Aughts Nostalgia
The accepted wisdom among creators in the new counterculture holds that there will be no aughts nostalgia movement as there is for the last decades of the 20th century.
Western cultural development stagnated and finally started eating itself circa 1997. Therefore, the lion's share of media products after that point are necessarily debasements or hollow derivatives of 80s and 90s IPs.
Nevertheless, this week I came across a Millennial attempting to stir up nostalgia for post-Ground Zero culture.
Here's the best he could come up with:
You might ask how I know the anon who authored that greentext is a Millennial. Besides the time window he picked, which would have coincided with Millennials' childhood and adolescent years, he displays that generation's defining attitudes toward the past. That being marked ignorance of and glib disdain for history compounded with delight in seeing what came before them destroyed.
Let's go down the list:
Normie-free internet - Clearly he never saw MySpace. The real golden age of the internet as exclusive nerd social club was the 90s. But narcissists dislike contemplating the world before they existed.
80s nostalgia - is 80s nostalgia, not aughts nostalgia, but he has to reframe pop culture icons predating his birth in terms of their Reboot Phase.
World Peace and economic stability: Here's the dead giveaway. The decade this anon cites coincides with the War on Terror. He has no memory of the world before the Forever Wars, so he takes the current state of low-grade global chaos as his baseline. This point perfectly demonstrates why lumping Generation Y in with the Millennials produces a useless generational model.
Poz, just not as much - Note that anon approves of the nuclear family's demolition; he just preferred it when the wrecking ball hadn't yet been turned on his video games.
Piracy and porn - Here's a glimpse at the deep evil festering beneath Millennial's worldview. Petty theft and onanism are not culture. They are infections that sterilize the self-propagating faculty that is a major defining mark of culture. You're seeing the greased slide that leads straight from the Pop Cult to the Death Cult, folks.
More porn - this guy is so blinkered and conditioned not to think past his own crotch that he can't see how the degeneracy he pines for ruined everything else he loves.
ICQ - invented in 1996
Facebook as we know it didn't exist in the 80s, either.
OK, he has been on MySpace. If he considers that the high point of internet culture, he's suffering from far more severe historical ignorance than I thought.
Michael Jackson - yet more co-opted 80s nostalgia
The Simpsons - had stopped being funny by 1998, and it's been scientifically proven.
The bleak self-portrait painted by Millennial Anon's greentext shows an atomized, solipsistic child forever looping in the Corporate IP Death Cycle with no idea where he came from or where he's going.
But anon and countless Millennials like him are not to be scorned. Rather, they are to be pitied. Generations Y, X, Jones, and the Boomers helped make and perpetuate the spiritual wasteland to which younger generations have been condemned. It's incumbent upon us to do what we can to salvage them.
What concrete action have you taken today to rebuild authentic culture?
If you can't come up with anything, my first suggestion is to take a minute and pray for guidance.
Then, take stock of your skills and resources to figure out positive steps you can take in your corner of the world to support the flourishing of healthy culture.