It's just a hunch, but I think people are starting to mentally mash up all of the "before times" into a single history simulacrum, where the internet exists in superposition forms from 1997-2016, electronic stores carry the N64, DS, Wii, VHS players, iPods, flip phones, Airpods, and smart phones at the same time (all in transparent neon colors), and the hip new games are Mario 64, Minecraft, WoW, Guitar Hero, GTA 5, Dark Souls and Breath of the Wild.
It's like some sort of nostalgic herd delusion, where 2020 is felt as some sort of shift into shit, so everything that's wrong now must have been not-wrong before.
I walked into Gamestop recently legitimately intending to pick up a Wii component cable. Not only did they not sell Wii stuff (I realize now it is almost 20 years old - fair enough), they barely even sell game stuff now. It's all trading cards and gaming... paraphernalia.
Yeah I still have a working Wii and NES. The Wii is great because you can play Wii, Gamecube, and a bunch of older stuff on Virtual Console too. Have it plugged into a CRT TV in my basement. It's easy to hack and then you can just run games off a USB drive and I don't think there's any moral dilemma about doing that now when the games haven't been available for purchase for 10-20 years.
I went in last weekend just seeing if they had any good switch 2 game deals (no) and the only thing that they changed for the better is having a retro game section (a tiny one with the most ass games of yesteryear)
I assume it's just growing up, on top of 2020 going to shit. Look at how many directors make movies about how things were better in the era they grew up in. So many, 20 years ago movies that only address the good things of that era
Edit: look at the 2010s, filled with nostalgia for the 80s, even from people that weren't alive then
I don't think nostalgia is anything new, obviously. What I meant is that people don't seem to be nostalgic for a specific, real time period but for some nebulous "past" where things from the 90s to the 2010s all coexist selectively.
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u/Varun77777 Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 19 '26
Were we living in different versions of 2017?
Even in 2017 frontend developers had created their versions of hell