When do you think nostalgia goes too far?

[agent817]

Okay, so I was on the IMDB forum for "Fun Size" (Don't ask why) recently and I stumbled upon a thread talking about 90s Nickelodeon and how it was better than now and all that other stuff. I agree with some people talking about how nostalgia exists with many different generations talking about how their younger days were superior than the current days.

I will admit that I have gone through nostalgic kicks here and there. It's fun to watch your old favorite shows sometimes, same with coming across clips on YouTube to relive old memories. However, I am not one of those people who dump on today's generation. YouTube comments make my skin crawl when I read them. Regarding music, well I don't focus too much on today's music. Not because I don't like it, but mostly because I am too into what I like to even care for anything out now (Though I do sometimes check out current acts).

Again, it's nice to relive old memories, but never make it your whole life. If that happens, then the person will end up like the 90s Kid from that Ukinojoe video.

[Glitch]

I thought this was gonna be about Girl meets World.

[Bone Daddy]

I just want them to bring back Guts.

Nostalgia goes too far when it keeps you from enjoying ANYTHING new.

Also, YouTube comments from people complaining that Ke$ha isn't as talented as say, Paul McCartney might be the dumbest thing in the internet

[Koda, Master Crunchyroller]

Nostalgia goes too far when you crap on everything new and conveniently forget all the bad things from back in the day.

Case in point, video games. Yes gamers should revere the past, hell the best games from yesteryear constantly get re-released.

But do NOT go around thinking the previous eras, particularly the 8, 16, and 32-bit eras, were the epitome of hot shit. There was a faaaaaaaaaaaar bigger ratio of crap to good games back then than today. That is probably one reason we remember the good games from then so lovingly, because they were beacons of quality admits a storming sea of shit.

So yes, for all means, revere the good games from back in the day but also remember the shit games and don't hate on the newer games just because they aren't like the games from the old days.

[Deleted]

Mar 7, 2013 20:09:55 GMT -5 Bone Daddy said:

I just want them to bring back Guts.

Nostalgia goes too far when it keeps you from enjoying ANYTHING new.

Also, YouTube comments from people complaining that Ke$ha isn't as talented as say, Paul McCartney might be the dumbest thing in the internet

I hate those comments the most. Like there weren't any bad soulless crap pop music in the 60's topping charts that everyone forgot about! Half of the most popular Rolling Stones songs today weren't ever chart toppers but were made famous years later from a 70's or 80's or early 90's film about gangsters or Vietnam war

[SenorCrest]

As an active pokemon fan. I run into people who say "They should have stopped at Gen 1!" and that all the new pokemon suck and etc. There is only so much gen one (nostalgia) that you can use until it looses the magic.

[Sajoa Moe]

Mar 7, 2013 20:20:58 GMT -5 @supersweetbotch said:

Mar 7, 2013 20:09:55 GMT -5 Bone Daddy said:

I just want them to bring back Guts.

Nostalgia goes too far when it keeps you from enjoying ANYTHING new.

Also, YouTube comments from people complaining that Ke$ha isn't as talented as say, Paul McCartney might be the dumbest thing in the internet

I hate those comments the most. Like there weren't any bad soulless crap pop music in the 60's topping charts that everyone forgot about! Half of the most popular Rolling Stones songs today weren't ever chart toppers but were made famous years later from a 70's or 80's or early 90's film about gangsters or Vietnam war

I bet "Candy Girl" by The Archies would have gotten a ton of backlash.

[Glitch]

A lot of these idiots are people who are gonna eventually grow into old people who are stuck in their ways( and also yell at you for any stupid thing).

I can only take nostalgia for a while before I feel sad because I feel like I'm stuck in the past.

[Red Impact]

Mar 7, 2013 20:20:53 GMT -5 Koda, Master Crunchyroller said:

Nostalgia goes too far when you crap on everything new and conveniently forget all the bad things from back in the day.

Case in point, video games. Yes gamers should revere the past, hell the best games from yesteryear constantly get re-released.

But do NOT go around thinking the previous eras, particularly the 8, 16, and 32-bit eras, were the epitome of hot s***. There was a faaaaaaaaaaaar bigger ratio of crap to good games back then than today. That is probably one reason we remember the good games from then so lovingly, because they were beacons of quality admits a storming sea of s***.

So yes, for all means, revere the good games from back in the day but also remember the s*** games and don't hate on the newer games just because they aren't like the games from the old days.

Quoted for truth.

The difference between stuff now and stuff then is that we've had time to forget the bad stuff then, where we haven't had time to forget the bad stuff now. That doesn't mean the best stuff ever is all new, but the bad of today is still fresh while the bad of yesteryear has been buried away in time.

[Clash, Never a Meter Maid]

I enjoyed a lot of 90's Nick, but I can safely say that A:TLA blows most of its faces off.

[Koda, Master Crunchyroller]

Mar 7, 2013 20:48:56 GMT -5 Red Impact said:

Mar 7, 2013 20:20:53 GMT -5 Koda, Master Crunchyroller said:

Nostalgia goes too far when you crap on everything new and conveniently forget all the bad things from back in the day.

Case in point, video games. Yes gamers should revere the past, hell the best games from yesteryear constantly get re-released.

But do NOT go around thinking the previous eras, particularly the 8, 16, and 32-bit eras, were the epitome of hot s***. There was a faaaaaaaaaaaar bigger ratio of crap to good games back then than today. That is probably one reason we remember the good games from then so lovingly, because they were beacons of quality admits a storming sea of s***.

So yes, for all means, revere the good games from back in the day but also remember the s*** games and don't hate on the newer games just because they aren't like the games from the old days.

Quoted for truth.

The difference between stuff now and stuff then is that we've had time to forget the bad stuff then, where we haven't had time to forget the bad stuff now. That doesn't mean the best stuff ever is all new, but the bad of today is still fresh while the bad of yesteryear has been buried away in time.

Not only that, but very few of the "bad" games from now are bad on the scale of the bad old games. Unless it was made by people who don't know what the f*** they are doing, even the bad games today somewhat function as games. As bad as, say Aliens: Colonial Marines is, you can still play from start to finish, and it even has a barely competent multiplayer suite.

There were countless old games that you literally couldn't finish thanks to a bug preventing you from advancing, unless you had like a Game Genie and the game had a code to do level select or something and allow you to bypass the glitch.

[agent817]

When you look at the wrestling perspective, it's always the Attitude Era that is superior to PG, according to YT users. Even though I became a fan during that era (And believe me, it had nothing to do with its popularity rising, I just happened to start liking it before the big boom), I can very well say that the Attitude Era has NOT held up well. I even remember someone saying that 2003 was a good year for wrestling. They are only half-right, if they were talking about Smackdown, because Raw was anything but great during that year. Guaranteed that when that year was current, the same people were saying that wrestling sucked then.

[DZ: WF Legacy]

Here is my jumbled up thoughts on the matter (interesting topic, by the way).

As an admittedly nostalgic person, I find myself routinely rolling my eyes at the overly nostalgic people who can't extract themselves from their childhood/former life and see things from a new perspective.

They just can't let go. It's like a mental disorder. They seriously just cannot see things for how they are, they have to be pissy cynics about EVERYTHING...and this is coming from a guy who can be quite cynical. Sometimes, you have to just accept that certain things are not for you anymore. I don't care about Power Rangers, and haven't since I was 10. It's not for me anymore. That doesn't mean the new stuff isn't good, and it doesn't mean the stuff I loved was actually good anyhow. It was actually pretty f***ing lame, looking back on it. But that won't stop me from loving every minute of it.

There are, though, valid complaints in terms of people being high on their past. I look at mainstream music today, and I feel it's such a shame that things have gotten as low as they have. But I can't sit here on my soapbox and pretend I didn't sport a backwards red cap like Fred Durst when I was a teen. Kids like edgy dumb stuff. People market edgy dumb stuff to kids. It sells. They're just doing what they did to me to a new generation in a different way. Same thing with Beiber - while some of his diehard fans have serious problems, we grown-ups realize that as an individual, he is just another cyclical pop sensation. It will happen again. And again. And if you're still obsessed with a teen idol on YouTube comments 10 years from now, consider counseling.

The past has good and bad. People were more humble and polite, they had higher attention spans which resulting in higher quality entertainment being marketable, but the downside was the immense bigotry and ignorance towards things that challenged the status quo. Romanticizing the past doesn't erase the wrongdoings of past generations.

There are great movies, great games, and great innovations that exist both yesterday AND today. Sometimes it's harder to find these days, admittedly. The world doesn't stop evolving just because you have. Likewise, we've sort of lost our way over the years, and that shouldn't be put on the backburner, either. To quote Solid Snake at the end of MGS2: "Building the future and keeping the past alive are one and the same thing." That quote changed my life as a kid and completely opened my eyes to a new line of thinking.

Life is never going to be as fun and full of excitement as it was when we were young. It's hard to come to terms with. You can't feel the same things you felt with all the wonder and grandeur of adolescence. That's why you should try to be a good person, appreciate what you can and make things as good as they can be. If not for you, for the young upcoming generation.

["Cane Dewey" Johnson]

With respect to nostalgia, sometimes I wonder whether most things aren't really ever that great to begin with, but when compared to other things on a continuum, what wins out is more or less a matter of bell-curving.

[The OP]

Mar 7, 2013 20:40:52 GMT -5 Sajoa Moe said:

Mar 7, 2013 20:20:58 GMT -5 @supersweetbotch said:

I hate those comments the most. Like there weren't any bad soulless crap pop music in the 60's topping charts that everyone forgot about! Half of the most popular Rolling Stones songs today weren't ever chart toppers but were made famous years later from a 70's or 80's or early 90's film about gangsters or Vietnam war

I bet "Candy Girl" by The Archies would have gotten a ton of backlash.

I'm glad you brought up that example, because I actually think sometimes people are too quick to dismiss certain opinions as nostalgic. There were plenty of people who hated bubblegum music like The Archies and still hate it now. It's not like there weren't people back then who thought that stuff was crap and didn't understand why more people wouldn't rather listen to Love or Jimi Hendrix or The Who.

The real misunderstanding that happens is that people think everybody back then was listening to all that cool music when in reality a lot more people listened to stuff like Fabian and Pat Boone. The lamer it is the more popular it probably was. That's why you can't judge the quality of music by how popular it is. Sometimes a song becomes popular because it's legitimately a great song, but other times it's because it appeals to the lowest common denominator.

[celticjobber]

Or maybe alot of today's stuff really is inferior to that of decades past? Especially when it comes to music and Nickelodeon.

I mean, I'm not some elitist. I was born in the 80's, and I like a wide variety of stuff from several decades before I was born (some of my favorite TV shows are from the 1960's and 70's) and can admit that some of the things I liked as a kid are pure crap (like Small Wonder, Webster, and Alf). And there are absurdly popular 90's shows like Seinfeld or Friends that I was never a fan of to begin with.

But most of the stuff on Nickelodeon today is headache inducing garbage, IMO. Especially the obnoxious shows by Dan Schneider. Nothing compares to the classic Nicktoons like Rugrats, Doug, and Ren & Stimpy. Or even the somewhat cheesy sitcoms like Hey Dude and Salute Your Shorts.

Cartoon Network seems to have a few of the more watchable shows these days. Especially the Looney Tunes reboot, and Mad. But most of the kids I know of (my nieces and their friends) exclusively watch Nick and Disney.

As far as the music goes, sure there has always been garbage pop like Justin Bieber and Kesha out. But there were also good rock bands at the same time getting decent radio play.

Now unless you scrape the bowels of the internet, you're hard-pressed to find any good rock bands that have come along in recent years.

Rock is basically dead to the mainstream, aside from legacy acts like the Foo Fighters and bands that are more pop than rock like Train.

Rap and pop rule everything. With country also being really popular (but also just another branch of pop, in many ways).

[salsashark]

Mar 8, 2013 4:51:43 GMT -5 celticjobber said:

As far as the music goes, sure there has always been garbage pop like Justin Bieber and Kesha out. But there were also good rock bands at the same time getting decent radio play.

Now unless you scrape the bowels of the internet, you're hard-pressed to find any good rock bands that have come along in recent years.

Rock is basically dead to the mainstream, aside from legacy acts like the Foo Fighters and bands that are more pop than rock like Train.

Rap and pop rule everything. With country also being really popular (but also just another branch of pop, in many ways).

That bolded part is flat-out absurd considering there are dozens, if not hundreds, of great young rock bands out there working in all kinds of sub genres. Saying that you have to scrape the bowels of the Internet to find them is crazy. Also, what's with this continuing obsession with rock music having to get airplay in order to be thought of as worthwhile? Rock's time in the spotlight is temporarily over, so why not just accept that and move on if you can still find good new young rock bands with a bit of searching (which doesn't translate to "scraping the bowels of the Internet," BTW)?

[celticjobber]

^ It doesn't have to get airplay to be worthwhile, but it helps for those who don't want to go out searching through hundreds of random indy bands online trying to find something you like.

And in decades past, great new bands had plenty of airplay. Not just the old guard, as my local rock stations still mostly play stuff from the late 80's and 90's (from Foo Fighters to Jane's Addiction to Metallica). So that's another thing that sucks about this era.

[salsashark]

Mar 8, 2013 6:26:27 GMT -5 celticjobber said:

^ It doesn't have to get airplay to be worthwhile, but it helps for those who don't want to go out searching through hundreds of random indy bands online trying to find something you like.

And in decades past, great new bands had plenty of airplay. Not just the old guard, as my local rock stations still mostly play stuff from the late 80's and 90's (from Foo Fighters to Jane's Addiction to Metallica). So that's another thing that sucks about this era.

In the past, there were also tons of great bands who didn't get airplay and tons of bad bands who got a whole lot of airplay (for that second one, a lot of the nu-metal stuff comes to mind).

If you're a music fan of any kind, it's easy to find good bands without having to go through hundreds of choices. Pick up a magazine or go to a website that follows your taste or is in the vicinity of what you want. Last.fm offers recommendations, too, and that's a popular enough site. People on this board are a fount of info, too, as are your Facebook friends if you have a few music people on there. The resources are limitless, which is much better than a musical diet being limited to whatever handful of rock songs stations are intent on repeating during a certain period.

[Deleted]

Amazed nobody brought up TV shows, or at least talked about them in length yet. I actually got a friend of mine into Regular Show and Adventure Time for that though. He made some picture with all the 90s CN characters, then all the ones from shows currently airing (including Regular Show and Adventure Time), and had some text about how "they just don't make them like they used to" or some garbage like that. I asked him if he'd actually watched at least Regular Show. To which he said no, and I told him if he watched it and didn't like it I'd forfeit the argument but otherwise he had no clue what he was talking about. Lo and behold, he loves it now.

I just hate the idea that people that watched Dexter's Lab or Rugrats (which is nowhere near as good as people remember it to be) when they were pre-teens think they have authority in their early-mid 20s (or 30s, I've seen those cases too) to judge the product on the networks now when they've never been marketed to that audience. And they always judge it on the basis of their memories of those shows. Even if a joke or two might have an older lean to it, Dexter's Lab was never meant for anyone over 16 or so. And don't give me any crap about Rocko's Modern Life and Ren and Stimpy being exceptions. They weren't. That's why they were on at 9:00 weekday mornings.

I also can't stand when they make the "they aren't made like they used to" argument, and they have a show clearly on the wrong side. The aforementioned friend put Camp Lazlo into the "old school" section, when that show ending was pretty much directly followed by the "current day" shows. He (and many others) have overlap. They try to argue those shows in the past are so much better, while having a more current show be an exception to their argument they want to hide so badly.

Now don't hear me wrong. You're not going to hear me say the cartoons I watched as a child (the demographic of said cartoons) aren't as good as what's on now. But that's because I'm also 25 and am not the right person to be making that call. I don't expect to turn on a new show on Cartoon Network at 8:00 AM on a Saturday and think "Oh man, it's like this show knows what I like!!!"