“The world seems worse compared to a time I had no responsibilities and every new experience was novel. What gives?” Gee I wonder
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There certainly is, it’s just not being engaged in this article. Its content is almost entirely recounting nostalgic aspects of his childhood and the crushing, atomized mundanity that has replaced it.
Nowhere is there any analysis on or reckoning with what makes his generation’s lost innocence different from all the others. Growing up and having to pay bills has been part and parcel of life in the imperial core since the modern era. That’s not to say there isn’t anything different about it this time around, but the means by which it is different aren’t enumerated.
I still think there’s value to the post as a means to vent and commiserate with others in the same boat, but that’s pretty much it ¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯
cringe millennial nostalgia
Lmao the 90s seemed bright??
Maybe the 80s seemed bright-ish but the 90s were marked by the serious cumulative effects of neoliberal policy on the western world and it was the era of political hangover where the bright optimism marked by the 60s and 70s was lost to the ugly side of individualism, ennui, and hopelessness. We also saw the rise of “globalisation” and the despair that came with it (cursed, ahistorical term though; capitalism has always been globalised. From the earliest days of the first corporations such as the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company etc. it’s always been globalised, the only difference was that the 90s was a sudden shock where the west might suddenly find itself somewhat on the receiving end of the uglier side of globalisation, essentially for the first time in history.)
Maybe the 90s seem comparatively bright from a retrospective angle but it’s drawing a long bow and appealing to false nostalgia to claim that the 90s was in any way an optimistic era.
Legit, it seems like most media then (even media targeted at kids) was tinged with a sense of meaninglessness - the end of history had arrived and for all most of the adults in our lives knew it meant 40 years of meaningless busywork in the cube farm followed by 20 years of idle retirement at some point punctuated by a stay in the nursing home and that trickled down to any kids who were paying attention. I by and large had a good, middle class upbringing, so maybe my experience was different from folks who were either wealthier or more precarious. And I also spent most of my early adulthood struggling with depression so maybe that tinges my recollections, but I don’t remember much in the way of optimism.
The majority of the music and a lot of the media of the 90s was absolutely characterised by the sense of meaninglessness and nihilism and futility that was the zeitgeist of that era - think grunge music and Daria.
I guess that was counterposed by the exxxtreme marketing and media that was similar tone but I think that represented the sense that we were scraping the bottom of the barrel and in order to feel anything or to get a sense of purpose/power it had to be hardcore. (I guess it’s worth mentioning that there wasn’t always a clear distinction between the nihilistic media and the extreme media because often the two were blended together - stuff like Beavis and Butthead and early South Park are good examples of this, with early South Park leaning in really hard into parodying the previous eras of narratives in TV shows that were heavy on moralising; South Park could only ever have a moral aspect to its storylines when it was dripping with satire and irony.)
It might seem like those two are really incompatible but if you look at society at that time as if it were a chronically depressed person then it’s easy to grasp the sort of pendulum swings from emptiness and numbness to the high-energy, anxious, almost frantic state which only leads to a crash back into a deeper numbness that we’re talking about here. Or like the person who is overstimulated to the point that their senses are so dulled that it takes really extreme input in order for it to register and for them to feel anything at all which ultimately leads to being more desensitised.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Hey every decade since 90s has been worse than the one before .
This is a fact
i don’t know. I was never happy in school, all the typical depression stuff feeling trapped in a prison etc. In the last year I was counting days before it finally ends. school isn’t a place where you have zero responsibility, you have to pass the tests, do homework etc. The only good part of school is the friends you make (provided you aren’t constantly bullied, luckily I wasn’t).
nostalgia warps ones perception of school. they forget about the mundane and stressful aspects and only remember the good times.
Remember that feeling when you brought gum to school?
I remember watching 9/11 happen at school. 🙄
the senate parliamentarian said sorry no future
Cypherpunks lmao. They started doing ape pictures
You got old and depressed, happens to everyone
Not me I got depressed way before I got old
You grew up
When we were young, the future was so bright (Woah-oh)
The old neighborhood was so alive (Woah-oh)
And every kid on the whole damn street (Woah-oh)
Was gonna make it big and not be beat
Now the neighborhood’s cracked and torn (Woah-oh)
The kids are grown up, but their lives are worn (Woah-oh)
How can one little street swallow so many lives?
Chances thrown
Nothing’s free
Longing for, used to be
Still it’s hard, hard to see
Fragile lives
Shattered dreams (go!)
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
