"I was born in the wrong generation."

I see this phrase everywhere, especially on music vids on youtube, constantly repeated like some kind of millennial mantra. "I was born in the wrong era for music." "I was born in the wrong generation for head-wear, classy dressing, etc." "I wish I'd been born in an era when women respected themselves and didn't dress like sluts." The list goes on and on.

I'm aware it's a thing that goes back thousands of years (even the ancient philosophers mourned a fictional Golden Age of human civilization that had faded away into the "cultural detrius" of their own era), but what spurs it on amongst so many young people today? Isolation? Loneliness? Cynicism? What kind of mindset is needed for it to foster and why is it so common?

arseholes

Cracks me up when kids are like this on youtube comments, in response to, like, Tarzan Boy or something.

Nostalgia as mediated by '10s culture so it erases the more questionable parts of the era it's looking back at.

i-guess-i-just-wasn't-made-for-these-times.jpg

i mean, i think it's just... kids? 'i have identified an aesthetic that feels cool and also absolutely appropriate to my self-conception, imagine there was a time when this aesthetic determined everything, i wish i lived in it'.

I wish I'd been born in the '50s so I could make a jukebox play by hitting it and then take a trip through time with my dog, Mr. Cool.

it's important to wonder whether its salience in e.g. youtube comments doesn't mark it so much as a "millenial" thing as that when "millenials" just casually say a thing on the internet it's preserved like it's an important statement and not just a passing thought that any young person might have.

"Nostalgia as mediated by '10s culture so it erases the more questionable parts of the era it's looking back at.

― Murgatroid, Monday, 9 December 2013 17:16"

OTM - I've never heard a black person openly yearn for the good old days of, say, 1955. It seems primarily to be a young, white phenomenon.

well, yes, it is easy to mentally associate yourself with the ruling class of a previous generation when you are white and have not thought about it very hard.

there's that common line, isn't there - everyone thinks they were cleopatra in a past life.

See also 'Chap' magazine aesthetic, parties in twenties fancy dress, etc

By some metrics this is the first recent generation that can expect a lower standard of living than their parents (obviously not true if you don't happen to be male / white). I'm currently reading the Taschen books about mid-century adverts and the skewed image of the 50s and 60s (prosperity, big houses, big cars, the nuclear family, a job for life, easy foreign travel, etc) they present is incredibly seductive. There's more to it than just aesthetics, i think. It's economic uncertainty and fear of the future that's driving a lot of this.

xp, or this, in short:

well, yes, it is easy to mentally associate yourself with the ruling class of a previous generation when you are white and have not thought about it very hard.

OTM - I've never heard a black person openly yearn for the good old days of, say, 1955.

eh, but what about the '70s, or the early '90s? i see these comments a lot on youtube, whether it's for funk bands, guitar bands, or kids pining for the heyday of 'real hip-hop'.

Artistically it's easier to align yourself with an aesthetic that has already been completed and defined than slot yourself into an aesthetic that's still forming and nebulous - it's easier to say what that definition means to your identity. That's why you see this statement a lot with teenagers/college kids who are still struggling with defining themselves.

kids have always enjoyed wearing costumes
i think it's just easier for us to see it on display now, and they have easier access to a wider variety of costumes and unlimited access to inspirational images

they want all the positives of the art and culture of an era that's been filtered through the lens of nostalgia, but probably not the negatives

there's always a romance to "elsewhere"

kids appropriating or just riffing on the styles/culture of the 90s is a thing, now

there are probably some kids right now wishing that they were teens in 1990

I heard this sooo much in the 80's about the 60's

on the other side of the looking glass: older people who go on about how different their lives would have been if they'd had the Internet when they were kids

oh yeah, "you kids these days don't realize how good you've got it" is a classic

well, to be fair, when I've heard older people using Brad C's line, it's been mostly about how much harder they think kids have it today. as in, "man, I'm so glad we didn't have the internet when I was growing up".

ppl love talking about how bad things have gotten, even if it's completely unjustified. you can pretty much say about anything "it isn't as good as it used to be," and ppl will agree with you. furniture, movies, music, kids' television, anything.

Every conservative movement relies on an imagined/idealist past as a basis for its attacks on elements of contemporary society that it opposes.

i should have been born in the 14th century tbh

It also depends on what kind of clothes are at the thrift store. In my day, you could find some serious 50s/60s/70s attire if you knew what you were looking for. But now there's etsy/eBay for those with the cash and 90s revivalism for those willing to brave today's thrift store. Now there's a whole economy of vintage/thrift costuming. I mean duh but it's true.

I have never found any pre-Christian druid attire at the thrift store, much to my disappointment. Had to settle for a sweater with a hood.

I wish I'd been born in caveman days so I could ride a sweet dinosaur and wear a pelt and die at age 19.

this kind of thinking ignores the fact that there is never a better time to be a flapper or an obnoxious rockabilly stan than the present

http://tjthesportsgeek.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/pepsimj.png

btw does ilx automatically misspell detritus?

apparently not

I don't think this is necessarily conservative, it's just an interest in the exotic. Same thing really as somebody wishing they were born in Paris, or daydreaming about living in Hawaii.

Not inherently conservative, but certainly the root and the lifeblood of conservativism. Particularly with respect to that blindered perspective of a particular era/place/scene.

Correction: "Not inherently conservative (like humor)..."

for middle school/high school kids being into music of the past is more of a counter-cultural or niche thing than any sort of conservatism

yeah, I don't think you can make any logical connection between political conservatism and retro nostalgia for art, fashion and design. the latter tends to seek out novelty, strangeness, and anything that seems totally "other" to current mainstream culture, while political conservatism is about resisting social change or undoing social progress. they seem to me to come from totally opposite impulses.

what does it mean to want to go backwards to a time that was more progressive? I think a lot of retro design fetishism is rooted in that nostalgia for an era in america when most everyday objects were union made in the U.S. is that a conservative impulse?

conservative how?

I know this is hugely reductive, but I think of conservativism in this context less as "let's go back to the days of the New Deal" than as "let's go back to the days when The Donna Reed Show was a mirror for what I mistakenly think life was actually like".

Definitely felt like this when i was a teenager in the 90s and thought no good music had ever been made past the 60s. Now i sort of wish I was living in pre-recorded music era as a travelling musician or silent film pianist or something.

In my my youth I had house/techno and the golden age of hip hop, followed by the golden age of piracy from which I tapped into every other golden age for free and will probably be in the ground by the time the big die-off comes, so no complaints.

I was born at the wrong time, I should have been born in 2032

"let's go back to the days when The Donna Reed Show was a mirror for what I mistakenly think life was actually like"

who does that though? most '50s nostalgia is of the rockabilly/hot rod/betty page/sailor tattoos variety, and celebrates niche things that seemed to be ahead of their time.

I think there *is* a fair amount of that inplicit in conservative thinking among older people, though: Focus On The Family, in which dad was the breadwinner, mom stayed home, ethnics stayed in their own neighborhoods and gay people pretty much didn't exist.

conservative how?

I don't know, I don't really think cultural nostalgia really correlates with politics in any meaningful way. I don't think art progresses either, so looking backwards to earlier art eras can never be considered conservative imo.

I think there *is* a fair amount of that inplicit in conservative thinking among older people, though:

well yeah, that's an entirely different thing than young people being all "i just wasn't made for these times" about youtube videos from before they were born.

Eh, those kids just need another war to toughen them up.

tbf the Focus on the Family types are idealizing a vision that didn't really exist in a completely different way from the people who idealize music/fashion of yesteryear

exactly

People who think they're living in precisely the right time are usually more insufferable

yeah, "I was there man!" is 1000x more annoying that "I wish I was there."

"let's go back to the days when The Donna Reed Show was a mirror for what I mistakenly think life was actually like"

I laugh at the idea these people really want to go back to the 1950s, because the tax rates from back then would give them a heart attack

x-post

Or also - although I'm all for optimism - "THIS IS GONNA BE MY YEAR Y'ALL! I CAN FEEL IT!" is seldom something I want to hear

one of the things I hate most in life is when people refer to "the Mad Men era" as though the show were a highly objective documentary of life in the 60s.

"THIS IS GONNA BE MY YEAR Y'ALL! I CAN FEEL IT!"

i've been telling myself this all month to stave off my crippling depression & despair tbh

Was going to mention Mad Men as a good example of nostalgia that actually takes the time to remind us all how shitty the 60s were for most people.

Yeah but it also gets cited as "when men were men" and "everybody was drunk all the time at the office" and various other exaggerated nonsense.

Talking of "being in the right era", some boomer came into the shop where I work a while back and we got to talking about music. Christ, he would not stop going on about how he got to see all these great musicians and how I was living in the wrong era. It's one thing to want to live in another era, and even to say that you did live in "the right" era; but to tell someone that *they* lived in the wrong blip of time upon this earth is arrogance itself.

It's even more painful when some youngster *agrees* with them and says, "man, you're right, I really did miss out!" etc.

You're exempt, then, crüt. Things do get better.

xxpost: the "men were men" fantasy is the worst of all and fuels the reactionary fedora nonsense you see on the internet.

it's punchline shittyness, though, like this is a framework through which we can remember the misogyny of the 60s but boy wasn't it grand

I feel like having a good year hardly ever coincides with a calendar year

I think you can separate that aspect of mad men out from the design and visual culture though. I don't see anything wrong with seeing the office on Mad Men and thinking "I want to live in that world" on a strictly aesthetic basis. Of course that's just as much of a fantasy as the donna reed conservative family thing, but I don't think there's anything damaging or politically reactionary about it. Other than I guess the general materialism and aspirational stuff, but that's an entirely different issue.

yup

the thing about that take is that the title quote is still hilariously wrong -- even if you appreciate the decor and style of that time, if you went to that time it's not going to be uniformly 60s style in your office. it's a recreation of an aesthetic that wasn't as widely distributed

I say this as I sit in an office with 90s furniture, a 2012 computer, and knick-knacks on my desk that have some retro styles, of course

yeah, I mean it's more complex than that, but there's a kernel of truth to it. it's like any fantasy or escapism I guess. same as the difference between a tourist's idealized vision of what it's like to live in a far away exotic place vs. the day to day reality of the locals.

I mean, I think that objectively, on the whole, things were better designed and built in the '60s. and then on top of that, even the tacky, cheap, ephemeral stuff takes on an appealing exotic veneer over time.

totally down with 14 being year of the crüt

I never thought "man I was born in the wrong era!" when I was a teenager. I fuckin loved mid-late 80s music and culture, all that new romantic/new wave/postrock/shoegaze/goth stuff was right up my alley. Maybe a little I'd occasionally wished to have been a few years younger and caught the tail end of punk/postpunk.

But it was my PARENTS gen who whinged about wishing being back in the 60s and things were shite now.

It wasnt until about 10 years back that I have to say I noticed kids of the same age (15-20?) going "man I wish I'd lived in the 80s".

No one should pine for the 90s though, that's just weird.

Yeah why would any westerner pine for a decade of prosperity and relative peace? Weird.

thread

To be fair, I think turbulent times are way more attractive to teenagers/young adults.

I dunno about that, I'm a young person and I wish the economic situation was a little easier. Not to mention I'm sure the kids in Syria aren't having that much fun...

relative peace

greil marcus's book on the doors has a great chapter about how oppressive boomer nostalgia is -- constant reminders that 'you weren't there' or 'you shoulda been there' for some supposedly great event -- assassinations, woodstock, ed sullivan, sgt pepper, altamont, etc etc. all of them turned into media events -- the 25th anniversary, the 30th anniversary, and used to remind ppl who weren't there how empty and lame their lives must be by comparison.

post-boomers and just rightly bitter and jealous, prob

xpost: That makes a lot of sense. It does seem to be a very boomer-fuelled phenomenon.

When did the boomers start codifying this nostalgia cult? The 70s or 80s, I guess?

you would know the answer to that if you were there

I dunno about that, I'm a young person and I wish the economic situation was a little easier. Not to mention I'm sure the kids in Syria aren't having that much fun...

― arctic mindbath (President of the People's Republic of Antarctica), Monday, December 9, 2013 5:48 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The Syria war doesn't involve western nations really so it's a moot point, the nostalgia we are discussing is usually reserved for western culture. That being said, I noticed a lot of teenagers and young adults being thrilled by Mai 68, the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam Peace Protests way more than any actual events and this is where it starts to worry me.

right. I thought you were talking about young people in general, as part of their very essence. obviously the West is its own thing, both geographically and culturally, you're quite right.

Nostalgia for Mai 68, Civil Rights, etc? Or at the time? What do you mean by "any actual events"? (soz, i am overworked/tired atm and therefore stupid)

Yeah why would any westerner pine for a decade of prosperity and relative peace? Weird.

- isnt this thread mostly about music/popculture?
- in my country in the 90s, interest rates hit 15-20%. Unemployment was actually p high at some points iirc, much higher than now.
- mullets, high waisted jeans and boy bands I rest my case.

a teenager wearing a flannel shirt in 2013 clearly wants to undo the telecommunications act of 1996

early - mid 90s was great musically. take out britpop & nu-metal and the latter part still had great music.
I grew up in the 80s and it was shit. I'll take the 90s any day.

take out britpop, send it away in a safe carriage while u torch the rest obv

lots more internet to make unending lists on in the 90s, that is for sure

How can the 80s be shit, it had amazing things at the *top of the charts* you'd never see now - Laurie Anderson, Talking Heads, Japan. People dressed with some fuckin style. PostPunk and new wave happened. The Fairlight happened. Neighbours happened.

I just want to preemptively punch any future kid who wishes they were born in this generation

I don't know. Maybe in a generation or two this period will look like Easy Street, what with global warming, mass extinctions, world population growth, resource depletion, ocean acidification, and general environmental degradation continuing on their merry way to armageddon.

Nah that sounds like fun compared to Macklemore

nostalgia seems pretty played out; we're due a new paradigm

The 80s had Thatcher. It was fucking shit.

nostalgia seems pretty played out; we're due a new paradigm

cool, let us know when you discover some new human emotions that aren't played out

How can the 80s be shit, it had amazing things at the *top of the charts* you'd never see now - Laurie Anderson, Talking Heads, Japan. People dressed with some fuckin style. PostPunk and new wave happened. The Fairlight happened. Neighbours happened.

― the Bronski Review (Trayce), Tuesday, December 10, 2013 4:14 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You should've been there man!

Heh, but seriously, when I was 14 and hanging out with my mates wearing DMs and listening to Pearl Jam and RATM I definitely remember us all collectively agreeing it was a good thing we hadn't come of age in the eighties because then all we'd have had to listen to was Kylie and Jason.

Trayce all those things are woejus awful fyi

philistine

Still have residual 90s kid horror of 80s aesthetics.

The 80s had Thatcher. It was fucking shit.

Yeah, bring back the Miners' Strike, race riots, hunger strikers etc, they were all cool

http://www.kingofficialwebsite.com/assets/images/01_SINGLE_LOVE__PRIDE__1984.jpg

^ my memory of whole decade

Mullets! Though they had them in the 90s too.

All penguin books published that decade look fucking shit n all

Point in 90s where mullets hadn't quite dies out in some more out of the way places, at the same time as the first ironic adopters in inner London.

kids, kids, it's okay, you're all wrong

80s greater disparity of greatness and rubbish compared to 90s IMO

My parents were pre-Boomer, they were rock and rollers...but not nostalgic. My union grandpa bought my mother a CAR for her high school graduation, and he had a high school diploma. But living in 1959 would be unthinkable for them - imagine WWII being only fifteen years earlier! They liked the seventies the best - they were so liberal!

I did the sixties thing in the eighties - certainly wouldn't do Vietnam again. Can't imagine driving an eighteen foot vehicle with the environment and all. I just like the attitude of earlier times, the pride in how things were made.

Funny how you don't really get a lot of thirty-somethings going around telling kids how great nineties pop culture was; at least not yet, I don't think. Most of the current 90s-retro fashions and touchstones seem to have been quite happily and naturally co-opted by millennials as a matter of course. They don't seem to be being pressed into it by rose-tinted commentators telling them what a wonderful time it was.
There's little recourse from irony too. While the pre-emptive nu-rave thing from a few years back had a stab at camping-up nineties dance tropes, it pretty much failed. These days it's more like 'ho-hum the nineties, here they come again, let's dig out the floral patterns and black top hats, wasn't Kim Gordon cool?' etc...
Compare this to the eighties-retro revival of the late-90s/early 2000s which was initially spurned by a high level of archness and snark - "haha, big shoulder pads and safetyclips and spandex everybody HAHAHA", before it eventually became a cultural obsession and started being treated with major archaeological reverence.

Well yeah cos you can only celebrate most aspects of the 80's ironically cos of the being shit thing

There was a hugely shit aspect to the eighties, and this loomed like a hangover in the nineties. To us teenagers in the nineties the eighties were literally made of hairspray and slap-bass and bad S/A/W one hit wonders with very few mitigating factors to convince us otherwise. Of course nineties pop culture was enraptured with the seventies, but even that started off as "LOL big afros and pointy fingers and flares" before people started looking at the less cartoonish aspects of that decade.

60s, 70s and 80s nostalgia was fairly well balanced throughout the 90s (depending on where you were).

Wd argue 60s informed indie in a much clearer way than 70's, at least up til say 98ish xp

xxpost And to be fair the nineties were really shit too. Curtain haircuts, Adidas trousers with pop-buttons on the side, Carter USM, John Major's underpants, Normski, Hurricane No.1, the IRA, Motormouth blahblahblah. No one's talking about this though.

Wd argue 60s informed indie in a much clearer way than 70's, at least up til say 98ish xp

― mind totally brown (darraghmac), Tuesday, December 10, 2013 2:42 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

True, but I feel as though the seventies had a greater impact on almost everything else. Fashion especially.

xp not only are all those things great, you had to include two 80s shit things from yr list that were expunged from the 90s early doors (CUSM and IRA)

Sheriff Fatman is a work of genius.

Reef?

Fashion is almost standalone in some ways (well, fashion and pop) because it is for and by ppl who like things to be gaudily shit as a mode of expression- difference being that the 80s embraced a large part of that

Sheriff Fatman is a work of genius.

gerry adams voice dub wasn't too shabby either

Funny how you don't really get a lot of thirty-somethings going around telling kids how great nineties pop culture was; at least not yet, I don't think.

There are a lot of thirty-somethings (and early 40-somethings) still locked in the 90s. I was listening to a radio station during the commute hour yesterday and they still play 90% 90s music during commute hours and lunchtime. Actually, I think they have a "90s at Noon" show.

Best part was their prerecorded tag line "Now for some new rock!" followed immediately by Beastie Boys' Intergalactic

Most times have something to recommend them, but perpetually looking at the era of your teenage years with rose-colored glasses is pretty silly.

I probably look at my post-college years, when I was employed and making reasonable money but still screwing around and figuring out how to hang around the bar and going out with a new group of friends a little more fondly than it deserves.

cool, let us know when you discover some new human emotions that aren't played out

will do but those things tend to not be discovered - or at least not until they've been circulating for a while.

...which is especially ridiculous, because 2002 - 2005ish were some of the worst years, politically
x-p to myself

Most times have something to recommend them, but perpetually looking at the era of your teenage years with rose-colored glasses is pretty silly

Nah, it's just when (normal) people are most aware of what's going on in pop culture. While I'd say there aren't that many thirty-somethings repping for nineties music above all others, I still know plenty of people my age whose CD collections consist of Free Peace Sweet, It's Great When You're Straight Yeah, Version 2.0 and a few Vox front-cover things. Think it's quite natural for the average person to stop taking an interest in zeitgeisty stuff once they finish uni and get a job.

not taking an interest in zeitgeisty things is different from thinking the zeitgeisty things of your teen years were inherently better than other eras

Well yeah, that's what I'm saying - I don't meet a lot of 90s children who genuinely believe their era was the best.

Whereas you did get that with 60s boomers and to an extent 70s and 80s people too.

it's almost worse, they don't think it was that great but their radio stations still play mostly hits from this era of mediocrity

Comedy is an interesting one. In the UK there was quite a sea-change in tone some time around the mid-late 90s with sketch shows and sitcoms that left older generations a bit perplexed. Relatively orthodox, canned laughter stuff like Men Behaving Badly and AbFab gave way to the rapid fire repetition of the Fast Show, the cinéma verité of the Royle Family, the surreality of League Of Gentlemen. This continued with The Office, The Mighty Boosh, Nathan Barley etc and I know a lot of people a bit older than me who claimed they 'didn't get noughties humour'.

we had Seinfeld

I was thinking about the 80s again -- most of Trayce's musical examples had their only hits before 1983, and the Talking Heads were pretty big after then but their only top ten hit in the US was that year.

Basically all these things peaked in public popularity at the beginning of the decade! Our vision of any time period is personal experience, I guess

it's almost worse, they don't think it was that great but their radio stations still play mostly hits from this era of mediocrity

― mh, Tuesday, December 10, 2013 4:14 PM (11 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My friends and I like nothing better than getting round Youtube and fighting over whether to listen to 'Pretend Best Friend' or 'Unfinished Sympathy' first, but I don't think anyone, even the people who are the least interested in what's around at the moment, are going to claim that the 90s were inherently better than the 80s or the 2000s. I think that could be down to the complete saturation of retro culture. We might get a nice feeling from rewatching old Red Dwarf episodes, but maybe this is the first generation to have been so utterly exposed to other eras as a part of our own cultural upbringing that any arguments to the superiority of our own era don't stand up at all? I dunno...

I was thinking about the 80s again -- most of Trayce's musical examples had their only hits before 1983, and the Talking Heads were pretty big after then but their only top ten hit in the US was that year.

Basically all these things peaked in public popularity at the beginning of the decade! Our vision of any time period is personal experience, I guess

― mh, Tuesday, December 10, 2013 4:22 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's not my favourite era of pop culture but I thought Trayce was eulogising late-80s goth and post-rock as well as Fairlights and TH. I've always had trouble with 86-89 as an era in pop, but I think that might be because it came directly before I got interested in music etc. There's a lot to be said for late-80s metal, dance and hiphop too.

Men Behaving Badly and AbFab were never aimed at the yoot but there was no shortage of yoot-friendly comedy at any point in the 90s

ime young teens watched pretty much any and all sitcoms they could

But even the format of, say, The Mary Whitehouse Experience was fairly traditional. I don't think the Royle Family or the Office were aimed at young people necessarily, but I think the lack of canned laughter and the fly-on-the-wall style did confuse a few parents at first. Also - people who thought the Day Today was real.

I still have peers who rep hard for movies from SNL stars of the 90s. Chris Farley/David Space and Adam Sandler, peak of comedy

David Spade, argh

sorry for the Brit-centricness of my posts. The major imports from the US at the time IIRC were Ellen, Friends and that other one about people living in big apartments in the city.

It's OK, all the british comedies of the 90s took a decade to catch on here so I've heard of them anyway

The only Brit comedies from the 1990s I really liked were Red Dwarf and AbFab. Royale Family and all that never really caught me.

Why the general sea-change though? The first wave of alt. comedy finally breaking through and permeating through to ever corner of the format?

People were fucking sick of Victoria Wood reruns I guess.

I would absolutely claim that the 90s were better than the 80s or 00s ftr dl

then came Dinnerladies...

I dunno. I like a huge amount of British comedy from the 80s, mostly by the alternative up-and-comers, e.g. Blackadder, The Young Ones, Spitting Image, etc. But the 90s stuff I've never got into.

As for the 2000s, there's been a lot more good stuff, such as The Office, Peep Show, Shameless, Mighty Boosh, Black Books, and so on. Lots of crap like Little Britain, the I.T. Crowd, Dead Ringers, etc, but that's to be expected.

The 90s seems very limited. In retrospect, lots of it was crap (Spice Girls, Aqua and other lame Scandinavian pop), but I don't feel entitled to comment, seeing as how I was born in 1990. I feel nostalgia for the 2000s, but not in the sense that I'd place it above all other decades as being the pinnacle of human existence. But neither would I say previous decades were better (although probably a damn sight better than future decades will be, but we'll see...).

The 90s seems very limited.

pretty astounded by this. can't think of a single cultural facet where it may apply. born before the 80s tho.

Lee & herring u cunts

seeing as how I was born in 1990

this can't be right

decade/two decades before you were born -> wow this is so great, such creativity, not like now
decade before your teens -> so limited, semi-ironic attachment to things you liked
decade of your teens -> not quite worth nostalgia yet, obviously things that were worthwhile
early 20s -> oh hey not bad, this is some good stuff
later -> all crap

xxpost: I was thinking in terms of comedy, but then that's purely a personal aesthetic. It may also have to do with the fact that my parents were early Boomers (not sure if there's a British equivalent, but they were very influenced by America, having lived there in the 70s) and my upbringing was heavily influenced by 60s, 70s and 80s media.

Something about the 90s gives me genuine creeps, although I was a happy kid during it.

sleepingbag: expand on that please?

artistically speaking, that is

socio-political climate depends on your ethnicity, class, age, and location

nbd it just seems like an incorrect year to have been born is all

haha, I kind of get what you mean. 1981-1983 and 1998 seem like "incorrect years" to me.

inevitably because enough time has passed since and there being evidently such an overbearing market for 90s musical things (countless reformed bands, nostalgia for specific subgenres and sounds) and as 90s icons are absorbed into the wider 'always on' nostalgia base the backlash accordingly can also be seen as at its strongest yet.

I've lived through a lot of decades and haven't liked any of them. I think I disliked the '70s the least, but that could be due to the time interval enhancing their charm somehow. I fondly remember moments and people and places but not long stretches of time.

I'm glad I don't see "Early American" decor anymore - such an ugly look and it was actually more prevalent than the cool Mid-Century Modern/Mad Men style.

The 90s was a sick decade if u liked cool shit, also pitting 10yr periods against each other is a fucking moronic thing for an adult to do

I never got to try OK Cola

I thought the eighties were a blast!! But it was a personal blast, mainly out of rebellion against a majority who seemed miserable.

Most emotions have some survival value. Nostalgia just seems fucking useless.

Cheers banaka

I think the lack of canned laughter and the fly-on-the-wall style did confuse a few parents at first.

Just as an aside, but what British sitcoms ever used canned laughter pre-1990s? Men Behaving badly and AbFab didn't, for a start. It's certainly used now though.

Not really sure where doglatin is getting that canned laughter thing tbh.

I assume what he actually means is no audience laughter.

Anyway, as is often the case with doglatin (bless him), I think he's seeing great tectonic shifts when they weren't actually that great

imo dog latin is making a subtle point about how our understanding of the past, whether positive or negative, is not based so much in clear memory as in the convenient shorthand we use that designates "good version of thing" and "bad version of thing"

Most emotions have some survival value. Nostalgia just seems fucking useless.

not really
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/2013/07/10/the-rehabilitation-of-an-old-emotion-a-new-science-of-nostalgia/

god, I _wish_ banaka was around

Yeah canned laughter = I meant audience laughter

I just watched the World's End (which was filmed in and around the town I grew up in). Seemed like a bit of a comment on retro mania, and nineties retro especially, even if it was playing on its tropes for nostalgic kicks.

I actually do wish I'd been an adult in the 80's. I have an 80's fetish. But it would have probably pissed me off. Although a close friend of mine was in his 20's in the 80's and his stories are INCREDIBLE. Like Bret Easton Ellis shit. Wearing Versace suits and doing tons of blow and seeing INXS play and getting lots of BABES.

is there a Bret Easton Ellis novel where at least one of the characters doesn't die

I mean, where there are zero characters that die

I have fond memories of the early 90's and watching 120 minutes and dialing the OK soda hotline over and over again and being a depeche mode superfan.

Maybe the ultimate wish for some people (i.e. pop culture fans) is to have been twenty years old at every point in time since 1956.

I mean, I was 9 years old in 1990 and listened to chart radio and watched the ITV Chart Show and loved Altern-8, the Prodigy, KLF etc but I had no idea what raving was all about short of an episode of Morse and a few ads on the radio. Actually ads on the radio taught me more than anything. I thought AIDS was an airborne disease and a condom was a device you kept in your house like a smoke detector that filtered out AIDS germs. Cue some narrowly-avoided awkward questions with my parents.

It's sad if 20-year-olds now feel like they're in the wrong era because the music you hear between 15 and 25 will mark you like nothing else so embrace it. In the west, in cultural terms (piling on the qualifiers there), it is never a bad time to be that age.

I remember reading (when I was 20 in fact) Goethe describing the phenomenon of the "nachkommling" or aftercomer, who began writing after Shakespeare and therefore felt there was "nothing more to do". I think people have always been prone to thinking they were born too late.

what do the 20yos like in 2013? mumford + sons?

Yeah but at 20 (must've been 1999?) I do remember thinking the majority of current music was shit and, other than a few IDM and post-rock releases, ended up delving into the past a lot more for many of my musical kicks. I don't really regret it - I was much happier discovering the Beach Boys than listening to Travis, but I do also remember imagining that 1968 would have been a great time to be alive.

i've got a pretty serious nostalgia crush on the UK c. 1945-60 but it's mostly bugger all to do with your so-called pop music tbh

UK c. 1945-60 mostly just the goon show and hanging iirc

brylcreem and a working class with actual work to do

Great as long as you weren't female, gay or of colour.

Not that I think you yearn for the criminalisation of homosexuality and "no blacks, no Irish, no dogs" signs obvs, NV

of course not and i hope i don't labour under any illusions, tho the role of women in working class households is probably more complex than the simple domestic subjugation people envisage pre-60s struggles. i think what i imagine is a form of community that got pulled down some time around 1983.

imagined communities. like most of them i guess.

I used to pine for the 80s as a kid growing up in the 90s, and feel cheated that I had missed out on all the best pop music/fashion/design. I don't really feel cheated now, I think because the internet (and that I'm old enough to go to second hand shops) mean so much of this stuff is accessible again.

i think part of my fantasy is stronger localization and pre media saturation too

Anyone else hearing the thread title as sung by Richard Hell?

If I imagine living in the 80s (or whatever era of the past) I imagine it being like living in a film, everything having a unified aesthetic, a sense of having been designed, rather than just looking like a random mix like now, but obviously it only looks that way in retrospect, it wouldn't have done so for the people at the time?

what do the 20yos like in 2013? mumford + sons?

― Mordy , Wednesday, December 11, 2013 10:54 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the other day I was out for lunch with a friend who's 20 years old and he asked me if i knew any good remixes of 90s dance pop.

(i made some noises about motiv8 and fatboy slim and things and he was like: no, more recent ones, i mean your nineties nonsense is good and all but really where's the drop and then he laughed at my horrified face)

If I imagine living in the 80s (or whatever era of the past) I imagine it being like living in a film, everything having a unified aesthetic, a sense of having been designed, rather than just looking like a random mix like now, but obviously it only looks that way in retrospect, it wouldn't have done so for the people at the time?

Having lived through the '80s, it didn't seem at all that way to me. As much as there were new design aesthetics coming through (the first thing that springs to mind is the graphic design in magazines like The Face and Smash Hits), overall it just felt like a continuation of (or evolution from) the '70s. Also, you could look around and see all kinds of things that were survivals from the '50s and '60s (shopfronts, pub interiors etc.) that have pretty much disappeared today.

Having said that, I do remember meeting a friend in a pub by the river Thames (perhaps at 'Hay's Galleria' or somewhere like that between London Bridge and Tower Bridge) c. 1987, and we both deplored the way the pub had been newly done out in a fake, wooden retro-pub-interior style. I guess it was the beginning of what you can still see today in many branches of Wetherspoon's. Is that not the start of the "random mix", as you put it?

Yeah modern retro "80s style" or "90s style" are pretty abstracted and watered down to a very specific aesthetic that I sort of remember but it's also like some other alternate reality, a mainstream definition of the 80s, exists alongside my own nostalgia. I mostly remember shag carpet and wood paneling. Not everything was neon over a black background.

This thread reminded me of a part in Beastmaster 2 where someone is complaining about how fake music sounds nowadays and says oh let me play some REAL rock n roll and then turns on some 80s song that is supposed to be a 50s throwback but has all these weird synth sounds in it.

Yeah it's a romanticised version of the decades. The kids who walk down the street wearing soft grunge styles dress like people in magazines did in the 90s, not how people really dressed.