Too much nostalgia online? And other discussions about it

[DiffydaDude]

Im having some mixed feelings on nostalgia lately. Yeah it's cool and all, but I'm starting to get a bit tired of people being all like "God i wish we could go back to this time, now everythings gEtTiNg WoRsE." and then dudes online start acting like its the 2000s again, ie "happy new year '04" (i havent even seen that many people say happy new year 2024). Like im not against it, i like that aughts style, but i think theres a lot of little eggcorns and mondegreens about the 2000s and 2010s that people get wrong. One of them is that the 00s and early 10s was cringe culture free and the world was a happier place and was all slathered in 'Frutiger Aero', and I think that it's, well, not really true.
 
For cringe culture, I saw a forum post from '08, '09 abt a guy punching a scene girl in the face in the parking lot of a Taco Bell, and, just like how people make videos about bullying, killing, slaughtering furries, I've seen videos about doing the same to bronies, so no, people definitely fucked around with each other back then.

For the world being a better place, well, there were many tragedies and calamities and all that happened in the 00s too, It's just that most people don't think about those things because they'd rather not, which isn't really a bad thing, it's just normal for people to do that. But sometimes it feels a bit, idealizing. Like i dont think the 00s was all curvy Hello Kitty cd/radios and boxy CRTs with kids characters on them and quirky game consoles with aero menus and aggressive online chatting. It had so much more than that.

What i think is different thoug is that people generally werent so cautious and sometimes puritan about things online. Back then, people just kinda did whatever, they fucked around and they made cool shiz and didnt think super hard about it. Nowadays, there's this whole idea that people must be a certain way and believe certain things, and if they dont act this way, they are immediately called things like "proshipper" and are exiled from all the "fandoms", which are all considered terrible because of the overrepresented bad people that end up in them, which is why these communities become so puritan in the first place. I'd  honestly rather things be more, like, colloquial and stuff instead of being all serious and stuff.

I think some (not all) of my feelings can be summed up by this post from the No Homers Club by @kes

Ya, the whole nostalgia thing's pretty bad. I just wish less shows were shitty in general. Why can't they repeat old shows on the criteria of objective quality instead of trying to please nostalgic people? I can name a few things from the 90s that I would expect my kids to like at the "right" age because they're generally not awful. It doesn't make them amazing, just not bad, which is all it takes to please a child. It has to be said that anything can suck when repeated enough times - as much as I love Friends, it was pretty much constantly rotated via several episodes a day for years on end in my country, to the point where I was pleased to hear it was finally being pulled. I mean, I actually still love the show but I would not want to watch it every day forever. The channels that play cartoons all night always bored me to death, and I also realised that most of those shows were never amazing to me. Honestly I think a lot of nostalgic people are just in denial because they can't find anything to like in general, so they want to think that they still like things just because they used to like them - I can see how depressing it would be to face facts. As for the aesthetic revival of the 90s, it's clearly due to the age of a lot of people working in media at the moment - 00s will be in VERY soon, because everyone knows those people's kids will hate whatever their parents insist was "the best".

[formadscience]

I think one thing that makes conversations on nostalgia a bit complicated is that there are multiple phenomenons that are labeled nostalgia. On the one hand, we have an entertainment industry that has gotten increasingly resistant to creating new things in favor of adapting, remaking, or otherwise capitalizing on already popular and well-loved media. I mean, when's the last time there was a popular movie that wasn't based on anything else? Everything new is old and everything old is new again. It's easy to see why people keep latching onto the old stories they loved when new stories are becoming increasingly rare.

Then, on the other hand, we have people who are observing things around them becoming worse and dealing with problems that didn't exist when they were younger and longing for those days. Like the enshittification of the internet, for which this forum itself is an expression of nostalgia for the times before. The nostalgia part is just a way of contextualizing the problem and saying "it doesn't have to be this way, because it didn't used to be this way." Though, you're right that the reality of it is a lot more complex than "the past is better than the present" since the "old days" also have a lot of old problems that people have forgotten about simply because they aren't problems anymore. For example, it's true that in the past there were fewer people in fandom pointing fingers at each other for certain types of ships that are now designated as problematic, but it also used to be a lot harder to be a fan of gay ships than it is now.

In regards to cringe specifically, I think you're right that that's something that has always been around. It's just that the thing that's currently designated as "cringy" changes with time, as one generation of teenagers grows up and becomes embarrassed by their peers or their past selves, while the next generation starts to create their own trends which they will eventually grow out of and become embarrassed by as the cycle repeats. In most cases, I think it's just a matter of waiting until the teen embarrassment wears off. Like with anime, for example. Anime got really popular, and then anime fans were called weeaboos and ruthlessly mocked for it, and now nobody cares about that anymore and anime is popular again. Personally, I think a lot of nostalgia for a time before cringe is really just an expression of certain "cringes" being phased out.

[Fish]

I recently watched a handful of videos that were all centered around this idea that video games aren't fun anymore. Their arguments were basically, video games aren't fun anymore because companies now care more about making money than making fun experiences for players and that there really isn't any fun/unique/innovative games anymore.

I felt kinda annoyed with these videos because first off, there are TONS of new, exciting, innovating games coming out!It felt like these videos just talked about the same few triple A games made by the same few publishers, so of COURSE they feel the same! As for greedy video game companies, well... I think thats just companies in general, not really anything new. Sadly, Nintendo did not actually care if we had a good time with our first Pokemon game. But they did care if we bought the next game, the cards, the movies, the toys, etc etc.

About a week ago, I was feeling pretty nostalgic for Mario Sunshine. So, I used some Tech Magic to Magically put Mario Sunshine onto my wii. Problem solved! It seems pretty simple, right? To defeat nostalgia I just simply play the old games! But, I think for the people making these videos it was a lot more than just what the game they were playing was. I think for a lot of us it's also about our childhood where we had less responsibilities or maybe being apart of some online community for certain games that aren't around anymore. Even while playing Mario Sunshine I was still just yearning for those days of no worries.

I think, the best way to combat this type of sad downer nostalgia is to just try to appreciate whats happening in the present and just keeping in mind that the 2000s weren't an amazing time all around. I mean I was playing Mario Sunshine in 2008 while people were... experiencing 2008 to put it simply. And it's hard to feel like the last few good games came out a decade ago, when 2023 alone had SO many games.

Anyways, I'm excited for the weirdness of 2020s nostalgia lol. "Do you guys remember Among Us? I played that SO much during the pandemic! Ah... it was so nice to have all that time at home." 

[wygolvillage]

I don't think nostalgia is inherently a bad thing on its own but I always get kind of pissed off when the conclusion is "now it's time to wallow in my sadness about how all the good things are gone" instead of "now it's time for me to create or seek out art that has the good qualities I miss", which is also part of what appeals to me abt web revival spaces, since the aesthetics of old web are used constructively to build something new. Web revival isn't just "what if we did old web Again" but something new and beautiful, at this point. In my opinion!

I also think nostalgia can easily be turned reactionary (see how many unsavory types build their politics around wanting to "return" to an imagined better past) and it's important to keep this in mind and actively combat it. Much to chew on.

Especially with stuff like movies or games, you can probably find a lot of cool stuff by swerving away from the mainstream. Miss pixel-art metroidvanias? Mascot platformers? Want weird little niche games that AAA studios would never make? The indie scene is FULL of them.

[glitchlynx]

I don't think nostalgia is inherently a bad thing on its own but I always get kind of pissed off when the conclusion is "now it's time to wallow in my sadness about how all the good things are gone" instead of "now it's time for me to create or seek out art that has the good qualities I miss", which is also part of what appeals to me abt web revival spaces, since the aesthetics of old web are used constructively to build something new.

I really like this way of thinking of it, 'sad nostalgia' vs 'creative nostalgia'. Creative nostalgia is great, I love seeing projects done with older styles and techniques! But once in a while I see someone bemoaning the fact that something is out of style and ... well you can totally engage with that style anyway? Just because it unusual now doesn't mean it's off limits?

I've heard at least a couple people over the past few months say something along the lines of 'I miss blogging. I wish RSS was still a thing,' which... those are definitely still a thing y'all. I don't know who's stopping them from creating a blog, but I hope they figure that out soon. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

[tarraxahum]

Oh on a personal level it's definitely a longing for a return to the simpler times. I can easily admit it for myself - a lot of the times what I actually want is not to replay an old game or whatever, but to feel like I felt back when I first played it. And it's not even guaranteed that I did feel better back then - sure, my childish problems seem minuscule to me now, in comparison to the adult responsibilities, but at the time they were likely just as overwhelming.

Plus, I feel like with age we sort of lose that sense of wow and novelty that we got when we were kids. Was stuff actually better or was it just novel and exciting and scratched our brains just right? Is a tiny 320p pixel screen of an old Sony Ericsson actually better than my Redmi Note (stuff like tracking and other predatory app mechanics notwithstanding), or does it just feel that way 'cause that was my first phone ever and this one is a fifth black smartphone in a row? You know, that kinda thing.

There are definitely things that we can rightfully complain about - the enshittification of everything, the way the Internet has changed (hence the indie part of it most of us participate in). While some laws in some countries definitely got better with time (see gay marriage in USA), in my country, for example, it's all been going backwards for the last decade. In some such cases it's valid to say that it used to be better. Some things definitely did. I also do agree that the Internet for example gave much less of a crap and was doing whatever. Were there still dramas and callouts - oh bloody of course, but yeah, the focus on purity and never doing wrong etc etc has definitely shifted. Not all of it is bad btw - I looked at some quiz site from the 00s and my eyes bled from the amount of slurs and -phobias that were apparently just normal and quirky(tm) to exhibit. Can't figure out if I forgot all that through my romantization goggles or I just inhibited better places (probably the former). That said, the wild swing into everything being problematic is sometimes a bit too much.

My dad says that all stuff like this is like a pendulum, swinging from one extreme to another. In all honesty I'm kinda interested to see what the online climate will look like come next couple of decades.

Some things weren't better at all, but we romanticize them anyway. Like the aforementioned cringe culture (which was definitely present in the 00s and the early 10s. I'd know. I was cringe.) It's giving the same vibes as some young women wishing to live in the oh so romantic times of the historic dramas - completely forgetting about, well. Civil rights. Or state of the medicine. That romantization is also very much convincing younger people that the past was better than it really was, too.

And then some things just felt different 'cause we were younger. Honestly, no matter how hard I tried, no amount of old-school websites revivals (say, Blips or even SpaceHey) were able to make me feel like I did when using the originals. My brain is different. I am different. I have anxieties now and cannot in good faith slap my sketches everywhere while believing that they're all masterpieces (I miss that attitude, honestly).

I think most of all that nostalgia is harmless, though. In big amounts, however, it does signal a huge dissatisfaction with one's present (hard to blame anyone, the way our present is going and getting harder to ignore in any dignified way). So more than anything else it harms the person drowning in it - we devoid ourselves of what little (or big) joy there is to be found in our present.

I do agree with the point mentioned by wygolvillage, however - such nostalgia is a tool many dangerous groups use to attract people. "Look what they took from you" is very much a dogwhistle for a reason. And then of course there are all those companies tripping over themselves to monetize that nostalgia and get richer off of it. That's, I think, is the main danger - it's a phenomenon born out of dissatisfaction and yearning, a vulnerable spot, therefore it's very easy to take advantage of it.

As for the annoying factor, well... I think it was always there. The "Well, in my time..." and "I was born in the wrong era" stuff, 90s retro parties and whatnot. It's just more apparent to us now when it's hitting our generation (using the definition loosely, there are users of different ages here). And it's probably getting deeper due to the constant barrage of bad news from everywhere (the tragedies and wars did always happen, but we didn't always have a constantly updating screaming newspaper in our pocket) and the uncertainty of the future.

Just gotta be careful not to overdo it. And recognize an underlying problem when it's there.

Anyways, I'm excited for the weirdness of 2020s nostalgia lol. "Do you guys remember Among Us? I played that SO much during the pandemic! Ah... it was so nice to have all that time at home." 

Amen to that. I think it can be an interesting study - seeing which things people's minds preserve as staples of the era.

[formadscience]

A couple of people mentioned indie media, which I'd like to talk about. It's absolutely true that the problems with the AAA games industry aren't present in indie games, and I'm sure there are also a lot of interesting indie movies out there. But I think an embrace of the indie only solves part of the problem. In a way, I think it could be part of the reason why a lot of people turn to nostalgia. I've enjoyed music a lot more ever since I stopped listening to pop music and started listening to a bunch of obscure bands on Bandcamp. But now I can't talk about current music with anyone, because they haven't heard of the bands I know and I haven't heard of any of the artists they know. Instead, we might end up talking about Nirvana or Black Sabbath.

With the internet and streaming, it's easier than ever before to go down a rabbit hole and find your niche, but that also means we lose a lot of cultural touchstones. How can you make small talk about TV with your coworker when there's no guarantee that they even have Hulu, much less watch all the same Hulu-exclusive shows you do? That used to be a huge part of our culture. It was easy to talk about what aired on TV last night because that was all there was to watch. Now, things like the MCU fill a similar function. At this point, I think most people have complaints about the MCU, but they still watch it, and a huge part of that is because you can bring up to an acquaintance and be reasonably certain that they've watched at least one movie. But if more and more people turn away from mainstream media, all that's left is nostalgia, because it's almost universally familiar.

[wygolvillage]

A couple of people mentioned indie media, which I'd like to talk about. It's absolutely true that the problems with the AAA games industry aren't present in indie games, and I'm sure there are also a lot of interesting indie movies out there. But I think an embrace of the indie only solves part of the problem. In a way, I think it could be part of the reason why a lot of people turn to nostalgia. I've enjoyed music a lot more ever since I stopped listening to pop music and started listening to a bunch of obscure bands on Bandcamp. But now I can't talk about current music with anyone, because they haven't heard of the bands I know and I haven't heard of any of the artists they know. Instead, we might end up talking about Nirvana or Black Sabbath.

With the internet and streaming, it's easier than ever before to go down a rabbit hole and find your niche, but that also means we lose a lot of cultural touchstones. How can you make small talk about TV with your coworker when there's no guarantee that they even have Hulu, much less watch all the same Hulu-exclusive shows you do? That used to be a huge part of our culture. It was easy to talk about what aired on TV last night because that was all there was to watch. Now, things like the MCU fill a similar function. At this point, I think most people have complaints about the MCU, but they still watch it, and a huge part of that is because you can bring up to an acquaintance and be reasonably certain that they've watched at least one movie. But if more and more people turn away from mainstream media, all that's left is nostalgia, because it's almost universally familiar.

I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing but it is kind of compounded by how subculture is kind of less of a thing nowadays. With subculture even if you like some niche thing you can find a community around it with its own set of cultural touchstones. (I think part of why web revival feels so alive and thriving is that it is a sort of subculture!) Or maybe fandom is kind of the modern replacement for subculture?

If I had more time I'd probably make a more thought-out post about this but I'm about to head out for the day :P

This topic has been super interesting so far.

[bees]

You make some good points. People really view the 00s and early 10s with rose-tinted glasses but I've got to disagree that the Internet was consistently better back then or that people were freer to express themselves.

There were certain corners dedicated to finding and harassing random people who were considered "cringe" or wrong in some way, even if they weren't hurting others. If some sites people link to on here had existed back then and been noticed, they would likely have attracted death threats and stuff like that due to people having a scene aesthetic, being furries, mentioning being autistic, etc.. There were lots of racist and ableist memes. "boobs or gtfo" was a not uncommon greeting if someone was thought to be a girl. There was often kind of an edgelord vibe and people trying to outdo each other in how offensive or messed up they could be.

I was basically a non-entity online so I didn't experience that and I'm grateful, but I remember feeling terrible for people who did. Towards the end of the 00s, lots of people I knew were definitely less open online. Some of that was the turn towards sites that didn't favour anonymity, like Facebook, but I think it was also the worry that you might get doxxed for saying something embarrassing.

There's still brigading and death threats, there's still bigotry, but I wouldn't say the 00s and especially the early 10s were the paradise people think it was. In a way, I feel like there's more/bigger online communities that are more sensitive to real world issues and much more accepting of others.

I think the good thing is that stuff was smaller, especially in the late 90s and early 00s. It was easier to not come across unsavory stuff and stick to certain, more positive pockets. There were no dashboards/newsfeeds, so it was easier to find a nice community and see only that. (Though there was certainly drama haha.) There were also lots of personal sites, small forums, blogs, etc. so there was more incentive for people to explore and be creative, in a way. But there was definitely a negative side to the Internet and to online communities almost from the start. I should also note that I was a kid in the 90s/early 00s, so there was likely a lot I didn't see or hear about because I wasn't looking.

(As an aside, I have no idea why anyone would feel nostalgic for the early 2010s web experience. Other than TikTok, people were mostly using the same social networks they do now, things were already looking very standardised, lots of blogs became more commercial... you get the gist. I don't recall my online life 10-15 years ago being that different from now, to be honest, and in many ways it planted the seeds for what we have now.)

I'd say the difference and what people probably miss is the scale and things feeling smaller, as well as a lot of rosy nostalgia for when they were younger.

[grubbyfox]

For me personally, nostalgia and "longing for the older times" isn't really the same. I mean, I cant really explain it, but for me nostalgia is on a more personal level and it can def. hurt and pain me, but not necessarily in a bad way? I cant explain, lol! I guess it's like, I can remember back to for example 2005 - 2007. My situation in life was shit back then. I was really traumatized by family stuff and just overall I took some stupid choices etc. Just a complete mess. But looking past that, 2005 - 2007 were some real good years. Despite the hardships and trauma. I was good at coping, I was meeting a lot of new people, I did not have a spec of anxiety (I think?), music was popping off, lol, tech was fun and light hearted, there was no real SoMe, etc. Just some good years in general, and I look back on them fondly - if I ignore what I went through.

But I def dont want to go back to that. No, no no... nightmare.


It's kind of the same with "retro web" and all this. I miss a lot of the stuff (MSN, forums for everything, no real SoMe), and that mobile phones were cute and cool looking. I miss not having "feeds" and scrolling and all that garbage in my phone. Yes, I can remove it, but it's not the same.

The internet was basically the same in some ways, there were edgelords, bullying, cringe stuff, cringe shaming, haters, turf wards etc...but they werent in your phone 24/7 for example.

For me, the nostalgia isn't necessarily the "frutiger" and all that. For me, what I actually miss, is how stuff works.
 
For example, where I live, there is no longer any FM radio. FM radio doesn't exist here anymore (sans 1 local tower i can barely get any reception from.) So if I just want to turn on a random FM radio and chill, nope. I'd have to get expensive DAB, but reception is awful and if it wont connect to our Wi-Fi (so I cant have it in the garden) the reception will most likely be crud.

Same with TV. I grew up with having a small TV in the kitchen and one in my bedroom. But "cable tv" here is not a thing anymore. So if I want more than one TV (with signal), I have to have an extra TV-box reciever +tv channel card for each TV, etc etc. A whole damn ordeal and wires and equipment, and insanely expensive on top of the already expensive cable.

There was something so casual and calm about waking up and putting on the TV in the kitchen, hearing the weather presented, random news or some ye olde cartoon or Gunsmoke episode lol. Just bliss. Now I have to actively sit down and keep my hand on my phone if I want the weather/news at breakfast. I hate it.

Same with my bedroom TV. Just channel hopping before bedtime, riding the channel waves until I fell asleep.

Now I gotta use like a chromecast, find something either on Youtube (and have ads with 300% louder volume that sometimes crash the app), or use like a streaming app and actively flick through it until I find something and just ohhhh my GODDDDDDDDDDD.

Its supposed to be "easier" but it just gets annoying instead.

Not to mention, TV used to be good. There were always some fun comedy/action/thriller/horror movies on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, on like 3-4 different channels. Then there were the friday night specials on some channels. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesdays were sometimes like drama, historic pieces, tear jerkers, romance and such.

They hardly even show movies on TV anymore.
 
They'll show like 17 episodes of Pawn Stars on one channel, 3 channels will send different "house renovating" shows nearly 12 hours straight, 2 or 3 channels will cram in some low budget "reality" (nobodies/"influencers"/d-list celebs) dOiNg sTufF for the lols, or like the same people in quiz/game shows etc. Just absolute trash.

Those kind of things are my "things were better before" - not necessarily "omg frutiger aero" (tho I will say win8 - win11 is trash too lol!)

[dirtnap]

as others have said, the years 2000 - 2010 were the PEAK of cringe culture. actually i'd say ~2013 might have been the actual peak, with cringe hategroups becoming established on mainstream websites like reddit and twitter (as opposed to the chans, and dedicated websites like encylopaedia dramatica) and garnering significant membership. in fact, 2013 was when kiwifarms started, a website dedicated exclusively to harrassing anyone they considered "cringe".

internet puritanism is not organically related to but did intelligently weaponise cringe culture; it was a movement deliberately started by bigots. started by, but unfortunately it's sort of leaked into a lot of the minds of its original targets, who have absorbed these puritanical ideas and managed to mix puritanism with cringe culture into a now-unavoidable internet culture war over (checks notes) some guys who pilot a giant robot.

so while there is a straight line from cringe culture to modern internet puritanism, they're very different in form and function. cringe culture was a bunch of deeply unremarkable people hating anything that was remotely different from them, on the simple basis that it was different and different is bad. it's an instinct. an instinct most people lose at the age of about 5, but nontheless an instinct. modern internet puritanism is intelligent. it's still bad, in fact i'd say it's worse than cringe culture for that exact reason (the majority of cringe culture participants literally grew out of it. you can't grow out of puritanism, because it's not an emotion. it's rational thought. you have to actually decide to stop being like that.)

when i say "rational thought" i don't mean that makes it correct, i mean that the thoughts these people have are rational (based on internal logic) as opposed to irrational instinct (based on immediate feelings, with no logic involved). "dogs can't look up" is a rational thought. it's unequivocably wrong but it's still rational because the speaker understands what they're saying, they understand what they mean, and they genuinely believe it to be true.

tl;dr cringe culture is an emotional reaction of "ew that's different" that most people grow out of with exposure and emotional maturity; modern puritanism is carefully-developed rationalisation of hatred of the other that, at least to the holder of such thoughts, makes logical sense.

For me, what I actually miss, is how stuff works.
 
For example, where I live, there is no longer any FM radio. FM radio doesn't exist here anymore (sans 1 local tower i can barely get any reception from.) So if I just want to turn on a random FM radio and chill, nope. I'd have to get expensive DAB, but reception is awful and if it wont connect to our Wi-Fi (so I cant have it in the garden) the reception will most likely be crud.

Same with TV. I grew up with having a small TV in the kitchen and one in my bedroom. But "cable tv" here is not a thing anymore. So if I want more than one TV (with signal), I have to have an extra TV-box reciever +tv channel card for each TV, etc etc. A whole damn ordeal and wires and equipment, and insanely expensive on top of the already expensive cable.

[trimmed for space]

Now I gotta use like a chromecast, find something either on Youtube (and have ads with 300% louder volume that sometimes crash the app), or use like a streaming app and actively flick through it until I find something and just ohhhh my GODDDDDDDDDDD.

Its supposed to be "easier" but it just gets annoying instead.

this is a great way of describing it, and you've helped me out too. i've been trying to come up with a coherent response to this thread since it was posted.

personally, i would describe nostalgia as a strong, positive emotional connection to some past time. it is, broadly, a feeling. it may not be based wholly in reality.

and i think a lot of people who are percieved as expressing nostalgia aren't, but the word has become so oversatured that it's getting difficult for anyone to talk about the past in a positive light without either mis-using the word themselves, or readers assuming they're talking about nostalgia because, to some people, that's what talk about the past in a positive way is! that is nostalgia to some people now!

some people use a word that describes a feeling to describe their thoughts, which further confuses the conversation. so "the corporate hellscape that is the modern internet sucks, i miss forums" is expressed or interpereted as nostalgia, gets read as emotion-based (i miss when i lived in 2005) as opposed to thought-based (the internet was literally less corporate back then)

i think when someone is talking in concrete terms about technology or other systems, they're not describing nostalgia. they just prefer that technology, and are frustrated by its modern replacement (or lack thereof).

when people start talking in more vague terms like "society" or "people" were better then, or just that they personally were happier at that time, or that they miss being a child, or things like that...that's nostalgia. those people are expressing nostalgia.

but when someone says "remember when you could turn on the tv and watch a random episode of gunsmoke? that was great. i wish i could still do that.", that's not nostalgia. that's a frustration with how tv works now, and a comparison to a version of tv that was less frustrating.

i spent a while wondering if i even can experience nostalgia. and honestly, i don't think so. i've actively tried to seek it out and found nothing.

a lot of older versions of technology were, in at least some ways, more user-friendly than their modern replacements. not because older things are inherently better, but because those modern replacements are more obstructive to the user.

also, i had to go back to the thread to copy this because it wouldn't quote for some reason:

Why can't they repeat old shows on the criteria of objective quality instead of trying to please nostalgic people?

i'd really like to know what this writer meant by "objective quality". normally i'd assume they were trying to pretend their own preferences were somehow "objective", but they seem to be making it clear that's not what they meant. i can't imagine such a system working in practice.

anything recorded to actual film would be kept over anything recorded to tape, as film has objectively higher quality. of course, the vast majority of anything recorded for tv was recorded to tape, and yes that includes cartoons, so that narrows the pool considerably. programs with poor audio quality would be discarded. by modern standards, anything on film has really bad audio quality. so, what's even left at that point? digitised, upscaled? if that's been done then it was already intended for republication so, what are we gaining by this system?

that said, no, no publisher is going to stop trying to please nostalgia. nostalgia sells. people who watch are inherently more valuable than people who don't. the things that get watched the most stay.

[dirtnap]

With the internet and streaming, it's easier than ever before to go down a rabbit hole and find your niche, but that also means we lose a lot of cultural touchstones. How can you make small talk about TV with your coworker when there's no guarantee that they even have Hulu, much less watch all the same Hulu-exclusive shows you do? That used to be a huge part of our culture. It was easy to talk about what aired on TV last night because that was all there was to watch. Now, things like the MCU fill a similar function. At this point, I think most people have complaints about the MCU, but they still watch it, and a huge part of that is because you can bring up to an acquaintance and be reasonably certain that they've watched at least one movie. But if more and more people turn away from mainstream media, all that's left is nostalgia, because it's almost universally familiar.

I FORGOT TO REPLY TO THIS. i find this absolutely fascinating, and you've re-awakened thoughts i haven't had for a while.

the way you describe the mcu fits perfectly into the function of narrative tradition: a set of stories with familiar characters and literary arcs, which can be used to facilitate contemporary discourse for practical, social, or entertainment purposes as the situation demands.

thanos-related memes in particular (both "thanos snap" to mean "dispose of/remove"; and "fine. i'll do it myself" to express frustration with the inadequate work of others and determination to do better) are the PERFECT example of contemporary discourse shaping itself around well-known elements of the mythology.

not everyone has seen a marvel film. i know some people who staunchly refuse for one reason or another. but they still know who and what thanos is, they're more familiar with his arc and character than they probably wish they were, and they know and use these memes.

the mcu, and to a lesser extent superhero comics in general, function as a modern equivalent to the mabinogion.

and before that, those television programs everyone watched held this function (if you have ever lived in the uk you have experienced this through doctor who, corrie, or both). for a couple of years, skyrim was the same. you've never played skyrim? doesn't matter, you're finally awake.

[DiffydaDude]

Wow there's alot of talk on here abt this topic, I wasn't expecting that!
I think some of my annoyances with the modern internet are down to how people act online, and also whats available. online these days. Personally, I feel like that there might be a sort of bubble that people aint noticed, and the best way I can explain it is that, when me and my brother both watched Youtube Shorts, we got nearly the exact same Youtubers, and we'd sometimes hear the video we'd just heard on one of our phones. and the youtubers we'd watch were people like Nick DiGiovanni, TetraBitGaming, Jonny RaZer, Danno Cal, tyrecords, that lock-picking guy, Jarred Jermaine, and a lot more. It varies between people, but we watched a lot of these same guys. Then one day, Youtube pushed a "Featured" short into our feed, which was a video of 2 girls doing tiktok dances, and i noticed that, there were a lot of comments talking about the smooth dancing and cool moves, a lot of comments from this possible bubble were all like "this is awful this is terrible and braindead and its why youtube sucks", and that made me realize that the kind of content I and probably many others all collectively watched was a part of some kind of bubble or echo chamber. Because really, it seems like a lot of the same people watch the same videos, comment on the same videos, and believe in the same things.
I also feel like I'm having trouble finding cool new fun stuff online, as a lot of the stuff in the web revival scene is just personal and 'self education' websites (i.e. Online Spyware Watchdog, FSF, etc). If there are any ways to find cool new stuff, do tell me!

[formadscience]

I FORGOT TO REPLY TO THIS. i find this absolutely fascinating, and you've re-awakened thoughts i haven't had for a while.

the way you describe the mcu fits perfectly into the function of narrative tradition: a set of stories with familiar characters and literary arcs, which can be used to facilitate contemporary discourse for practical, social, or entertainment purposes as the situation demands.

If you're interested, you should watch this video which I was mostly just summarizing (and which I just noticed was actually posted on this very forum by OP a while back! Funny coincidence.)

[arcus]

I kinda like the nostalgia kids have for the 2000s. It's nice seeing things I liked back in the day, especially old tech make a comeback. The historical inaccuracies with the culture online do bother me though.

With the internet and streaming, it's easier than ever before to go down a rabbit hole and find your niche, but that also means we lose a lot of cultural touchstones. How can you make small talk about TV with your coworker when there's no guarantee that they even have Hulu, much less watch all the same Hulu-exclusive shows you do? That used to be a huge part of our culture. It was easy to talk about what aired on TV last night because that was all there was to watch. Now, things like the MCU fill a similar function. At this point, I think most people have complaints about the MCU, but they still watch it, and a huge part of that is because you can bring up to an acquaintance and be reasonably certain that they've watched at least one movie. But if more and more people turn away from mainstream media, all that's left is nostalgia, because it's almost universally familiar.

I think this is a big reason why communities have formed around streamers. Especially in video game communities, where it's much easier and cheaper to watch a video of someone playing a game instead of actually playing it. And also why lore focused games like Undertale and Five Nights at Freddy's are so popular.

internet puritanism is not organically related to but did intelligently weaponise cringe culture; it was a movement deliberately started by bigots. started by, but unfortunately it's sort of leaked into a lot of the minds of its original targets, who have absorbed these puritanical ideas and managed to mix puritanism with cringe culture into a now-unavoidable internet culture war over (checks notes) some guys who pilot a giant robot.

Not entirely true. A lot of it came as a push back of abuse issues in fandom spaces. Certain fandom spaces got really bad, and with the rise of Tumblr and people talking more about social issues, being critical over fiction was seen as apart of the solution. It absolutely was co-oped though.

What i think is different thoug is that people generally werent so cautious and sometimes puritan about things online. Back then, people just kinda did whatever, they fucked around and they made cool shiz and didnt think super hard about it. Nowadays, there's this whole idea that people must be a certain way and believe certain things, and if they dont act this way, they are immediately called things like "proshipper" and are exiled from all the "fandoms", which are all considered terrible because of the overrepresented bad people that end up in them, which is why these communities become so puritan in the first place. I'd  honestly rather things be more, like, colloquial and stuff instead of being all serious and stuff.

Wasn't my experience at all. Shipping in its entirety was seen as incredibly cringe online in English spaces. The main difference was that homophobia was the focus, hence the phrase "don't like don't read." There was drama all the time, but it generally wasn't as widespread, since the internet wasn't as centralised.

I say English spaces, since it's still cringe in other spaces; in Japanese spaces people have to put warnings in their bio if they draw ship art, and have to keep their ship art private if it's based off a live action series.

I also feel like I'm having trouble finding cool new fun stuff online, as a lot of the stuff in the web revival scene is just personal and 'self education' websites (i.e. Online Spyware Watchdog, FSF, etc). If there are any ways to find cool new stuff, do tell me!

Wiby, a curated search engine
Marginalia, a search engine that prioritises non commercial sites
Marginalia's similar site finder
Marginalia's site explorer (it's not working at the time I'm writing this however)
brisray's webring list
Neocities' activity page. It's usually fine these days but the ToS is fairly loose.
Nekoweb's activity page