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Is it a mostly inconsequential context? I think it's exactly the sort of context that is valuable and human and grounds us to events of our past. That one phot

Is it a mostly inconsequential context? I think it's exactly the sort of context that is valuable and human and grounds us to events of our past. That one photo (and the collection of photos from the 70s linked in the article) say a lot about culture, about identity, about life and how things have evolved (or not evolved, or devolved) since then. It's a story too about celebrity, and how this picture exists in this moment, today, because a celebrity found and shared it. It's completely distorted this woman's day to day. While it seems like a positive for her, it highlights just how much power celebrity has in our mental economies. Should one person have the ability to completely blow up someone else's routine like this? I dunno! But social media definitely facilitates it! There's a ton of very interesting topics to cover here, in addition to the ones you raise, and I don't think they really are that inconsequential!

ethbr1 2y ago
I've thought of the related phenomenon as "the only thing you can't buy is time." I.e. there's no amount of money you can spend today to make something 45 years old So as we increasingly move into a materially post-scarcity developed world, time becomes the last scarce thing. It overlaps with nostalgia, but there's also a big component of novelty/rarity. See previous example of tracking down that song that was written for the X-Files and playing in the background in a single bar scene. Also, me blowing my friends' minds with a record I have of Richard Harris (now, "Dumbledore") reading selections from The Prophet: https://www.amazon.com/Kahlil-Gibran-Prophet-Musical-Interpretation/dp/B003H1DIJY https://www.amazon.com/Kahlil-Gibran-Prophet-Musical-Interpr...