On the recent (and possibly recently ended) nostalgia boom - My own explanation for it

[jorgoth]

Why there’s a nostalgia boom in the 2010’s:

1. 30 year nostalgia cycle, pop culture didn’t really go thermonuclear until Star Wars and the first spike in merchandising ~1980
2. People are tired of niggers and faggots and Karens. They want to pretend that all the developments in pop culture after ~1999 never happened. Even the 2015-2019 faggot Saturnalia in pop culture is a symptom of this, it’s niggers and faggots and Karens wishing they were old-school televised Aryans, wishing they were part of a culture that is the direct antithesis of their own timid yet spiteful one. Notice how they never go full homo in pop culture in spite of their seeming invincibility in political discourse, all faggots are self-hating in current year.

 

[Nathan Higgers]

Does anyone else genuinely miss the 2000s?

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Ever since Occupy was derailed by woke, smartphone culture and "social" media got mainstream, and "woke" became the state religion, it's been an endless Clown World. So of course people are going to be nostalgic for a time that didn't suck so bad. It would suck if people were conned into thinking nostalgia is bad.

 

[UnKillFill]

There hasn't been any genuinely good music for the past 2 decades aside from like a random song or two. I'm not surprised that people are nostalgic for the past, the present is shit.

 

[Beautiful Border]

There's also the fact that new popular culture feels stagnant at best and downright awful at worst. But beyond that, there's no real optimism for the future anymore. That's the most important cultural factor that separates the 1980s from today. Mark Fisher has talked a lot about how society looks back at the past more and more fondly and obsessively in part because it's becoming harder to conceive of the future in a positive way.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Why there’s a nostalgia boom in the 2010’s:

Because film studios are greedier than ever and not willing to take risks, pay writers like shit, and promote via nepotism rather than talent. Therefore they go with what they know sells because it sold in the past.

 

[Kulee Baba]

There hasn't been any genuinely good music for the past 2 decades aside from like a random song or two. I'm not surprised that people are nostalgic for the past, the present is shit.

I was in the car with a buddy and he starts playing Bruno Mars. Not a bad artist at all, hell probably one of the best contemporary Pop Artists of the last decade. "Leave The Door Open" starts playing.

And it dawns on me, this is fucking Motown music. The same shit my Boomer dad would play in his Lincoln and bore me to tears as all I wanted then was Grunge rock. Only way you know it's a new song is that ithas way more sexually explicit lyrics than what they'd ever put out back then. I mean it's not like Bruno is misleading the music video gives that 70s vibes but it's amusing that youth today wants a music style that's been considered oldies for well as long as I've been a child.

You can make the argument that we had nostalgia music in the 90s too with Oasis being a Beatles-esque sound, but honestly Oasis only sounded somewhat like The Beatles. Beatles never made anything that sounded like "Wonderwall."

It's fascinating to think nostalgia has permeated so hard into the music scene when it seemed we were all guessing modern generations would be listening to crazier and crazier music. Guess it's not a bad thing since Techno was always trash.

 

[UnKillFill]

I was in the car with a buddy and he starts playing Bruno Mars. Not a bad artist at all, hell probably one of the best contemporary Pop Artists of the last decade. "Leave The Door Open" starts playing.

And it dawns on me, this is fucking Motown music. The same shit my Boomer dad would play in his Lincoln and bore me to tears as all I wanted then was Grunge rock. Only way you know it's a new song is that ithas way more sexually explicit lyrics than what they'd ever put out back then. I mean it's not like Bruno is misleading the music video gives that 70s vibes but it's amusing that youth today wants a music style that's been considered oldies for well as long as I've been a child.

You can make the argument that we had nostalgia music in the 90s too with Oasis being a Beatles-esque sound, but honestly Oasis only sounded somewhat like The Beatles. Beatles never made anything that sounded like "Wonderwall."

It's fascinating to think nostalgia has permeated so hard into the music scene when it seemed we were all guessing modern generations would be listening to crazier and crazier music. Guess it's not a bad thing since Techno was always trash.

I haven't even heard that particular song before, but Isn't that basically Bruno Mars' entire schtick- that he plays old music, only today? That's pretty much all I know about him. But that doesn't make that a good song...

Also, you aren't wrong about Oaisis.

 

[Idiotron]

Nostalgia milking really did start with Star Wars.
It rehashed and repackaged old ideas from the childhood of Lucas, not to mention it pandered to American nationalism and the last time the US won a war against a common enemy (Nazis) right after a pointless demoralizing war ended (Vietnam).
After that, we got the Star Trek movies, Flash Gordon and the remakes of 50's horror B movies (The Thing, The Fly, The Blob).

That was the start and it never really stopped.
There were just as many remakes in the 90's as there are now (Starsky & Hutch, Herbie, 101 Dalmatians, Godzilla, Psycho and many more), it's just that you don't remember all of them.
The fact that we haven't reached the late 90's/early 00's in nostalgia pandering is that it's too new.
We're at the mid 90's right now with Spice Girls supposedly making a sequel to their hit 90's movie Spice World.
Matrix 4 (which will be a "soft reboot") is coming out in December and that will pander to 1999 nostalgia.

As for the "no homo" in movies?
It's because of China, movies with openly LGBT characters can't get a cinematic release in China, that's why all the gay shit is on TV.

 

[Kulee Baba]

I haven't even heard that particular song before, but Isn't that basically Bruno Mars' entire schtick- that he plays old music, only today? That's pretty much all I know about him. But that doesn't make that a good song...

Also, you aren't wrong about Oaisis.

More I think about it yes a lot of us his singles have been retro throwbacks, although I'd say one of his first big songs "Grenade" was far more contemporary Pop than what he's popular for today.

And yeah I don't think this is a great song by any means. I'm calling it "good" by the metric that I can listen to it and chill out as opposed to wanting to just hit the fast forward button like any song that abuses autotune.

Speaking of nostalgic pop music Adele is a near carbon copy of Aretha Franklin style music. I would have never guessed that people younger than me would be dancing to music that completely owes it's popularity to "The Queen of Soul" but here we are.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

But beyond that, there's no real optimism for the future anymore.

I think Star Trek in particular kind of reflects that. The '90s series and ENT from the '00s are more or less optimistic about the future, and the further back the series is, the "brighter" it feels.

Meanwhile, "post-JJ" Star Trek has this "dark feel" to it - especially now with STD (lol STD) and Picard.

 

[Blamo]

Why there’s a nostalgia boom in the 2010’s

Beside the things you have listed in your opening post I would add the changed nature of the media landscape.

Many of the cultural artifacts of the past are still in rotation and they haven't been able to fade away and give place for new things. We are living in an eternal "now" where for some reason things from the 60s-90s are still out there and competing with new things. The fact that corporations keep remaking, remastering and reselling the same ideas and names doesn't help either.

I would add due to the increasingly disposable nature of media and ease of access nothing seems to stick in the popular consciousness. Without time to digest and reflect on something it just get into a part of the background noise.

Also, while media is really consolidated they are presenting it in a myriad of channels, appealing to specific demographics. There is no common cultural event anymore. I think mass media peaked in the 90s and 00s.

I can't imagine a Pokemon craze or anything similar happening anymore.

 

[Just A Butt]

pop culture didn’t really go thermonuclear until Star Wars

lol what?

 

[ZipDisk]

Chinese don't like starships. They want people running around on the ground yelling.

I hated how JJ trek kept fucking up the ships.

 

[TV's Adam West]

It's all that Doug Walker's fault. He's the nostalgia critic, he remembers it so you don't have to.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

I would add due to the increasingly disposable nature of media and ease of access nothing seems to stick in the popular consciousness. Without time to digest and reflect on something it just get into a part of the background noise.

Also, while media is really consolidated they are presenting it in a myriad of channels, appealing to specific demographics. There is no common cultural event anymore. I think mass media peaked in the 90s and 00s.

Things are both more consolidated yet more atomized than ever thanks to the internet and ease of finding guides and tools to just make shit yourself and distribute it. This is mostly video games, music, and books and even if the central distribution (i.e. Amazon, Steam, etc.) is pretty consolidated, independent creators get a lot from it. Hell, I'd argue Youtube counts too since it's pretty much destroys TV documentaries and to a lesser degree reality TV and a few other genres. It's also easier than ever to find things thanks to the internet and social media channeling word of mouth into an easily searchable form.

Where consolidation really hurts and stifles creativity is how the middle sector of the market is practically dead. All the smaller studios, labels, publishers, etc. are now folded into larger ones. This is where you got all sorts of cult hits in practically every media and even some really famous stuff, all because this mid-market had to take risks to remain relevant and successful. Bigger studios followed their lead and were forced into innovation on their model. The fact that doesn't exist anymore leads the corporations to play things increasingly safe and make focus-tested bland schlock written by hacks hired based on nepotism. Case in point, JJ Abrams and Star Trek/Star Wars. They're focused more than ever on making money, and know they don't have to take risks to see their stock price and earnings go up, up, and up.

Definitely agreed about the ease of access. Feels things move too fast in this day and age.

 

[Juan But Not Forgotten]

Does anyone else genuinely miss the 2000s?

Kind of. Internet was smaller and not as sanitized. Now it's all repackaged, bland and under control of Big Five.

There's also the fact that new popular culture feels stagnant at best and downright awful at worst. But beyond that, there's no real optimism for the future anymore. That's the most important cultural factor that separates the 1980s from today. Mark Fisher has talked a lot about how society looks back at the past more and more fondly and obsessively in part because it's becoming harder to conceive of the future in a positive way.

Pretty much. People strive for an interesting bright future they were promised in media, but it never came.

 

[Calandrino]

I don't think it really is nostalgia. The primary audience for Terminator 9 is people who weren't even alive when Terminator (and maybe Terminator 2) came out. The glut of superhero movies isn't because there's a ton of nostalgia for i.e. Guardians of the Galaxy. Look at the CW's entire lineup of shows: are they really after people who even know what Kung Fu or La Femme Nikita or Dynasty even are? Avatar is still the highest-grossing movie of all time and you can't even remember the name of the main character. The universe's engine is out of steam, technology for creating films and music basically plateaued ~20 years ago, and the on-demand nature of internet has put pop culture into a weird state where everything seems to exist simultaneously. Now, throughout the past, there have always been doomsayers proclaiming that everything was shit. However, now everything actually is shit. What a time to be alive!

 

[Epic Fail Man]

I want to live with Vikings and swing axes while pillaging villages and stealing their women and gold.

But I guess we don't do that anymore.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

The number one reason for this is the audience. People care more about brand recognition than quality, so the corpos cater to it. Additionally, the current audience mindset is lodged hard reliving the Bush era (which is why they keep talking as if the media landscape haven't changed since then) and those manbabies would very much consoom the same shit as if they were children.

This might explain modern remakes being geared more of getting the parents watching it happy rather than the kids, which is an untenable position as the kids will just move to watching anime and the studios will be left in 20 years without any intellectual property worth a shit. A fitting fate.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's also studios getting too big and infighting perpetuated by talentless hacks causes any promising new idea by someone with talent to be put into development hell.