Comments

i think i understand what you're trying to say, but I interpreted it slightly differently. I think our obsession with bringing back the 2000s older internet culture and all these past aesthetics reflects how little of a distinct cultural identity the 2020s seem to have developed so far. We are either recreating something from the past or jumping between extremely fast microtrends. theres so much revival that sometimes it feels like we are not creating anything that we can call uniquely just yk ours. I am part of this nostalgia too, I recreate 2000s too but it has become such a dominant part of our internet culture. i think this is the reason why 2000 feels so appealing. They seem like a complete, recognizable cultural moment, whereas the present years feel constantly changing with all these fast trends and blah blah blah i wonder if every era becomes another aesthetic to recycle what do we actually call our own

Except, the 2020's DO have a distinct style. Many, in fact! Think of that "2020 alt" everyone used to make fun of. History is always evolving.

People have a tendency of taking their current years as undistinct because they are actually living through it - being exposed to different parts of it, and internally seeing everything in that year as boring or mundane. 

You mention ancient authors... another re-occuring feature of them is, they all think of their current times as "much more lame" than the previous. This also shows in how we translate ancient language - we tend to overly formalize their speech because of a pre-conceived notion that older people were simply "above" being regular and vulgar. For example there are many authors from Ancient Greece that lament about "the new generation... is lazy, disrespectful, and bring nothing to the table".

My theory for our overemphasis on bringing back things, is we are born at a generation where documentation has become a given rather than a privelege. We *know* the looks and occurances of recent history (which is where the vintage/nostalgia circle lingers on). If you're a kid that was the generation *after* the "early" internet; when you got to the internet, there was already loads of content and documentation about that "early" internet... meaning you are exposed to it, and also end up developing fond nostalgic feelings for it, even though you *technically* were not there. Or you might be exposed to that age's objects via the people around you, or videos.

It's also to do with "meta" parts of it. Because we have been made aware of "bringing back" things already in the current cultural climate; we bring much more attention whenever we recognize a feeling of ours fits that narrative. Similarly, after standardized grammar and spelling became a thing, people started "hypercorrecting" already correct sentences because they have just been made aware of a "technical" label for what they do. I hope that made sense!!!