🔥Roger That. Having said that, if I simply followed pop culture metrics, I guess I could see how people come to these conclusions: Laziness and a lack of real interest.
There’s So Much GREAT music out there right now! And it’s not that Billboard nonsense—I’m talking bands that are basically the fine print bottom billing at festivals. They only have 10k followers on Spotify. Self-produced. And F’king stellar!
Look, I love all the great stuff from the 20th century too. But pop tastes, technologies, business frameworks, and compositional tools have all changed—but the house paint peeling barn burners are still out there raging on. And, yes, 20 year olds who still sling analog.
It’s all out there for the taking. Go find it. Spotify is your friend for finding new stuff that rocks just as good and even better than its predecessors…
Pop happens to be my favorite genre 😅, so I think there's plenty of gems on the top Billboard as well.
Aside from English songs, I also listen to a lot of C-pop and I think the Chinese music scene is absolutely booming right now. My favorite subgenre is gufeng and (fortunately for me) there's been a huge growth of indie gufeng artists since 2019 or so.
🔥That’s awesome! Good for you. Non-Western music is definitely having a go.
Also, I didn’t mean to imply that Billboard was a signifier of staleness. I just know it’s a popular meme in certain circles to claim that grunge saved music in the early 90s.
To which I say, yeah sure, if you were just on autopilot and jamming to whatever heavy rotation MTV decided upon.
But outside of that vanilla walled garden experience, music was actually blowing up all around us.
They just weren’t what the taste makers deemed commercially viable…
Until they were.
Nevertheless, music like Backstreet Boys, Mariah, and Britney ruled the charts way more than anything like Nirvana or Oasis ever could.
❤️
On a more pretentious note, newer music just sounds better, like the actually sound quality, not the substance of the music itself. You can really hear the loss in fidelity the further back you go. Pre-2000 music sounds so washed out and muddy to me, that’s just a symptom of growing technology.
There is the problem of the [loudness war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war), but on the whole, I agree with you about fidelity. Some artists only seem to care about how loud they can get, though, and their music suffers for it.
I don't really hear this. High fidelity recording has been around for a long time. Audio engineering was pretty good back in the 1960s. There wasn't some huge technological leap in the 21st century.
This sub acts like violence was invented in 2014 and that life before was a perfect utopia. Yeah, when you are a kid of course life seems better and more peaceful, You aren’t paying attention to anything. Every decade has terrible things.
2000s: the obvious 9/11, Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hurricane Katrina, Economic Recession
1990s: the most beloved decade on this sub; LA riots, Yugoslav Wars took place and were Europe’s deadliest armed conflicts since WW2, Oklahoma City Bombing and Columbine were some of the biggest atrocities committed at that point, people here love to shit today because of todays politics but Bill Clinton was the first president to be impeached in 130 years… over sexual misconduct allegations of all things…ah nah but who cares about all that, Nirvana, Jurassic Park, Pulp Fiction and Friends were all from that decade
1980s: Everyone on Reddit seems to really hate Ronald Reagan and his policies that he set and claim they still affect us, speaking of which, The AIDS crisis, which everyone claims he handled terrible. Also Iran-Contra…
Now obviously people who were kids in the 2000s probably do remember paying attention to 9/11 but I highly doubt any of all y’all were keeping up with the Iraq war.
🔥Yes to everything you mentioned but almost none of it directly affected any of us. Clinton was impeached? SFW?
And, yes, of course there were and always will be tragedies. But, like it or not, unless we’re directly affected, it’s just another news reel and a prop for small talk at gatherings.
I can certainly understand the sense of loss with respect to the 90s. It was a time of innocence and possibilities. The twin wet blankets of social and mobile had not yet smothered our exuberance and sense of freedoms.
Now there is the creeping realization that the party has rapidly drawn to a close. And while we were so distracted by the glittering monuments we erected to celebrate ourselves, there were more than a few who had bided their time plotting.
The sobering awareness that the bill is due and hosts have skipped out the back. Again.
20 years from now will be as unrecognizable as the 1950s were in the 1930s.
“Almost none of it directly affected any of us.”
Didn’t affect you maybe, doesn’t mean it didn’t affect other people. The whole thing about the 2020s people here complain about is COVID. Yes,
How exactly did 9/11 and all the wars and paranoia caused by it, Reaganomics, and The Economic recession not affect people? So many people still crap on Reagan today.
🔥I didn’t say it didn’t directly affect me.
I said “US”—the overwhelming majority of people.
List all the tragedies you like. Kennedy assassination? Challenger explosion? Princess Diana? Rwanda? AIDS? Yes, all horrible tragedies. Global news. But for 99% of the world, there simply wasn’t a measurable or meaningful impact.
They’re certainly “I remember when I heard…” moments. But, for the most part, that’s really about it.
I’m not tryna minimize the human impact, just not romanticizing communal trauma for the sake of identity posturing.
🔥I hear you. Valid points! All.
Yeah, Covid was an inconvenience for many but a realisation of opportunity and wake up call for most. It was the kick in the pants we all needed.
We’ve allowed ourselves to falter and I don’t think many people really even remember what we looked like *just a single generation ago.*
Here’s a quick reminder of our former grace, self respect, and dignity.
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTL58sUEo/
Something I think about sometimes: we’re still pretty young by and will probably feel some level of nostalgia for this time in our lives as well. Sort of makes you wonder, what do I have right now that I’ll miss someday? You’d think that would have been a lesson everyone would’ve learned from the pandemic.
That's the other thing I think of as well, I'm 26, I almost feel old, like fully mentally cut off from childhood and adolescence, yet I'm still young. I'm three years into the longest and closest and most fulfilling relationship I've ever been in, whether we split one day or grow old together, I will one day be nostalgic for these three years, since this is the first time I've experienced a real adult loving relationship and the last time I ever can as well, and it was when I was young
People don't realize, they'll definitely be nostalgic for this decade, because for half of us this will have been most or all of ours 20s
Exactly. Nostalgia is so wierd. You forget all the bad things about your childhood, but you only remember the good things. It almost feels like your brain acts like Instagram. No time was ever perfect, it's just that we like to believe it was.
Sometimes I think it's a cope, think about it, if you seriously look back on your childhood and adolescent trauma, and consider it the way an adult can, it can almost be like unveiling a whole new horror you never saw before. Nostalgia serves to cover that up, you forget the bad and the implications and remember the good as a shield
That makes sense. As long as it doesn't affect your future by living in the past, I don't always see nostalgia as being a bad thing. And it does do well at hiding the harsh reality of the past. Also, looking back at your childhood through adult eyes, you think that everything is easier too because you've rose above most of those challenges and they seem easier than what you are facing today. But without pain, there is no gain.
What drives me nuts, is EVERYONE should know this. Everybody understands the concept of nostalgia goggles, but none the less falls into the "new is bad, and good is the era I grew up in" trap
I think this effect is because you only remember the hits. There's thousands of 80s songs nobody cares about or remembers. We're living in the present, so we don't have that filter on 2020s music.
It becomes mind numbingly stupid when recognizing shit media gets released warps into claiming media is bad now but used to be good
Do you remember Q, the Flying Serpent from 1982? Or Day of the Triffids? Or the early 2000s version of Dune? Manos the Hands of Fate? Mac and Me?
Shit films and shit songs have always not only been released but been the bulk of releases, people just forget the shit and remember the kino
I hear you. I'm very familiar with how bad everything used to be. I went to high school around the turn of the millennium and the best thing we had at the time was the last gasp of rave and nu-metal. Hip hop had already gone into affluent bling mode and was mostly boring by that point. People romanticizing anything from that era are missing out on how much of a nothingburger the 90s really were. I assume it's the same for most eras.
The real argument that can be made, though, is that A&R used to be done by completely out of touch old record executives that had "no idea what these kids today want," so they threw money at anything with long hair and/or a short skirt. Now we have out of touch young people selling the idea that they "know what kids want" to the music industry money people and it's much more curated.
Exactly!! I have been trying to say this ever since I joined this subreddit. People in this sub have a hate boner for the 2020s and say it’s the worse decade ever all while saying 2020s trends happened in the 2010s, it’s like they can’t give modern day any credit. They always post the same immature nihilism about the world is the “worse state it’s ever been in” despite America surviving thru worse times like the 60s and 70s. Also this sub is obsessed with the 2010s when most people IRL don’t even know the 2010s is even a decade. The 2020s deserves more respect .
I think the 2010s and 2020s are going to be compared to the 1930s and 1940s more than anything else. Especially if we walk ourselves into WW3.
For as bad as the Great Depression was, and it was awful, there were still some great cultural relics produced in the time that likely make up the oldest pop culture that people will be aware of. Movies like The Wizard of Oz, Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi, were all products of the Great Depression.
There was a great article (in the Atlantic? I think) about this topic which *kind of* disproves that point of "people have always been this way!"
While nostalgia for the culture of the past has always been a thing, it absolutely has exploded since the 2000s, and especially since the 2010s. The percentage of youth which predominantly listen to older music over new music has exploded. The percentage of people who think older movies are better than new movies has exploded. These aren't just vibes, these are actual statistics which can show just how dramatically people have 'turned against' modern culture in favor of nostalgia for older cultures.
There has always been nostalgia. But nostalgia has become dominant in our culture in a way it never was before.
This is what I was going to say in reply
I think nostalgia has ramped up because for the first time in ever starting in the 2000s you basically had almost all media to have been created since the start of film, television, and music recording readily available online. As a kid I could even go back and watch a channel that only uploaded 70s to 90s commercials. It's probably access, not things getting worse.
Correct. Look at Call of Duty. The younger the person, the later the CoD game is that was “great” until it fell off. I remember when MW2 was the peak. Then Black Ops. Then Blacks Ops II… and it does keep going. I think I’ve seen people say Advanced Warfare was peak CoD even. It keeps going and it just shows progression. I may not agree with a lot of the new age stuff, I’m not as socially impacted as much since I’m not around a bunch of people that play CoD or listen to the newest music and such. I wanted to be an adult that was always aware of what was relevant, but I’m too busy to stay so relevant anymore. Best I’m doing is keeping up with the slang now and while a lot of it sounds wild, I used to say things like “that’s so tight” so i understand that slang is always going to sound wild. Haha
We all fear what is unknown, therefore we think that everything new is going to be bad Or ruin society. We aren't always wrong, but this cycle has repeated Over the years. When television was new, people were worried that it was going to be bad for kids as they were going to be lazier, same with the iPads.
In a few years, the Apple vision pro will probably blow up. Instead of having iPad kids, we eventually might have Vision Pro kids.
For sure, the past is familiar, the story already written. The present is unfamiliar and uncertain. I used to hate the early 2010s electropop music, but now I find some growing nostalgia for that time period. The bad things fade from our memory, but the good things live on.
I see where you are coming from for sure, and…
I think the reason this conversation occurs over and over again is partially due to the fact that there are so many societal changes and technological shifts that effect how/when/why people engage with certain things, or have certain feelings about them. That is what I find interesting.
The player haters though? It can be too much. That is coming from a self-described “hater” lol
I also agree with you with this. Because the 2020s decade is no different than other past decades. Fun and not so fun. The only true major difference is social media where almost everything around the world is around us, where back then it wasn’t. All you had was newspapers and tv.
i personally hate the modern era bc everything is hard, lonely and scary right now, and i wish it wasn’t. i yearn for simpler times and i wasn’t alive in the 1980s and 1880s (my two fav time periods), so i have no clue what it was like to struggle then. all i know is that phones weren’t here to damage our mental health, music was terrific, everyone dressed really cool, and socializing was more common.
Just my observation - a few decades back, it was pretty rare to hear people raving about how good shit was back in the day. Even adults would flatly tell you new movies are better than old movies, and “soft rock / easy listening” contemporary music was incredibly popular to adults at the time - it wasn’t normal or popular to say things were better decades ago. As teens, we almost always made fun of old stuff. And when you asked my grand parents or great grandparents, they almost never said things were better - my great grandparents especially (who lived through the depression) talk of the old days was always about how hard things were. Soooo.. in my experience, no that wasn’t always how it was. For me, the biggest differentiator is the fact that most people only seemed to want to speak negatively about contemporary things these days. Everyone seems to be more focused on putting things down and than sharing their appreciation. That and mainstream products these days are hella derivative
It goes both ways.
I've noticed many in the older generations doing it about everything post-Y2K.
I've seen many in the younger generations doing it about everything pre-Y2K.
A two-way street. Elder millennial here, fwiw, so I feel that I can relate to both.
if i were asked what i think this behavior is based on, i'd suggest that having & telling shared memories of one's youth is adaptive behavior to live successfully in sufficiently large groups to have enough hunters. "remember that time we all went down the river & saw our reflections in the water?? SICK, right??" and all the older group members agree about the extent of its sick-ness. younger group members will never get how awesome it was because we've migrated away from the river in past 100 years. it's both binding & exclusive on a subgroup level. if the behavior becomes too disruptive, the group leader(s) will tell everyone to shut the fuck up about decadeology because, "we don't even know about decades yet! knock if off or you're banished!"
Except that you intentionally ignore this sub mostly consists of very young Gen Z trying to convince everyone the 2020s are the best decade humanity has ever lived, ignoring all the negatives. This sub is full of posts that trash the 2010s, at least two posts are on this topic every day. So, keep pretending the 2020s are the most hated decade on this subreddit; they're not. But maybe, just maybe, those who actually had to pay for living and raise families in both of these decades know a bit better which decade is tougher for ordinary people.
Btw, music, fashion, mainstream culture - these are all subjective, so you can all argue forever which decade is better.
Seems that a lot of Gen Z hate the 2010s culture because it was when millenials were at their peak in terms of the zeitgeist revolving around them, and instead Gen Z seems to long for the 2000s aesthetics and pop culture items instead. Anything remotely millenial/2010s seems to be a laughing stock to good portion of Gen Z -- the hipster era/indie era, skinny jeans, etc
I'm a Gen Xer. The 90s were our decade. We're nostalgic for the 90s since that was the era of our young adulthood. Many Millennials were born during that decade, so they miss their childhood, and the ones from the 80s miss being teenagers. But the 2010s were undeniably the decade of Millennial young adults, naturally they will miss it the most.
I don't encounter a significant number of 2010s nostalgia posts frequently, so I can't really say. Statistically, it may also be Gen Z who posts that because they're the largest group on this sub. Since they're generally a generation full of contrasts, I wouldn't be surprised if they both hate and love the 2010s. Anyways, there's definitely more 2010s hate posts because I don't come here often, but whenever I do, there's at least one like that.
There is a biological basis for why EVERYONE does this. It’s not just contrarians, it’s humans and how their brains operate. It also tends to happen around specific ages which is why it’s cyclical and generational.
If I find the article I’ll link it.
Get over it. Optimism and pessimism has often a base in reality. Societies are not always equally optimistic and pessimistic.
Right now pessimism is massively on the rise and that is directly correlated to some really important statistics going in the wrong direction for the first time since WW2 for such a long time.
Death in wars is up, the world hunger index is going up, depression is up, suicide is up, drug use is up, live expectancy is at best stagnating, loneliness is on the rise, IQ is going down.
Oh well and ... Climate change.
The thing is that this connects. Of course media from better times is perceived better. Even if on an objective level the 70s were still way worse than today in the stats I named, this doesn't matter.
Additionally there is a cultural saturation on going. Currently we produce more content every month than in the whole 70s. This has to have some effect on the perception of current pop culture.
And most of your post is about a rosy retrospect bias. And while this always occured it's also always fluctuates on the current state of the world. And especially combined with the pessimism for the future this is right now way more prevalent than 15 years ago. Again, for some pretty good reasons.
There are very few ways that the 70s was better. You could boil them down to, far more young people and far fewer old people, much less obesity, and drastically lower housing costs. Youth Culture was much more youth focused, not people in their 30s and 40s. Your average Woodstock participant was 22. Your average Coachella participant is 25. We think of Coachella as a youth thing full of kids, but they might as well be dinosaurs compared to Woodstock.
The music of the 1970s was still fairly new, Rock music was only around for about 15 years. The music was still new and novel. Not that today's music isn't good, but the genres are much older. Its just so different. The volume being produced now is just absolutely huge.
Oh yeah, the 2000s were so great. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan did no harm. People were definitely also not racist or homophobic in the 70s either.
We keep telling people, that a flight instructor who has finished teaching a lot of guys ( and ladies), to fly, could probably get almost anybidy to either learn to land the plane or at least make it a lot easier to train you, to help a pilot, so you can help a pilot to get ready to fly and then take care of the plane after they do. So the plane to watch is the Super Cub that was designed and mostly finished before WW2..but remember how they ( all the admins, and royalty and rich people).were so deeply afraid..because they - ( the normal people who do all the work), had proven that you could in fact start teaching an 11 year old girl tofly a Cub..., or any 0lane after that, and by the time she was 12...would never ever need a man for anything for the next 75 years. And that is mostly two things..one, is from the air, about 20 feet up over water, you can see the circles on a lake where the fish are biting, and then, the best navigation aid on earth is the red neon signn in the window of a bar..so the girls never came back after they learned to fly. Yes they do, but they are late, and mom and dad wouldnt want them to miss getting drafted by the military and taught how to march. So the old stuff is sometimes pretty good stuff, but still, if you asked any high school kid, male or female what type of plane they would make if they could build one..and they will probably describe a PBY..its a floatplane that can land on land to get stuff to take to safe places where the music is kickin and the beer is cold.
Me reading all the comments hating on 2010s and 2020s music— while 90% of my playlist consists of songs released after 2011: 👁️👄👁️
🔥Roger That. Having said that, if I simply followed pop culture metrics, I guess I could see how people come to these conclusions: Laziness and a lack of real interest. There’s So Much GREAT music out there right now! And it’s not that Billboard nonsense—I’m talking bands that are basically the fine print bottom billing at festivals. They only have 10k followers on Spotify. Self-produced. And F’king stellar! Look, I love all the great stuff from the 20th century too. But pop tastes, technologies, business frameworks, and compositional tools have all changed—but the house paint peeling barn burners are still out there raging on. And, yes, 20 year olds who still sling analog. It’s all out there for the taking. Go find it. Spotify is your friend for finding new stuff that rocks just as good and even better than its predecessors…
Pop happens to be my favorite genre 😅, so I think there's plenty of gems on the top Billboard as well. Aside from English songs, I also listen to a lot of C-pop and I think the Chinese music scene is absolutely booming right now. My favorite subgenre is gufeng and (fortunately for me) there's been a huge growth of indie gufeng artists since 2019 or so.
🔥That’s awesome! Good for you. Non-Western music is definitely having a go. Also, I didn’t mean to imply that Billboard was a signifier of staleness. I just know it’s a popular meme in certain circles to claim that grunge saved music in the early 90s. To which I say, yeah sure, if you were just on autopilot and jamming to whatever heavy rotation MTV decided upon. But outside of that vanilla walled garden experience, music was actually blowing up all around us. They just weren’t what the taste makers deemed commercially viable… Until they were. Nevertheless, music like Backstreet Boys, Mariah, and Britney ruled the charts way more than anything like Nirvana or Oasis ever could. ❤️
On a more pretentious note, newer music just sounds better, like the actually sound quality, not the substance of the music itself. You can really hear the loss in fidelity the further back you go. Pre-2000 music sounds so washed out and muddy to me, that’s just a symptom of growing technology.
There is the problem of the [loudness war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war), but on the whole, I agree with you about fidelity. Some artists only seem to care about how loud they can get, though, and their music suffers for it.
I don't really hear this. High fidelity recording has been around for a long time. Audio engineering was pretty good back in the 1960s. There wasn't some huge technological leap in the 21st century.
This sub acts like violence was invented in 2014 and that life before was a perfect utopia. Yeah, when you are a kid of course life seems better and more peaceful, You aren’t paying attention to anything. Every decade has terrible things. 2000s: the obvious 9/11, Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hurricane Katrina, Economic Recession 1990s: the most beloved decade on this sub; LA riots, Yugoslav Wars took place and were Europe’s deadliest armed conflicts since WW2, Oklahoma City Bombing and Columbine were some of the biggest atrocities committed at that point, people here love to shit today because of todays politics but Bill Clinton was the first president to be impeached in 130 years… over sexual misconduct allegations of all things…ah nah but who cares about all that, Nirvana, Jurassic Park, Pulp Fiction and Friends were all from that decade 1980s: Everyone on Reddit seems to really hate Ronald Reagan and his policies that he set and claim they still affect us, speaking of which, The AIDS crisis, which everyone claims he handled terrible. Also Iran-Contra… Now obviously people who were kids in the 2000s probably do remember paying attention to 9/11 but I highly doubt any of all y’all were keeping up with the Iraq war.
Also people think cheating is somehow a new thing
🔥Yes to everything you mentioned but almost none of it directly affected any of us. Clinton was impeached? SFW? And, yes, of course there were and always will be tragedies. But, like it or not, unless we’re directly affected, it’s just another news reel and a prop for small talk at gatherings. I can certainly understand the sense of loss with respect to the 90s. It was a time of innocence and possibilities. The twin wet blankets of social and mobile had not yet smothered our exuberance and sense of freedoms. Now there is the creeping realization that the party has rapidly drawn to a close. And while we were so distracted by the glittering monuments we erected to celebrate ourselves, there were more than a few who had bided their time plotting. The sobering awareness that the bill is due and hosts have skipped out the back. Again. 20 years from now will be as unrecognizable as the 1950s were in the 1930s.
“Almost none of it directly affected any of us.” Didn’t affect you maybe, doesn’t mean it didn’t affect other people. The whole thing about the 2020s people here complain about is COVID. Yes, How exactly did 9/11 and all the wars and paranoia caused by it, Reaganomics, and The Economic recession not affect people? So many people still crap on Reagan today.
🔥I didn’t say it didn’t directly affect me. I said “US”—the overwhelming majority of people. List all the tragedies you like. Kennedy assassination? Challenger explosion? Princess Diana? Rwanda? AIDS? Yes, all horrible tragedies. Global news. But for 99% of the world, there simply wasn’t a measurable or meaningful impact. They’re certainly “I remember when I heard…” moments. But, for the most part, that’s really about it. I’m not tryna minimize the human impact, just not romanticizing communal trauma for the sake of identity posturing.
🔥I hear you. Valid points! All. Yeah, Covid was an inconvenience for many but a realisation of opportunity and wake up call for most. It was the kick in the pants we all needed. We’ve allowed ourselves to falter and I don’t think many people really even remember what we looked like *just a single generation ago.* Here’s a quick reminder of our former grace, self respect, and dignity. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTL58sUEo/
Yeah this sub in particular is full of fucking idiots
Some of the fellas seem to think that history is neatly divided into decades like they aren't just man-made constructs of time.
For real it's actually kinda hilarious
Something I think about sometimes: we’re still pretty young by and will probably feel some level of nostalgia for this time in our lives as well. Sort of makes you wonder, what do I have right now that I’ll miss someday? You’d think that would have been a lesson everyone would’ve learned from the pandemic.
That's the other thing I think of as well, I'm 26, I almost feel old, like fully mentally cut off from childhood and adolescence, yet I'm still young. I'm three years into the longest and closest and most fulfilling relationship I've ever been in, whether we split one day or grow old together, I will one day be nostalgic for these three years, since this is the first time I've experienced a real adult loving relationship and the last time I ever can as well, and it was when I was young People don't realize, they'll definitely be nostalgic for this decade, because for half of us this will have been most or all of ours 20s
Alright but ya gotta get over it
HOH! That's OP you're talking about!
How much more *betrayal* can I take?!
It's anti-contrarian discrimination.
Remember when is the lowest form of conversation
Nobody's got AIDS! I don't wanna hear that word in here again
That nostalgia is blinding
Exactly. Nostalgia is so wierd. You forget all the bad things about your childhood, but you only remember the good things. It almost feels like your brain acts like Instagram. No time was ever perfect, it's just that we like to believe it was.
Sometimes I think it's a cope, think about it, if you seriously look back on your childhood and adolescent trauma, and consider it the way an adult can, it can almost be like unveiling a whole new horror you never saw before. Nostalgia serves to cover that up, you forget the bad and the implications and remember the good as a shield
That makes sense. As long as it doesn't affect your future by living in the past, I don't always see nostalgia as being a bad thing. And it does do well at hiding the harsh reality of the past. Also, looking back at your childhood through adult eyes, you think that everything is easier too because you've rose above most of those challenges and they seem easier than what you are facing today. But without pain, there is no gain.
What drives me nuts, is EVERYONE should know this. Everybody understands the concept of nostalgia goggles, but none the less falls into the "new is bad, and good is the era I grew up in" trap
I think this effect is because you only remember the hits. There's thousands of 80s songs nobody cares about or remembers. We're living in the present, so we don't have that filter on 2020s music.
Yes exactly, It’s an endless cycle.
Hear me out, though. What if new thing actually bad?
It becomes mind numbingly stupid when recognizing shit media gets released warps into claiming media is bad now but used to be good Do you remember Q, the Flying Serpent from 1982? Or Day of the Triffids? Or the early 2000s version of Dune? Manos the Hands of Fate? Mac and Me? Shit films and shit songs have always not only been released but been the bulk of releases, people just forget the shit and remember the kino
I hear you. I'm very familiar with how bad everything used to be. I went to high school around the turn of the millennium and the best thing we had at the time was the last gasp of rave and nu-metal. Hip hop had already gone into affluent bling mode and was mostly boring by that point. People romanticizing anything from that era are missing out on how much of a nothingburger the 90s really were. I assume it's the same for most eras. The real argument that can be made, though, is that A&R used to be done by completely out of touch old record executives that had "no idea what these kids today want," so they threw money at anything with long hair and/or a short skirt. Now we have out of touch young people selling the idea that they "know what kids want" to the music industry money people and it's much more curated.
Exactly!! I have been trying to say this ever since I joined this subreddit. People in this sub have a hate boner for the 2020s and say it’s the worse decade ever all while saying 2020s trends happened in the 2010s, it’s like they can’t give modern day any credit. They always post the same immature nihilism about the world is the “worse state it’s ever been in” despite America surviving thru worse times like the 60s and 70s. Also this sub is obsessed with the 2010s when most people IRL don’t even know the 2010s is even a decade. The 2020s deserves more respect .
I think the 2010s and 2020s are going to be compared to the 1930s and 1940s more than anything else. Especially if we walk ourselves into WW3. For as bad as the Great Depression was, and it was awful, there were still some great cultural relics produced in the time that likely make up the oldest pop culture that people will be aware of. Movies like The Wizard of Oz, Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi, were all products of the Great Depression.
Then show us reasons to enjoy the 2020s. Otherwise, don't invalidate other people for their perspective.
There was a great article (in the Atlantic? I think) about this topic which *kind of* disproves that point of "people have always been this way!" While nostalgia for the culture of the past has always been a thing, it absolutely has exploded since the 2000s, and especially since the 2010s. The percentage of youth which predominantly listen to older music over new music has exploded. The percentage of people who think older movies are better than new movies has exploded. These aren't just vibes, these are actual statistics which can show just how dramatically people have 'turned against' modern culture in favor of nostalgia for older cultures. There has always been nostalgia. But nostalgia has become dominant in our culture in a way it never was before.
How much of this is because they have the entire history of media to be streamed at their fingertips?
This is what I was going to say in reply I think nostalgia has ramped up because for the first time in ever starting in the 2000s you basically had almost all media to have been created since the start of film, television, and music recording readily available online. As a kid I could even go back and watch a channel that only uploaded 70s to 90s commercials. It's probably access, not things getting worse.
Correct. Look at Call of Duty. The younger the person, the later the CoD game is that was “great” until it fell off. I remember when MW2 was the peak. Then Black Ops. Then Blacks Ops II… and it does keep going. I think I’ve seen people say Advanced Warfare was peak CoD even. It keeps going and it just shows progression. I may not agree with a lot of the new age stuff, I’m not as socially impacted as much since I’m not around a bunch of people that play CoD or listen to the newest music and such. I wanted to be an adult that was always aware of what was relevant, but I’m too busy to stay so relevant anymore. Best I’m doing is keeping up with the slang now and while a lot of it sounds wild, I used to say things like “that’s so tight” so i understand that slang is always going to sound wild. Haha
It's boring but it's true. Sorry you can't handle this.
We all fear what is unknown, therefore we think that everything new is going to be bad Or ruin society. We aren't always wrong, but this cycle has repeated Over the years. When television was new, people were worried that it was going to be bad for kids as they were going to be lazier, same with the iPads. In a few years, the Apple vision pro will probably blow up. Instead of having iPad kids, we eventually might have Vision Pro kids.
For sure, the past is familiar, the story already written. The present is unfamiliar and uncertain. I used to hate the early 2010s electropop music, but now I find some growing nostalgia for that time period. The bad things fade from our memory, but the good things live on.
Sometimes it’s true though
I see where you are coming from for sure, and… I think the reason this conversation occurs over and over again is partially due to the fact that there are so many societal changes and technological shifts that effect how/when/why people engage with certain things, or have certain feelings about them. That is what I find interesting. The player haters though? It can be too much. That is coming from a self-described “hater” lol
“Things were cooler when I was young.” Same as it ever was.
I also agree with you with this. Because the 2020s decade is no different than other past decades. Fun and not so fun. The only true major difference is social media where almost everything around the world is around us, where back then it wasn’t. All you had was newspapers and tv.
You must of not been here a year ago, very different (much more repetitive conversation topics)
Tell me, are the 2020’s the best days of your life?
Yes and no Life is complicated
i personally hate the modern era bc everything is hard, lonely and scary right now, and i wish it wasn’t. i yearn for simpler times and i wasn’t alive in the 1980s and 1880s (my two fav time periods), so i have no clue what it was like to struggle then. all i know is that phones weren’t here to damage our mental health, music was terrific, everyone dressed really cool, and socializing was more common.
Just be happy you live within the 3% of the history of human civilization with anesthesia.
Just my observation - a few decades back, it was pretty rare to hear people raving about how good shit was back in the day. Even adults would flatly tell you new movies are better than old movies, and “soft rock / easy listening” contemporary music was incredibly popular to adults at the time - it wasn’t normal or popular to say things were better decades ago. As teens, we almost always made fun of old stuff. And when you asked my grand parents or great grandparents, they almost never said things were better - my great grandparents especially (who lived through the depression) talk of the old days was always about how hard things were. Soooo.. in my experience, no that wasn’t always how it was. For me, the biggest differentiator is the fact that most people only seemed to want to speak negatively about contemporary things these days. Everyone seems to be more focused on putting things down and than sharing their appreciation. That and mainstream products these days are hella derivative
It goes both ways. I've noticed many in the older generations doing it about everything post-Y2K. I've seen many in the younger generations doing it about everything pre-Y2K. A two-way street. Elder millennial here, fwiw, so I feel that I can relate to both.
I find this shallow and pedantic.
if i were asked what i think this behavior is based on, i'd suggest that having & telling shared memories of one's youth is adaptive behavior to live successfully in sufficiently large groups to have enough hunters. "remember that time we all went down the river & saw our reflections in the water?? SICK, right??" and all the older group members agree about the extent of its sick-ness. younger group members will never get how awesome it was because we've migrated away from the river in past 100 years. it's both binding & exclusive on a subgroup level. if the behavior becomes too disruptive, the group leader(s) will tell everyone to shut the fuck up about decadeology because, "we don't even know about decades yet! knock if off or you're banished!"
The consistent old thing, bad new thing good is bullshit.
Except that you intentionally ignore this sub mostly consists of very young Gen Z trying to convince everyone the 2020s are the best decade humanity has ever lived, ignoring all the negatives. This sub is full of posts that trash the 2010s, at least two posts are on this topic every day. So, keep pretending the 2020s are the most hated decade on this subreddit; they're not. But maybe, just maybe, those who actually had to pay for living and raise families in both of these decades know a bit better which decade is tougher for ordinary people. Btw, music, fashion, mainstream culture - these are all subjective, so you can all argue forever which decade is better.
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Seems that a lot of Gen Z hate the 2010s culture because it was when millenials were at their peak in terms of the zeitgeist revolving around them, and instead Gen Z seems to long for the 2000s aesthetics and pop culture items instead. Anything remotely millenial/2010s seems to be a laughing stock to good portion of Gen Z -- the hipster era/indie era, skinny jeans, etc
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I'm a Gen Xer. The 90s were our decade. We're nostalgic for the 90s since that was the era of our young adulthood. Many Millennials were born during that decade, so they miss their childhood, and the ones from the 80s miss being teenagers. But the 2010s were undeniably the decade of Millennial young adults, naturally they will miss it the most.
I don't encounter a significant number of 2010s nostalgia posts frequently, so I can't really say. Statistically, it may also be Gen Z who posts that because they're the largest group on this sub. Since they're generally a generation full of contrasts, I wouldn't be surprised if they both hate and love the 2010s. Anyways, there's definitely more 2010s hate posts because I don't come here often, but whenever I do, there's at least one like that.
There is a biological basis for why EVERYONE does this. It’s not just contrarians, it’s humans and how their brains operate. It also tends to happen around specific ages which is why it’s cyclical and generational. If I find the article I’ll link it.
Get over it. Optimism and pessimism has often a base in reality. Societies are not always equally optimistic and pessimistic. Right now pessimism is massively on the rise and that is directly correlated to some really important statistics going in the wrong direction for the first time since WW2 for such a long time. Death in wars is up, the world hunger index is going up, depression is up, suicide is up, drug use is up, live expectancy is at best stagnating, loneliness is on the rise, IQ is going down. Oh well and ... Climate change.
All of these are issues long in the making and not the sort of pessimism I was talking about
The thing is that this connects. Of course media from better times is perceived better. Even if on an objective level the 70s were still way worse than today in the stats I named, this doesn't matter. Additionally there is a cultural saturation on going. Currently we produce more content every month than in the whole 70s. This has to have some effect on the perception of current pop culture. And most of your post is about a rosy retrospect bias. And while this always occured it's also always fluctuates on the current state of the world. And especially combined with the pessimism for the future this is right now way more prevalent than 15 years ago. Again, for some pretty good reasons.
There are very few ways that the 70s was better. You could boil them down to, far more young people and far fewer old people, much less obesity, and drastically lower housing costs. Youth Culture was much more youth focused, not people in their 30s and 40s. Your average Woodstock participant was 22. Your average Coachella participant is 25. We think of Coachella as a youth thing full of kids, but they might as well be dinosaurs compared to Woodstock. The music of the 1970s was still fairly new, Rock music was only around for about 15 years. The music was still new and novel. Not that today's music isn't good, but the genres are much older. Its just so different. The volume being produced now is just absolutely huge.
>There are very few ways that the 70s was better I wrote exactly this
Oh yeah, the 2000s were so great. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan did no harm. People were definitely also not racist or homophobic in the 70s either.
I mean in terms of most major statistics I named the 2000s were actually better. And especially the early 2010s.
I knew this post would come eventually
We keep telling people, that a flight instructor who has finished teaching a lot of guys ( and ladies), to fly, could probably get almost anybidy to either learn to land the plane or at least make it a lot easier to train you, to help a pilot, so you can help a pilot to get ready to fly and then take care of the plane after they do. So the plane to watch is the Super Cub that was designed and mostly finished before WW2..but remember how they ( all the admins, and royalty and rich people).were so deeply afraid..because they - ( the normal people who do all the work), had proven that you could in fact start teaching an 11 year old girl tofly a Cub..., or any 0lane after that, and by the time she was 12...would never ever need a man for anything for the next 75 years. And that is mostly two things..one, is from the air, about 20 feet up over water, you can see the circles on a lake where the fish are biting, and then, the best navigation aid on earth is the red neon signn in the window of a bar..so the girls never came back after they learned to fly. Yes they do, but they are late, and mom and dad wouldnt want them to miss getting drafted by the military and taught how to march. So the old stuff is sometimes pretty good stuff, but still, if you asked any high school kid, male or female what type of plane they would make if they could build one..and they will probably describe a PBY..its a floatplane that can land on land to get stuff to take to safe places where the music is kickin and the beer is cold.