How do you explain the phenomenon of almost every generation hating the present they live in and yearning for the past...

How do you explain the phenomenon of almost every generation hating the present they live in and yearning for the past times? Is it nostalgia or something deeper? Or is the world simply gradually going to shit decade by decade?

I'm incredibly nostalgic for 90's and 80's. I literally spend hours on youtube watching shows and listening to music i did when i was younger. First it was just reminiscing my childhood but now i'm in the phase of desperately searching for any clue that would give me the comforting feel of the decade of my choice. It's like a drug, i can't explain it better.

But i can't make myself listening or watching some contemporary stuff, it turns me off like a plague. Everything modern disgusts me.

And i'm not even that old.

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Yes, probably just nostalgia.

I feel the same way too though.

Because you were a child. Children are usually not confronted with the complexity of geopolitics and the economy, which is why you look back at your childhood decade as a simpler time.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection?wprov=sfla1

I sure as hell don't.

I can relive a good portion of my childhood with the Internet, and I realize that the people of the past also had shit taste.

Because your present is meaningless and bleak.

>going back to no internet
>going back to gang violence
>going back to terrible music
no thanks

I feel like a lot of it is nostalgia but something about the modern day just seem's hollow compared to the past. An over reliance on technology and cutting down of social standards which lead to people not interacting as much.

>90's
>no internet
just because there's no ebin black twitter memes to share on facebook doesn't mean there wasn't internet

90s was a pretty worthless decade
80s was a white washed decade
70s was when America was on drugs
60s was when everyone was assassinated
50s is praised as a conservative utopia despite the fact that almost everyone loved the New Deal, maybe government regulations is good for the nation after all
40s was too focused on the war and slapping japs
30s was a hangover
20s was a party
10s was meh

>going back to dial-up

fixed

The economy wasn't completely in the shitter in the 80's and 90's. That nostalgia you feel is actually just a desire for a better life for yourself and those around you.

>terrible music

This is objectively wrong in so many ways. Modern music is garbage, literally made with machines. At least in the 80's people actually wrote the music and not algorithms.

>How do you explain the phenomenon of almost every generation hating the present they live in and yearning for the past times?

The selecting capabilities of time.

Past times had just as much shit as the present does, it's just that all the terrible shit has been discarded and forgotten.

Pretty soon, this will happen to this era and all we will remember is how the 10's were the greatest decade of all time and how the 20's and 30's are complete dogshit compared to them

>going back to warcraft 1, dune and DOOM 1, 2
fixed

But 10's are objectively shit.

00's were meh tier.

we're more than half way through the 10s and I don't see anyone waxing nostalgia for the 00s yet.

dubya truly ruined that decade for everyone

I'm a millenial(1998, now need to call mods) and I don't find early 2000 to be much better than those years, the only thing I really miss from the era I was born is something I didn't experience, rock music from that era in my country was great and big stars nowadays were really close to the public, allowing them to sing in their concerts, for example, and being truly close, nowadays they're so famous that they couldn't do it even if they liked.

>actually thinking those shit games are better than modern games

Objectively, the 90s were a great decade.

Geopolitically, the Soviet bloc had fallen apart so the permanent looming threat of nuclear annihilation everyone had been living under for 40 years was gone. The free democratic system* had won. Islamic terrorism was not yet on the radar, climate change was a distant hypothetical problem, the economy was doing fine to awesome for most of the western world and so it seemed everything was just going to keep getting better from there on.

It was the last decade where you could effectively believe that we are on a straight smooth path towards Star Trek (or whatever was your techno-utopia of choice).

*Lots of asterisks on that one, but it really was the humanly better side of the Cold war conflict.

>being this contrarian

While I suppose all generations look back to the past, at least ours makes sense, since the world is pretty shit compared to the late 90's/early 00's

It's because everyone hates being an adult, no matter how good their life is.

90s was objectively better than today. Anyone who disagrees is an under aged fag. We entered the dark ages after 9/11.

>50s is praised as a conservative utopia despite the fact that almost everyone loved the New Deal, maybe government regulations is good for the nation after all
That's because prosocial interventionism by the government is key in upholding social norms. Most conservatives get that wrong.

I'd rather live in the 1950's where I can accuse my asshole neighbor of being a communist and never have to see him again.
Truly a great time for all

>back to terrible music

I wouldn't know about today vs the 90's, but 2005 was a black hole of terrible in that regard; everything was Nickelback-esque buttrock or worst-of-both-worlds "in da club" bullshit stuck between gangsta rap and radio-friendly hip-hop. Hell, I'd say a lot of things started slipping in 2005.

2010-2012 was pretty alright, 2013 through today is an ever-growing shitstorm leading up to something huge.

Needless to say, whether that something huge is great or terrible, Trump will be involved.

huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Bro, the 90's/80's were just better in almost every way.

TV (the only thing better nowadays is dramas), movies, music, the economy, no social media bullshit, people not on their phones every 3 fucking seconds.

>There will be people who miss the 2000's

>says only the weakest of men

Is that you Grohl?

I miss the early 2000s.

>>There will be people who miss the 2000's
Actually, first half was pretty decent. It's better than tens at least.

It's being young, and being part of the youth movement, it's exciting, things are new, you're young, strong, healthy, it's easy to make friends in your teens and 20's, you're not worried about responsibilities, the future is wide open...

The musician that are famous are older than you, you can look up to them, they're doing cool things, they're so cool!

Then 30 hits you like a fucking sledgehammer, you're an adult, you have to be serious about work, get shit done, no more fucking around.

Then you see all these kids, running around thinking they're the shit, they're stupid naive, little twats with faggot hairdos, and even the hot girls are dumb kardashian bitches, they think they're cool cause they listen to dubstep but they're just brainwashed corporate zombies paying 600 a ticket to see ultra in miami, when you saw juan atkins for free in a basement party in 1997, and it was cool as fuck. Those dubstep kinds never even heard of juan atkins and they look at you weird when you try to educate the little cunts that he invented the music they like 30 years ago, and they're not new or original, they're just more flamboyant and cheesier and they're not even enjoying the music they're just taking pics for their status updates so people KNOW they went there, but they don't know the names of any of the fucking songs.


Honestly the 90's weren't THAT great, but there's was a mystic to it. The 80's even more mystic, and 70's just crazy mystic. Now every fucking thing anyone does is documented, updated, filed away. And song can be had at a moments notice, it's not special when it comes on the radio, or you have to pay money to buy it and invite your friends over to listen and it's a big deal.

please be bait

I'm in my mid-twenties and i've never been more miserable in my life.

The 90s were authentically better though.

Median household income and middle class buying power were considerably higher, US fatalities in combat were next to zero, US prestige and power were at an all time high, and technology was progressing at lightning speed.

I would kill literally every Muslim on the planet to have another decade like the 90s.

It's kind of a mid-twenties thing.

Violence was peaking at the end of of 30 year rise.

New York City had 15 years of war deaths in Afghanistan work of murders in 1990.

Inner cities were far shittier than even today, and cash welfare was still a thing.

nationalism in the early 00s was top tier and tech innovations continued exploding...up to the recession and president racewar things were not as bad as they have become

That's the weird thing; when you think objectively the early 2000's should be terrible; that's when 9/11 happened, after all. When I think of the early 2000's being good I think of the pop culture, but in my defense that's more relevant to most people's day-to-day lives than geopolitical tension with far weaker nations/regions.

In that regard, it seems like basically everything started shitting itself in the latter half.

Honestly, race seemed pretty tame for his first term; obviously there was gonna be some weirdness with the first black president (inb4 Clinton or halfbreed), but the rhetoric was mostly about how capitalist/socialist we should be.

The start of our current trouble was the Zimmerman shooting, but something else was clearly going on; it's not like racially-charged incidents are new, remember Rodney King? The issue of police violence and race is also hardly new, Fuck the Police was released before a lot of people here were born. Maybe it actually did get worse, maybe it seemed the most profitable course of activism and coverage, maybe it's da joos, but something started with that shooting and kept going.

The US "won" in Afghanistan and Iraq. But then they went on to "lose" the occupations of those countries in the next fear years. Add onto that the 2008 financial crisis.

Another issue: The internet wasn't yet utterly mainstream and monetized, so idiots couldn't shit it up like they do now on Twitter and Facebook and all the clickbait news sites associated with social media. Ask anyone who used the internet before social media and they'll tell you it was a far better platform. That platform is now dead, and this thing is what we have left.

1994 world trade center attack which ironically is practically non existent in the face of 9/11

problem is the president used that top-tier nationalism to drive us into a war that had nothing to do with terrorism

this could've been out WWII but it ended up our Vietnam

I guess it was just due to more media coverage of it what with the "we have a black president why is this still happening" mentality

Yeah the late 80s early 90s Metallica after playing a major show would sometimes find a small bar after and play another set. If that happened now with social media people would swarm that bar in minutes.

Go read some Schopenhauer kiddo.

>The scenes of our life are like pictures done in rough mosaic. Looked at close, they produce no effect. There is nothing beautiful to be found in them, unless you stand some distance off. So, to gain anything we have longed for is only to discover how vain and empty it is; and even though we are always living in expectation of better things, at the same time we often repent and long to have the past back again. We look upon the present as something to be put up with while it lasts, and serving only as the way towards our goal. Hence most people, if they glance back when they come to the end of life, will find that all along they have been living ad interim: they will be surprised to find that the very thing they disregarded and let slip by unenjoyed, was just the life in the expectation of which they passed all their time. Of how many a man may it not be said that hope made a fool of him until he danced into the arms of death.

You can be a good musician and stay local, but it's hard. Check this guy out, he's pretty legit.

youtube.com/watch?v=VRg0NRoU4Z8

Though corporate interests are sadly pushing for bigger, more lucrative acts. Meanwhile, there's only so much public venue space.

the president and the media getting involved in race baiting on the side of criminals and agitators (instead of advocating for a suspension of judgment until all the facts were out) is what made it stick and snowball and get worse and worse

Tbh post-9/11 patriotism seems comfy as fuck right now.

I prefer critical patriotism. Nothing ever improves without being challenged to.

Post 9/11 patriotism is a stupid mob precipitated on the exploitation of death and sacrifice.

Anyone claiming they can deem a decade "objectively bad" is delusional. It's almost entirely to do with nostalgia, and a yearning for simplicity.

If anything, I actually prefer the 2010s to the 90s.

Post-9/11 patriotism died after Snowden.

both 00s and 10s started with hope and but moved on to disappointment

not unless your neighbor calls you a commie first

>I'm incredibly nostalgic for 90's and 80's.

Same, except that I never knew the 80s and don't even remember the 90s very well

But when I watch movies from the 80s, the ambiance seems so much better
When it comes to my country it's understandable, since it wasn't infested with muslims yet, so Paris look very good in these movies
But even America seems way less depressing in 80s movies than in current ones

'84-2009 objectively best years in the last 100.

g-gramps?

Yeah, I can get that, imo though critical patriotism tends to focus much more on the critical part and lose sight of the patriotism part, which I think is a big reason shit is so divisive now.

>Post 9/11 patriotism is a stupid mob precipitated on the exploitation of death and sacrifice.
I guess this is justified, but it just seems pretty pessimistic desu. People remember the silly AMERICA FUCK YEAH stuff but I never hear anybody mention how much better race relations were at the time, or just relations in general. Everybody really rallied together after 9/11, there was this shared sense of cooperation, it was pretty amazing. I think racial tensions were still pretty rough from the 90's, but for a while it seemed like people were so freaked out by terrorism they put all that stuff aside and we all were on the same team. I couldn't find a link but I remember this old stand up bit (I think it was Dave Chappelle, but not sure) that hit on this, talking about how black people weren't on the bottom of the totem pole now that everybody was scared of Muslims.

The current 10's are pretty meh.

I hope the 20's are a party again.

Ah yes. The time when the synthesizer was invented and used most certainly did not contain artificial music.

America was hopped-up on stimulants in the wake of 9/11, it felt great at the time but unless we actually pulled off the nation-building and found Osama in short order we were gonna have a crash.

Post 9/11 patriotism died during Bush's second term, when even the hardcore conservatives that voted him in started hating him. Snowden's significance was just demonstrating what everybody already figured was going on.

Seriously, I'm from a family that opposed Bush during 9/11 and are literally liberal humanities professors, there are not enough animu girls to express the left's collective smug over Bush failing. 2008 was a fucking party for us despite the recession, there was no fucking way the Republicans were gonna win after that shitshow.

I just hope the 20's don't crash like last time, the recession sucks enough as is. Also at this rate they'll either be a party or a shitstorm of unfathomable magnitude.

To be honest, I'd rather have pre-9/11 optimism.

the early 000s were essentially an extension of the 90s, I know a lot of people say the cut off point is 9/11 but that's simply not true. Popular culture in the early 2000s was much closer to the 90s than anything from 2006 onwards

I'm in my mid-twenties and the only time I was more miserablw was in my teens.

I was more miserable in my late tees/early 20's desu

>nostalgia goes in patterns of 30 years
>50s stuff popular in the 80s
>60s stuff popular in the 90s
>70s stuff popular in the 00s
>tfw born in late 1995 and will be in the prime of my life for a 90s rehash decade in the twenties
It's not all so bad.

where do i start with schoppy? do i need some philosophy background? i've only just started with the greeks.

This is the crux of it.

Adult responsibilities take hold of you and you're forced to look at everything through a pragmatic and skeptical lens for self preservation instead of being allowed to revel in the safety of adult protection like you were when you were a child.

This of course provided you had decent parents and a decent upbringing. It would be hard to find someone with a dysfunctional childhood that longs to return to it.

Basically nostalgia is just the recognition of your lost innocence. Continued exposure to anything will make its effects duller over time. When you were a child everything was new. The older you get the more everything stagnates.

The problem with the US in the 90s is that we had spent decades defining ourselves as the enemy of Communism. After the USSR collapsed, the US didn't know what to do with itself. Its sense of purpose was lost.

Even though the 90s were a time of peace and prosperity, there was a sense of pointlessness and meaninglessness that permeated the decade. You can see it now in the pop culture of the era and especially in the grunge subculture.

Grunge actually started at the height of the Cold War.

youtube.com/watch?v=kB8l3-mGeSg

It had more to do with Seattle being absolutely ruined with drug addiction and remote enough from other US cities that it developed a unique, strange musical scene.

Using your description I´m already 30,although I´m only 22.

Nationalist faggot. Why

The grunge subculture spread nationwide fairly shortly after the USSR fell.

Hard to say. I was born in 1984 so I am essentially the poster child of the 90's as far as what my age range was from 1990-1999.

I had a really great childhood. I think what made the 90's great is it what in my opinion was the last generation where kids were still kids and political correctness and over-parenting didn't have a stranglehold on society. There was also socialization to an extreme degree since the internet wasn't developed enough at the time to be an activity you wasted so many hours on. Video Games were a pastime but it was more something you did when your parents forced you to come inside for bed.

That's my take on it at least.

>tfw born just in time to experience the revival of the 80s as a young adult
my time to shine has finally come

>How do you explain the phenomenon of almost every generation hating the present they live in and yearning for the past times? Is it nostalgia or something deeper? Or is the world simply gradually going to shit decade by decade?
Survivorship bias. We remember the good times and forget the bad. While in the present we only see the bad and ignore the good. This makes life feel like on constant change from good to gradually worse, when it's generally the other way around. Life is better now than ever for the majority of human beings on earth.

Though the more specific meaning of survivorship bias refers more to actual things, for example music. Your dad will only remember the great songs from the 80s, he's not going to remember all the absolute bullshit, just the hits, whereas right now he's constantly confronted with all the shit music, but the same ratio to the 80s of good music too, but as shit music is more, and its in the present, he will notice it more. But in 20 years, he'll only remember the good songs of the 10s, and think music was better then (now). The same applies to all in life.

Well, political correctness and over-parenting didn't weigh in a lot on my own childhood.

T. 1997

Perhaps not. I am speaking in generalities which is what this thread is about. I would imagine poor kids in the SE probably experience a pretty similar childhood to what I had naturally in the 90's.

Technology changed some things. I think that is undeniable.

I miss pokemon, runescape, playing lego, the dawn of the internet and funky webchat like msn, i guess thats about it

I lived in a time before internet and a time of internet, it was brilliant. Kids now will only know the internet. It was odd for me, i would spent half the day running around outside making dens and playing army with friends, then go in and mess about on early youtube and runescape. Best of both

>Born in 92
>See someone say born in 95
>lel they must be like 14
When does this stop
Also
>Go on porn cam websites
>DoB 1997
>WTF
>Oh wait, they're 19.

>being lewronggeneration

I was born in '84 and I think most 80's, 90's and 00's music is shit. I like the late 60's and all of the 70's as far as music goes.

I think music is too much of a personal taste to chalk everything up to nostalgia. Even though I like 70's music I would never want to live in the decade and think most everything about it is shit.

there's always good music and there's always shit music. You really shouldn't generalize entire decades as if there was only a few set genres of music existing in each decade.

There's always patterns of what you like. Certain decades objectively have a certain sound to them and if that is what you gravitate toward that is generally the decade you are going to say you like your music from.

It doesn't mean every single song from other decades are shit.

>Certain decades objectively have a certain sound to them

This, even if anywhere near true, would be due to recording techniques and technology available at the time. That has nothing to do with creative output or artistry of the time.

youtube.com/watch?v=WRJmJzWibzA

If someone heard this, they would most likely think it were composed sometime after the 1950s when electronic music was popularized. However, it was composed and performed, in the same regard as this 1970s recording, in the 1930s for the theremin.

Does this composition fit what certain sound you think the 1930s objectively had?

I think you are talking about popular music, which certainly follows whatever trend of music style or fad exists for that time period due to that being the best way to market and sell the music.

However, just because popular music follows a well marked style & sound for each decade doesn't mean music as a whole retains that style & sound for each decade and changes for each decade along with the fads and trends. You cannot say decades have an objective certain sound to them when it's impossible for the entire realm of music to follow one path of music style or trend. There will always be a large amount of exceptions, probably even more than actual examples of each decade having their own distinct sound.

The displaced secular yearning for the infinite.

"Correlation does not imply causation"?

PRES 2020-
Hello. vote for me when it's 2020, I will become president!

It's not just nostalgia. The 90s were a time of relative peace and prosperity before things went to shit. You had the same thing with the 20s in between WWI and the Great Depression, then the postwar boom in the 50s and 60s before recession and the Vietnam War. When the Cold War ended, everyone could give a collective sigh of relief.

Then 9/11 happened and the world was plunged into shit again, followed by another recession, and global crises such as environmental issues and terrorism. Of course nothing is ever perfect at any given moment, but the 90s were comparatively a good time to look back on.

Also, in terms of cultural impact, we've reached a point that the 90s can be considered 'retro' and the negative aspects of today's media and technology makes us yearn for simpler times.

Another thing to note is that the most influential demographic on the internet at the moment was born or grew up in the 90s, which also generates a lot of childhood nostalgia.

Because you were not part of the capitalistic engine while a child. Probably just in the receiving end,

I know what you're saying user, everything seemed to be going good, then 2013 happened and things started to slide, not very noticeably, but by the time 2015 arrived the shit became apparent. Now in 2016 literarily every piece of music that has come out from an artist I has been okay at best, mostly shit tho. I'm expecting hard times, not unbearable, but definitely some rocky roads ahead in this world.

>people become attached to the things around them
>the things around them change

It's literally that simple. Embrace the flux, buddy

>East European born in 1986

>90 year old people have nostalgia for late 1930s-WWII royal period, even thought that period was full of violence, corruption and the war itself

>50-60 year old people have unironic nostalgia for the communist period when we had a brutal dictatorship

>30-40 year olds hate the communist period but have nostalgia for the 1990s even thought that period was shit economically and culturally

2003 was 13 years ago

Veeky Forums has gotten old

which country?

90s was a period where nothing bad happen (except a bunch of genocides in other countries)

but it was also a period where nothing happened (except aforementioned genocides)