Is my nostalgia just a meme now?

General
1

I got recommended this music video today:

It’s uh, it’s shocking.

From the Avril Lavigne 2005 era styling and presence to the mid-2000s over-cranked teal-and-orange coloring, to the Windows Movie Maker-esque fading text for lyrical bits to…

I’m sorry, are those fake interlacing combing artifacts?! Someone had to make a whole VFX pipeline to fake (very poorly/inaccurately, mind you) interlacing artifacts, instead of just exporting the video a couple extra times to create it, shooting the thing on a $100 DV/HDV cam in the first place (or using FiniteSingularity’s OBS plugin)… what the heck? Someone put in significant effort into doing a bad job of replicating this effect?

Plus the entire video is presented in a ~3:2 aspect ratio, rather than 4:3…

This feels like a fever dream. This feels like a messy, uncanny alternate reality where things look close to what I remember, but everything is just… off.

Is this weaponized nostalgia? Are the trends of my lived experience just a meme now?

Combine that with this other video I got recommended (due to the Halo discussions) where the guy is ironically using the Machinima intro and raging his ridiculousness into a Blue Snowball or something:

And I just… I can’t anymore.

Is nostalgia really just “having a feeling towards the vague idea of the thing rather than any actual realistic memory or utility of the thing in the first place” now? Has it always been? I DON’T KNOW!

2

Noodle is using this channel as a way to pump out more content, and is using that late 2000s-early 2010s YouTube aesthetic cranked up to absurd levels as like weird half-ironic theme for the channel. Idk, as someone up grew up during that time, it speaks to me because I remember when that stuff was fresh and how… simple it was back then compared to now but also yeah no one knew how to make a mic sound good back then lmao shit is funny

3

I know; that’s a common thing now - it’s just weird to see one’s once-daily life reduced to basically a deep cut/punch line.

Doesn’t help that this is my first encounter with Noodle and it’s yet-another-overly-raging-at-announcements thing that I’m so sick of. I’ve seen plenty of channels doing the format (and myself w/ Liminal Musings) but using the old format to continue carrying on modern constant cynicism just makes me sad.

Things were simple back then, but we also didn’t obsess over being unhappy with every new thing back then.

Just like with the fake interlacing artifacts, the inaccuracy and the taint of modernity seeping through the cracks creates major incongruence in my brain.

4

My go to response is, “welcome to being old.” You’re going to see stuff like this for the rest of your life. Imagine how our parents feel with fads coming around that mimic the 70’s, 80’s, or (dare I say) the 90’s.

I haven’t had the time to do this yet, but I want to compare a show like Rosanne to Young Sheldon. The subject matter is different, but both roughly take place in the late 80s/early 90s. How does a show created to invoke the nostalgia of a specific time frame compare to a show that was written, filmed, and broadcast in that time? Do they trigger the same feelings?

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5

You’re going to see stuff like this for the rest of your life.

Exactly. The eighties have become hip at least three times in the last thirty years.

6

All I can think about is the movie Pixels when you say this

7

While not specifically about nostalgia, Neil DeGrass Tyson just posted a video reflecting on getting older. I suggest watching, reflecting, and applying.

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