It could be just we are all old but it seems like it. The internet has allowed us all to be "the one metalhead in the village" by linking us to other fans on the net. That means we have less of a shared culture. Perhaps that is only because we are nerds who don't interact with normies and normie culture.
Main stream culture does seem to have stalled. So many remakes of movies. So many sequels. TV also has a bunch of sequels and a few remakes. TV is another major change. Zoomers don't watch linear TV. A group of friends don't tune in to the same channel at the same time to watch the same show. They'll binge on as much as possible.
I can't comment on music because I was never into popular music.
Good observation. The very early 90s very much felt like the 80s, etc. What characterises a decade of culture rarely ends neatly on the right numerals, although I'd say the 2000s died some time around 08-09 when the internet started failing/twitter started rising. GG in 2014 was a pushback against a progressive infiltration that was already well established, & one which didn't characterise the 2000s.
The 2000s never felt much like they had an identity to me at the time and they had plenty of rancid shit going on - govts capitalising on 9/11, etc. But on reflection there was a lot of great games, consoles, music and movies and it was the golden age of piracy. Prior to smartphones and the mass normie adoption of the net, there was a lot of idealism for the power of the internet too.
The 2010s were very much a void, one that I'd characterise as a battleground created by feminist technocrats. It doesn't feel like they're fully over yet, but something in the air feels like change. I just don't know into what. Just because it's 2023 already, doesn't mean the 2020s aren't about to land.
The idea of a nation-scale shared culture is being erased. The closest you get are a handful of events deliberately pushed to the forefront of everything in an effort to fabricate an synthetic culture that benefits the people manipulating it.
Every year we all joke about how it's probably going to be worse next year while secretly hoping that maybe it will get better. And then you know what happens?
I don't blame you. Thought the world was ahead of me, had a fiancee, I was making big career strides - then it was all torn away from me. I almost made it and it is almost like a sick joke how badly the world fucked me. A crime really. My country hated me in a coldsnap, BLM and ANTIFA niggers tried to burn down my home, for a time it was legally permissible to shoot me in the street for my then evolving political beliefs and frustrations, then it was okay to want to ship me off to covid auschwitz, every friend I had turned coat and I found out the hard way how normies will hierarchally discard a person, all of my opportunities were given away freely to my enemies, overt commies, etc. People have even targeted and tried to kill me. Before all this I was bluepilled to the gills. I was kicked around like a dog by the world, stripped of everything that made life worth a damn and it expected me to grovel like a bitch repeating its preferred, fictional narrative. I became completely disillusioned and stopped asking "WHY?!", because "fuck you" is the actual reason. It's all programmed proceedure and it doesn't have to make sense to you.
And after, like the Lord's prayer I'd reminisce and ruminate about all the people who wronged and betrayed me, not realizing that what I really wanted was a damn time machine. But 2019 for all of the optimism and potential it represented, all of the lies that were worth believing back then - it's all a damn ghost. You look back and all the signs were there. I wanted it all back, but you can't chase the ghost of something that never truly existed. Your friends were projections and the sun in the sky was an illusion. You'll be running forever, following what is either a swan or siren's song that has no real conclusion.
Those days never belonged to you or me. They are an intoxicating fiction of when we had no narrative of our own. It is comforting to leave fate to others thinking things will work themselves out, but that's not what history tells us - not even in its most dishonest iterations. The book will shut on you and no one will remember anything but the lies written with a broad brush.
The only narrative that can ever be true is the meta you create for yourself.
The 80s died in the early 90s when rock started dying and the action movie was destroyed. The 90s died when the twin towers fell. The 00s were the beginning of the end for American culture, and their death occurred when Obama became president. Trump was merely a brief slowing down of the boiling frog but with him gone the 10s are back on schedule with a complete lack of creativity and the death of all cultural icpns.
It could be just we are all old but it seems like it. The internet has allowed us all to be "the one metalhead in the village" by linking us to other fans on the net. That means we have less of a shared culture. Perhaps that is only because we are nerds who don't interact with normies and normie culture.
Main stream culture does seem to have stalled. So many remakes of movies. So many sequels. TV also has a bunch of sequels and a few remakes. TV is another major change. Zoomers don't watch linear TV. A group of friends don't tune in to the same channel at the same time to watch the same show. They'll binge on as much as possible.
I can't comment on music because I was never into popular music.
The 80s ran until Smells Like Teen Spirit, the 90s were until 9/11, the 2000s ran until Trump won, and the 2010s are still going today.
The great culture war started when gamergate exposed the regressive left by outing their widespread corruption in games journalism.
Good observation. The very early 90s very much felt like the 80s, etc. What characterises a decade of culture rarely ends neatly on the right numerals, although I'd say the 2000s died some time around 08-09 when the internet started failing/twitter started rising. GG in 2014 was a pushback against a progressive infiltration that was already well established, & one which didn't characterise the 2000s.
The 2000s never felt much like they had an identity to me at the time and they had plenty of rancid shit going on - govts capitalising on 9/11, etc. But on reflection there was a lot of great games, consoles, music and movies and it was the golden age of piracy. Prior to smartphones and the mass normie adoption of the net, there was a lot of idealism for the power of the internet too.
The 2010s were very much a void, one that I'd characterise as a battleground created by feminist technocrats. It doesn't feel like they're fully over yet, but something in the air feels like change. I just don't know into what. Just because it's 2023 already, doesn't mean the 2020s aren't about to land.
I think of the 2000's as the Homestar Runner era
That's the desired outcome.
"Only the endless present in which the party is always right".
My god . . . you're right. How depressing.
Every year we all joke about how it's probably going to be worse next year while secretly hoping that maybe it will get better. And then you know what happens?
It finds a way to get fucking worse
It's because people keep saying we've reached peak clown world. And clown world takes it as a challenge.
Exactly. At least clown world gets worse in completely unpredictable ways.
I don't blame you. Thought the world was ahead of me, had a fiancee, I was making big career strides - then it was all torn away from me. I almost made it and it is almost like a sick joke how badly the world fucked me. A crime really. My country hated me in a coldsnap, BLM and ANTIFA niggers tried to burn down my home, for a time it was legally permissible to shoot me in the street for my then evolving political beliefs and frustrations, then it was okay to want to ship me off to covid auschwitz, every friend I had turned coat and I found out the hard way how normies will hierarchally discard a person, all of my opportunities were given away freely to my enemies, overt commies, etc. People have even targeted and tried to kill me. Before all this I was bluepilled to the gills. I was kicked around like a dog by the world, stripped of everything that made life worth a damn and it expected me to grovel like a bitch repeating its preferred, fictional narrative. I became completely disillusioned and stopped asking "WHY?!", because "fuck you" is the actual reason. It's all programmed proceedure and it doesn't have to make sense to you.
And after, like the Lord's prayer I'd reminisce and ruminate about all the people who wronged and betrayed me, not realizing that what I really wanted was a damn time machine. But 2019 for all of the optimism and potential it represented, all of the lies that were worth believing back then - it's all a damn ghost. You look back and all the signs were there. I wanted it all back, but you can't chase the ghost of something that never truly existed. Your friends were projections and the sun in the sky was an illusion. You'll be running forever, following what is either a swan or siren's song that has no real conclusion.
Those days never belonged to you or me. They are an intoxicating fiction of when we had no narrative of our own. It is comforting to leave fate to others thinking things will work themselves out, but that's not what history tells us - not even in its most dishonest iterations. The book will shut on you and no one will remember anything but the lies written with a broad brush.
The only narrative that can ever be true is the meta you create for yourself.
We can't choose the times we live in, or the battles those times will face us with.
All we can choose is how we deal with them, and whether they break us.
At least you had Trump 2017-2020.
Just wait. Republicans will get a red wave in 2024 & we will start to turn the tide to make the libs cope & seethe for 8 long years.
I would post this same comment, but sarcastically.
Why are people so blackpilled here that they react negatively to any optimistic comment?
Too many doomers.
The 80s died in the early 90s when rock started dying and the action movie was destroyed. The 90s died when the twin towers fell. The 00s were the beginning of the end for American culture, and their death occurred when Obama became president. Trump was merely a brief slowing down of the boiling frog but with him gone the 10s are back on schedule with a complete lack of creativity and the death of all cultural icpns.
Two cheap aphorisms for you about this situation, one depressing, one hopeful:
'There's no such thing as rock bottom', ie. there's always further to fall
and
'Sometimes the path back isn't the same way you came.'