As Gen Z,i think we can all agree that being nostalgic for a time we weren’t born in is a strong part of our culture, trends , wardrobe ecc…
Even the ability of being on here recalls to that nostalgic feeling: the time before short videos were a thing ,when the internet was controlled by the community.
Maybe u think that this strong culture of bringing back and not having a real signature style that can distinguish the 2020s is worrying, but in reality this phase is just dictated by the current sensitive political environment we are in.
Milions of writers could back this theory up but let’s start from the beginning, with Hesiod.
all the way back in Ancient Greece Hesiod was one of the first occidental authors, where he divides and describes 5 phases of The world human’s have seen:
first we have the Golden Age : the perfect one, where humans didn’t know pain and misery, where they lived happily with gods without differences besides immortality.
to Reinforce his thesis he goes up and talks about other 3 eras: the silver age, The bronze age and the Hero’s Age:
One by one all the good of their world start to disappear and with those gods too, misery starts to show.
Then it appears the worst Era of all time, the Steel era:
the one we live in,Gods are not even a far memory to us, so to feel the hole we have inside caused by a corrupted society The only gift we have is the greatness of Nostalgia for previous generations.
Hesiod definitely struck an important arrow in Old Greece society as if the Roman one,different authors got back into his Theory and tried to expand it even more.
terms as golden age,silver age and bronze age are still so important in our culture, media’s constantly remind us of this eras in one way or another,why?
PS: I hope i didn’t make any major mistakes while traducing,let me know.
Comments
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ribonuclearacid
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
i agree but at the same time i wonder even if in any of the past generations experienced it like we do
i think it coudn't be possible bc the internet wasn't owned by huge companies and made to make u insicure so much that we dont understand real human interactions, on the other hand i think that we so feel uncanny towards any negative emotions to a fascist system inside the internet ecosphere and we just completely alienate.
( plus the gov. inflates everything up to keep us ignorant about everything older... sad)
Anyway, to stay in topic i say that ilonger live in a internet that makes everything so bland and fast
more likely nothing will have emotional and historical meaning anymore
by archivi031; ; Report
MrEvren
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!!!
hi, i think u have a fair point here i kinda overlooked the 2020s style bc i think its a much more complex topic to discuss with everything happening so fast on social media its so hard to embody in some sentences what our style is :)
(maybe i could make another blog about it?)
we are so hyper aware and the worst part is that we only blame ourselves for how the internet works now but even for how we regulate our emotions and life.
"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."
^^ this is absolutely true, we don't value documentations anymore bc we are overloaded with content all the time so we decide to bring back a time when information weren't so accessible ,but on the other side of the coin, we can constantly access to that content that give us nostalgia.
its kinda of a endless circle thats why i think this coping mechanism is mostly dictated by our historical time and mental health.
did u know that "being nostalgic" was considered a mental illness back in the 19° century?
the term "nostalgia" was created in a thesis by Hofer (a med student) 300 years before the word became popular, the way their tried to cure being nostalgic has a really similar logic to what u were saying in your comment, i find that really interesting
by archivi031; ; Report