thorpe, John Dixon, Victor Newman, and Jack Abbot that got my interest. Most of these characters still have a special place in my heart. But as I started watching more, it was really the female characters that kept me interested in the genre. Characters like Lucinda Walsh, Alexandra Spaulding, Holly Norris, and Jill Foster Abbott stayed with me forever and made me want to watch on a daily basis for years. 

 

The CBS lineup was the lineup that I gravitated to most, and then I gradually moved onto the ABC soaps and DAYS as well. 

 

Edited May 27, 2019 by BetterForgotten

[NothinButAttitude]

 

Agreed. 

 

Just wrap the last four up and let the genre go into rest until someone with some sense comes back and revives it on a more profitable platform. 

[Soapsuds]

Male here..

 

Starting watching soaps with my mom at a very young age. I would tape my soaps and watch them when I got home from school. I would even miss special family events to see Friday cliffhangers....LOL

 

My favorite soap of all time was ATWT followed by Y&R and GL. I watched Search For Tomorrow regularly too. I've seen all the soaps at one time or another. I got hooked on GH because of Colton/Felicia/Frisco story. I also loved Anna and Scorpio. 

I always enjoy reading your posts and this one didn't disappoint either!

[Cruising Soaps]

Here- CBS Soaps primarily.

A splash of Sunset Beach, and HollyOaks

[j swift]

Soaps are my earliest TV memory.  We would come home for lunch from elementary school and some soap was always on the portable black and white tv in the kitchen (my parents fancied themselves intellectuals and only allowed one color tv until we grew up and they had a flat screen on every wall in the house).   Soaps were always associated with school holidays or staying home while sick (in Los Angeles we had smog days rather than snow days), but we would usually watch some soap daily during the summer.  My sister and I have joked that if her kids were allowed to watch what we did during lunch, and fed a steady diet of PB&J sandwiches, certainly someone would have been fired.

 

In college, we had a central TV and I lived on an all guys floor.  As a young gay man, soaps were my only socially acceptable exposure to half-naked men.  I started watching GH in the afternoons and soon a crowd formed.  We would never discuss it outside of the lounge, but we screamed with delight at the Laureltown mystery.  I will never forget the hysteria that broke out when Terry Brock's singing cured Tony Jones's impotency.  It was truly the most fun I ever had watching TV and my friends from college still reference it.

 

For some reason, I continued to read SOD until about five years ago.  At some point, it became impossible to keep up with the stories because the synopses were filled with nonsequiturs.  However, twenty years prior I was at the newsstand, every Thursday, to pick up a Soap Opera Digest, a copy of Soap Opera Weekly, and a box of Red Vines (having inherited a bit of snobbery I would never have subscribed because my mail carrier would know that I read trash).  Since then, I've collected all of the coffee table soap history books on Amazon, some for as little as a dollar, and some were worth less once read.  

Edited May 28, 2019 by j swift

[Khan]

 

And yet, you're here with us.

[Dr Neil Curtis]

Days, P&G soaps (GL being my favorite), AMC, and Generations are/were my soaps. 

[juppiter]

 

(Joke)

[vetsoapfan]

 

My PC laptop has a mind of its own, too, and often tries to override my authority. 

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And we revel in it, yo!

 

Why, thank you, kind sir.

[Fevuh]

Hard for me to choose between ATWT and GL but those were my two favorites.  Started with Y&R but I was only like 7 or 8.  My earliest memory of Y&R was everyone believing Katherine dying in a

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identified by her real ring but she showed up at her funeral because just before the fire someone asked if she could wear her ring and Katherine gave it to her.  I remember Roger slipping from Ed’s hand on GL and all of my Mom’s friends talking about it.  My Dad would pretend not to watch when I taped them, but when I graduated college and moved out, he retired (1993) and Mom always said he would not go out of the house when ATWT and GL were on and if they were out at the grocery store he would be in a big hurry to get home.  I tune in about 2 times a week to Y&R and B&B.  I watch B&B for the comedy of how stupid and bad it is.

 

I agree that they should be canceled.  Give the genre a break and start a new one in 5 years so that the Millennials or following generations can swear they invented serials.  Because they will totally believe it.