How Nostalgia Sells You a Lie

[@xg2513]

I will say that I think a lot of vintage stuff is attractive to us is because our world is so colorless and corporately sanitized now, and people are craving color and character. Old fridges were colorful, old appliances were cute. Appliances now look like they were made for a hospital

[@b.w.9816]

I feel the same way about a lot of things lately. It seems like houses and cars had so much more personality in the past. Take a good look at all the cars of the road now. So alike. So boring.

[@apcolleen]

One striking element about the kettle is that the name is spooged onto the side of every appliance. Back in the day you knew what company logo was what and you only needed like a little 3-in logo to get the job done. But to add insult to injury the company's name smeg... The face you have to pull to even say that word out loud. Too bad the demure craze can't include corporate logos anymore. I feel like I'm being advertised in my own home so I keep as much stuff in my cabinets out of sight as I can. It's jarring when I go to some people's houses and they have so many products. Especially pointless first world excess products. I'm 44 but my grandparents were born in the 1800s. So I'm not a marketing person's best customer.

[@davidmhh9977]

This is also where selective memory comes in. We remember the most colorful and eccentric parts of each generation and that's also what gets preserved the most. I'm sure not every kettle from the 50's had that cute enamel look, but those were the ones that were advertised and look like something from a 50's catalogue, and they're probably what people hung onto the longest, or bought second hand. It's like if someone did a 2000's kettle. It would probably be stainless steel, because that's what the most sought after appliances looked liked, but at the same time, there was a lot of cheap white plastic.

[@krdiaz8026]

Stainless steel appliances sell because they can blend in with your chosen decor unlike a cute pink toaster which not everyone might like. I would say that our world is more colorful today because of our clothes, ads and graffiti.

[@Miskito]

Yess!!!

[@pandaknowsimsadder]

Honestly, I feel like I have nostalgia fatigue. My subconscious is totally aware I'm being bombarded with it, so now it has the reverse effect. No warm fuzzies. Just the icky feeling that I'm being manipulated.

[@apcolleen]

It has all the same energy as ads on gas pumps that you can't mute.

[@sonoda944]

And what's worse is that you are correct

[@lilamontoya5609]

It makes me want to see the original thing instead of the remake

[@chadjones1266]

Sincerity and originality are due for a comeback

[@SlapstickGenius23]

Actually to play the devils advocate, there were even smaller reference pools (and thus more obvious unoriginality) in the old Hollywood cinema of the 1920s-50s. That changed with the advent of prototypical slasher films like Psycho and with the rise of tv anime in America from the 1990s onward.

[@interstat2222]

Social media needs to end first!

[@user-11Il10I1]

The problem is, originality is unobtainable. Everything is already under the sun.

[@JonathanHeydh-vy4yw]

It’s capitalism

[@benmalsky9834]

But everything IS sincere

[@thecapone45]

The psychology behind nostalgia is so interesting. It’s why fortune tellers and horoscopes work for so many people. We have selective biases. I’ve seen so many videos on KZbin from the 40s to the present (those videos where someone is recording while riding in a car or going around the city) and invariably, everyone says why THAT era was the “best”. I think the reality is, our childhood is always special because our parents helped to make it that way. Parents shield us from the outside world. We didn’t care about inflation, gas prices, or trouble overseas at 8 years old. Our world was games and playing outside with friends. And one day, believe it or not, some 25 year old is gonna look back at 2020-2025 as such a good time to be a kid. I think the most heartwarming thing is to realize that each of us, in our own way, serve to make a child’s memory of the present precious… Just like adults did for us, decades ago.

[@jackhemsworth7515]

i was born in 1990. i grew up with a tamagochi, pokemon blue on a nintendo gameboy color. pick and mix.. and then when i got to 18, the 2008 financial crash happened and the world was like "Sorry we can't employ you right now". i'm now 34. Do i want to fire up my old gameboy colour and try and beat the elite four again on my original gen 1 cassette? no. not really. The gaming space has gone so much further than low rez pixel sprites that there's an entire category of games that are doing that. and then of course, Minecraft continues to be a thing that exists that never really went away. and trolling new players on runescape telling them Alt + F4 gives them infinite money and watching them disappear from the game world as they tried it.

[@Jellyscode]

I agree that it can be biased, and companies know that. I also think we are seeing first hand how millennial nostalgia is being exploited, there was so much creativity in the 90s in so many different forms, I mean just think about how many snack foods and cereals and candies were being pumped out. Tech was moving fast and there were so many games and toys available to us. Movie genres and cartoons were exploding with new ideas. Everything was colorful, I think it’s safe to say it was sort of a “peak” era of product and packaging design. Consumerism was shoved down our throats, a new aesthetic was born every month lol. I might be biased because yes I was a kid during that time, but I do think it’s important to see the bigger picture of how blatantly obvious it is that SOMETHING different is happening here, even younger generations are nostalgic for the 90s even though they didn’t experience it. pop culture and consumerism really is profiting off of that culture even though it was 30 years ago. I think there’s a difference between someone just “reminiscing” and our entire society trying to latch on to feelings we had during that time because in the age of information it’s much more comforting to play roller coaster tycoon than it is to read the news. It’s all very interesting indeed.

[@jessip8654]

The 90's-2000's were a pretty cool era to grow up in though. I got to grow up alongside the development of modern technology, and enjoy it before greedy corporations sunk their claws into everything and sucked every drop of life and originality out of it. The 2020 kids get like, TikTok slop and microtransactions. and refried refried franchises from my generation instead of something created just for them. Cool.

[@Siures]

Maybe that’s the reason I don’t feel very nostalgic to the 90s. There are very few exceptions (like Stargate and some 90s SNES games), but mostly I try to find good things from all decades. 70s Science-Fiction, modern punk, queer literature from the 1920s… I only crave for the lots of free time I had as a teen. School in Germany ended in the early afternoon and then there was only free time. I napped, played video games, read, listened to concerts and all that in one day! But that’s more an adulting thing that my days are waaaayyyy more complex now.

[@JonathanHeydh-vy4yw]

Capitalism created those stuff

[@Josh-yr7gd]

"A Christmas Story" is a movie about nostalgia, which ironically became a nostalgic movie itself.

[@JJMcCullough]

I’m kind of tired of people pretending nostalgia has some wildly counter-intuitive psychological explanation. I think sometimes people just sincerely like the things they enjoyed when they were young… because they were good.

[@pwall]

Oh hi JJ nice to see ya!

[@RushedAnimation]

Yeah! I love watching the same episodes of pokemon I saw when I was a kid with my kids. (When my kid found out I used to watch pokemon when I was his around his age, he asked "so why isn't it in black and white?")

[@RDB-]

I think I'm personally on both sides of this argument. There are a ton of really amazing things from my youth that are coming back(let's be honest never really left ie pokemon for one example). However some are 100% a cash grab trying their best to be that " 'member us? ". I believe that nostalgia can be used to manipulate people super easily.

[@TheCountOrlok]

Criticism of nostalgia is not about claiming the feeling itself is "counter-intuitive", but about how it's also being constructed, intensified and exploited by third parties to alienate people from the present, distort their image of the past and turn everything into profit. Nobody is saying that any and all enjoyment of an activity one did as a child can't come from a genuine place.

[@BlackZynfyndel]

Things from the past can be “good” and the modern media made off of them can still be empty and devoid of any real soul looking only to cash in off the memories. Like take the Super Mario Movie. It’s not bad or terrible, but at the end of that, to me, it just felt like a bunch of images and quips you could DiCaprio snap too but the plot was instantly forgettable. And I know I know, someone is going to come along and excuse it because “SMB never had that deep of a plot!”, and to that I would then ask well why even adapt it anyway?

[@Domihork]

One thing that I find really sad about this is that there's so much nostalgic content now (with all the reboots, sequels, revivals etc) that I don't really know what future generations are gonna be nostalgic about. Is their nostalgia just gonna be a reboot of our nostalgia?

[@theLazyElf]

I wouldn't worry that much about it. The Y2K trends we currently worship with nostalgia emerged during a period of nostalgia towards the 70's. "That 70's Show" might be the biggest smoking gun out there, but it certainly not the only proof of it all. Likewise, Gen Z is both creating and consuming right now a brand-new aesthetic that we currently disregard as disposable and tasteless... and that exact same aesthetic will become the target of nostalgia in the 2040's or 2050's (that is, if we all get to live for that long), and the reason I know that is because that's exactly how I percieved the Y2K aesthetic during the early 2000's... and to a lesser degree, how the 70's aesthetic was percieved during the 1970's. Nostagia is normal. We should worry about nostalgia-indused consumerism selling us retro goods without the quality of the original retro stuff (that plastic retro kettle from the video is a perfect example), but nostalgia on its own will not send us towards a Ouroboros-like "eating our own tail" lifestyle. Like it or not, a new culture is always developing, even when nostalgia blind us to it.

[@Window4503]

I can see a revival of hipster culture and a nostalgia for the pandemic. The latter is actually easy to romanticize if one ignores all the tragedy: the world shuts down, nature recovers a bit, you work remote for the first time, strangers stop breathing down your neck, you pick up new hobbies and ways of connecting, you make your living space more comfy… it’s already been used in certain films but I can see those who didn’t experience it wishing they could and then cashing in on certain trends inspired by it, especially artsy introverted types.

[@danityvanityinsanity]

They’ll all be one neuralinked hive borgmind.

[@benmalsky9834]

I think if it like how it works in ten movie Coco, we are passing along our love of these things to future generations to ensure they are never forgotten.

[@Xanderall]

Dude, "upcycling" is not an euphemism for "secondhand". Yes, you begin with previously owned or discarded items, but then you reuse them in such a way as to create a product of higher quality or value than the original. Like when you take wooden crates and transform them into side tables or kids' libraries and play spaces.

[@Rakadis]

I might be getting old and bitter. I mostly get sad when nostalgia is involved. So much of my childhood has been resurrected and destroyed for some quick profit...

[@blankseventydrei]

same here, I got tired of it a while ago, while I never bought stuff out of nostalgia, at first it was neat to see stuff again but then I felt it was not creative. now when I see a reboot, I say passss.

[@naejin]

I feel similarly about movie sequels that ended well, but are being resurrected & produced just for profit. Instead of a life cycle, our memories are zombified.

[@abigailpena5950]

I have PTSD from my childhood so a lot of things from mine can trigger a panic attack for me or long term paranoia, so everywhere I look I have to be ready to emotionally whatever I encounter

[@hal0hal0mc]

Eh even back then it was done for profit. People forget how many remakes were done back in the 90s. Every 20 years another King Kong movie is made.

[@Bonanzaking]

It’s literally every generation. Just think of Disneyland, it was built to be nostalgia bait for pre 1900’s.

[@Spoooookkyy]

“Even the advertisements of our youth are somehow nostalgic” that’s literally the best part, ads have degraded way more than everything else

[@interstat2222]

They reflect the aspirations of the market of the time. Which is why we get all this influencer trash as ads online now.

[@DarkMultiBigTrees]

I had parents who grew up in the 60s, and I remember being obsessed with the 70s as a late teen in the early 00s. I don't think it's that uncommon for teens to want a youth they didn't have.

[@Phalaenopsisify]

This is one of your best videos in a long time. Regarding clothing I think the 90's was the last time regular clothes you bought in a normal store was decent quality. It seems like no matter how gently you treat clothes nowadays they fall apart in at best a few years.

[@misspat7555]

So people will do literally ANYTHING they think will make them money. A simple fact, and one that it is important to keep in mind. 💰

[@vresnuil]

I feel so seen about the nostalgia for the time without internet. I feel like half way through my childhood, the word changed and I was catapulted into the future. These days I have a preoccupation with “real” things. Anything made without synthetic materials, and no electronic components. I’m so tired of technology and man made things.

[@ch3rri]

i saw a tweet recently saying how children are being raised on reheated leftovers especially in regards to how studios have been gutting children's cartoons an

[@straitJacketFashion]

To be fair, adverts have always been nostalgic. When the thing advertised is no longer relevant but the jingle remains lodged into the back of your brain - ‘I feel like chicken tonight, chicken tonight’

[@Count_Smackula]

Yup. It's thoroughly implanted because we only had 3 channels. A jingle from the 70s comes to mind & starts out of my mouth, and my wife chimes in with the next verse.

[@piccalillipit9211]

*THE REASON IS SIMPLE* in order to maximise profits companies are only willing to do things they KNOW are commercially successful They wont pay creative people to do NEW things - cos thats expensive and it might not work

[@JohnDoe-mq4sq]

Yep. And in the process they ruin that good thing from the past. Instead of making a new story for a new generation, they just make a terrible version of what once did well.

[@austinhernandez2716]

But capitalism brings innovation 😂

[@piccalillipit9211]

@@JohnDoe-mq4sq YES...!!!

[@Wil-Ly]

If you want to sell something new, just make it looks familiar, old. If you want to sell something old, make it looks new. Don't remember who this quote is, but is Marketing.. or the art to manipulate human minds to buy things we don't need. Greetings for the channel. Enjoy and be happy 😊

[@jayjaybee]

I get why people are so nostalgic, but there's a danger being *too* wrapped up in it. It stagnates our present artistic culture and people let it color their view of the past too much. Ads are *very* nostalgic btw, because as ephemeral as they are, they're still part of the culture.

[@nokedili]

Nostalgia also applies to history the same way. I come from Hungary and many people here feel "nostalgic" for Austria-Hungary. On one hand, it was the time of the fastest ever economic growth in Hungary (first and second industrial revolution all at once), cities started to look more like Western Europe. There were no major wars effecting the country (until WW1). Austria invested huge amounts of money in Hungarian infrastructure so it was practically free for Hungary. On the other hand, the king/emperor held wayyy too much power and Hungary didn't really treat its minorities (Slovak,Croatian, Romanian, Serb, German etc) very well. This really backfired during and after WW1, Hungary ended up losing 2/3rd of its former territory, even regions which had Hungarian majorities at the time (as a form of punishment, for example the southern half of Slovakia). After a brief communist period, Hungary then became extremely far-right and joined Germany in WW2 in hopes of getting the lost territories back. Every far-right politician in Hungary uses Greater Hungary maps in their imagery, for example a whole political party is built on this nostalgia (they have some other wild takes too). fun fact: Viktor Orbán, Hungary's prime minister (of 14 years) once showed up to a football match wearing a scarf with Greater Hungary, so even he is utilizing this Sorry about the random history lesson I originally meant this to be way shorter

[@JonathanHeydh-vy4yw]

Nostalgia is a western concept and problem is Accelerationism

[@rionka]

Thank you for the history mention! ❤

[@JonathanHeydh-vy4yw]

@@rionka Nostalgia is a western concept and problem is Accelerationism

[@nosrin1988]

im nostalgic for the cost of everything in the 90s, and the size of the food.

[@clairestanfield-ui1fg]

yes that so much 😆😆🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@droth1031]

But I'm guessing you still want today's wages. Stuff wasn't magically more affordable back then; we just had less to buy.

[@nosrin1988]

​@@droth1031 The dollar had more value back then. The dollar went further back then. So even if I had 90s wages, I would still have more spending power. Wages have not gone up at the same rate as the cost of food, housing, vehicles. We definitely "make less" both in amount of dollars and in it's values.

[@Unitenotfight]

Taco Bell’s old slogan was 59, 79, 99. That was the cost of every menu item in cents. And while the food wasn’t great, it was much better quality than it is today. You could feed a whole family for less than $20. These days, your total will be 59, 79 or 99 dollars. I can literally go to an authentic Mexican restaurant, get some good quality steak tacos, and still spend less than I would eating Taco Bell mystery meat. I honestly don’t get why most of these fast food places are still in business. The food is terrible, prices too high, and the convenience of it being “fast” has gone out the window. Not to mention that after waiting forever for your food, the teens making it forgot to put half your order in the bag.

[@clairestanfield-ui1fg]

@@Unitenotfight especially the wait time, it's now a normal thing for them to tell you to pull ahead and someone bring your food out to you.😑😑🤪🤪

[@Rouxenator]

My mom has a Smeg kettle like that, its leaking now 2 years later. I bought a cheap store brand kettle 10 years ago and it's still fine, apart from the blue LEDs that died so now the water is no longer blue.

[@Ella-g2m]

My Mr. Coffee kettle is kicking ass daily 10 years later. Rich dumb idiots being separated from their money, warms my heart.

[@TheSidwysDrftr]

This isn’t the only cause. Corporate Hollywood and gaming are learning to only lean on existing IPs due to the fact that many new ideas are massively flopping.

[@yvan2563]

The worse part is that a lot of new movies and TV shows flop because they keep shoving their woke agenda in our faces.

[@Bustermachine]

@@yvan2563 Yeah. Definitely don't want any of that Woke Star Trek. Not like none woke TNG star trek where Captain Picard - Checks Notes - Tells off a cryogenically preserved capitalist. 😕 Or maybe one of those non woke Ratchett and Clank Games on the PS2 - that bitingly mocked hyper mercantile consumerism - Ironically that commentary is removed in the remake, and the game is worse for it. It's not that Hollywood is 'woke'. It's that Hollywood has become incompetent due to systemization of the entire movie making process. We see this with people like Abrams. Producers who use their influence to get in the director's chair, when they're good producers but bad directors. Or Snyder who is a good shot composition guy, but a bad director. Or the Rings of Power, which wasn't just bad because of the creator's personal views . . . but because they'd never actually run a major project before. Abrams just liked them and wrote them a glowing recommendation. I mean, I view the rings of power as particularly incompetent because, if you want to insert a leftist narrative you can do so quite easily while being completely compatible with Tolkien's own philosophy, the rings themselves are wonderful allegory for the tech industry. But maybe the guys financed by one of the largest cloud computing providers in the world (-cough- the one ring -cough-), which underpins hundreds of billions of dollar of internet infrastructure, don't want people thinking too hard about that one XD

[@omisan771]

@@yvan2563 Yup, almost everything is woke trash nowadays, so I return to older TV shows, movies and games.

[@oldirtybasturd]

Cuz new IPs are full of garbage agendas that turn people off

[@Allthecrazythings87]

Thats because communist and socialist thinkers aren’t actually very intelligent or creative… but thats all they will hire.

[@ericmackrodt9441]

Generally I don't buy modern stuff that is a throwback or a reference to the past. I buy the actual items from that time period, with some exceptions. It feels a lot more genuine.

[@JonathanHeydh-vy4yw]

The modern comes from the Latin word modo meaning just now

[@Kevin-oj2uo]

I like some of the vintage stuff because we used to have more power over the media we consume with purpose. Let's say if Blurays make a big come back and you can actually own your movies and series.

[@piccalillipit9211]

I had 1,800 albums on CD. I transferred them to Apples wonderful cloud service - only $50 a year - what could go wrong, no need to store them physically - 24 Bit sound quality higher than the CD's. Until I hit a bad patch in life and didnt renew the subscription and my media was... GONE. 1,800 albums on CD - all purchased by me and in as new condition - gone cos i missed a $50 subscription payment...

[@kellyro77]

Selling nostalgia isn't a recent phase. They've been doing it since I was a kid in the 80's even, pandering to our parents. What I dislike about the more current nostalgia phase is that they just re-package old stuff (movies in particular) instead of taking any sort of time to be creative and come up with something completely new and unique. Why I got sick of the Avengers and Star Wars campaigns. If Disney gets their hands on it, know they're going to overuse it and milk it for all they can until it turns into a dried up, shriveled husk.

[@benmalsky9834]

I hate your attitude towards Disney’s approach. It’s perfectly acceptable to make sure that Star Wars and Marvel are passed down to the children of today and tomorrow.

[@benmalsky9834]

I NEVER get tired of the Marvel and Star Wars campaigns.

[@Unitenotfight]

Agree. Stranger Things is a good example of how to do nostalgia right. Disney is a good example of how to do it wrong 😂

[@benmalsky9834]

@@Unitenotfight Disney does it RIGHT too!

[@benmalsky9834]

@@Unitenotfight I am highly offended.

[@smushles19]

gotta say I love watching 80s-90s commercial compliations

[@Kewrock]

If I include my property tax, and utility bills? Yeah. I'm spending $200 a day to live.

[@andrewvc1527]

Yeah, that’s a wild statistic. “Includes average daily costs of groceries, housing, utilities, insurance, entertainment, eating out, and more.” Like, at that point they may as well just give average yearly salary, because that’s basically what they’re talking about. (Which for the record would come out to $76,201) I wonder if they gave the $208 per day because it makes it sound like more than it actually is, makes millennials seem better off, makes us seem like flippant, impulsive, avocado toast buying idiots, instead of systematically burdened with debt and depressed wages.

[@markmattimore592]

As a Gen-Xer I find it interesting that millennials are now experiencing the whole retro throwback to their childhood (and they somehow feel that it's unique to them). Every generation has gone through this. I remember back in the '70s and '80s there being a huge wave of '50s nostalgia targeted to baby boomers. My generation went through this in the early 2000s. Now it's millennials turn. Give it another 15 or 20 years and Gen Z will go through it as well. Nothing is new. History is circular.

[@GreatSageSunWukong]

yep I too am Gen X and recall flares coming back into fashion for a start and all the retro gaming collections of the late 90s early 2000s, also some very 60s style music around in the 90s/00s

[@nosrin1988]

Everything old is new again, tale as old as time. It all goes in cycles you're absolutely right.

[@Spoooookkyy]

Damm like the movie Grease lmao?

[@mightymight365]

But, you know, Millennials HAVE to make it about “Me, me, me!” And, “We’re the only ones going through this”. GenX neeeeeeever did that.

[@skartimus]

I don't think anyone thinks this is unique it's pretty well known everything goes in cycles, especially fashion. I wonder what Gen Z will get nostalgic about...

[@MarteaniArt]

No no, don't give Nintendo too much credit. Nintendo knows EXACTLY how to market nostalgia coupled with FOMO. Nintendo tends to make a thing, and then stop, which happened with the original NES Classic. They sold over 2 million, they were still in demand, and then Nintendo discontinued the product. All within six months! They eventually did a second release two years later, which stabilized after market prices. It's this second release that outsold other consoles (for a month), because it was essentially “hey, it's your last chance, you missed it the first time, will you miss it again?” Don't let the cartoon plumber fool you, Nintendo is just as cut throat as any other major media corporation.

[@K_8T]

I am reminded of Mario All Stars, the limited run game. The collection didn't even utilise the best versions/updates of the game their respect games included.

[@PScoopYT]

​@@K_8TYou could argue for Mario 64, but buddy, there is no other better way to play Sunshine or Galaxy officially lol

[@nickm5419]

@@PScoopYT Super Mario Sunshine on Dolphin

[@AJ_Jingco]

The BEST years to grow up as a kid. Was in the 1990s and in the 2000s, I was born in 1996 and my childhood was in the 2000s to early 2010s. What I like most about the decade 2000s is that I can still play childhood games on the Philippines 🇵🇭 and the rise of the modern Internet in the 2000s, I played DOTA 1 when I was a kid in the 2000s. Man what a GREAT time to be alive.

[@williamthompson5504]

I was born in 1981. The 80's were great. In 1996, I would have been going into 10th grade.

[@JaySee5]

I hope phone makers get onboard with nostalgia and bring back the headphone jack. It'd be nice if appliances actually make the bulletproof and repairable appliances of the past.

[@FutureProofTV]

imagine being able to replace your own battery again 🤯🤯

[@GreatSageSunWukong]

I'd like them to bring back pocket sized phones, if I want a tablet I will buy one, the size of phones is just stupid.

[@lukasegeling5205]

Sony's flagships still have a headphone jack, expandable storage and absence of display cutout. Let's hope they keep it that way until 2027 when the EU mandates replaceable batteries, since they don't have that yet. A flagship Sony Xperia with all current features plus a replaceable battery (and more reliable fingerprint scanner) would be perfection.

[@topoffthecoupe1871]

Headphone jacks don't need to come back and reintroducing wouldn't really aid in sales

[@MsZiomallo]

​@@topoffthecoupe1871is the phone companies' boot tasty?

[@fridgeffs5662]

This happens every 15 or 20 years. Its been well documented. Ts a generation thing. Look at the 50s movies that were popular then back to the 70s. Then back to the 80s. And now we are moving on to the 90s.

[@KC-kp4vh]

If it’s good, it’s good- regardless of when in your life you discover it. I’m not nostalgic about anything (28), but I’m a collector, and I love design and functional products.

[@lsc66416]

I'm very happy to have found this channel. It's helped me be a bit more conscious of my spending on things I don't really need.

[@Bunny-ch2ul]

My guy, this is not remotely new. This is just part of the trend cycle. *Every era is nostalgic for the era twenty-five-ish years before. There was an Edwardian revival in the 30s, with gauzy, ruffled, floor length dresses. There was an Art Deco revival in the sixties. There was a craze for all things fifties during the eighties. The Y2K aesthetic was a throwback to the sixties and seventies. A ton of eighties trends came back in the 2000s. This is literally just how the trend cycle works. It's just hitting differently for Millennials because it's weird having people nostalgic for their youth, while a lot of us still feel like kids. Most of us, if we put any effort into our appearances whatsoever, look ten years younger than our parents did at the same age. (God bless sunscreen, retinol, and finasteride.) If you watch early Seinfeld episodes, they're all in their thirties. They look fifty. Frasier was in his late thirties, and he looked retirement age for god's sake. We're also not at the same life stage as our parents. I'm 35, married, and own a home, but I'm still in the "let's go to concerts and travel the world" phase, rather than the Gymboree and playdates phase. (I don't know why anyone rushes to have kids. Adult buying power without kids is fucking magical. It's like being in your twenties, but rich, and you don't care about impressing anyone.) I feel like the lesson here is to maybe pump the brakes on the nostalgia though. We mercifully made/make fun of our parents for being nostalgic for Leave it to Beaver bullshit. Going nuts because there's a Mufasa movie isn't a better look. The second you start saying, "things were better in the past" is the exact second you become irrelevant.

[@nickm5419]

things were better in the past and making fun of the parents cause of LITB..thats different cause its in Jest & LITB is actually fucking Good and not this modern fucking Trash being shat out

[@Bro3256]

I was linked this video on Discord in regards to the Nintendo portion and I just have to point out and clarify a lot of the details since it feels misinformed. 7:59 While its true that Mario Bros. kickstarted Mario as the character we know today, it wouldn't be until the original Super Mario Bros. that truly sprung him into popularity and forever cementing it as Nintendo's main brand. Super Mario Bros. was especially a big deal in Japan where the best selling book in 1985 was a strategy guide on how to beat the game. 8:13 Before the NES, Nintendo released the Family Computer (Famicom) in Japan in 1983. When Nintendo wanted to release the system overseas in America, they would up rebranding and redesigning it into the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and test launched it in New York in 1985 and rolled out nationwide the next year. 8:17 The 240 million units number seems to come from the overall sales of the entire Mario franchise worldwide which does not strictly count games only released on NES (or Famicom). It appears that the video implies that Mario Bros. alone sold this much but this is not true. In terms of the actual numbers worldwide on Famicom and NES: Super Mario Bros. sold 40 million, Super Mario Bros. 3 sold 18 million, the International Super Mario Bros. 2 sold 7 million, and the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 plus the original Mario Bros. sold 2 million each, with a total of around 69~ million combined for Famicom and NES. 8:25 Weird to skip out on the Super Famicom and Super NES considering the Nintendo 64 did not catch on in comparison especially in Japan (to the point where the Nintendo 64 was outsold by the PlayStation and Sega Saturn in Japan). 8:40 Not really innovative or a new idea, other examples of plug & play consoles that let you play old classic games had existed prior. Most notably AtGames released a dozen or so systems before Nintendo decided to try the concept themselves. Nintendo just so happened to have been able to make a killing off of it which nostalgia was absolutely a factor. 8:48 Early 1990s? The library of games featured in the Nintendo Classic Mini: Family Computer and NES Classic Edition mainly consisted of games released between the mid to late 1980s with only a few select games with early 1990s release dates. Not to mention the peak of the Famicom in Japan was around 1984-1987 with the Famicom boom era whereas overseas and in particular North America, the NES was at its peak between 1987-1989. By the time the 1990s rolled around 8-bit systems were considered old news and while games would continue to release for older systems the main focus during that time was 16-bit. 9:33 This appears to be sourced from an image titled "Satoshi Matrix Top 100 NES/Famicom Games List" which is shown on screen to illustrate "the types of games Nintendo makes". This doesn't make a whole lot of sense as out of the 99 games listed, only 11 are either developed or published by Nintendo and the rest are third party. This image also includes unlicensed and bootleg releases such as Micro Machines and Pokémon Yellow. Less I mention how a handful of the games shown never released for NES but rather Famicom.

[@jasonking2218]

No one gives a sh-t

[@rionka]

Thank you!

[@laurachristianson1688]

It’s called nobody has new ideas, quite frankly most of the reboots are bloody shite. Kinda good because I don’t have to spend money on stuff I’ve already kept over the years.

[@XDarkGreyX]

Nah, it's mainly that reboots and alike are often a more safe bet than new IPs. Why work your brains and put your resources into creating something new that barely sells if you can just remake a movie for the 10th time that is more likely to make the bigger sum of money.

[@russbooger6211]

@@piccalillipit9211it’s not that simple really.. there are layers to this. To think it can be summed up in one yt comment is adorable tho. 😊

[@piccalillipit9211]

@@russbooger6211 No dude - it really IS that simple. I work [tangentially] in the fashion industry and thats the reason here. I have listened to people in the movie and TV industry and its the same story there. Its hyper financialisation and the renteer extraction economy. NO ONE wants to make anything new; they want to EXTRACT profit from existing IP. I am guessing you are Am3ric4n...???

[@b3ans4eva]

@@russbooger6211

[@russbooger6211]

@@piccalillipit9211 you got it then man, you solved it. Tell the higher ups. You solved it. Big brain solved it in one yt comment. Sigh.. c’mon, grow up.

[@harysuper]

I took the bait but went the opposite way. I bought a third hand CRT tv, dusted off my old gaming consoles, and got a refurbished VHS C camcorder. I also inherited some film cameras. I can be nostalgic but ✨Sustainable ✨

[@GreatSageSunWukong]

Film cameras really need to make a comeback, I think everyone kind of gave up on photography once 35mm film went away and we all ended up with digital, it just seemed to kill the interest for everyone, everyone I know anyway we all just drifted away from taking photos

[@benmalsky9834]

You have to remember that it’s not always about the money. Sometimes there is genuine love poured into nostalgic items and entertainment, with the desire to not just remind us of the things we loved as kids, but to pass them down to future generations to make sure they are never forgotten.

[@Papasot]

7:29 I really appreciate this look, everyone likes some buttons and some satisfying levers and some dials going around making clicking sounds

[@Caerdan]

Inline skates is my weakness. I've bought 2 pairs over the years trying to relive my 90s youth - both worn once!

[@hfvhf987]

Trouble is, it's grass i'm nostalgic for. I miss the countryside i grew up in, that's now paved over.

[@DaniellaCartwright]

I've always loved all things 80s and I was born in the 90s, so this nostalgia for a past that wasn't mine has always been a thing to me

[@Josh-yr7gd]

We have information overload today. There's little room for originality and little time for an idea to develop. You could never have a Mr. Rogers today, but we all have fond memories of him from our childhoods. I tried to watch the Mr. Rogers movie with Tom Hanks and I only lasted about 2 minutes. I couldn't see anything but Tom Hanks and it just ruined it.

[@KevinCarlson]

I didn't know Pokemon had Harrison Ford in it

[@Antenox]

Harrison Ford is just Ash if Ash aged normally through the series.

[@theLazyElf]

I was actually expecting to see an image of Harrison Ford with a Pikachu onesie on the bottom right corner of the video the moment he said that.

[@whatname4613]

I thought he voiced Gyarados.

[@kylewagner78]

I wondered when a video like this would come out. I have been seeing this around everywhere! I almost fell for it!

[@RTDoh5]

The only things I miss from the past is products not being overly complicated by tech, and an era where tattoos were a rarity and not so saturated that they are common. 13:27

[@cherry.blossom_tree]

11:23 - that is clearly an AI-generated image of a classic Happy Meal from the late 80s/early 90s.

[@dingomatic]

We are living in the era of the kidult boom as well, so there might be an element of fulfilling ones childhood wishes (i.e., collecting old or new but limited edition toys of childhood IPs, literally buying into certain lifestyles modeled after certain "-cores" based on media, etc.) that is a factor into the cycle of nostalgia baiting

[@ropro9817]

I have zero nostalgia because I'm dead inside. None of this marketing works on me. 😂

[@alexandermoore2982]

Right? As a kid who never had a console and watched, like, two Disney movies this nostalgia-bait actually makes me want to buy or watch things less because I don't already have context for these products and franchises.

[@ropro9817]

@@alexandermoore2982 Exactly! And every time Hollywood shits out yet another remake or sequel, I just roll my eyes. 🙄

[@illegalalien6542]

Same, stereotypical only child who was raised by a poor single mom here. Couldn't give less of a sh*t about any of this nostalgia bait.

[@cenkomenko]

Thanks

[@CrazyPato1979]

I think you missed the point regarding the Mario movie. Different from Barbie, which is a movie that talks about adult concerns packaged in nostalgia, Mario is a kids movie. I can’t find an adult who liked the movie except for the fact that it was fun to see scenes from the video games on the silver screen. I think that, while there must be an element of nostalgia in Mario, their target are new generations of consumer. That said, you’re right about all the rest of the Nintendo nostalgia market. There is another aspect of the Nintendo nostalgia marketing. Particularly I like it because there was a time between the 80s and 90s that my family didn’t have the money to buy video games. So today I pay Nintendo Online to play those classic games that I couldn’t play as a child. Some of them are not that good, but Zeldas and some RPG are really good and, in some aspects, better than today’s games in the same genre.

[@Jessicab-u7c]

There were days for us gen Xers where kids had to leave the house and go to an arcade and buy coins to play the cames at 25 or 50 cents per game. if we really want to feel nostalgic go tyo a secondhand bookstore those were common in the 90's.

[@kurtadamlar]

Also, let's not forget, a good design is poised to prevail and become a classic.

[@rosalindgatto9630]

11:50 That might be a bad example of misremembering things. The bad Christmas memories FAR outnumber the good ones, though my family can laugh about most of it now and they motivate us to have more chill holidays.

[@shatteredglass005]

Ugh, I LOVE a London Fog!! The lady in that room with you has excellent taste

[@alpolo007]

You see this in the firearms world as well. GWOT M16A4s were huge five years ago, then it was Vietnam era M16s, now it’s 80s and 90s Colt Commandos.

[@Blueskybuffalo]

A Japanese company created an Italian plumber to design my childhood.

[@djjamesblackchannel]

Nailed everything I've been saying for the past few years without accusing me of being a grumpy 39 year old. The 90s was full of bad times, socially and politically, but we only select the memories we want from that era. Nostalgia is a warm fuzzy fix for many, but going outside into today's world mean you can form new memories, have new serotonin and dopamine hits!

[@thecapone45]

4:25. Of course. How can anyone forget 🎵CAUSE IM YOUR LAYYYYDYYYY!!! AND YOU ARE MY MAN!🎵 They really wanted to sell us 8 year olds a love songs collection.

[@Moonstone-Redux]

It has never left my playlist since I got my first portable music player back in 2003 though...

[@TheStarBot]

I do not think Mario is a great example of nostalgia bait, ignoreing how video games are an actual art form then mindless plastic garbage, but they are almost always an reason for why they make an new Mario game, to move the medium / series forward

[@FAB13]

Nickelodeon magazine please!! 📞 Nickelodeon magazine please!! 📞

[@benmalsky9834]

Stop it with this whole “nostalgia is bad” thing, I love it and I can’t get enough of it!

[@MrCaku]

I love 90's throwbacks that remind me what it felt like to be a kid... Levi: "The past is just a coping mechanism of delusion." 😢

[@JonathanHeydh-vy4yw]

I hate the Georgian calendar and I hate western culture

[@ReviewSalesmanDan]

What is the 1999 Overgrowth Base Set example at 3:42 meant to illustrate? This is the value of a sealed, 25 year-old product on the secondary collector's market. It's not something The Pokemon Company or Nintendo are marketing now.

[@juliajs1752]

I got all nostalgia out of my system when I spent a weekend listening to the charts of my formative years. Realising how much my music taste has changed made it so much easier to accept that nostalgia is not for the present, because it wasn't the current *me* that loved that kind of movies, books ,games.

[@emily36130]

I don't want products with 50's design, I want products with 50's build quality

[@Tom-cn4cm]

Repairmen was something that was used a lot more back then. Build quality was meh. Having a tv repairman come over a few times a year was normal. lol

[@crackedphone6912]

Matrix was right. The 90s was the peak of civilization.

[@AIDreamBeatsMain]

Sir… Pokémon has been going strong the entire time it has been alive. It’s not just “coming back”.

[@JB2X-Z]

Pretty sure the guy just dropped Pokemon once he felt it was too childish and didn't realize that the world kept moving without him.

[@AIDreamBeatsMain]

@@JB2X-Z Possibly. I never went through that myself with it. I started playing in 1999 and haven’t quit. I just love those games. 😅

[@armorbearer9702]

I get it. The mind can only hold so much information. The things that produce strong emotions is what we remember. I suppose we want to block out the bad stuff and remember the good times.

[@TheNiteNinja19]

I remember when the whole idea of streaming everything was cool and awesome. But now that it's been enshitified, I've been buying physical media again.

[@Bonanzaking]

Don’t waste the money, sail the high seas as a pirate. The convenience of digital without the DRM.

[@joveymcjupi4455]

@@BonanzakingThat’s what I do for the most part too, but there’s something inherently special about *physically* owning something as well. Plus, if you wanna support the said creators (this is mainly for music rather than movies n whatnot), its a great way to do so as well.

[@Bonanzaking]

@@joveymcjupi4455 uhh this ain’t the pre internet era in regards to music. In music the money is in touring. I support musicians by going to live shows. Price of a ticket, price of tour shirts and other merch, meet and greets puts far more money in their pockets than buying their CD’s without them having to give a cut to a music label. For example with my favorite band, Megadeth I’ve been to every show they’ve played in Southern California since 2009 sometimes seeing them multiple times on a tour and paid at various points to meet them and get a few autographs. This is far more meaningful to them money wise than buying their CD’s and far more money spent on my behalf over 14 years than buying 15 albums. I get nothing from owning physical media. It’s a headache because very quickly you start to run out of space in a house. I’d find it extremely annoying if I had to store hundreds and hundreds of discs and their cases taking up far more room than a hard drive with a backup for redundancy sake and this just for music. If I factored in movies and TV shows and their cases it’d be far more inconvenient and slow the process of finding what I want to watch or listen to. I’m pretty much plugged in listening to music nearly the entirety of the waking day, whether home or walking about. Digital reigns supreme for me.

[@sebachirinos]

Thank you for this reflexion. I never comment on vids, but this was awesome

[@jokerpilled2535]

The more I can pretend to live in the 90s, the more I can cope with living in this modern society.

[@Lauren_C]

A very applicable quote from Cowboy Bebop describes my view of nostalgia well: “It was all just a dream.”

[@luckynhlanhlatshabalala2475]

Thanks. Just subscribed and turned on the notifications. I'm now going to watch videos you already posted because they suit my content.

[@shalona1974sweden]

A sign that the past (I'm gen x) must've been better was that we glamorized the future ✨️🔜✨️

[@Xamry]

I literally left a comment on another channel a few nights ago where they went over ads over the decades 4:22 I said something about how I watched a video about ads without ads being disrupting and bothersome It was about items withdrawn from fast food menus and the original ad campaign that accompanied them

[@KazrBrekker]

“The culture industry perpetually cheats its consumers of what it perpetually promises. The promissory note which, with its plots and staging, it draws on pleasure is endlessly prolonged; the promise, which is actually all the spectacle consists of, is illusory: all it actually confirms is that the real point will never be reached, that the diner must be satisfied with the menu.” ― Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

[@martin-uz1py]

Whenever I see anything from Smeg I think of Red Dwarf it makes me happy to know people like having the word smeg emblazoned on their kitchen appliances. 😃

[@clarita_ve]

Isn't this normal? It is human nature to long for times when things were "better". They are "better" because as kids we don't see many problems so we remember those times as perfect. That Gen-Z example that you mentioned about longing for the childhood they didn't had is basically the plot of Midnight in Paris. I used to said that was born in the wrong decade because I loved 80's music and Star wars, but probably was more because my parents were teens-YA then and they talked marvelous things about those years and I wanted that. And that is what Gen-Z or Alpha might think about the 90's-2000's. And regarding fashion, it is cyclic. We went from wide pants, to skinny jeans to wide again in a matter of 25-30 years, just to give one example. I don't know if that is nostalgia or just teenagers not wanting to dress like their parents, listen to their music, having a similar house appliances...

[@JonathanHeydh-vy4yw]

It’s mostly because of capitalism and also I hate America and this stupid so called culture and The generations thing is stupid

[@Styrophoamicus]

Understanding when a company is trying to trigger your nostalgia can help you be more critical about the product on its own merits, not just "it gives me the warm and fuzzies".

[@festivalkyrie]

Big remake time was popular in the 90s and 00s, too, so it's nothing new (and we have lots of examples through history), our new addition it that we're losing the meaning on physicality. We're losing buttons, sounds, that made technology more physical for us. And as for everything feels disposable so easily (and replaced such an easy way too!), it feels like we're only just levitating through life. I'm searching for a Casette/CD player I had as a kid/teen, because I enjoy physical media, especially music. Funnily, as we can afford the things we weren't able to find or purchase as kids, all of my friend feel guilty for making a purchase- for their hobby, or enjoying something. If you have a feeling for it, it's like comiting a sin 😐😐

[@Mevi]

Mario was the first Italian man I had ever seen. Ah, the good old days.

[@amorfatikhb]

your videos are structured and edited so well

[@AlanaLee-xv2qy]

Thirty years seems to be the nostalgic set point. In the 80s, it was longing for the 50s (think Back to the Future) and in the 90s it was for the 60s (Woodstock reboot, etc).

[@JonathanHeydh-vy4yw]

The georgian calendar is stupid

[@kibble-net]

Nostalgia bait is so powerful that an entire political party built their campaign around it here in the USA.

[@derkommissar4986]

Wow I'm voting for that one

[@pope88fb]

This time I really don't agree with some stuff: in general, everything about nostalgia is right, but regarding videogames characters, like Mario or Pokemon, for plenty of people is not nostalgia, it's always been present. Maybe Mario it's childhood stuff for you, but it always has been relevant...

[@iGotBulletproof-Insomnia]

Upcycling and second-hand aren't meant to be interchangeable. Upcycling is usually when you take something existing and adjust it to fit a different style or repurpose it into a new piece. You can upcycle pieces you already own, trade clothes with people you know, or thrift it, but typically upcycling means that you've taken needle and thread and scissors to it to make it something new.

[@lustbubo4638]

I'm tired of internet nerds trying to tell me how awesome CRT's are. I'd MUCH rather run N64 games at 1080 60fps on my laptop than OG style. And the CRT "Filters" are just garbage 😂

[@davidsaroea5530]

A lot of old stuff has character. I take walks in the historic districts all the time. It's beautiful and serene and cool looking

[@DigitalAshes]

@6:21 shout out to London Fogs, they're the best

[@JoeNasr123]

I blame the fact that people are both lazier and less talented as they rely more and more heavily on technology. Combine that with “cashing in everything as if it’s the end” corporate greed, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. It will only get worse.

[@SlapstickGenius23]

Yeah, although to play the devil, decades earlier when people were using less high tech stuff, nostalgic movie genre trends were just as blatant even without WiFi (or most people being merely lazier than they were). Only in the early 1970s did the much older and more questionable trends get replaced largely by the more familiar but then-new trends that we’ve known even today.

[@scronx]

This is so interesting for an old boomer -- didn't realize the extent of it. That 1950s teapot warms the cockles of my heart! My generation experienced the (?) first nostalgia craze, grooving on the mass culture of the 1930s and '40s, Paul McCartney's "granny" music (as Lennon called it) etc. People have to have a sense of rootedness, of coming from somewhere in time. As for the past not having been objectively better, you would not believe how many of life's essentials we've simply thrown overboard in a mad dash to be modern and "with it". Wokesters will always denounce earlier eras because their agenda has always depended on deracination. We're absolutely doomed if we keep hurtling off in these present politically correct directions. Well, we are because of our forever chemicals etc but that's another subject.

[@SiincereARC]

As a Millennial, I can say I'm on this wave of just sticking my face in nostalgia to keep myself sane. BUT, I can also say, I grew up in the lower class, so my nostalgia is more of "I finally have the chance", which is why I have a record player, a tape player or a fancy late 90s car. When you mix that with how insanely bad things are (I'm using that term as someone who paid a lot of attention in history class and am aware of what things get recycled) today, why seek out depression when I can just listen to or watch something I know will make me happy. It may not be the "right" thing to do but I'd rather listen to Illmatic for the 100th time while watching reruns of the cosby show.

[@pablocasas5906]

While I agree in certain aspects that Nintendo does employ nostalgia in some of their products, I wouldn't call the Mario Movie as a sort of throwback, Mario has reinvented in every console generation, so people from different age groups have been introduced to Mario, the Mario Movie and his recent video games are targeted to new younger people and adults who grew up with Mario

[@Bloomkyaaa]

*I love rewatching adverts on TV from when I was a child in the early 2000s because they had actual soul and effort put into them.*

[@RTDoh5]

With almost all adds being pharmaceutical adds. You do miss the variety.

[@datsunmadman]

I watch 70s and 80's adverts too and I love it

[@app0the]

Where I grew up TV ads didn't really exist until the early 1990s. As a result all those ads from the 90s and 00s have a fun amateur-ish vibe to them, which led to a lot of memes and catchphrases engraved into the core of the brain of our generation in that time and place. These days all ads seem to have stabilized and are just following a specific formula rather than trying to toss things at the wall to see what sticks.

[@garrettjohnsen]

Why does everyone want me to buy into the idea that today sucks and yesterday was better. It’s annoying. I’m happy. Let me be happy.

[@thegrantgirl7543]

Hey now... Gen X'er here and WE cared about those doughnuts. we CARED my friend, just sayin. Don't leave us out of the Nostalgia accessibility to our wallets problem - (this message brought to you by Skipper, Barbie's best friend! *cue music*)

[@JohnTsagas]

One of the best videos you have made! Many thanks 🙏