Gen Z Nostalgia for an Era They Never Knew
I find myself ever more eager to recount aspects of pre-internet life as I remember it, before there was such thing as being “online,” when all interactions with others were “IRL,” save for phone conversations conducted exclusively on “landline” phones, some of which were public “pay phones” (meaning you had to put coins— and not Bitcoins— into them to make them work for you).
While it is difficult not to become wistful to some extent when writing about the past, my aim here isn’t to indulge in nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, which in my experience inevitably becomes an insufferably maudlin affair.
Read the comment section of nearly any YouTube video featuring a snippet of a concert from the 1980s, and you will find a ghastly assortment of sad-sack crybabies whinging about how things were so great in their youth, how they drove the prettiest girl in their class in their sporty Camaro to see Journey rock out in 1981 and life was beautiful, whereas now they’re old and decrepit and divorced and their ungrateful zoomer kids don’t even know what good music is, and the modern world sucks and why do they even go on, etc.?
(If you think I am being hyperbolic here, I dare you to watch a concert video of an 80s rock band— just pick one!— then scour the comment section to see how depressingly accurate my summary is.)
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I admittedly am one who, like many others my age, finds the whole prospect of growing old a vexing (literally) existential dilemma, but I am filled with little but revulsion when I come across those who cannot stop obsessing about the glory days of their exquisite juvenescence. In the first place, as one whose adolescence was fraught with a hefty helping of angst, alienation, and social isolation, I find it difficult to relate to the “took the prettiest girl in my Camaro to see Journey in 1981” types.
More importantly, however, while I understand looking fondly upon the past— for to be truthful, my childhood was indeed wonderful, and my young adulthood and early-middle age also contains some delightful highlights— I simply cannot abide the mawkish self-pity of those convinced that their best years are behind them.
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Another reason it seems important to recall the “before times,” and to reflect upon them from a contemporary point of view, is that there is a growing sense amongst today’s youth that something valuable has truly been lost with the digital transformation of society.
Both my daughter (23) and my son (20) have, independently of one another, told me how great they thought it would be to live in a world free of social media, smart phones, and the like. And they are far from the only members of their generation to harbor such sentiments. What makes this trend extraordinary, it seems to me, is that its most fanatical adherents appear to be those who never lived in a world without the very things that they now wish to do without.
I recall that when the internet first ramped up in the mid to late 90s, it was hailed as the “information superhighway.” In the days of dial-up modems, being able to send and receive email— that is, able to correspond at length with a friend and not have to wait for days for his or her letters to come via post— was super-cool.
Overall, there was great optimism about the new digital frontier that was being built. Little possibility of a downside to anything in the new “online” realm was discerned by any of the leading lights of the period.
This of course was a full decade before Facebook, a decade and a half before Twitter, and two decades before free porn could be accessed by anyone anywhere at anytime (and on your phone, of all things).
Today, young people commonly post Ted Kaczynski memes on social media sites like Instagram and Twitter/X, pointing up the profound paradox at play: much of the population is now immersed in the very technology that they despise in the depths of their souls. It has become such a part of the warp and woof of their lives— including, in many cases, the means by which they earn what passes for a living these days— that extraction, if it is indeed possible, is a delicate affair indeed.
https://andynowicki.substack.com/p/gen-z-nostalgia-for-an-era-they-never