Shit that reminds you that you’re getting old - Re: Fwd: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fwd: Damn young’uns

[Pokemon Conquistador]

I remember when Hot Topic used to sell stripper heels and catered towards the racey or music crowds. Now it's all low quality disney slop.

I remember an old store called Ragstock that used to sell army surplus uniforms and equipment and vintage kimonos. Now it's basically Hot Topic 2.

I remember when "oldies" stations used to play songs from the 50s and 60s. I haven't heard many of these songs in years since I barely hear them on the radio at all anymore.

 

[ForgedBlades]

Subway is way more expensive than it used to be. A sandwich itself cost around twice as much as when it was $5 footlong.

And the interior decor is different: that "corporate hipster" look.

I eat a lot of fast food and I think I've only been to Subway once since the pandemic. When you can go to Jimmy John's or Potbelly and pay a buck or two more for a much better sandwich it's not really a hard decision to skip over it.

 

[Iron Father]

My son is now the age I was when he was born. It's an age-based anniversary I never considered.

 

[cactus]

I remember an old store called Ragstock that used to sell army surplus uniforms and equipment and vintage kimonos. Now it's basically Hot Topic 2.

I remember when "oldies" stations used to play songs from the 50s and 60s. I haven't heard many of these songs in years since I barely hear them on the radio at all anymore.

I'm not as old as you, so I remember when Hot Topic was the mall goth store.

Oldies stations seem to only play music from 20-40 years ago, in another 10 years, it'll probably be impossible to hear anything from the 70s and 80s on the radio, and the ones near me already barely play 70s music.

 

[Orange Rhymer]

The 'old' sitcoms like Cosby Show and A Different World.
The promises of a uniquely integrated, yet equal culture.
While a rascally band of caramel, but essentially white, nobles led us into a bright future. And everyone living in harmony.

Reality hit hard. And hits harder every year, with every riot and every violent offender on PR bond.

Nobody really believed the original messages, but Jesus. The future was a nightmare I never anticipated.

 

[ForgedBlades]

Speaking of TV shows, they fuck with my head a lot. Stuff like me watching reruns of the Brady Bunch in the 90s being equivalent to a kid watching Recess or Daria today. Shit is bananas to me.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

Every time I have to stop myself from getting upset at kids for doing the same things me, and my friends used to do when we were kids.

 

[SandyCat]

I was dumbfounded a zoomer I was talking to didn't know what a CD is. Then I realized I haven't had to use one since 2008

 

[cactus]

I was dumbfounded a zoomer I was talking to didn't know what a CD is. Then I realized I haven't had to use one since 2008

I have a niece and nephew both under 13 who know what CDs are. It's not age, it's ignorance.

 

[The Cringe Connoisseur]

I vividly remember a few years ago I was driving and turned on the radio right when the intro to Feel Good Inc started and I got hyped and it wasn't until the end of the song that I realized it was playing on a classic rock station lol. I just said "Oh" to myself and stared off into space for a minute at a stop sign. Took the wind right out of my sails. Then the other day I laughed to myself when I happened to think that in another 30 years or so there's going to be millenials in nursing homes listening to Gorillaz and R.H.C.P instead of Frank Sinatra and 60/70s pop rock. Shit is wild.

 

[cactus]

I vividly remember a few years ago I was driving and turned on the radio right when the intro to Feel Good Inc started and I got hyped and it wasn't until the end of the song that I realized it was playing on a classic rock station lol. I just said "Oh" to myself and stared off into space for a minute at a stop sign. Took the wind right out of my sails. Then the other day I laughed to myself when I happened to think that in another 30 years or so there's going to be millenials in nursing homes listening to Gorillaz and R.H.C.P instead of Frank Sinatra and 60/70s pop rock. Shit is wild.

Just imagine, eriatrics in nursing homes listening to harder music like Slipknot and Korn, Slayer even.

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

I'm convinced that a lot of retail stores are going out of business because their websites don't fucking work on mobile devices at all. The interfaces lag. The pages don't load correctly. It constantly logs you out. It never remembers the zip code you put in to find a store near you. Generally just slow as shit. How

I know an online only company that has some sort of issue with images being ballooned well past their default size on any device only to not do anything about it. Several months later, they still have the line, "We are aware about the image scaling problems," without doing anything about it. It sucks when I want to buy somethng from your site but can't navigate properly because the images are too large for their own good.

I had to mail out some business checks today.

My bank recently changed its policy for giving customers personal checks when they exhaust their supply. One used to get up to 4 boxes for free. now, they cost $30 each (I believe each box holds 100 checks) unless you're one of their "Elite" clients with over $250k in the bank and a personal banker. It's no wonder people gravitate towards online and electronic payments more now.

I remember when "oldies" stations used to play songs from the 50s and 60s. I haven't heard many of these songs in years since I barely hear them on the radio at all anymore.

The local oldies station now plays 80s music regularly and it's scary to know that's what's considered oldies music now.Stuff from the 50s is probably treated as archaic and nice as big band stuff was 20-plus years ago.

I think I've only been to Subway once since the pandemic

I've been to Subway exactly once since the pandemic. I forgot to bring my lunch with me and went there for the first time since COVID hit. The sticker shock was so much then that I never forgot my lunch again for the rest of the time I worked at that particular workplace.

Thread tax: Seeing high school classmates proudly announcing they are becoming grandparents.

 

[Spunt]

If you view the point where that show started sucking to be around the year 2000, then the show has sucked longer than it's been good.

Necro'ing this post a bit, but that is absolutely when it happened.

In the UK, the Simpsons was only available on Satellite or Cable until the mid-2000s (I remember when Satellite TV was new and having Cable was like living in Star Trek, fuck me I'm old). When I went off to university in about 1998 the Simpsons was the best show on TV and worth getting Cable for all on its own. My parents had Cable in their house so I got to see the Simpsons and the X-Files and it was fucking amazing, but being a penniless student I had to go without, and continue to for a couple of years after I graduated, living in the city where I went to University doing various temp jobs to avoid growing up.

Anyway I moved back in with my parents in about 2004 before getting a new job and girlfriend and moving out again. But in that time, I had cable again, so I was damn well going to watch the X-Files and the Simpsons, fuck yeah! The X-Files had the T-1000 instead of Mulder and was complete garbage. I didn't get to the end of the first episode. But never mind, there's always the Simpsons! I turned it on, and within the first minute I witnessed a joke that wasn't funny. It just whiffed. Complete miss. Cringe, even. For the first decade of the Simpsons' existence, I had never seen a joke fail like that. I was genuinely shocked. Then it happened again. And again. And the entire episode was like that. I don't think there was a single joke in there as good as even the lamest joke in the 1990s. It was like witnessing a beautiful woman turn into a wizened old hag in front of your eyes.

It's the kind of thing that reminds you of your own mortality, in a way. Before you hit, say, your mid-20s, you're not really aware that the world will always change and leave you behind. In fact the Simpsons' writers grasped it so well when in Homerpalooza (one of my personal top 5 episodes) Abe says "I used to be "with it", but then they changed what "it" was, and what I was with wasn't "it", and what was "it" was weird and scary to me. And it will happen to YOU." That speech was in the context of Homer not being able to understand the music Bart and Lisa liked - which was bands like Cypress Hill, Smashing Pumpkins and Sonic Youth. Sonic "Youth" are now in their 60s. The classic Pumpkins albums are now OLDER than Homer's "dinosaur bands" (Grand Funk Railroad, Jefferson Starship, the Alan Parsons Project) were when that episode was made. There are people out there who not only consider Siamese Dream to be "dinosaur music" whose OWN tastes are considered to be "dinosaur music" by Zoomers. "Hey Ya" is 15 years old.

Fuck. Abe was right. It happened to ME.

This essay brought to you with the power of Sleep Deprivation (TM)

 

[Samhain]

Before you hit, say, your mid-20s, you're not really aware that the world will always change and leave you behind.

I noticed in my late 20s, during 2011, things began to accelerate. The 24 hour news cycle kicked into overdrive, attention spans got worse, internet trends began lasting for a much shorter time, etc. New music subgenres would be born online, be popular for a couple years, then essentially die off. It became so quick and easy to hop on a trend (art, music, humor, activism, etc.) that it would quickly become oversaturated with "content" to the point where people tired of it much faster than they would have in years past.

New thing pops up, becomes popular, then everyone gets tired of it and forgets about it at lightning speed these days. I've witnessed this cycle in so many things the past 5 or so years. A new trend that, in years past, would've lasted a whole year (or even longer) now experiences its full life cycle in a few months, and sometimes even less.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

I'm not as old as you, so I remember when Hot Topic was the mall goth store.

Oldies stations seem to only play music from 20-40 years ago, in another 10 years, it'll probably be impossible to hear anything from the 70s and 80s on the radio, and the ones near me already barely play 70s music.

I knew a guy who ran music for a retirement community and he ended up getting into a big fight with management because they wanted 90s shit and dumping the 50s

 

[The Lawgiver]

My nephew loves Transformers, but I don't even recognize any of the ones he likes. At least he can send me a picture so I know what to look for when I shop for him.

This is genuinely interesting given transformers hasn't changed their core characters in fucking forever with the only exception to recognizability being some of the bay movie designs. Unless the characters he's looking for are the marvel/dreamwave/idw comic only guys they started making figures of long after those comics ended (or you don't know about beast wars guys) most of the designs should be pretty recognizable.

I noticed in my late 20s, during 2011, things began to accelerate. The 24 hour news cycle kicked into overdrive, attention spans got worse, internet trends began lasting for a much shorter time, etc. New music subgenres would be born online, be popular for a couple years, then essentially die off. It became so quick and easy to hop on a trend (art, music, humor, activism, etc.) that it would quickly become oversaturated with "content" to the point where people tired of it much faster than they would have in years past.

New thing pops up, becomes popular, then everyone gets tired of it and forgets about it at lightning speed these days. I've witnessed this cycle in so many things the past 5 or so years. A new trend that, in years past, would've lasted a whole year (or even longer) now experiences its full life cycle in a few months, and sometimes even less.

Same issue, same timeframe, but I was like 18 then.

I have a niece and nephew both under 13 who know what CDs are. It's not age, it's ignorance.

Yeah, they never stopped selling CDs lmao, I can go into a walmart and they've got a small area with them and vinyls, but stores like best buy that used to be full of cds and dvds/blu rays phased most of those out for phone accessories and empty space with amazon alexa kiosks because for some retard reasoning they changed most of their stock of shit people actually buy to online only.

 

[ChompChomp]

"Hey Ya" is 15 years old.

I'd hate to break it to you...

 

[Hey Johnny Bravo]

Every time I have to stop myself from getting upset at kids for doing the same things me, and my friends used to do when we were kids.

This is why I don't say anything when some kids steal a street sign. It's honestly a classic move and I love to see shit like that.

 

[Friend of Dorothy Parker]

I vividly remember a few years ago I was driving and turned on the radio right when the intro to Feel Good Inc started and I got hyped and it wasn't until the end of the song that I realized it was playing on a classic rock station lol. I just said "Oh" to myself and stared off into space for a minute at a stop sign. Took the wind right out of my sails. Then the other day I laughed to myself when I happened to think that in another 30 years or so there's going to be millenials in nursing homes listening to Gorillaz and R.H.C.P instead of Frank Sinatra and 60/70s pop rock. Shit is wild.

Someone on the radio the other day mentioned Gorillaz has been around 26 years. And of course the Peppers have been around for FORTY-THREE. FORTY-THREE. When they came out (1982), 43 years prior we were still 2 years away from formal involvement in World War II. Think of the massive changes in music from 1939 to 1982. But today's music still often sounds similar-ish to 1982.

And the longevity is astounding - many bands starting to get big in 1982 are still turning out new music and/ or filling arenas and moderately sized venues. To pick a random few: The Cure, RHCP, Duran Duran - still turning out new music and touring big, even bigger than they did in the earliest 80s...hell, I saw The Stones with my young adult kid a couple of years ago, and they were huge long before I was even born.

 

[Spunt]

And the longevity is astounding - many bands starting to get big in 1982 are still turning out new music and/ or filling arenas and moderately sized venues. To pick a random few: The Cure, RHCP, Duran Duran - still turning out new music and touring big, even bigger than they did in the earliest 80s...hell, I saw The Stones with my young adult kid a couple of years ago, and they were huge long before I was even born.

That's more a sign of the collapse of the music industry. Fans of those old bands are the only people who actually buy music and can afford to go to concerts on the regular. Zoomers and Gen Alpha just pirate and stream and can't afford a concert ticket without taking out a second mortgage.

Record companies are as risk averse as the equally failing film industry. Paying for another RHCP album or sending Alice Cooper out on tour again instead of taking a risk on a young artist is the music equivalent of spending $300m on Iron Man vs Spider-man: Dawn of Star Wars instead of an original IP. And when they do promote a new artist it's always nepo baby industry plant bullshit like Billie Eilish or Yungblud rather than a real unsigned indie artist working their asses off on the toilet gig circuit the way those 80s and 90s bands started.

PSA: If you're in an unsigned band trying to "get noticed", give up. It's not 1993, the talent scouts aren't even looking for you any more. The band they're going to sign instead are going to an elite music school paid for by their industry parents. If it makes you feel any better, they're probably not making much more money than you and they have to give sexual favours to cigar-chomping Jews just to get an advance on a debut album that will put them in debt for life.