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It's hard to refute, cause it really is true that everyone's most instrumental pop culture experiences happened when they were 10-25 years old. I think one thi

It's hard to refute, cause it really is true that everyone's most instrumental pop culture experiences happened when they were 10-25 years old. I think one thing that is fascinating is how popular iconography and music/films from 20+ years ago still is. Like I see teenagers wearing t-shirts with NOFX or Van Halen on them, instead of Billie Eilish. https://www.hottopic.com/tees/music-tees/?cm_sp=LP-_-TeesGrid-_-MusicTees https://www.hottopic.com/tees/music-tees/?cm_sp=LP-_-TeesGri... Ultimately the post WW2 period was the birth of mass media youth culture, this was a truly revolutionary thing culturally speaking, and everything else has been a series of progressively less meaningful waves as we have 75 years of music/films artfully expressing what it means to be young.

Apocryphon 5y ago
> Like I see teenagers wearing t-shirts with NOFX or Van Halen on them, instead of Billie Eilish. Same as it always was. (SPIN magazine, April 2005): https://books.google.com/books?id=3ftHVmAonmoC&lpg=PA107&dq=spin%20magazine%202005&pg=PA60#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=3ftHVmAonmoC&lpg=PA107&dq=... > A few days after the Orange Bowl, I saw the video for Simpson's "La La." In one segment, she wears a vintage Adam and the Ants T-shirt; later, she wears a Motley Crue shirt. I suppose it's theoretically possible that Ashlee Simpson honestly likes those bands. But within the context of this video, her identification with them does not feel remotely organic; it feels like somebody put a lot of thought into whom Ashlee should align herself with. All young artists do this, but some are less subtle than others. I once saw singer/songwriter Leona Naess perform in Cleveland wearing a ZZ Top T-shirt. "I don't even know who this band is," she said between songs. "I just like this shirt." Naess played Minneapolis on the same tour, but this time she wore an Aerosmith T-shirt. "I don't even know who this band is," she said between songs. "I just like this shirt." Obviously, this was an attempt at cultural positioning: Leona Naess wanted to appear like the kind of girl who (somehow) had never heard of ZZ Top and Aerosmith, just as Ashlee Simpson wants to appear like the kind of girl who's intimately aware of Motley Crue and Adam Ant. Yet both artists failed in their attempts, and that's because even a child could tell they were trying way too hard. And people hate that.
danbolt 5y ago
Throughout the COVID-19 restrictions, I've been writing little games that run on the Nintendo 64. I was born in the early 1990s and liked to play video games as a child, so the platform has some nostalgia now that I'm older. What's surprised me though is the amount of times I've received questions from teenagers about how to make Nintendo 64 games. Given their ages, I would have thought something like the Nintendo DS might have been more interesting to them. It reminded me of when Nintendo was marketing repackaged 1980s NES games to me as a child. [1] I remember being interested in them partially because of being exposed to nostalgia from others online. Part of me wonders if a bit of institutional momentum can help give a brand more of an edge for some audiences. [1] https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Classic_NES_Series https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Classic_NES_Series

Apocryphon 5y ago

> Like I see teenagers wearing t-shirts with NOFX or Van Halen on them, instead of Billie Eilish. Same as it always was. (SPIN magazine, April 2005): https://books.google.com/books?id=3ftHVmAonmoC&lpg=PA107&dq=spin%20magazine%202005&pg=PA60#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=3ftHVmAonmoC&lpg=PA107&dq=... > A few days after the Orange Bowl, I saw the video for Simpson's "La La." In one segment, she wears a vintage Adam and the Ants T-shirt; later, she wears a Motley Crue shirt. I suppose it's theoretically possible that Ashlee Simpson honestly likes those bands. But within the context of this video, her identification with them does not feel remotely organic; it feels like somebody put a lot of thought into whom Ashlee should align herself with. All young artists do this, but some are less subtle than others. I once saw singer/songwriter Leona Naess perform in Cleveland wearing a ZZ Top T-shirt. "I don't even know who this band is," she said between songs. "I just like this shirt." Naess played Minneapolis on the same tour, but this time she wore an Aerosmith T-shirt. "I don't even know who this band is," she said between songs. "I just like this shirt." Obviously, this was an attempt at cultural positioning: Leona Naess wanted to appear like the kind of girl who (somehow) had never heard of ZZ Top and Aerosmith, just as Ashlee Simpson wants to appear like the kind of girl who's intimately aware of Motley Crue and Adam Ant. Yet both artists failed in their attempts, and that's because even a child could tell they were trying way too hard. And people hate that.

danbolt 5y ago

Throughout the COVID-19 restrictions, I've been writing little games that run on the Nintendo 64. I was born in the early 1990s and liked to play video games as a child, so the platform has some nostalgia now that I'm older. What's surprised me though is the amount of times I've received questions from teenagers about how to make Nintendo 64 games. Given their ages, I would have thought something like the Nintendo DS might have been more interesting to them. It reminded me of when Nintendo was marketing repackaged 1980s NES games to me as a child. [1] I remember being interested in them partially because of being exposed to nostalgia from others online. Part of me wonders if a bit of institutional momentum can help give a brand more of an edge for some audiences. [1] https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Classic_NES_Series https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Classic_NES_Series