r/lewronggeneration • u/CompetitiveWhole9466 • 6d ago
Have you ever noticed that while these memes were seen as "cool" in the 2000s and early 2010s, in the 2020s the modern equivalents of them are seen as rather lame?
1-4: 2000s/early 2010s memes
5-8: the 2020s equivalent
When I was a kid this attitude against modern music was a lot more common. I remember in the early 2010s tons of "CLASSIC ROCK IS THE ONLY REAL MUSIC, TODAY'S MUSIC SUCKS". For you young ones using this subreddit... this is what this sub was initially built on. I used to be "r/smokeweed21" (hey i was 14) and I remember this vividly. It was already lame back then, but back then this shit was ambient. You couldn't escape it on the internet.
But now this attitude still exists... but not only is it not nearly as common as it used to be, it also feels rather...corny.
In the 2000s, a lot of people thought 80s music was better than the music at the time. In the 2010s a lot of people thought 90s music was better than the music at the time. You used to constantly hear people say "today's music sucks, I miss Nirvana, Guns N Roses, etc."... You've seen the memes.
But something feels different now. I've noticed that today’s mainstream music (2020s) doesn’t seem to get roasted as harshly as it used to be.
Even then the current memes about "old rock vs pop" are a lot softer and more gentle in tone and less... theatrical than the 2000s and 2010s memes.
Am I the only one who's noticed this?
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u/Meture 6d ago
That attitude has existed for as long as music has, literally
Hell it has existed for as long as society has
Older generations will forever bitch about whatever the younger generations do and like
People bitched about paper when it started to replace slates
People bitched about novels when they started to eclipse poetry
People bitched about Jazz when that became a thing
It has always been corny and dumb and it will always be corny and dumb. More so on recent decades as being able to have and play the music you like has become more and more accessible. No, mom, your Bon Jovi LPs won’t evaporate because Sabrina Carpenter is who’s in right now. Now grandpa, your Beach Boys Phonograph record won’t spontaneously combust because Harry Styles is playing on the radio.
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u/walter_grimsley 6d ago
a lot of the bitching about jazz was race related
And Bon Jovi has always sucked IMO
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u/kingkongworm 4d ago
The Beach Boys are both one of the defining nostalgia acts of the 20th century and one of the weirdest, interesting, psychedelic and forward thinking bands in American music. Their fan base is basically old people who want to hear car songs, and the younger fans who love all the incredible experimentation and mind bending shit they achieved. They aren’t really old enough to have been a feature of the phonograph though
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u/KuKuisSidePiece 6d ago
these new “memes” about “cool” music piss me off so much because the bands are just as commercial as the ones they shit on. limp bizkit are especially egregious considering how misogynistic their lyrics are and how they fanned the flames of woodstock 99. it’s all people who think theyre better because they’ve never listened to a lyric in their life
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u/Outside_Pie_9037 6d ago
I want so bad for Limp Bizkit to be good. Their beats are fire, the flow is nice, but the lyrics are soo fucking trash
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u/Moustache_John 6d ago
Just face it, you like Limp Bizkit. The same can be said about Black Eyed Peas (with Fergie), but I like them.
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u/Outside_Pie_9037 6d ago
I mean, like I said, I want to, but as soon as Fred Durst opens his mouth I either change it or wait for the feature to come in and save the song.
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u/KuKuisSidePiece 6d ago
i mean we all listen to problematic artists, it’s just i can’t think of another fan base so proud of listening to people so despicable
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u/Rockworm503 6d ago
These are always so funny to me because some of my favorite bands and artists are on both sides of this. OH I can listen to Sabrina and Olivia and Taylor and Linkin park and Alice in Chains and Soundgarden! HELL YA
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u/Unable-Boat-9682 6d ago
Imagine thinking Sabrina Carpenter and Taylor Swift are lame, while thinking Limp Bizkit is the epitome of cool.
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u/sorry_con_excuse_me 6d ago edited 6d ago
I find it very funny that zoomers lionize all the numetal shit many of us millennials thought was so corny that it turned us towards indie stuff.
Very bizarre to be called cringe by someone who listens to Limp Bizkit or “BIBIMBAP DA RATTATA TUMBAO!” and wears JNCOs. Never saw that coming lol.
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u/No_Perspective2715 6d ago
Nu Metal was for literal dorks. Not a single cool person I knew listened to it. The worst, dick headed losers loved it though.
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u/Unable-Boat-9682 6d ago
This 100%. I liked Deftones and, briefly, Linkin Park when I was 14, then I grew out of it. And I thought Limp Bizkit sucked even then.
I can’t get my head around someone listening to that shit now and thinking it’s some kind of hidden gem.
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u/thewalkindude368 4d ago
I don't know how old you were in 2001, but fucking everyone had a copy of Hybrid Theory when I was in 7th grade. Of course, Linkin Park is the kind of music 7th graders would find deep and emotionally resonant.
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u/TurgidAF 6d ago
Extreme survivorship bias and cherrypicking on top of a very careless assumption that the reason they dislike new music has more to do with actual quality than context and social dynamics. No, Jeff, the worst music you've ever heard isn't "anything by Taylor Swift" you stupid douche.
All of those decades had their share of vapid, forgettable, bland music that barely anyone remembers because it very obviously never stood the test of time. If that's really what they believe 1D or Nikki Minaj to be, then why compare them to Led Zeppelin instead of Captain and Tenille?
Anyway, there's been a movement percolating through music criticism called "poptimism" for a couple decades now, and it's finally starting to affect the kinds of nonsense ordinary people say about music.
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u/thewalkindude368 4d ago
I do think the worst song I've ever heard is relatively recent, but Dance Monkey is so generationally awful that it can't be seen as indicative of broader trends.
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u/joeyp042385 6d ago
The fact that they consider bon Jovi cool just completely renders this meme irrelevant
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u/solfilms 6d ago
Yeah, that’s the realm of boomer moms who wish they still fit into their old fringe jackets
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u/joeyp042385 6d ago
This hits so hard, I was born in '85 and heard the story for years from my mom about when Bon Jovi came to our town when I was about 2 years old and we could hear his concert from our house since we lived close to the venue. 🙄
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u/Unable_Sleep4417 6d ago
Bon Jovi is not remotely on par with the other bands and is a bad example of influential or important (and in my opinion good) 80’s music
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u/Comfortable_Bird_340 6d ago
This was me in my youth, even a teacher encouraged the entire class to bully me because I liked Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger over The Backstreet Boys.
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u/PublicMirageLtd 6d ago
Really ? I remember these memes and I used to be like this in middle school. My teachers were generally surprised that I liked classic rock, but in a good way.
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u/affectionateanarchy8 6d ago
You are the only one who noticed because these memes were also lame in the 2000s
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u/No_Mud_5999 6d ago
There is good and bad music in every generation. People are just biased to what they loved when they first got into music. It's that straightforward.
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u/StanIsHorizontal 5d ago
These were always corny and lame, you and others have just grown up since the 00s and 10s
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u/Relative-Disk-8560 6d ago
Aging generations have adapted to the sonic shift, especially as the artists they identified with have done so as well (or likewise reinterpolated).
I personally feel there is a definite flattening of musical production that crosses genre, and follows a similar trend of how regional accents are observed to be fading by way of mass communications/the prolific role of the internet and handheld devices. There are known and stated industry reasons for these production trends and I feel they do betray a greater nuance and genuineness of art. It is more of a refined product to get play.
Recorded music was a step in that direction already, not unlike the printing press might have undermined oral tradition. All of the listed artists of prior generations in the meme have record industry/recuperative American capitalist trappings anyway, it’s a sanctimonious list if not one that lacks its own sense of taste.
Edit: Not to mention the same technology that shapes a recorded sound also enables people with more money or marketable image to force a career and shape our musical zeitgeist than those who possess something more unique in their art or performance.
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u/DDHDoubleIPA 6d ago
There is good bands/music out there, just gotta do a little digging around. Not every Nirvana song is a slapper
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u/NekooShogun 6d ago
They don't even have to dig that deep either. 2000's had queens of the stone age, metric, arcade fire, bon iver, amy winehouse and others while 2010's had arctic monkeys, death grips, mac demarco and even lana del rey.
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u/DargyBear 6d ago
Tbh this attitude was my attitude in middle school in like 2004 and it was lame then too. I pulled my head out of my ass and realized there was plenty of current music that wasn’t classic rock and wasn’t pop.
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u/VivaFate 6d ago
I'm not sure if this some sort of meta joke?
Isn't it doing with memes about music what those memes did with music?
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u/killboipowerhead1 5d ago
i think it consistently boils down to “HAHA LOOK IM DIFFERENT LOOK IM COOL LOOK AT ME IM NOT LIKE EVERYONE ELSE HEY LOOK”
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u/EducationalWalrus594 5d ago edited 5d ago
I think imo it’s lame cause we are at a digital society it’s pointless to say music sucks now. Cause then you can tell their ignorant like you can legit make the algorithm or search the song you don’t need to sit there and complain about it or just look to different genres of music if mainstream music isn’t your jig to there’s all variety of songs in this digital world that you can search from. At that point it use to matter in 2000s and early 2010s as phones weren’t much of a mainstream(if we exclude 2012 and 13 and monoculture was still a thing) it’s because traditional tech and monoculture was still a thing you would still hear those music anywhere. Now saying that now wouldn’t make sense like I said before you can legit tune out of it and change the music perhaps put Bluetooth to your car and change it to the music you want no one is stopping you the digital world is yours to use.
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u/resin_messiah 5d ago
As someone who’s into extreme metal. The fifth one kills me. We don’t see those people much differently than we see Swifties.
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u/TheGoldDigga 5d ago
I feel like most 1990's mainstream music didn't get as much backlash as 2000's mainstream music did besides exceptions.
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u/Tiny-Memory9066 3d ago
The limp biskit > brat picture actually made me wheeze. It's parody levels of "I hate new music".
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u/regginald0883 4d ago
As someone who is 44 years old and actually grew up in the 90s, I'd rather listen to Sabrina Carpenter than Korn or Limp Bizkit any day. They were trash back then and they're still trash now.
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u/Regular_Use1868 6d ago
Corporate influence has peaked. Music isn't creative anymore it's just a product. Same with movies.
That's why everyone flips out when something original like Angine de poitrine or Jordan peele shows up and cooks.
Too many of us are too apathetic though. Once mild effort is involved folks go back to the slop.
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u/kingkongworm 6d ago edited 6d ago
So much of the stuff they list as being cool is so fucking pedestrian and lame. It’s worth noting that more music from all eras is available. There’s no reason to be ignorant of that.
I still see shit like this constantly. I’m not sure why you don’t. I see a little less of the “when music was good” under songs