This has nothing to do with politics at all, just casual thoughts, I had to vent somewhere. Maybe it’s just me being a bit doomer or something, but my siblings, almost all of my friends and most of the people I know usually agree. You know how older people say that they miss 1980s for example, that’s basically how I view first half of 2010s for newer generation.
Everything was so much better then: internet, movies, TV shows, games, popular stuff, as for the internet, most of popular trash today was non existent including cringe ‘‘trends’’ etc, reddit wasn’t as popular and as talked about as today, there was Google+ and YouTube was best with Markiplier playing horror games being mainstream, Balkan YouTube being at it’s peak(anyone who is from countries of ex-Yugoslavia will know about what I’m talking about), Minecraft, GTA V, ARK Survival Evolved, Creepypastas, indie games, Pokemons everywhere, you name it. Movies were better and better every year (props to Cocaine Bear and few more recent movies which are actually good ofc), while today most of the movies are either boring sequels, ruining originals or terrible remakes, with newer games also doing the same thing.
It was 2017 when everything started going to shit on the internet, very early 2017 started good, but then in about mid 2017 everything changed: dramas and cringe trends started on internet, open racism on social media started becoming more frequent, people complaining about everything etc, reddit and TikTok becoming more popular, good social media getting shut down or ruined with updates, cringe games becoming popular while old ones including literal Minecraft went into irrelevancy(it came back later thankfully) etc.
And life was so much better then in general, not everyone was complaining and depressed irl, I remember every day after school going with siblings and friends on sports center across the street from school and spending whole day there. Today, it wouldn’t be even possible since almost everyone I know is depressed and very closed in, including new people I meet, everyone is basically just looking after themselves closed and not giving a shit about anyone or anything if you know what I mean. People are just becoming depressed shells more and more, what is up with that? Not so long ago before a few years, this would be unimaginable and here we are. I’m saying 2012-2016 since that was the best time imo. As I said, my siblings agree with me, most of my friends also but they just kind of don’t know why is that.
Does anyone else feel the same or similar about that time?
To me this is all a symptom of the underlying disease which is the long crisis of capitalism that started in 2008 and has been kicked into overdrive since around 2016. When the material economic base of society starts to crumble sooner or later so does the cultural superstructure, the arts included. As profit margins shrink corporations, even the pseudo-monopolies, are forced to resort to ever more scummy means of making money. At the same time the worsening material conditions also result in an increase in the toxicity and polarization of the societal discourse as people seek to blame everything but the system itself.
Of course the early 2000s should not be romanticized as they were also not a time when things were exactly going great, there is a reason why the 2008 crash happened, and going back a bit further, the 90s weren’t all that the nostalgia would have you believe either, even in the West where there was a massive infusion of cheap goods from the opening up of China, as well as the cheap energy, resources and virtually free wealth from the cannibalizing of the former Soviet Union and the almost complete opening up of much of the global south to unopposed neo-colonial plundering… there were still deep socio-economic problems that were being papered over by the general enthusiasm that came with the illusion that capitalist imperialism had won.
All of this is a product of the inherent contradictions of capitalism, particularly in its neoliberal form, culminating in inevitable crashes, each subsequent one being worse than the last and each permanently damaging the economic health of the system, leaving more and more people in a more precarious state than they were before. The general socioeconomic malaise then manifests as various cultural pathologies such as those that you describe. These are all signs of a system and a model of society in terminal decline. In places like China where there is a positive trajectory the mood is the exact opposite: a general political consensus, a flourishing culture and social harmony.
How can you compare hells that were 2000s and 1990s with early-mid 2010s tho?
The 90s in the west wasn’t the largest non wartime humanitarian disaster like it was in the Eastern bloc. A lot of westerners have nostalgia for the 90s.
It’s fucked up, that’s like missing early 1940s…
90s kid here - yeah we were pretty ignorant. I still have nostalgia for that period because it’s my youth, things were simpler then, because I didn’t understand how horrible the world was, and a lot of the culture of that time is permanently imprinted on my mind.