Notice: Home alone tonight?
Topic: The Sudden Inability to Feel Nostalgia
+Anonymous A — 2 months ago #68,736
Does anyone else feel at least indifferent or slightly repulsed by whatever's supposed to be so-called nostalgic? Such as a classic film you've seen, animated cartoons, lost media, those games you played, those plastic toys in the fabric bin, songs you listened to, places you visited, those embarrassing posts you wrote before you could even speak & write properly, crappy/cheesy old memes, from around twenty years ago? Like a visceral sense of fatigue whenever old media gets pushed in front of you, in a patronising “Hey, remember ____? Those were good times” way. It doesn't feel warm or inviting anymore as much as it did when I was a teenager, but rather artificial and well-formulated nowadays. All I can think to myself is, “are these the only things we will remember in our entire lifetime?” Just a loop of mass-marketed media? Where there'd be no other incoming cult classics to reach the same level (because modern executives are too creatively-bankrupt, just re-using old franchises), no new cool aesthetic trends/fads, fresh graphical design choices, inventive genres, etc. since we've become more detached/alienated from each other, being out of the loop, seeing how hyper-centralized the Internet became. Think about those greedy/parasitic corporate entities trying to build brand loyalty in your developing brain, marketing products at kids with those wacky-ass commercials. I don't wanna look back at it ever again, I don't want to hear those '80/90s top hit songs whenever I'm at a supermarket. It feels like a symptom of Terror Management Theory, using these cultural artifacts as psychological buffers against the terror of time passing by too quickly and reaching our inevitable deaths, clinging to these corporate-manufactured milestones because facing the void is too hard. But the illusion has completely shattered for me. Those old, once-beloved tunes have just become annoying, inescapable earworms that repeat in your head all day, no longer evoking any intended emotions, mere sensory pollution carrying no significance whatsoever. You look back to realize your life's timeline has been occupied by media consumption cycles rather than actual human experience, you're nothing but a passive docile consumer. Even the aesthetic mediums would lose their magic as we try to understand them from a more technical deconstructive perspective. Maybe I was just beaten up by my family members too often as a kid. Autistic people could be assumed to have a stronger reaction towards this (consider those from DeviantART who do TV intro edits), I am autistic myself however. Anyway, hope you enjoyed reading this ranty Agora Road-ish trashtalk.
+Anonymous B — 2 months ago, 6 hours later[T] [B] #680,954
I'm old, what's trendy with middle aged folk ain't the same stuff. I'd rather shoot for the future and hope the 2030's are outstanding and the 2020's can be mostly forgotten, putting a retro coat of paint on it isn't enough to save it IMO.
+FuckAlms !vX8K53rFBI — 2 months ago, 12 hours later, 18 hours after the original post[T] [B] #680,958
> no new cool aesthetic trends/fads, fresh graphical design choices, inventive genres, etc.
there will be, but you'll see them for what they are from the start: manufactured images/experiences being forced by marketing because you are no longer young and full of wonder/hormones to make everything feel meaningful
+Punk Goth Girl — 2 months ago, 4 days later, 5 days after the original post[T] [B] #680,983
Wtf im the complete opposite rn. Im so nostalgic person. I guess its a personality thing. I jack off to nostalgia.
+Anonymous E — 2 months ago, 1 day later, 1 week after the original post[T] [B] #681,010
i've seriously been on both ends of the spectrum. i spent a lot of years desperately clinging to my childhood, times before shit got real i guess? the worst part for me is the fact that the person i was and the people i knew are dead now. most of them are still alive, but things will never feel the same. but eventually and embarrassingly recently i realized that's not such a bad thing though. it's an opportunity for me to explore new feelings and memories that will later replace the older nostalgia lol.
if you know anything about buddhism, you know that attachment leads to suffering. anyway i'm not here to get all spiritual on yall's asses but i definitely changed my outlook when my sister had a kid and now i see her going through her childhood, just like i did, so it's almost impossible now to pretend that my childhood was somehow the greatest era of human history and nothing ever top it.