Thoughts on Millenials being obsessed with the past

[Cpt. Stud Beefpile]

I'll happily admit to it. The other posters, especially Safir, already stole most of my points.

The biggest single thing that makes us so nostalgic, if you will, is that after the "once in a lifetime" 2008 recession, there hasn't been a single goddamn thing that's indicated we have anything to look forward to economically speaking. AI is going to employ a frightening amount of people in an era where a lot of folks with college degrees have already found themselves working at shit wagie jobs with no hope of paying off their student debts.

The wonder of the Internet is now a corporately homogenized privacy threat, software as a service and DRM is stifling (fuck Denuvo in particular) and dating is now an automatic competition against every other male in a 10 mile radius.

 

[CuzinEd]

I think a big problem with millenials is this sort of weird self infantilisation where they want to be treated like children forever. A big part of this is that we didn't hit a lot of the milestones of adulthood that we expected to because the economy went to shit in 2008 and now we have gig economy hell. idk that zoomers are going to go through the same thing. They seem to be plenty fucked up in their own way. But I don't think things like not owning a home are going to bother them as much 20 years from now because they never expected that stuff in the first place.

I didn't notice that kind of mindset with Millennials. If anything Millennials wanted to have good lives. They just can't with the way the US economy is. After a while you just learn to accept your lot in life and get tired of struggling and fighting against it just to never gain anything. So you are going to end up as a 30 something year old basement dweller who has more free time than other people. All you can do at that point is make the best of it and have fun. Sitting around whining about it all the time isn't going to make things better. You can only do so much at the end of the day. Most of the things causing the problems are out of the control of the average person.

Zoomers will suffer the same fate as Millennials. If the Millennials didn't have it easy neither will they. It's just the way it is.

I'll happily admit to it. The other posters, especially Safir, already stole most of my points.

The biggest single thing that makes us so nostalgic, if you will, is that after the "once in a lifetime" 2008 recession, there hasn't been a single goddamn thing that's indicated we have anything to look forward to economically speaking. AI is going to employ a frightening amount of people in an era where a lot of folks with college degrees have already found themselves working at shit wagie jobs with no hope of paying off their student debts.

The wonder of the Internet is now a corporately homogenized privacy threat, software as a service and DRM is stifling (fuck Denuvo in particular) and dating is now an automatic competition against every other male in a 10 mile radius.

The US economy wasn't that great before the micro collapse in the late 2000's. I know because I am an older Millennial in my late 30's and I was out looking for jobs way before the late 2000's "recession". The economy under Bush was just as shitty as it was under the nigger. The only president we have had that might have changed that was Trump and he faced 4 years of obstruction from democrats and republicans. The republicans definitely didn't want him doing much concerning trade and immigration.

The younger Gen X people didn't do that well either. Plenty of people in their 40's are stuck in shitty jobs and still doing the roommate thing.

@Safir
They get asked questions and asked to solve math problems and they have a phone right in their pocket and they don't even use it. They don't even attempt to. Oh I don't know the answer but I can find out. It would show way more intelligence than just standing there going uuuuhhhh and then saying something stupid.

 

[Magicicada_septendecula]

@CuzinEd Some of it has to do with definition. I you're middle age at 45, then you're expecting to live to 90. Most people are at the middle of life in their late 30s, maybe early 40s . As for Millenials, Strauss & Howe, the guys who coined a lot of the generation-related terms and wrote a huge book on it, place their beginning as early as 1981.

 

[Alex Hogendorp]

I used the think that decades like the 80s and 90s are high culture but I find it to be far from it. However, nostalgia for these times never left me due to the fact these decades still offer a bit of nature under a brutal bliss. I'd still sought out for an old piece of media, even shitty expired nostalgic soda's that would only make me throw up which explains why I'd get ecstatic to see Mountain Dew White Out in the market. High culture after World War II is extremely sparse and what seems like high culture is a facade. 80s and 90s also saw many new "progressive" things that further demoralize the population. Any remaining high culture was constantly bombed by democracy. But I still love Max Headroom and Mac Tonight. So much so this is why we made Moon Man. We took a corporate mascot and used it to retaliate against the faggots and mass immigration. It's also why I felt so dependent on KiwiFarms existing. It's one of the last remaining sites replicating much simpler times.

There's something so nostalgic about relics of simpler times.

 

[Kill a Troon for Pikamee]

Millenials were the last generation born and brought up in the real world. From zoomers on, every concurrent generation will never know the world as it was before the Internet, smartphones, TikTok, instagram, facebook, influencers and so on. Millenial (and Gen X) nostalgia is not nostalgia for the past, but nostalgia for reality and nostalgia for living in real world, before the planet started to hallucinate

 

[Anonitolia]

idk that zoomers are going to go through the same thing. They seem to be plenty fucked up in their own way. But I don't think things like not owning a home are going to bother them as much 20 years from now because they never expected that stuff in the first place.

au contraire, mon amie
you forget that we have Gen X parents
we've got matriarchs and patriarchs with that expectation, and a fair amount of them are delusional enough to expect from their kids what they achieved themselves, regardless of how different the world has become
that expectation of a house and a stable family life isn't going to go away until every generation before millenials is dead and gone- or maybe even until millenials are gone, too
it's too ingrained into society and human nature at large to ever truly vanish, but the expectation specifically has been passed down as "the way to be an adult" until about 7 years ago when people decided living in pods and eating bugs was an acceptable alternative and taught their kids as much

I'll bet a big part of why we're so fucked up is because of not only not living up to the same unrealistic expectation that screwed up millennials in the first place, but also having that expectation (one of the only constants in our childhoods) torn down alongside every other social norm and replaced with outright inhumanity in the forms of such things as AI, genderfluidity, and rabid political extremism
Combine all of that with the fast pace of the internet, the even faster pace of tech progression (especially within our childhoods), practically no stability in any form (due to things as major as super high divorce rates or as minor as websites that we frequent completely changing their looks (and sometimes function) after a year or two or three) and the human rights disaster that was COVID-19 and what it did to social interaction and you have probably the most fucked-up and alien generation of humans in the history of the species

not even going to touch on things like having literally nobody to trust (parents are a joke to most, government is forever deemed corrupt and untrustworthy and/or also the messiah that will make everything better, corporations and the rich are constantly painted as bloodthirsty monsters, teachers teach nothing because "why attend class when I have google", extreme lack of sincerity and/or honesty in both entertainment and regular human communication due to irony poisoning, etc),
no real future to hope for (constantly told that the world sucks and will continue sucking, alongside every traditional aspiration- becoming rich, having a family, traveling the world- being heavily demonized for one reason or another),
fewer opportunities to work or make something of yourself than ever (can't comment too much since I'm inexperienced in the job market, but 9/10 minimum-wage jobs i've seen in my area require either 2+ years of experience, a college degree, or both),
and a requirement + expectation to do more schoolwork than any generation ever before while simultaneously being told that the two decades of school you went through and crippled yourself with debt for weren't good enough for the most basic jobs imaginable (not even going to mention the breeding grounds for extremism that these now-mandatory schools often are)
beyond these bulletpoints because I could seriously write a whole essay on them and I really don't have the time to right now

 

[WelperHelper99]

Millenials were the last generation born and brought up in the real world. From zoomers on, every concurrent generation will never know the world as it was before the Internet, smartphones, TikTok, instagram, facebook, influencers and so on. Millenial (and Gen X) nostalgia is not nostalgia for the past, but nostalgia for reality and nostalgia for living in real world, before the planet started to hallucinate

I'm a zoomer, yet I remember a pre smartphone world. I remember ashtrays everywhere, VHS tapes, but those of my generation that do are fading. The younger ones don't. I sympathize with the Nostalgia, I have some of it myself; the world was better. You still had chains like Toys R Us that broke up the mega monopoly of Walmart/Target.

I remember when online purchases were new, Ebay, and it took weeks for your shit to come and took you bidding. Now you just do it on amazon on your phone. It's made people lazy, and if anything, miss the thrill of getting that box in the mail.

 

[DeadwastePrime]

dont forget that a lot of the early millenials are now in their early 40s and a decent bulk are now in their 30s and nostalgia is a hell of a drug on someone like that as they probably grew up with things like the snes or the playstation or certain movies or comics or whatever other nostalgic things from their childhood they might remember dearly

 

[WitchfyndeGeneral]

I think this phenomenon is more common with the mid-to late Millennials who were fucked over by recessions and scamdemics in my opinion.

Much of this desire to go back to the 80s or 90s is usually driven by Millennials who have experienced the great recession of 2008 when they were still in High School, or University. As a result of having many aspects of adulthood taken away from them, they have become nihilistic and and many have given up hope for the future. I believe American culture is stagnant culturally because a large chunk of the population had lost all the money nessecary for the culture to grow. Because many Millennial have had their futures fucked over, they usually escape to the fantasy world of the past hence why so many modern movies are superhero flicks or sequels, prequels and reboots of older movies from the childhoods of Millennials. Ironically, Millennials can’t bear the present and want radical change, which explains why so many of them want Socialism.

Seeing the impact of plandemic lockdown have been doing to the millennial population, it seems that they are taking a even more defeatist position than they did during the recession and continue living in the nostalgic past of the 1980s and 1990s, and maybe that’s way thing would be for another decade considering ChatGPT might take away the few jobs that Millennials have. Who knows what will happen?

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I thought this will be about zoomers being hang up on the 80's despite their mothers not even being born yet. The funniest thing for me is zoomers thinking of a past that didn't exist for half a century. Like right wingers talking about the USA being a high trust society.

 

[Tetragrammaton]

as someone who was born in the 90s i have lived through a fair amount of nonsense and have had my plans for the future destroyed over and over again. i was even lucky enough to have parents who cared enough to set money aside for me but i ended up losing that before i was even old enough to spend it.

i can see why some people might be obsessed with the past because for many of us we grew up hearing stories from our parents and grandparents and aspiring to live even better or equal lives as them.

those lives are getting more and more impossible to live as time goes on and some people seem to realize this and just give up entirely. as for me the pandemic fucked me over big time and i am still trying to find the next step forward.

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

Is this any different from Gen X'ers being nostalgic for the 80s and the synthy disco vibes or Boomers being nostalgic for the rock & roll of the 60s?

Probably not, it's just getting old, nothing complicated about it.

As others have pointed out, there is a significant quality of life difference between Millennial nostalgia and Boomer nostalgia. Millennial nostalgia is rooted in knowing the past was objectively better in every way. Boomer nostalgia is based on aesthetic desires combined with their past being worse than the future. For Millennials, the future is just bad and mostly out of their control. At least, in socially acceptable ways.

 

[WolfeTone]

As others have pointed out, there is a significant quality of life difference between Millennial nostalgia and Boomer nostalgia. Millennial nostalgia is rooted in knowing the past was objectively better in every way. Boomer nostalgia is based on aesthetic desires combined with their past being worse than the future. For Millennials, the future is just bad and mostly out of their control. At least, in socially acceptable ways.

I think every generation is apt to get sold on the idea that the past, which we often view with rose-tinted glasses, was better and that revisiting it will give us the same feelings we thought we had back then. I think this filters more into optimism than cynicism, but it's a very cynical thing for corporations to target any prime demographic in whatever sector they inhabit the most, and sell them an even-worse version of things that will, ultimately, pale in comparison to how they're remembered. That cynicism benefits the system rit-large. It makes money. It wastes regular peoples' times. And when it's done a way deemed proper to the system it ends up freeing up pre-concieved notions of a happy and fulfilled past to make room for more consumer goods.

Decent point though, but I wouldn't get down about things getting worse. It's always darkest before the dawn and conscientiousness is worth infinitely more than comfort.

 

[Local Fed]

It's fair to ask why people look so much to the past, but what should also be asked is: what is there to look forward to? In that answer I think it also answers the original question of why there's so much looking at the rear view mirror.

It's easy for people to dismiss that question and the talking points surrounding it (which I could prattle on about, but won't in too much detail) by calling the person asking it a "Doomer" but look at what a 30 year old millennial (let's say a man, white and in a western country, considering the average person here who'd be reading this) is looking down the barrel of and ask yourself: do things look good to you? If the future outlook was the stock of a company would you buy shares or would you short it? Personally, I'd probably be shorting it.

If you're a perma-NEET whose focus is all about new bing bing wahoo and new anime and porn scenes coming out then I guess whatever questions about the future there are don't matter all that much to you. If you're looking at the broader world and your place in it, the things that past generations took for granted like marriage, family and the ability to own a home, then things suddenly look a lot less rosy if those are things you're concerned about.

 

[Beige]

Millenials were the last generation born and brought up in the real world. From zoomers on, every concurrent generation will never know the world as it was before the Internet, smartphones, TikTok, instagram, facebook, influencers and so on. Millenial (and Gen X) nostalgia is not nostalgia for the past, but nostalgia for reality and nostalgia for living in real world, before the planet started to hallucinate

This. I was born in the mid-90s, and pre-social media Internet is basically the only thing I have any nostalgia for whatsoever.

It caused a marked shift in society overnight when Facebook became a thing. My school went from having maybe one bad fight a year to multiple a week. All of a sudden the Internet went from being for "losers", to the center of drama for all of the popular social climbers, as the mainstream has remained ever since.

"Planet starting to hallucinate" is a really good way of putting it. Half of the people I know my age have completely lost their fucking minds about political happenings that have literally no impact on them or anyone they know. It's really funny when you think about it; all the normalfags got smartphones and became terminally online spergs.

To OP's point: the world felt much more warm and real before everything became digitized. I don't think it's super uncommon for people who aren't zoomers and/or utter mongoloids to feel that way. I personally believe the dehumanizing clout-chasing culture, constant political bullshit, and general vapid, disposable way of life is going to reach critical mass soon. The only way to beat it is for people to drop all the dumb shit, and treat it for what it should be:

A fad. The word "Twitter" should invoke the same feelings of regret and (at best) kitschy slightly-ashamed nostalgia as "Disco".

 

[Manul Otocolobus]

And speaking of malevolent foreigners, stink bugs have now been a thing in the 21st century, and Wikipedia even has a nice gif showing their spread:

I fucking hate those motherfuckers so much! Another chink plagues unleashed upon us!!

 

[Hepativore]

I found this by accident last year, and while the speaker tends to veer off into new-age terminology here and there, she has a surprisingly-based and fair take on why millennials ended up the way that they did in their outlook on things.

 

[Ser Prize]

I think this phenomenon is more common with the mid-to late Millennials who were fucked over by recessions and scamdemics in my opinion.

Much of this desire to go back to the 80s or 90s is usually driven by Millennials who have experienced the great recession of 2008 when they were still in High School, or University. As a result of having many aspects of adulthood taken away from them, they have become nihilistic and and many have given up hope for the future. I believe American culture is stagnant culturally because a large chunk of the population had lost all the money nessecary for the culture to grow. Because many Millennial have had their futures fucked over, they usually escape to the fantasy world of the past hence why so many modern movies are superhero flicks or sequels, prequels and reboots of older movies from the childhoods of Millennials. Ironically, Millennials can’t bear the present and want radical change, which explains why so many of them want Socialism.

Seeing the impact of plandemic lockdown have been doing to the millennial population, it seems that they are taking a even more defeatist position than they did during the recession and continue living in the nostalgic past of the 1980s and 1990s, and maybe that’s way thing would be for another decade considering ChatGPT might take away the few jobs that Millennials have. Who knows what will happen?

Only so many ways to take two recessions in your life, you know? I'm on the later end of millenials(1993) and even though I was in highschool when the first recession hit I remember the whole atmosphere changing externally.

I never had many hopes or dreams when I was younger so it was a slow burn, but as I near 30 I have to question what world I'll have to live the next 40 years of my life in. When faced with that kind of dread it's really easy to look back at what was and dream. At least we can afford those dreams.

 

[Harbinger of Kali Yuga]

Well, after the 90s, what good things were there? That's when everything truly converged on mass produced media. Obviously I think 80s music was far better--there's more good 80s bands than from the entirety of the 00s-20s. With movies that's mostly true, with anything even somewhat daring having gone by the wayside. I guess TV is better than it was then, but who wants to watch TV all day?

The wonder of the Internet is now a corporately homogenized privacy threat, software as a service and DRM is stifling (fuck Denuvo in particular) and dating is now an automatic competition against every other male in a 10 mile radius.

I barely use the internet anymore. I haven't been on social media for years. It's unusable. Hell, the Farms are the only place I find worth posting on anymore. I have a lot of nostalgia for pre-web 2.0 -bullshit. The people just get younger and dumber, everyone gets more offended, everything is more censored. I can't even really stomach a lot of the lolcow stuff because it just feels like I've seen it all already before and none of these people ever change, though CWC still likes to randomly surprise everyone.

 

[Shadfan666xxx000]

I know the past was legitimately better but couldnt we just point out the mosr simple explanation: that theyre getting old now? After all Happy Days and Back to the Future were both products of the 80s and the 2000s were almost a retread of those 80s in pop culture so theres definitely a trend of generations getting old and fawning softly over the culture of 20 years ago.