Same story, am 1 year older than OP. I started with ZX Spectrum though.
My father was a programmer. Back then he was using punch cards (when I was a few years old), then tapes, then he got a 60MB hard drive the size of a washing machine which took one minute to spin up. A full drawer in the rack contained 256K ram. A 2400 baud modem was the size of a PC grey box.
Fun times! Space invaders in 1k Z80 assembly, stored in a BASIC REM statement, using the display memory as "internal state"... Later I added 16k RAM, eventually the "HighRes" Graphics card and last but not least the thermo printer.
(and yes you had to actually solder components to get the thingy be able to run a sort of pong in 1 KB).
The thing that remained stuck in my memory (common to all Sinclair users) is the sound of the cassette loading and (many years later) that of modems trying to connect to this or that BBS.
For a type of feature/product/concept like what Stories is, merely googling is a bad way to understand it. You have to use it to get its value. Being a data nerd at first I hated the idea of posting short ephemeral content and I thought this is a cold, isolated direction for social networks. But I do have to admit I post more, knowing this doesn't add up to the "vanity" nature of my profile. And the historical stories are still available through data takeout.
Also be prepared to get into it nevertheless, Twitter will introduce a similar feat called "fleets" soon.
The ephemeral siloed web contradicts everything people who grew up with the internet thought it stands for, and for people who still do phone calls, there is no real need for sharing pseudo-fleeting messages, that what whatsapp is for.
And from what I understand, the period where you need to be in constant contact or broadcast to more than 10 people is pretty limited to school and early higher ed for most people in my experience.
So unless stories become a way to keep in touch with your offsprings, I don't see a need or near normalness of these communication methods among people born before '85.
Sorry was unclear about this. But that's what I meant, I rather have searchable conversations with the option to delete things, non-ephemeral by default. And whatsapp is the app older people adapted to and get along with. It's what they now.
What’s the point of these labels? I know 16 year olds that talk like the stereotype of “boomers”, and 70 year olds that talk like “generation z”.
Imagine we were making the same kind of generalisations about your gender, skin colour, choice of programming language - what would it add to the conversation? We may as well say “Scorpios like partying where sagitarians prefer reading books”
While there may not be much value in stereotypes like that, with generations at least we are all somewhat interconnected by historical events. WWII defined one generation, and their kids. 911 defined another. Those things that change us as a society do have some impact.
We all lived through it. Though we had different experiences of those events, and processed them all in our own way, they still shaped us as a society.
We do make generalizations about all the categories you mentioned. Some are harmless some are hurtful. This doesn't mean that demographics are irrelevant or that characteristics are randomly distributed. We are influenced dramatically by the environment we grow up in and nothing is quite so stable as the past. So, your exceptions do not discount the rule.
I'll take my generation vs gen Z as an example. I clearly remember 9/11, blowing NES cartridges to get my games to work, rewinding video tapes, making phone calls to friends on a shared line using a corded phone, having to listen to a radio station for 3 hours to hear the one song I liked and then rush to hit record so I could save it for replay, and on and on. I cannot share these experiences with gen Z. They won't ever have that. I can talk about it but it's just like a Boomer telling me about going to Woodstock or making 10 cents an hour bagging groceries, or dodging minefields in Vietnam, or using punch cards to program. Sure I can hear those stories and be amused, shocked or whatever by them...but I'll never know precisely what it was like to go through all that, with the mood of the time.
The first rule of Gen X is that you don't talk about Gen X. Not because it's forbidden or anything (or because they all watched Fight Club), but because everybody just forgets Gen X.
I always have trouble seeing millenials born in the 80s as such. I feel that as a cultural block, you need to bisect the definition between 80s millenials, and 90s millenials.
80s millenials (personally I call them Gen Y or Michael Moore Millenials) came of age in the 90s, could remember the Soviet Union (if only hazily), experienced its unique cultural excesses on a more conscious level, and directly shaped the technology that would later form the digital substrate of new millenium.
They participated in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from their onset, and were also old enough to viscerally experience 9/11.
Their generation helped develop activist-consumerism when it was still counter-culture, tend to embrace the idea of a more global society, and came of college age just as the internet began to gain ubiquity. Even though they had to directly weather the financial crisis, they seem to have a more optimistic view of the future, and human potential in general, even if they often see progress as being stymied by bad people.
The second group, (90s millenials or just millenials) have no collective memory of the Soviet Union, and entered the world as consumers of the digital transition, even if they were too old to truly be considered digital natives as their successors in Gen Z are. By the tine they were of age to join the military, the US had been at war for nearly a decade, and no one was quite sure why it still continued. The economy took a dive, and they were too young to experience it the same way as Gen Y did.
Their early experiences of the internet were when it was still heavily decentralized, but had also become accessible to the technically illiterate. They were culture producers more than they were developers in the oughties, and they grew up alongside surveillance capitalism. Their view of the world is a bit more mixed, and they're also who the author is referring to, I think.
I count myself among the latter group, if that offers some context to my perception.
Anyone using these terms (Gen X,Y,Z, boomer, millenial, etc) in a serious conversation/post without defining it is part of the problem. And maybe even just trying to somehow lump together hundreds of millions of people just because they are around the same age makes less and less sense. (Especially the anthropomorphization, that all X are lazy/dumb/entitled/etc.)
This is apparently an unpopular view, but after thinking a bit about it, I agree with your premise.
Splitting older millenials with gen X, and younger millenials with gen Z makes sense, because instead of an arbitrary characteristics like "being 20 in the new century", this splits seem to better match some cultural changes that are not perfectly aligned with round dates.
I think what defines a generation is what people saw and remember, not directly years.
From a European perspective, Boomers saw the first step on the Moon and May 68 events, their children ("Gen X") saw Chernobyl, the end of the Cold War and grew up with the Oil crisis and the constant warnings that pollution is going to be a serious problem if we don't do something (or rather, if we don't stop doing certain things). Their children ("Millenials") saw the second Gulf War and the collapse of the WTC.
I've heard the generation that straddles X and Millennial, which the author and I belong to, referred as X-ennial. More important that the name, everything from Chernobyl to WTC are strong memories for me.
The “I am old” trope is just so uninteresting. To me, it’s a sort of humblebrag - because I’m older than you, my opinions are more valuable.
There are infinite things I don’t understand, some because I’m too young, some too old, but mostly just because I haven’t yet gone down that path in life. For what it’s worth, I was born in 1982.
> The “I am old” trope is just so uninteresting. To me, it’s a sort of humblebrag
I assure you, it isn't. I mean, I'm sure it's uninteresting, but it isn't intended to be a humblebrag. I practically cheered when the OP indicated that they don't understand "stories" because I legitimately don't, but I also have this realization that the reason I don't understand stories is that I'm just kind of inflexible and grumpy about new things at times. That's not admirable. That's not useful. But it's the truth. I truly don't understand why some pictures are shown at the very tippy top of my facebook feed, but I only get to look at them for 10 seconds. Is there a reason for this? Does someone find it beneficial? Do the kids laugh at me for even stopping to think about it? (Yes. Yes they do.) This is not a badge of honor.
Yeh, fk "Stories", whatever they are. Actually, also, fk Facebook too.
It's not admirable or useful, no. But, I find it's kind of relaxing to have a near total lack of FOMO. I've become the guy I never thought I'd become, but I'm totally comfortable with that. Is this a humblebrag? I have no idea, but it's definitely calming to not have to give a shit about all the new things.
Meh, I am +/- 2 years within the author's age, and although I grumble here and there about young people practices (latinx?? yikes) I think I have an OK understanding of popular culture, including Internet things. Come on: memes, dabbing, dubs,tik tok,fortnite dances, Pewdiepie.Most of them are silly and funny things, not the exact solution of GR for 2 neutron stars colliding.
I will admit that there are things I believe, but I am not 100% sure if they are true because of my age. For example, although I hate nostalgia, I am convinced that modern mainstream music, let's say after the 2000s is severely lacking compared to what happened in the previous 60 or so years. There always be great musicians, doing great music, but right now the current popular stuff have been homogenized and sterilized to make it pallatable worlwide.
You really are pretty mistaken on the music (I'm 35). I'm guessing you are just exposed to bad pop acts like Mylie Cyrus. Keep in mind that most popular music in the 1960's and 1970's sucked too. For every Beatles there was 10 Monkees.
There's been an incredible amount of innovation in music in the last few years (except rock. It's dead). Creation has been democratized, so there's more people making music than ever before. You just have to know where to look. I listen to KEXP Seattle [0] quite a bit, which is a community-supported station.
Hey, wait a minute! The Monkees were pretty good for what they were (mass-production pop) — at least in the early days when they were doing Boyce & Hart compositions.
There is a shedload of good music out there, but the distribution mechanism has changed. If you actively look on Spotify, you'll start to find things. That is unless it's a simple case of the music in [decade I was 13-23] was the best!
Just want to add that I'm 28 and have never figured out snapchat/stories. Personally, I'm not sure how to use them, and from other people, I find them SUPER boring.
You can touch the screen and hold to keep the picture there for longer. If it's like Instagram stories you can tap the far left side of the screen to go backwards as well.
It is interesting. Young people can consume just about anything and it still makes them... better? I guess that's the word.
One day you notice that you circle around in brownian motion. I should have started to learn more discrimination techniques years ago. It is so terribly hard to navigate the sea of interesting stuff and find the droplets that are also interesting, but that also have ability to change your mind (think LW and the likes).
That's like... the ultimate skill. If it isn't ultimately interesting, then what is?
> To me, it’s a sort of humblebrag - because I’m older than you, my opinions are more valuable.
I am getting older too, but I’m constantly learning things from people younger than me - increasingly more so than those older than me. And that’s okay.
Sure I’ve done more and seen more but how much of it is actually relevant? Some for sure, but this world changes so fast. Are my opinions valuable? Yes. More so simply because of my age? No.
I’m about a year younger than the author of the blog post and I agree with you. This is something that has been scaring me a little in the last year: getting older does not mean life as a whole gets easier. There are just more advanced things that keep you up at night. And yes, the world changes so quickly that you soon realize that you too are becoming irrelevant. What a curse to feel the optimism and specialness of youth only to see it slowly fade away.
I’m not sure that things are actually changing all that quickly. Instead, we’re just watching a pendulum swing from one extreme (control) to another extreme (freedom).
And its this repeated movement between the two extremes which are providing our incremental improvements, since we keep the good parts from each end, and use those as the foundation for what the next extreme will look like.
Programming provides an interesting microcosm of this, if you look at overall attitudes towards variable typing.
What have I learned? Nothing new; “this too shall pass” is a phrase much older than I am. But I’m able to accept it, and take advantage of the gains of the wild pendulum’s swing without being caught up in it myself.
Ageism cuts in both directions and it's one of the few forms of prejudice society still tolerates for some reason.
Imagine this guy's post if you substitute "too old" with "black" or "female" (or "male"). It would be cut down quickly and yet here we are expected to laugh at things.
What I hate about ageism most of all is it makes it impossible to have any kind of discussion about the real merits and demerits of things if there's some kind of new versus established nature to it. In certain circles, there seems to be a false, pervasive assumption that what's new and popular among the young is better, and that uptake is just inhibited by creaky old folks; in other circles there seems to be an assumption that's what's old and established among the older crowd is that way because it's superior.
The reality is that some established products are established because they are so great; and other products are great because they address limitations of existing products. But once you bring age of critics or advocates into the mix, it's all over because someone starts slyly looking at their pals over their shoulder and dismissing the discourse as due to youth or age.
I've been on both sides of this, as someone the same age as the author, and it's infuriating. There are products that my generation grew that I never adopted because of concerns, and now it's the young trendy thing to do to abandon them. There are new products that are overhyped imho because they solve problems that never really existed, but the wheel gets reinvented anyway because of the constant need for people to brand themselves as innovators. On the other hand, there are new products that finally exist that I wish everyone would take up, but don't because of old products that should have never become as popular as they did, or because of the vagaries of network effects, fads, and so on.
So this person doesn't get Facebook Stories or whatever the hell it is. Fine. Is there anything wrong with that? No. Can't we talk about that? Why does it have to become about age, even if he's doing it through self-deprecating (humblebragging?) humor?
I disagree. I think of it in terms of lives lived within a life. I'd break mine down into:
1) 0-5 Coming into self-awareness (this is like waking up while still drunk or coming down from recreational drugs, as your consciousness reassembles from wherever it was)
2) 6-11 The universe provides for you (mom and dad are god, your needs are mostly provided for and you should do what you're told)
3) 12-17 The face of humanity (you witness the very best and worst that humankind has to offer, through the trials and tribulations of junior high and high school)
4) 18-21 College (thanks I needed that)
5) 22-29 The narcissistic years (I am so miserable, why can't I say no?)
6) 30-39 The long now (how long have I been alive?)
7) 40-49 Death begins at 40 (how could I have just been born?)
8) 50-64 I should feel older (so I've heard)
9) 65+ Unknown (are you me?)
There are probably more. All I am saying is that when I hit 40, I realized that I was more than one time period removed from the young graduates just starting their careers around me. I wasn't really their brother anymore, I was their dad or weird uncle at the very least. No more getting invited to parties, no more fashion for me. Just loafers and nutritional supplements to keep me on life support until 2040 when I enter The Matrix or get reincarnated, whichever comes first.
For me it's more a case of, I was much older at 18 than I am now, so when young people don't want to hear it from their elders, that's a form of conservative or elderly behavior. It's sophomoric.
When you miss a lot of things in popular culture, you may start to become irrelevant. But I think missing a couple things is OK.
I always thought there should be some form of yearly bootcamp for nerds. Drop out of larger society for most of the year, doing your thing, then for a week each year you get indoctrinated in all of the crap everybody else is doing and thinking. That way you can stay mostly culturally-relevant without spending huge hunks of your time becoming the master of the intricate details of things like Game of Thrones. Just know the general themes, be able to tell some jokes and create metaphors and illusions.
I don't know who would run this bootcamp. I assume teenagers. Your teenage years are a time where it is very important to stay with the group, establish social ranking, be the master of conversation about various widespread cultural events. Those feelings never go away, but for many of us they die off as we get older, have families, and absorb ourselves in work we find important.
There are some very weird things about getting older. First off, you only are old on the outside. While people, especially some younger folks, may look at you as if you were an alien that just arrived from Mars, inside you're the same old kid you always was. Just the outside has changed. When presented with a new situation, you may appear to decide more slowly, but you're also thinking about a lot of different things and options you wouldn't have thought of in your youth, and you realize that unless you're driving a racecar, most times it's better to take a minute and decide and get it right than it is deciding in two seconds and getting it wrong.
You see a lot of stuff. Hopefully you learn from it!
When you miss a lot of things in popular culture, you may start to become irrelevant. But I think missing a couple things is OK. I don't want to be the same as everyone else. "If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking." -- Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
Agreed. As a 42 year old, more often than not I find myself to be the oldest person on any given team. My advice is to take advantage of it. You get a free pass to opt out of the inane pop-culture discussions. You also inherit a default "guru" status on most teams as long as you don't screw it up.
>You also inherit a default "guru" status on most teams as long as you don't screw it up.
Your entire post, seems to be describing Nathan Barley (British TV Series). It is evergreen content and a hidden gem, with a then unknown, all-star cast and co-written by Charlie Brooker of Black Mirror fame. I will not link anything, in case you decide to seek it out; you will laugh and/or cringe, at least once!
I teach. The students keep me up to to date with what's important.. Turns out, not that much and apparently a revolution is coming but they don't more than I do about that.
There are a lot of folks commenting on my post, asking why it is important. I think you understand it. You want a wide palette of cultural idioms and metaphors in order to find better ways of connecting with your students. Otherwise it doesn't matter. People learn through taking patterns they already have and extending them. That means as a teacher you need an understanding of the common patterns your students carry around.
I envy you. Must be cool to get immediate, day-to-day feedback on your work, even if it wears on a person after a while.
> You want a wide palette of cultural idioms and metaphors in order to find better ways of connecting with your students.
Some of my (law) students barely know what the TV show Seinfeld was — and one semester a couple of them, native-born Americans no less, weren't familiar with Friends.
My own now-adult daughter and her BFF were such Friends fanatics that they could tell you what episode it is just from hearing a line of dialog quoted.
The only thing I miss about being young is being physically fit. Which I could fix relatively easily, if I really cared a lot. Otherwise, it sucked. No money. Terrible job. No kids and family. No idea what I wanted. I don't feel young anymore. I feel in control of my own life.
Yes it’s a little harder but it’s SO MUCH BETTER than being unhealthy/ unfit. I’m not necessarily a natural athlete but I’ve almost always stayed in shape... until a few years ago. I was running long distance trail runs and I injured my leg. I had to cancel a few races and I slipped into a bit of a depression.
It took me a few years to get the courage and gumption up to get active again. Now that I’m older, it’s been much harder to get back in shape. And my recoveries (post- run or post-weights) take longer. But on the whole I feel so much better, all the time. My mood and my close relationships have all improved. And my work performance has improved too.
The mild discomfort has been well worth the pay off.
Take all those things that you said and then apply it to someone who never ages on the outside and that's me I will forever look like a teenager this presents some unique situations in itself let alone other teenagers thinking I talk their lingo.
I don't have to keep up on the meme-of-the-week. Next week it will be gone.
In fact, I don't have to keep up on any of it. I have some interest in (at least some of) the stuff that lasts. But the ephemeral stuff... why should I care?
Maybe I'm culturally irrelevant & just don't realize it, but IMO the banal movie star pop culture isn't significant, it's other things like the VW scandal, train delays in our town, city planning, energy planning, Tesla, e-mountain bikes, local snow trends, etc that I talk with people about. That stuff isn't just crap and it's worth paying attention to.
People think that, but it's an illusion. The appearance affects self-perception and, eventually, behavior. And, normally, you become different by getting wiser, and that's not a small thing. You talk different. You do your work differently. (On the other hand, people who try to appear younger than they are look creepy.)
"Memes" are themselves a meme. At some point - probably soon - we'll get a different non-meme meme social activity attractor, which will confuse everyone who grew up with cat videos and random images captioned with Impact.
For me, the worst thing about getting older is realising that I'm now older than the people who used to be on TV.
They seemed ancient when I was in my teens - at least 35. Some of them may even have been over 50. (!)
Back in the day (the 80's) we already had memes, but they looked like other things.
The movie Robocop came out in 1987 but the gag about "I'd Buy That For a Dollar" was indicative that meme culture was enough of a thing to be worthy of satire.
Back when SNL was in its 80's prime it seemed like every skit turned into a meme. For example the Jon Lovitz "pathological liar" skit was pretty big for a while.
It's unfortunate the NBC keeps such a tight grip on all the SNL content. Lot's of 80's cultural history is locked up like that.
> Drop out of larger society for most of the year, doing your thing, then for a week each year you get indoctrinated in all of the crap everybody else is doing and thinking.
Why do you think that getting that indoctrination is in any way whatsoever valuable? I don't watch television or listen to the radio, and don't read or watch the news. I don't miss any of it at all, and I am not in any way whatsoever harmed by it.
Most of that stuff is just distraction from the things in life that are actually important, like the people around you, or the fact that our society is explicitly designed to rob and oppress billions of people.
Getting all of that stuff out of your face and head really lets you think and focus on the things you can actually do to enrich yourself, those around you, and the world/future generations. Reject mass media and focus.
You guys are swinging way too hard the other way in this thread. Being part of a society is generally pretty cool.
Shitposting (and consuming shitposts) over the dumpster fire that was Game of Thrones was pointless, culturally relevant, and also a lot of stupid fun.
> First off, you only are old on the outside. ... most times it's better to take a minute and decide and get it right than it is deciding in two seconds and getting it wrong.
you’ve just described being old on the inside. it’s not curiosity or hunger for new things that’s makes you young, it’s acting without considering consequences. it’s not being able to draw inferences from one situation to another.
being old on the inside is desirable to the extreme. it’s called wisdom. do not knock it.
What has been very strange for me, is the main streaming of comic book culture has made much of my decades old knowledge hip and current again. But when I was reading comic books as a teenager, it wasn't culturally relevant at all to my peer group.
Same age as the author and his timeline is a lot like mine, albeit with advanced degrees I don’t have. I used to have all of those social media accounts and found that in my case I’m happier not having them. By all means try it out and see if it works for you, but you may prefer actually seeing things.
It's ironic to me that the post starts with a twitter poll, because I don't get twitter either, and I've tried. And I'm even a bit younger than the poster.
I think Twitter makes the most sense if you are involved in a fast moving community with a large presence on Twitter. I signed up for Twitter early and followed some devs but lost interest. Years later I got heavily involved in esports and found it helpful both in keeping up with the industry, friends I have made and promoting events/tournaments.
I was going to reply with exactly the same sentiment. Born in '79, have never understood the appeal of Twitter or why the news media wants it to be so important.
I use twitter (too much), rather than IG or facebook, because I prefer the emphasis on short bites of written text (mainly jokes). Ultimately, I'm still getting sucked into this infinite-scroll-timeline thing. I just don't like pictures that much, so Twitter is the poison I've picked.
Heck, I love Facebook, but I still don't understand the point of "Facebook stories". It seems to be a series of pictures that you can't control when it moves forward? Why don't you just give me a photo album, so I can look through them at my own pace?
You can stop it from moving by clicking and holding (both on the phone and laptop). The point is that it's a fast snippet of someone's time. Things you don't want someone referencing in the future.
For instance, you may want to show your friends you are in a resort and that you are in some other friends house. But you don't want people to be able to trace down your every move by looking at your profile.
It's just a duplicate of Instagram stories, which itself was a duplicate of Snapchat. Why is the interface that way? Because that's how Snapchat did it.
The basic idea is that thebcontent that is ephemeral, which lowers mental barriers to adding content. Consumers have grown weary of how standard posts on Facebook or Twitter are available eyernally for stalkers, employers, and random people to see unless you delete it explicitly. "Stories" disappear after a day.
As noted there's no reason that they had to do this exactly the same way as Snapchat. It could have any kind of interface such as a typical photo album, but part of the plan was copying Snapchat because they were popular and wouldn't sell out to Facebook. It's been very successful for Instagram and I assume they just wanted to extend the format to Facebook members who do not use Instagram.
It’s not inconceivable though that there will be another generation/location combination who will experience this (see for example how entire countries have the internet turned off for longer and longer periods).
Popular culture is always both smaller and larger than you expect. Especially in music, where particular events loom huge in the canonical history but then you realise that there can only have been a tiny number of people actually there (e.g. the famous Manchester Free Trade Hall Sex Pistols gig). But conversely it's possible to stumble across a vibrant, long-lasting, close scene of people that you've never heard of, with its own memes and legends.
But the big era of a single, national popular culture was very much a product of the TV age. The easy identification of a decade with a single music genre and clothing style is over. We're fragmented now; Game of Thrones feels big but has a narrower reach than the big pop culture movements of the mid-20th century.
Find your niche. It's OK. But don't mock the niches of others.
Is it over? Hipsters, for example, were a large, identifiable group that I would say is only just fading now. In a decade or so the 2010s will be thought of as the hipster fashion generation with full body tats, beards, etc., even though the vast majority of people didn't dress like that.
I was watching some teeny, zombie show on Netflix a few months ago that still clearly delineated teens into identifiable groups, though nerds are cool, and the group that would have been the actual nerds in times past identified themselves as just 'awkward'.
AFAIK, tribality is built into our DNA, I can't see it ever disappearing, people want to belong.
You can even point to some TV series like 'Russian Doll' that capture the fashion style and the 'essence' of this era.
When the internet took off in the late 90's, the information bandwidth allowed everyone to access "the long tail" of available culture and interests, and find their precise niche. This lasted about a minute, in generational terms. Now we're all living in the long tail. Now, the long tail is all there is. THIS is why music companies have suffered; not piracy. And news; not because of ads. Business based on scarcity and promotion are dead or dying. This is why popular culture peaked in the 80's. There will NEVER be a time where the majority of the population is caught up in the same thing, where one fashion trend or one genre of music dominates.
Except that more or less nobody in the 1990s thought that "popular culture peaked in the 80s". Most people were glad that that cursed decade was over and we could move on from its absurdities and cultural lows.
Are you sure your assessment is not just some sort of cylical 40 retrospective nostalgia?
Things everyone considered terrible in the 90s, almost universally: disco, and by association much of the 70s; 80s fashion across the board. The music and movies and such of the 80s were still regarded as OK.
Sorry, but this just seems utterly wrong, certainly for music. The 1970's gave us band after band, performer after performer who are still revered today. Who is the 1980's example of, say, Led Zeppelin? Or the Mahavishnu Orchestra?
Now, I will concede that in the 90s people did not see the 70s in this way (at least not in general) - not long enough had passed, I think. That's why I suspect that any notion of the 80s being a culturally rich decade comes from the fact that it is now 30-40 years ago, rather than just 10 as it was at the start of the 90s.
This sort of view doesn't have much to do with anyone's experience of the decade as it happened, and I think it doesn't have a lot to do with what actually happened, because in any given decade, there will always be a rich and diverse set of amazing cultural creativity. It comes mostly from time passing, and a new assessment blending with nostalgia for the culture that surrounded as we reach certain ages.
> The 1970's gave us band after band, performer after performer who are still revered today. Who is the 1980's example of, say, Led Zeppelin? Or the Mahavishnu Orchestra?
I think the hint is in the examples you're giving : the 1970s were the heyday of progressive and what is now called "classic" rock, and that particular genre seems to be your frame of reference.
Whereas for us Euro synth folks, the 70s was the age of early pioneers like Kraftwerk, Vangelis, Jean-Michel Jarre (I suppose that's where rock music was in the 50s)
And the 80s are THE golden age of synthpop explosion that put us on the map, with legends like : New Order, Yazoo, Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, Bronski Beats, Eurythmics, Jean-Michel Jarre, a-ha, Tears for Fears. Our 80s are rock music's 60s (think Beatles & Rolling Stones).
The 80s are so revered that for the past 5-10 years there's been a whole music genre ("Synthwave") dedicated to reproducing its aesthetics with a contemporary twist. It's even been preempted by mainstream pop recently with The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights" single.
Our own Led Zeppelins are 90s kids Daft Punk, Chemical Brothers, the Prodigy, Fatboy Slim.
In the 2000s, we took over for good and mostly killed any remnants of rock music's mindshare in Europe, and the US followed in the 2010s with the "EDM" mainstream pop flavor of our stuff.
In other words, it's all a matter of which bubble you're living in !
I was a Euro-synth person. I never liked classic rock (which to my chagrin I am (re)discovering in my 50s and thinking that the best of it is really pretty amazing).
It's true that the 80's "gave us" synthpop, and although I'm aware of the new level of reverence for some of it, I don't detect the more critical younger minds regarding it with the same level of awe that is now accorded to what happened to rock in the 1970s. My sense is that people like the sound, find it sort of fun-nostalgic, and are recreating it. Nobody views any of the bands you mentioned (I have the first singles by all of them, by the way, on vinyl) as truly ground breaking.
I could be wrong.
Personally, I went from Euro-synth stuff into ECM, improvised music, indian classical, progressive house and downtempo :)
Of course, the music of the 70s was much stronger than the 80s so far as rock and related genres go. There’s a big ol’ lull in high-quality recordings until the tail end of the decade. Very noticeable. But if you mentioned 70s culture during the 90s people’d reliably go “ugh disco what were they thinking?”
The everyone-knows-the-same-stuff thing was every bit as strong in the 90s as the 80s. Remember, the Internet was just mostly-text message boards and low-media websites until the very end of that decade, and most people, even in the US, didn’t use the Web much until the 2000s.
> Find your niche. It's OK. But don't mock the niches of others.
I couldn't agree more and wish people would approach niches of others with curiosity rather than derision. I'm sure plenty of us on the coasts of the U.S. look at something like auto racing and say "No that's not a thing, who cares about people driving cars around in a circle. And burning all that fuel is bad for the environment, so feh."
Well 250,000 people show up to the Indy 500 so yes, it actually is a thing, and a thing that a lot of people are very passionate about.
The "decade with a single music genre" is much more a US thing than (say) a UK thing. The popular music scene in the UK since the 1950s at least was always divided into different genres and subcultures, many of them substantial in size and frequently with only a plurality for the largest. But I'm not even sure that the US really matches this description either. It's mostly a fiction created by mass media rather than reflecting the situation on the ground.
I was around when two "major" popular music "moments" happened (punk in London in the 1970s, and grunge in Seattle in the 1990s). It has always been striking to me just how few people were involved in these subcultures, and how hidden they were until one day they weren't. Punks in London in 1977 were a tiny, wierd, shunned group that got a lot of attention. Grunge fans in Seattle in the early 1990s had a handful of venues and a lot of people wondering why these people were wearing second hand plaid shirts.
It's even true of the hippies/counterculture at the end of 1960s/1970s. There were always far more "squares" among their generational cohort than there ever were members of that "group", which is why I get irritated with people who think that "hippies grew up and went to wall street". Not really. Maybe a few, but wall st. got populated in the 1980s by people who never were and never would have been hippies - which is to say, most of the population.
> a lot of people wondering why these people were wearing second hand plaid shirts.
When grunge spread outside of Seattle, yes. I was in New Orleans in the 90s when grunge got big and seeing people in 90°F wearing flannel was definitely odd. But in Seattle, plaid flannel has always been a thing and continues to be for entirely logical reasons: it's fucking cold and flannel is cozy and warm.
You're absolutely right that at any point in time there has never been a single monolithic popular culture. Even the 60s had Burt Bacharach, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys, and Otis Redding. It does feel to me that the transition to streaming means the genres have splintered into finer and finer subdivisions with people less and less aware of what's outside of their own personal recommendation bubble.
If you listened to new wave exclusively in the 80s, you still knew about hair metal. You'd hear snatches of it as you scanned the radio. But, today, I literally have no idea what other people are listening to and I'm fairly certain no one around me knows about all the weird niche stuff I listen to all day.
Seattle is rarely "fucking cold". It is damp in the winter, but trust me, in 1991 (say), very few people were wearing flannel (plaid or otherwise) as a main clothing choice. Fleece: check. Goretex (or equivalent): check. Flannel: bed sheets!
It can be a funny experience coming late to pivotal work of popular culture, I somehow managed to miss out on Blade Runner until quite recently, and watching it felt like a putting a missing jigsaw piece into place.
Another one I came late to was Anchorman. Suddenly a lifetime's worth of people's odd remarks and affected mannerisms fell into their proper place.
One of the things i like about listening to old jazz etc records is that sometimes, you suddenly hear a moment you've heard a thousand times in a hundred hip-hop records, and now you know where that came from.
This is getting a bit worse, I think, but it's always been that way.
Go further back than your ancient 2004 Anchorman references and you'll get Blade Runner, Star Wars, Princess Bride, etc.
One step further and you'll get 2001 (Thus Spoke Zarathustra / Blue Danube / Hal quotes), Citizen Kane ("Rosebud"), Gone with The Wind ("Frankly My Dear...") etc.
Sometime after that you'll get people quoting from Shakespeare without seeing the plays (still happens, of course), and soon we'll end at Bible quotes (naturally, as practically no one could even read it), or Roman authors. And I bet someone can point me at writings by those exact Romans where they complain about the youths not being up to par with Plato.
I rarely feel odd about a lack of knowledge, as there's just too much to know. Also, you've got the two issues where this is a) just used for meaningless gatekeeping anyway or b) a "cargo cult" meme already.
The latter will get more and more common: Quotes and references, where the reference binds you together, not the shared knowledge of the original source.
That's not specifically about the young not knowing their cultural references anymore, though. People complaining about their offspring in general is as old as time. Although, ironically, a surprising amount of quotes about that aren't sourced properly or dubious in general.
> The latter will get more and more common: Quotes and references, where the reference binds you together, not the shared knowledge of the original source.
This opens up the possibility of altering the meaning of the reference. As long as you refer to the original, errors in the reference can be detected by others who also know the reference. They can then point out the error and you can discuss it, or directly check the original source.
Hence, since an objective original source exists, it is always possible to recalibrate your references via feedback from reality.
So one step of increasing distance from reality may be two people exchanging Shakespeare quotes, who have both not actually read the play it is from, but who still know that it is from a Shakespeare play, and could look up the original source if they cared. In other words, they know of the existence of the original source.
Another, further step away from reality would be if those people also lacked the knowledge of the original source (e.g. the Shakespeare play it is from), or even worse, who do not know (or even ask themselves whether) there is an original source. They then take the reference as idiomatic, leaving wide open the possibility of others to attach arbitrary meaning to that reference, without an easy possibility to defend against such distortions of meaning.
Another interesting point is that if you know a reference from an original source, you most likely have additional relevant knowledge and context for its interpretation. Whereas if you have only "learned" the reference from others, detached from the context needed for correct interpretation, you risk misinterpreting the reference, basically mutating its meaning.
Sorry for going on a tangent here, but I couldn't resist this opportunity to apply some ideas from [0].
I thought the article was a pop culture reference to the Bladerunner film, specifically, the "Tears in the Rain" speech:
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."
In case anyone is interested in old computer stuff, I made vintagesimulator.com
But on the topic, I'm 42 and fully expect to see even more dramatic changes in my lifetime. Including a Martian manned base, high bandwidth brain computer interfaces (Neuralink), widely deployed self-driving cars, AGI and the beginning of the post-human era.
I'm from same age group and region as this guy but started computers some 15 years after him.
When I've started Uni I had no idea what a mouse is and no concept of files or folders. Today I have no idea what Instagram is and use no social media outside HN.
> "I still don't have any idea what Instagram or Facebook stories is."
Since the author is familiar with Twitter, one can imagine it like a tweet that self-deletes after 24h, except with Facebook's and Instagram's version of a "tweet", i.e. post.
Core concept is to get people to return to the platform (daily) because of FOMO.
Calling it "stories" is quite misleading actually, one (or at least I) would expect a story to be rather something permanent compared to a post, but it's exactly the other way around.
My friend in his 20s said to me 'You are old, but useful', and I responded with a gee thanks. At this point he realized I misheard him, and claims he said 'You are old, but youthful'. Anyway, it's now a joke between us and perhaps it is the best we can do:
Old, but youthful and by intention or accident - useful.
What do you mean it has zero value? It's probably the most pure form of self expression available on social media because it's free of consequences (in theory at least).
And the "return to the platform daily" thing is overstated - that's like saying a chat program makes people return to it regularly by delivering messages. It's technically right but shows a complete misunderstanding of how and why it's used.
For me to understand Instagram stories, it's important to kinda understand the Instagram culture. Normal posts (not stories) are pretty "high-effort" (in terms of shooting and editing) and are posted not so often, maybe every two days at max for your average teen. This left a gap for short-lived stuff (I'm currently eating in this 5* restaurant, I'm currently hiking, I'm on this "cool" party etc.) you wanted to share to a large group of your "friends" (so DM like whatsapp is not a real option because it feels attention-whoring to write it to everyone).
This was mostly filled by Snapchat stories, where you could share exactly that without having to fear to spam people because it's time-limited, everyone does it and it's a very casual format. This feature was basically copied by instagram and is a success for the same reasons, expect nobody uses snapchat stories anymore.
Source: I have young siblings and I kinda use that stuff as well, although not that much.
I get this. My problem seems to be one level deeper. I do not want to share my current plate or the hiking track I'm on. Neither am I interested in this kind of news of my friends. I'm ok with the youngsters doing that for fun.
But where is the serious conversation gone? Did we share our latest meal in the forums back then? No. Where do the young people get their information when they are serious about sth?
I'm not sure what you mean with serious in this context? Do you mean invested?
I'm not really into sharing this info either, but I find it refreshing to see what my friends far away are currently doing and often use it as a possibility to connect with them.
What is this "the young people" thing you are talking about? I've got a bunch of friends around my age (40+) who use stories heavily.
Serious conversation happens on FB or here or Reddit.
If you seriously think this is bad or something, then think of it as roughly analogous to the old finger command, where we'd all put random status things and ASCII art in our .plan files.
Stories is pretty much this feature, just done much better.
it's a story because you are encouraged to post several in a row that tell a story of your day. You can tell stories IRL without writing them down so why would something need to be in a durable medium to be a story?
core concept is to give people a way to share something that doesn't have to be a perfect, a picture of cheetos or a license plate rather than a wedding or Yosemite, because it won't stick around on your profile forever. This is a good thing because otherwise what you see on there can make it seem like everyone else is having a much more exciting life than you (as you sit on the couch after work) and causes depression.
Why is unbridled cynicism towards sm so prevalent here?
> Why is unbridled cynicism towards sm so prevalent here?
I open Facebook. I click on someone's story. I see a static image and try to read it, but it disappears after a few seconds. Often it's promoting an event, so I'd like to click for more info. But I can't. Sometimes it's a short video but I can't stop it or easily replay it. So my reaction is the same as it is when I encounter a website that shows an auto-playing slideshow that I can't stop. "This is stupid." And I hit the back button and don't return. Now I see FB stories as merely a thing to ignore that takes up 30% of my screen real estate when I visit FB.
This is written by someone who doesn't seem to like the feature, and doesn't really get it.
As I said elsewhere in this thread: the "return to the platform daily" thing is overstated - that's like saying a chat program makes people return to it regularly by delivering messages. It's technically right but shows a complete misunderstanding of how and why it's used.
I'm right in that age category and use both Reddit and HN. I would say your guess is right that most people my age use Reddit as their Slashdot. Both provide good insights but I feel the discussion is usually more useful in HN, although this depends on the subreddit.
Generally I go on reddit when I'm looking for a quick distraction and HN is for when I'm looking to read things a bit more deeply.
I don't think it necessarily has an aging demographic.
When I was in college, the information on Reddit related to programming and computers was relevant. As I've gained experience, the information on Reddit has gradually become less and less useful. To the point that I don't even bother following tech-related subreddits anymore.
I'm 26 and I can't for the life of me understand the appeal of tiktok, my girlfriend who's a few years younger than me likes it, we'll be sitting on the couch and she'll be watching videos and I just don't get it. On the flip side, she doesn't really like reddit which a site I use almost daily - to each their own I guess.
Tiktok is the first app or piece of technology or whatever you want to call it that made me feel "old", up until now I've been able to pick up on new trends and things that are popular with ease, I used Facebook early on, Instagram when it became popular and snapchat too but tiktok just didn't stick. I guess it's a small sign of things to come as I get older.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 295 ms ] threadMy father was a programmer. Back then he was using punch cards (when I was a few years old), then tapes, then he got a 60MB hard drive the size of a washing machine which took one minute to spin up. A full drawer in the rack contained 256K ram. A 2400 baud modem was the size of a PC grey box.
And learned Z80 assembler (only way to have some (relative) speed with it)
(and yes you had to actually solder components to get the thingy be able to run a sort of pong in 1 KB).
The thing that remained stuck in my memory (common to all Sinclair users) is the sound of the cassette loading and (many years later) that of modems trying to connect to this or that BBS.
Also be prepared to get into it nevertheless, Twitter will introduce a similar feat called "fleets" soon.
And from what I understand, the period where you need to be in constant contact or broadcast to more than 10 people is pretty limited to school and early higher ed for most people in my experience.
So unless stories become a way to keep in touch with your offsprings, I don't see a need or near normalness of these communication methods among people born before '85.
WhatsApp is for chats; they're not fleeting. Phone calls are fairly inconvenient to take and incomparable with "true" fleeting messages.
Just to nitpick a little, the millennial generation starts with 1980-1982 depending on who you ask, so 1976 isn't that old.
Imagine we were making the same kind of generalisations about your gender, skin colour, choice of programming language - what would it add to the conversation? We may as well say “Scorpios like partying where sagitarians prefer reading books”
To dehumanise those they're applied to so you can say bad things about them without feeling guilty.
I'll take my generation vs gen Z as an example. I clearly remember 9/11, blowing NES cartridges to get my games to work, rewinding video tapes, making phone calls to friends on a shared line using a corded phone, having to listen to a radio station for 3 hours to hear the one song I liked and then rush to hit record so I could save it for replay, and on and on. I cannot share these experiences with gen Z. They won't ever have that. I can talk about it but it's just like a Boomer telling me about going to Woodstock or making 10 cents an hour bagging groceries, or dodging minefields in Vietnam, or using punch cards to program. Sure I can hear those stories and be amused, shocked or whatever by them...but I'll never know precisely what it was like to go through all that, with the mood of the time.
The author of this article was born the year the Apple I was launched he's not old!
The second rule is whatever, man.
80s millenials (personally I call them Gen Y or Michael Moore Millenials) came of age in the 90s, could remember the Soviet Union (if only hazily), experienced its unique cultural excesses on a more conscious level, and directly shaped the technology that would later form the digital substrate of new millenium.
They participated in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from their onset, and were also old enough to viscerally experience 9/11.
Their generation helped develop activist-consumerism when it was still counter-culture, tend to embrace the idea of a more global society, and came of college age just as the internet began to gain ubiquity. Even though they had to directly weather the financial crisis, they seem to have a more optimistic view of the future, and human potential in general, even if they often see progress as being stymied by bad people.
The second group, (90s millenials or just millenials) have no collective memory of the Soviet Union, and entered the world as consumers of the digital transition, even if they were too old to truly be considered digital natives as their successors in Gen Z are. By the tine they were of age to join the military, the US had been at war for nearly a decade, and no one was quite sure why it still continued. The economy took a dive, and they were too young to experience it the same way as Gen Y did.
Their early experiences of the internet were when it was still heavily decentralized, but had also become accessible to the technically illiterate. They were culture producers more than they were developers in the oughties, and they grew up alongside surveillance capitalism. Their view of the world is a bit more mixed, and they're also who the author is referring to, I think.
I count myself among the latter group, if that offers some context to my perception.
Splitting older millenials with gen X, and younger millenials with gen Z makes sense, because instead of an arbitrary characteristics like "being 20 in the new century", this splits seem to better match some cultural changes that are not perfectly aligned with round dates.
From a European perspective, Boomers saw the first step on the Moon and May 68 events, their children ("Gen X") saw Chernobyl, the end of the Cold War and grew up with the Oil crisis and the constant warnings that pollution is going to be a serious problem if we don't do something (or rather, if we don't stop doing certain things). Their children ("Millenials") saw the second Gulf War and the collapse of the WTC.
There are infinite things I don’t understand, some because I’m too young, some too old, but mostly just because I haven’t yet gone down that path in life. For what it’s worth, I was born in 1982.
I assure you, it isn't. I mean, I'm sure it's uninteresting, but it isn't intended to be a humblebrag. I practically cheered when the OP indicated that they don't understand "stories" because I legitimately don't, but I also have this realization that the reason I don't understand stories is that I'm just kind of inflexible and grumpy about new things at times. That's not admirable. That's not useful. But it's the truth. I truly don't understand why some pictures are shown at the very tippy top of my facebook feed, but I only get to look at them for 10 seconds. Is there a reason for this? Does someone find it beneficial? Do the kids laugh at me for even stopping to think about it? (Yes. Yes they do.) This is not a badge of honor.
It's not admirable or useful, no. But, I find it's kind of relaxing to have a near total lack of FOMO. I've become the guy I never thought I'd become, but I'm totally comfortable with that. Is this a humblebrag? I have no idea, but it's definitely calming to not have to give a shit about all the new things.
I'm 47 (1972) so relate a lot to this guy.
https://tinyapps.org/blog/200702250700_why_in_my_day.html
... kids today ...
I will admit that there are things I believe, but I am not 100% sure if they are true because of my age. For example, although I hate nostalgia, I am convinced that modern mainstream music, let's say after the 2000s is severely lacking compared to what happened in the previous 60 or so years. There always be great musicians, doing great music, but right now the current popular stuff have been homogenized and sterilized to make it pallatable worlwide.
There's been an incredible amount of innovation in music in the last few years (except rock. It's dead). Creation has been democratized, so there's more people making music than ever before. You just have to know where to look. I listen to KEXP Seattle [0] quite a bit, which is a community-supported station.
[0] https://www.kexp.org/
Hey, wait a minute! The Monkees were pretty good for what they were (mass-production pop) — at least in the early days when they were doing Boyce & Hart compositions.
You can touch the screen and hold to keep the picture there for longer. If it's like Instagram stories you can tap the far left side of the screen to go backwards as well.
One day you notice that you circle around in brownian motion. I should have started to learn more discrimination techniques years ago. It is so terribly hard to navigate the sea of interesting stuff and find the droplets that are also interesting, but that also have ability to change your mind (think LW and the likes).
That's like... the ultimate skill. If it isn't ultimately interesting, then what is?
I am getting older too, but I’m constantly learning things from people younger than me - increasingly more so than those older than me. And that’s okay.
Sure I’ve done more and seen more but how much of it is actually relevant? Some for sure, but this world changes so fast. Are my opinions valuable? Yes. More so simply because of my age? No.
And its this repeated movement between the two extremes which are providing our incremental improvements, since we keep the good parts from each end, and use those as the foundation for what the next extreme will look like.
Programming provides an interesting microcosm of this, if you look at overall attitudes towards variable typing.
What have I learned? Nothing new; “this too shall pass” is a phrase much older than I am. But I’m able to accept it, and take advantage of the gains of the wild pendulum’s swing without being caught up in it myself.
Imagine this guy's post if you substitute "too old" with "black" or "female" (or "male"). It would be cut down quickly and yet here we are expected to laugh at things.
What I hate about ageism most of all is it makes it impossible to have any kind of discussion about the real merits and demerits of things if there's some kind of new versus established nature to it. In certain circles, there seems to be a false, pervasive assumption that what's new and popular among the young is better, and that uptake is just inhibited by creaky old folks; in other circles there seems to be an assumption that's what's old and established among the older crowd is that way because it's superior.
The reality is that some established products are established because they are so great; and other products are great because they address limitations of existing products. But once you bring age of critics or advocates into the mix, it's all over because someone starts slyly looking at their pals over their shoulder and dismissing the discourse as due to youth or age.
I've been on both sides of this, as someone the same age as the author, and it's infuriating. There are products that my generation grew that I never adopted because of concerns, and now it's the young trendy thing to do to abandon them. There are new products that are overhyped imho because they solve problems that never really existed, but the wheel gets reinvented anyway because of the constant need for people to brand themselves as innovators. On the other hand, there are new products that finally exist that I wish everyone would take up, but don't because of old products that should have never become as popular as they did, or because of the vagaries of network effects, fads, and so on.
So this person doesn't get Facebook Stories or whatever the hell it is. Fine. Is there anything wrong with that? No. Can't we talk about that? Why does it have to become about age, even if he's doing it through self-deprecating (humblebragging?) humor?
1) 0-5 Coming into self-awareness (this is like waking up while still drunk or coming down from recreational drugs, as your consciousness reassembles from wherever it was)
2) 6-11 The universe provides for you (mom and dad are god, your needs are mostly provided for and you should do what you're told)
3) 12-17 The face of humanity (you witness the very best and worst that humankind has to offer, through the trials and tribulations of junior high and high school)
4) 18-21 College (thanks I needed that)
5) 22-29 The narcissistic years (I am so miserable, why can't I say no?)
6) 30-39 The long now (how long have I been alive?)
7) 40-49 Death begins at 40 (how could I have just been born?)
8) 50-64 I should feel older (so I've heard)
9) 65+ Unknown (are you me?)
There are probably more. All I am saying is that when I hit 40, I realized that I was more than one time period removed from the young graduates just starting their careers around me. I wasn't really their brother anymore, I was their dad or weird uncle at the very least. No more getting invited to parties, no more fashion for me. Just loafers and nutritional supplements to keep me on life support until 2040 when I enter The Matrix or get reincarnated, whichever comes first.
For me it's more a case of, I was much older at 18 than I am now, so when young people don't want to hear it from their elders, that's a form of conservative or elderly behavior. It's sophomoric.
I always thought there should be some form of yearly bootcamp for nerds. Drop out of larger society for most of the year, doing your thing, then for a week each year you get indoctrinated in all of the crap everybody else is doing and thinking. That way you can stay mostly culturally-relevant without spending huge hunks of your time becoming the master of the intricate details of things like Game of Thrones. Just know the general themes, be able to tell some jokes and create metaphors and illusions.
I don't know who would run this bootcamp. I assume teenagers. Your teenage years are a time where it is very important to stay with the group, establish social ranking, be the master of conversation about various widespread cultural events. Those feelings never go away, but for many of us they die off as we get older, have families, and absorb ourselves in work we find important.
There are some very weird things about getting older. First off, you only are old on the outside. While people, especially some younger folks, may look at you as if you were an alien that just arrived from Mars, inside you're the same old kid you always was. Just the outside has changed. When presented with a new situation, you may appear to decide more slowly, but you're also thinking about a lot of different things and options you wouldn't have thought of in your youth, and you realize that unless you're driving a racecar, most times it's better to take a minute and decide and get it right than it is deciding in two seconds and getting it wrong.
You see a lot of stuff. Hopefully you learn from it!
Did you see that ludicrous display last night?
Maybe it should be included in the bootcamp!
Overall though, I really like what Arteta is doing with the club.
Unfortunately, it requires selflessness to submerge oneself in the mainstream in order to write such things. AI perhaps?
Boot camp for nerds? Christ
What for? Good thing about being un-junior is that you can ignore the relevance score and be your regular yourself at all times.
Your entire post, seems to be describing Nathan Barley (British TV Series). It is evergreen content and a hidden gem, with a then unknown, all-star cast and co-written by Charlie Brooker of Black Mirror fame. I will not link anything, in case you decide to seek it out; you will laugh and/or cringe, at least once!
I envy you. Must be cool to get immediate, day-to-day feedback on your work, even if it wears on a person after a while.
Some of my (law) students barely know what the TV show Seinfeld was — and one semester a couple of them, native-born Americans no less, weren't familiar with Friends.
The only thing I miss about being young is being physically fit. Which I could fix relatively easily, if I really cared a lot. Otherwise, it sucked. No money. Terrible job. No kids and family. No idea what I wanted. I don't feel young anymore. I feel in control of my own life.
Basically, you're going to need to care a whole lot more as time passes if you really do want to get fit, so better to start now!
It took me a few years to get the courage and gumption up to get active again. Now that I’m older, it’s been much harder to get back in shape. And my recoveries (post- run or post-weights) take longer. But on the whole I feel so much better, all the time. My mood and my close relationships have all improved. And my work performance has improved too.
The mild discomfort has been well worth the pay off.
In fact, I don't have to keep up on any of it. I have some interest in (at least some of) the stuff that lasts. But the ephemeral stuff... why should I care?
People think that, but it's an illusion. The appearance affects self-perception and, eventually, behavior. And, normally, you become different by getting wiser, and that's not a small thing. You talk different. You do your work differently. (On the other hand, people who try to appear younger than they are look creepy.)
For me, the worst thing about getting older is realising that I'm now older than the people who used to be on TV.
They seemed ancient when I was in my teens - at least 35. Some of them may even have been over 50. (!)
The movie Robocop came out in 1987 but the gag about "I'd Buy That For a Dollar" was indicative that meme culture was enough of a thing to be worthy of satire.
Back when SNL was in its 80's prime it seemed like every skit turned into a meme. For example the Jon Lovitz "pathological liar" skit was pretty big for a while.
It's unfortunate the NBC keeps such a tight grip on all the SNL content. Lot's of 80's cultural history is locked up like that.
Why do you think that getting that indoctrination is in any way whatsoever valuable? I don't watch television or listen to the radio, and don't read or watch the news. I don't miss any of it at all, and I am not in any way whatsoever harmed by it.
Most of that stuff is just distraction from the things in life that are actually important, like the people around you, or the fact that our society is explicitly designed to rob and oppress billions of people.
Getting all of that stuff out of your face and head really lets you think and focus on the things you can actually do to enrich yourself, those around you, and the world/future generations. Reject mass media and focus.
Shitposting (and consuming shitposts) over the dumpster fire that was Game of Thrones was pointless, culturally relevant, and also a lot of stupid fun.
you’ve just described being old on the inside. it’s not curiosity or hunger for new things that’s makes you young, it’s acting without considering consequences. it’s not being able to draw inferences from one situation to another.
being old on the inside is desirable to the extreme. it’s called wisdom. do not knock it.
It's billed as a way to be able to contact famous people.
Especially compared to the hyperpartisan uberpolarized shit-tier level insults that people try to hurl at "them".
For instance, you may want to show your friends you are in a resort and that you are in some other friends house. But you don't want people to be able to trace down your every move by looking at your profile.
The basic idea is that thebcontent that is ephemeral, which lowers mental barriers to adding content. Consumers have grown weary of how standard posts on Facebook or Twitter are available eyernally for stalkers, employers, and random people to see unless you delete it explicitly. "Stories" disappear after a day.
As noted there's no reason that they had to do this exactly the same way as Snapchat. It could have any kind of interface such as a typical photo album, but part of the plan was copying Snapchat because they were popular and wouldn't sell out to Facebook. It's been very successful for Instagram and I assume they just wanted to extend the format to Facebook members who do not use Instagram.
But the big era of a single, national popular culture was very much a product of the TV age. The easy identification of a decade with a single music genre and clothing style is over. We're fragmented now; Game of Thrones feels big but has a narrower reach than the big pop culture movements of the mid-20th century.
Find your niche. It's OK. But don't mock the niches of others.
I was watching some teeny, zombie show on Netflix a few months ago that still clearly delineated teens into identifiable groups, though nerds are cool, and the group that would have been the actual nerds in times past identified themselves as just 'awkward'.
AFAIK, tribality is built into our DNA, I can't see it ever disappearing, people want to belong.
You can even point to some TV series like 'Russian Doll' that capture the fashion style and the 'essence' of this era.
Are you sure your assessment is not just some sort of cylical 40 retrospective nostalgia?
Now, I will concede that in the 90s people did not see the 70s in this way (at least not in general) - not long enough had passed, I think. That's why I suspect that any notion of the 80s being a culturally rich decade comes from the fact that it is now 30-40 years ago, rather than just 10 as it was at the start of the 90s.
This sort of view doesn't have much to do with anyone's experience of the decade as it happened, and I think it doesn't have a lot to do with what actually happened, because in any given decade, there will always be a rich and diverse set of amazing cultural creativity. It comes mostly from time passing, and a new assessment blending with nostalgia for the culture that surrounded as we reach certain ages.
I think the hint is in the examples you're giving : the 1970s were the heyday of progressive and what is now called "classic" rock, and that particular genre seems to be your frame of reference.
Whereas for us Euro synth folks, the 70s was the age of early pioneers like Kraftwerk, Vangelis, Jean-Michel Jarre (I suppose that's where rock music was in the 50s)
And the 80s are THE golden age of synthpop explosion that put us on the map, with legends like : New Order, Yazoo, Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, Bronski Beats, Eurythmics, Jean-Michel Jarre, a-ha, Tears for Fears. Our 80s are rock music's 60s (think Beatles & Rolling Stones).
The 80s are so revered that for the past 5-10 years there's been a whole music genre ("Synthwave") dedicated to reproducing its aesthetics with a contemporary twist. It's even been preempted by mainstream pop recently with The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights" single.
Our own Led Zeppelins are 90s kids Daft Punk, Chemical Brothers, the Prodigy, Fatboy Slim.
In the 2000s, we took over for good and mostly killed any remnants of rock music's mindshare in Europe, and the US followed in the 2010s with the "EDM" mainstream pop flavor of our stuff.
In other words, it's all a matter of which bubble you're living in !
It's true that the 80's "gave us" synthpop, and although I'm aware of the new level of reverence for some of it, I don't detect the more critical younger minds regarding it with the same level of awe that is now accorded to what happened to rock in the 1970s. My sense is that people like the sound, find it sort of fun-nostalgic, and are recreating it. Nobody views any of the bands you mentioned (I have the first singles by all of them, by the way, on vinyl) as truly ground breaking.
I could be wrong.
Personally, I went from Euro-synth stuff into ECM, improvised music, indian classical, progressive house and downtempo :)
I couldn't agree more and wish people would approach niches of others with curiosity rather than derision. I'm sure plenty of us on the coasts of the U.S. look at something like auto racing and say "No that's not a thing, who cares about people driving cars around in a circle. And burning all that fuel is bad for the environment, so feh."
Well 250,000 people show up to the Indy 500 so yes, it actually is a thing, and a thing that a lot of people are very passionate about.
I was around when two "major" popular music "moments" happened (punk in London in the 1970s, and grunge in Seattle in the 1990s). It has always been striking to me just how few people were involved in these subcultures, and how hidden they were until one day they weren't. Punks in London in 1977 were a tiny, wierd, shunned group that got a lot of attention. Grunge fans in Seattle in the early 1990s had a handful of venues and a lot of people wondering why these people were wearing second hand plaid shirts.
It's even true of the hippies/counterculture at the end of 1960s/1970s. There were always far more "squares" among their generational cohort than there ever were members of that "group", which is why I get irritated with people who think that "hippies grew up and went to wall street". Not really. Maybe a few, but wall st. got populated in the 1980s by people who never were and never would have been hippies - which is to say, most of the population.
When grunge spread outside of Seattle, yes. I was in New Orleans in the 90s when grunge got big and seeing people in 90°F wearing flannel was definitely odd. But in Seattle, plaid flannel has always been a thing and continues to be for entirely logical reasons: it's fucking cold and flannel is cozy and warm.
You're absolutely right that at any point in time there has never been a single monolithic popular culture. Even the 60s had Burt Bacharach, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys, and Otis Redding. It does feel to me that the transition to streaming means the genres have splintered into finer and finer subdivisions with people less and less aware of what's outside of their own personal recommendation bubble.
If you listened to new wave exclusively in the 80s, you still knew about hair metal. You'd hear snatches of it as you scanned the radio. But, today, I literally have no idea what other people are listening to and I'm fairly certain no one around me knows about all the weird niche stuff I listen to all day.
... for some definitions of 'music.'
It can be a funny experience coming late to pivotal work of popular culture, I somehow managed to miss out on Blade Runner until quite recently, and watching it felt like a putting a missing jigsaw piece into place.
Another one I came late to was Anchorman. Suddenly a lifetime's worth of people's odd remarks and affected mannerisms fell into their proper place.
It doesn't has to be "young peoples stuff", it's enough that you weren't interested in it decades years ago.
Go further back than your ancient 2004 Anchorman references and you'll get Blade Runner, Star Wars, Princess Bride, etc.
One step further and you'll get 2001 (Thus Spoke Zarathustra / Blue Danube / Hal quotes), Citizen Kane ("Rosebud"), Gone with The Wind ("Frankly My Dear...") etc.
Sometime after that you'll get people quoting from Shakespeare without seeing the plays (still happens, of course), and soon we'll end at Bible quotes (naturally, as practically no one could even read it), or Roman authors. And I bet someone can point me at writings by those exact Romans where they complain about the youths not being up to par with Plato.
I rarely feel odd about a lack of knowledge, as there's just too much to know. Also, you've got the two issues where this is a) just used for meaningless gatekeeping anyway or b) a "cargo cult" meme already.
The latter will get more and more common: Quotes and references, where the reference binds you together, not the shared knowledge of the original source.
Well, you asked for it.
O tempora, o mores has become a common use Latin phrase (Cicero, 63 or maybe 70 BC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_tempora_o_mores!
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
This opens up the possibility of altering the meaning of the reference. As long as you refer to the original, errors in the reference can be detected by others who also know the reference. They can then point out the error and you can discuss it, or directly check the original source.
Hence, since an objective original source exists, it is always possible to recalibrate your references via feedback from reality.
So one step of increasing distance from reality may be two people exchanging Shakespeare quotes, who have both not actually read the play it is from, but who still know that it is from a Shakespeare play, and could look up the original source if they cared. In other words, they know of the existence of the original source.
Another, further step away from reality would be if those people also lacked the knowledge of the original source (e.g. the Shakespeare play it is from), or even worse, who do not know (or even ask themselves whether) there is an original source. They then take the reference as idiomatic, leaving wide open the possibility of others to attach arbitrary meaning to that reference, without an easy possibility to defend against such distortions of meaning.
Another interesting point is that if you know a reference from an original source, you most likely have additional relevant knowledge and context for its interpretation. Whereas if you have only "learned" the reference from others, detached from the context needed for correct interpretation, you risk misinterpreting the reference, basically mutating its meaning.
Sorry for going on a tangent here, but I couldn't resist this opportunity to apply some ideas from [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."
But on the topic, I'm 42 and fully expect to see even more dramatic changes in my lifetime. Including a Martian manned base, high bandwidth brain computer interfaces (Neuralink), widely deployed self-driving cars, AGI and the beginning of the post-human era.
When I've started Uni I had no idea what a mouse is and no concept of files or folders. Today I have no idea what Instagram is and use no social media outside HN.
Am super happy and proud about how things are!
Since the author is familiar with Twitter, one can imagine it like a tweet that self-deletes after 24h, except with Facebook's and Instagram's version of a "tweet", i.e. post.
Core concept is to get people to return to the platform (daily) because of FOMO.
Calling it "stories" is quite misleading actually, one (or at least I) would expect a story to be rather something permanent compared to a post, but it's exactly the other way around.
I get why this is good for the platform. For me (1985) it seems to have zero value. I feel old more and more.
And the "return to the platform daily" thing is overstated - that's like saying a chat program makes people return to it regularly by delivering messages. It's technically right but shows a complete misunderstanding of how and why it's used.
1975. But very immature.
This was mostly filled by Snapchat stories, where you could share exactly that without having to fear to spam people because it's time-limited, everyone does it and it's a very casual format. This feature was basically copied by instagram and is a success for the same reasons, expect nobody uses snapchat stories anymore.
Source: I have young siblings and I kinda use that stuff as well, although not that much.
But where is the serious conversation gone? Did we share our latest meal in the forums back then? No. Where do the young people get their information when they are serious about sth?
I'm not really into sharing this info either, but I find it refreshing to see what my friends far away are currently doing and often use it as a possibility to connect with them.
Serious conversation happens on FB or here or Reddit.
If you seriously think this is bad or something, then think of it as roughly analogous to the old finger command, where we'd all put random status things and ASCII art in our .plan files.
Stories is pretty much this feature, just done much better.
core concept is to give people a way to share something that doesn't have to be a perfect, a picture of cheetos or a license plate rather than a wedding or Yosemite, because it won't stick around on your profile forever. This is a good thing because otherwise what you see on there can make it seem like everyone else is having a much more exciting life than you (as you sit on the couch after work) and causes depression.
Why is unbridled cynicism towards sm so prevalent here?
I open Facebook. I click on someone's story. I see a static image and try to read it, but it disappears after a few seconds. Often it's promoting an event, so I'd like to click for more info. But I can't. Sometimes it's a short video but I can't stop it or easily replay it. So my reaction is the same as it is when I encounter a website that shows an auto-playing slideshow that I can't stop. "This is stupid." And I hit the back button and don't return. Now I see FB stories as merely a thing to ignore that takes up 30% of my screen real estate when I visit FB.
You could argue it's an interpolation of the events surrounding the companies behind those platforms...
Is that how it works?
Hell, this is a whole new darkness level in abusing human behavior patterns. How far is it from an actual drug dealing?
As I said elsewhere in this thread: the "return to the platform daily" thing is overstated - that's like saying a chat program makes people return to it regularly by delivering messages. It's technically right but shows a complete misunderstanding of how and why it's used.
Got a few friends who are under 25 and work with social media everyday helps.
But yeah, some stuff I just don't like or get and I don't care. I mean, there are also young people out there who don't like tiktok or mumble rap.
Generally I go on reddit when I'm looking for a quick distraction and HN is for when I'm looking to read things a bit more deeply.
I don't think it necessarily has an aging demographic.
When I was in college, the information on Reddit related to programming and computers was relevant. As I've gained experience, the information on Reddit has gradually become less and less useful. To the point that I don't even bother following tech-related subreddits anymore.
Tiktok is the first app or piece of technology or whatever you want to call it that made me feel "old", up until now I've been able to pick up on new trends and things that are popular with ease, I used Facebook early on, Instagram when it became popular and snapchat too but tiktok just didn't stick. I guess it's a small sign of things to come as I get older.
I mean, many people don't like video games, so they probably also don't like playing Fortnite.
I liked Vine, it had funny videos. Tiktok seems to be more like IG for videos, not my cup of tea.
On the other hand, IG became more interesting when I found comic accounts, maybe that's a way I could go with tiktok, haha