The best example of this cultural stagnation is the now decade year old GTA5. Nobody playing that game for the first time would have any reason to think it isn’t set in 2024, besides maybe the absence of Tik Tok
and with the release of gta 6 we will be able to compare the two and see... actually not that much of a difference in terms of the contents of the game itself, the cultural references and the technology present in it.
@@horiascarlat6109 No you can tell, just listen to the jokes. They've been clear the next game is going to be woke, no more "punching down", etc. Look at the protagonist, I'd go so far to say GTA 6 is the end of GTA.
@@darthbigred22 lol, female playing character isnt "woke". and the trailer very much showed us how big of a parody of the real world 2024, on one will care if there are jokes in a gta game
It's globalisation my man. Everything is the same everywhere. Im from Poland and if you go out to the streets of any big city you gonna see zoomers with broccoli hair and air pods listening to some shitty mumble rapper while recording tik toks. And I bet that you can see that in New York and London. Western culture became homogenous and stagnant because everything is the same everywhere. Being born smack dab in the middle of the 90s I witnesed insane growth of the technology, the jumps from ps1 to ps2 to ps3 were insane. Jump from ps3 to ps4 was minor in comparison and from ps4 to ps5 is non existend. Everything is just incremental now. We are in the late stage of Roman empire when people are becoming more and more lazy, art regresses and technology stagnates.
Technology isn't really stagnating, artificial intelligence is the prime example. But to be fair, that's not really technology but scientific innovation
Technology is stagnating despite the mass production of artificial intelligence? Also weird take that people are becoming lazy when it's become a common trend in the US, Canada, and UK for young people to work immense hours yet receive little payment.
You also have to remember how much of pop culture came from underground counterculture rather than mainstream pop culture. Rock music, indie movies, pre crash video game development and distribution, anime OVAs making their way overseas in the 80s and 90s before toonami and adult swim came on the scene in the early 2000s. You can argue the internet and the instant speed of word of mouth these days doesn’t allow smaller subcultures to ferment and grow into larger cultures icons in the future.
I think its because the internet and globalization have eliminated regional differences... nothing unique is being formed anywhere because we all get the same everything fed to us via the internet. Even regional accents are slowly disappearing. I'm from New England, and when i was growing up we ALL had accents to one degree or another. (No R sound if it was at the end of a word for example) We had our own words that meant totally different things to what they meant anywhere else. Now? Its the same as anywhere else. None of my kids have any accent at all really, and mine is nowhere near as thick as it used to be.
Echoed my thoughts exactly. Young people make new shit up and it gets monetized immediately, or has to go on corporate platforms so it can be monetized. Things can't be underground, people can't experiment and make mistakes and grow as artists before they hit the big time if they ever had a chance.
@@pilouuuu that's just a speedbump, then a turnabout... What we considered counter culture, our kids consider to be the domain of turbo dorks. My 16 year old and his friends are EXTREMELY conservative. They're at the gym 3 or 4 times a week, they read stoic philosophy, the Bible, and western classics, they dress nice, and consider degeneracy and disruptive behavior to be cringe AF. Turns out that you cant be the dominant culture and the counter culture at the same time; and i think that's irreconcilable for the left... they cant wrap their heads around blue hair, degenerate behavior, loud music, and substance abuse being mainstream and thus completely uncool.
Culture just went corporate. No taking risks, no controversy. Yet a lot has changed in different areas that are maybe not as noticeable visually. Take the last year with the rise of publicly available a.i. there are loads of changes ahead in the next two years. You’ll see.
The thing with companies in general so that you may call them 'late stage capitalism' is that they have reached their full market potential. There's no more possible audiences to reach organically, so they have to water it down to reach a few more people or make it so efficient that there's no room for creativity anymore. This is all because shareholders demand an even higher profit every year. So the answer is stock market investors, who became more cautious and demanding after the 2008 crash.
@@renaatsenechal I don't know, man. Gaming companies for example, could easily make more money by dropping all the woke nonsense, stop making female characters ugly and just makes good games again. Just look at the popularity of Stellar Blade and Black Myth Wukong.
@@renaatsenechal I don't agree, things have gotten more popular these days without having to be watered down, they haven't reached everyone or everything, the problem IS that they're trying to reach everyone and everything, but not to benefit every individual, only themselves. COD for example. They've made it "easy" for people who aren't that good at shooters, at least for the first few rounds before they're beaten down the next 5 games because they've done "so good" when they were just competing against other weaker players.
@@renaatsenechal exactly. Nothing more to say other than that this is the state of not only culture related industries but the entire western economy. Venture capitalists fear for their profits so they try to maximize profits or buy up real estate or infrastructure in a big way, so they can ensure others steady flows of profits. I just can’t see how this can end well, without the lower classes loosing big time. Even the ones who seem to be well off will probably be sucked into the vortex when the market crashes.
Early 2000s had so much more to explore online.....blogs and message boards....all written and commented on by actual individuals (with a few trolls for entertainment) ....I'm convinced the old internet has been supressed and replaced by google and facebook based bots......even YT has a set formula with promoting the rise and fall of certain content creators, play the game or get bypassed by the algorithm.
@@BananaPhoPhillyits also wayy too obvious how filtered the comments are. If the algorithm finds something even slightly offensive about your comment it will be hidden away.
Yup. Most of the old net has been buried or erased entirely. For instance, you can barely find any images that were posted to the internet before like 2012 on Google Images now.
The commercialization of social media and then Covid and post covid is what shut everything down. I said it before. The 2020's is where fun and culture dies.
I used to feel like that too but getting older and learning about human history made me realize we're not the first ones to feel this doom it's been happening though all of recorded history and beyond. and whoever first said history always repeats was a extremely wise person. we go through cycles in society the Internet and social media has definitely changed things that's new but I believe we are all craving for human connection deep down and things will turn around
I think eventually things will work themselves out, look how many layoffs there are in the video game industry. And the Hollywood box is not what it was pre-pandemic. People will just get bored of the safe, focus-tested stuff.
@@lf2052Getting older you should also realize that civilizations can and did collapse. I'm sure some Babylonians thought they were just going through a phase right up until their fall.
The death of Nerd Culture is probably the most noticeable aspect of Monoculture to go by by. It started grass roots, swelled until it became suffocating, and then expired after End Game.
Broadening the demographic killed nerd culture. Companies appealed to people who didn't like nerd stuff in the first place and destroyed the original vibe. Now its just generic slop.
@@EresirThe1stThe same can be said for every subculture of music, films, art etc. Once they enter the mainstream that is filled with oppertunists, frauds, posers etc. What matters is to allow a growing audience without surrendering to the mainstream. Or what made it awsome in the first place.
Not really the internet just opened their eyes, we live in a heirachy to our job's, wealth, social status. I can tell you don't have a job, it's a self interest world. The real truth this is a survival of the fittest type world, maybe someday you will understand that. We are just organic talking virus that's all we are.
Everyone has to walk on eggshells today. You can't make innovative or edgy content anymore, or at least: corporations won't let their authors do it, because they're too scared of social media reaction.
I find it rather ironic that we have better technology for content consumption than ever in the history of mankind while at the same time the creation of new content and culture is pretty much dead.
That's is ironic, I blame the combination of woke culture and monopolies that are afraid of taking risks or offending people. Ironically woke culture is basically destroying entertainment and destroying the golden gooses of money making series and franchises and pissing off more people than if they were trying to push the boundaries
There's a lot of content creation, but the innovative stuff is buried in niche subgroups. The Internet and social media is about scale, so for big budget stuff- if it's not a safe bet for scale - it just never gets made. At least it seems like only the safest, milquetoast stuff gets greenlit. My teenage nieces were complaining that the 2024 remake Mean Girls is so sanitized compared to the original 2004 version.
Nah. The main difference is that culture is more decentralized today compared to the past where you had the TV as the main and a common source for culture. The thing is that information in decentralized systems tend to propagate rather than be broadcasted, and people have more agency over the how the information propagates. In simpler terms, it's like you saying that culturally there's nothing new over, say, Japan. You don't live there, you have no idea what's going on there unless somebody that does tells you. Everybody now lives in their own "country" culturally. There's innovation and stuff happening everyday, just not in your bubble.
A huge thing is as technology improved & subcultures fractured into tiny micro cultures the corporate business world consolidated to an extreme. There isn't the ecosystems to support the micro cultures. There is more experimental music today globally than ever before but there are 3 labels that control 90% of music releases. Look at every medium and it's the same story. A few monopolies with total control & a million basement hobbies with nothing in the middle. There are people creating the next thing every day but it gets crushed before it even had a chance to grow. Auto companies makes the same 3 crossovers in the same color with different badges instead of having unique products for different people. Mergers & acquisitions killed culture. Standardized killed creative expression. A soap ad, music tour announcements & pictures of your pets have to fit in the same Instagram box. It's not a cultural failure it's a business choice. We should be in a golden age but maximizing markets cuts it off. Thankfully things do occasionally slip through & there are a million amazing things down in the cracks.
Totally agree. If only we had a way of connecting people to things organically without it becoming bastardized and for-profit as soon as it finds any success.
I agree with a lot of this, but stuff like the auto companies making the same three crossovers has to do with tightening safety regulations (which is why so many cars look the same) and sales. People love crossovers. Car companies see the demand, so the trend continues. What's the point in doing anything else if they're successful? If/when the trend dies, then something else will take it's place. It's always been like that with vehicles.
What doesn't get crushed by mergers, acquisitions and monopolies, get cancelled and destroyed by cancel culture and mods of woke lunatics who are obsessed with controlling everything every hobbie has to preach their narrative and messaging or be silenced and destroyed
When you mentioned the cars you're right. I think the only company actually making new kinds of cars is Tesla, with the Cybertruck. People may hate it, but it is different and innovative.
It's because this whole nightmare we have now started in 2008 specifically. Phones, social media, bad games, bad music, and most of all - the first serious world economic crisis. 2008 is like a cutoff point past which little makes any real sense for those of us who have been there in the 90s and 2000s. 2007 was the last year that had any of that mid-90s to mid-2000s feel that we all want to go back to but never will, since today, the world is broken in ways which are already visible through the cracks. It will get a lot worse.
"bad games" you say that in the same year that Metal Gear Solid 4, GTA 4, Devil May Cry 4 was released and a few months later Assassin's Creed 2. our culture declined between 2013 and 2016
@@1kracuauker797 And we better not mention Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead, Gears Of War 2, Dead Space, Persona 4, etc, etc, etc. 2008 was one of the most packed years in gaming history.
San Andreas did the same thing Vice City did in terms of capturing the aesthetic of the time period it was portraying, but except with 90s west coast hip hop culture
Ironically that basically how I saw when I first got on in the early 2010s the internet and what I feel in love with movies and free tv show at the touch of my finger tips, video game reviews and retrospectives, history documentary and all the horror movies I could ever watch and I feel in love with the internet, honestly I mainly just used UA-cam and couldn't care less about taking to people for a literal decade I don't think I talked to a single person online before 2020, now UA-cam kinda sucks so I actually talk to people online because I'm bored and the Internet sucks but I've been basically spending too much time on it so it a habit like smoking is, it doesn't feel like a improvement version of cable anymore the magic is gone to much drama and divisive political stuff nowadays
@@shaneriggs6678 breh Internet in early 2010s was basically the same as it is today. Major corporations already owned most of it. You just grew up. The reason why old farts like me rever Internet in the 90s and very early 00s is because it was complete anarchy. I mean imagine no UA-cam, no Facebook nor social media at all, no Google even if you're old enough. Pure chaos. Interested in, idk, anime? Let's say Google is there already. Nowadays you'd probably join some group on some social media page and have it all available right away, back then you'd see 100s of weird forums with random people, or IRC chats, made by some dude in his basement as opposed to some corporation. Truly we didn't appreciate te complete beautiful anarchy of it all and the freedom which came with it until it was all sterilised.
@@aw2584 well I was never really cared about talking to people online so I basically just completely ignored the internet until around 2010 , I only reason I even started to care about the internet was UA-cam had access massive amounts of movies, tv shows and game reviews, I only talked to people nowadays online because modern entertainment sucks and culture war politics drama basically makes me feel depressed and kinda just talk to people for who the hell even knows
@@aw2584 That's so true. People built their own websites in html, they usullay looked like crap but they had a soul and the raw opinions and passions of the creators. There were countless forum sites, etc. non controlled or censored by some giant corporation. There was a real spirit of freedom and self-expression. Nowadays everything feels restricted, soulless and castrated.
If you look purely at the online space the culture shifts every year or two. That's where it went. Compare the 2014 meme game to now. The reason it isn't offline is because the physical space has become a dumpster fire. Economic failure, demographic changes, lack of 3rd spaces, anti-free speech actions, etc. have all coalesced to make a low-trust fragmented society.
Someone explained to me that their kids never go out into the real world because nobody can afford to drive a car around. Gas is high, cars are expensive and the internet connects them just fine enough. Makes me sad knowing all the fun I had going out into the world, but the kids will figure something that works out for them. It sure seems unsatisfying to me though.
Even the Internet has gotten that way now. Every platform has nebulous tos that are enforced arbitrarily to suppress whatever the corporation who runs it happens to dislike. Then there's the AI either deleting or hiding every single post it flags as problematic (ie: not the most bland milquetoast nothings possible). And then there's the people who want to shut down anything and everything because its offensive or problematic or abusive so they can look so virtuous online.
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e mass bannings of "offensive content" and "hate speech" which are really just nice words whatever the corporation which runs the site disagrees with, combined with shadow banning and hiding content. You ever see a comment here that has 25 replies listed, but then you click "show replies" and only see 5? That's because the other 20 were hidden by a bot for mentioning controversial or brand unsafe topics.
GTA4 really encapsulates the sarcastic and jaded nature of everything then. the people, the adverts, the music, everything. fresh off of 9/11 and other events, the world was so out of it, that being out of it became it
Don't forget it was a world dominated by war. Tons of war movies and war videogames, everyone knew or had someone that was away in the war, and all anyone cared about is finding that motherfucker bin laden.
Culture has been incredibly stagnant since the late 2000s, this is a fact. It's a concept known as "cultural ground zero", and it has been explored by many writers.
I'm guessing you're a fan of David Stewart? I really enjoy his videos on the subject. I think he JD Cowan, and Brian Niemeier knocked it out of the park with that theory.
Yeah, people are too afraid of offending somebody, so nobody uses original ideas anymore. Best to play it safe and reboot something that everybody loves.
@@finnpendleton4615 I get the Feeling that Wokeness i slowly Dying in 2024 it began arround 2008 and now it FINALLY Starts to really Bore and Piss People Off.
I'm also a 1999 baby. The world has changed, but it also hasn't. I dunno, I'll talk to people younger than me by over half a decade at my job and half the time I forget they're not even my age. Maybe it depends on the type of person.
As someone born in 2004, I feel like I'm at the very tail end of consciously witnessing this perceived shift in culture. I entered grade school in the late 2000s, middle school in the mid 2010s, had nearly half of my high school experiences before the Pandemic, and started College at the end of the covid craze. I was 16 when everything shut down. As a 20 year old, my life experience is short to none compared with the rest of this comment section, but I so deeply miss the last grasps of the analog days of my childhood. Whatever I remember left of it... Big box TV's, playing with my mother's phone's retractable antenna, reading movie listings and the comics in the newspaper, our family's computer room, physical photos and photo albums of my childhood. Oh how I appreciate the little time I had before the world became numb to its own desires and passions...
I'm glad other people have noticed this. I have mixed feelings about it. On the positive side I can still wear the same kinds of clothes I wore back in the 90s and still look current. On the negative side it's boring and everything since the late nineties has just blurred together. Music hasn't even moved forward that much. That's probably the biggest disappointment. Throughout the 20th century new genres of music were popping up regularly. Now it's just the same stuff we had 30 years ago. Fortunately unlike my parents who hated my music I can enjoy the music young people make today because it's basically the same kind of music I grew up with. Young people also seem to like older music more than my generation did so that's also a positive.
Right? No new genres, just new sub-genres, mixes of two old things. Then again, must we constantly get completely new things culturally? I don't know the answer to this question yet.
I remember being 13yo in 2009 watching new cartoons thinking something feels off. I know now that all of the cartoons were very similar and extremely sanitized.
Cartoon Network had some really funny cartoons around that time like Flapjack and Chowder. 2010 to now every cartoon looks like Adventure time and cal arts
@@PseudonymsAreGovnoYaEbalGoogle we've been in "late stage Capitalism" since around the 50ies-80ies. The real problem can be gleaned from your own analysis of the perceived cause. In reality the stagnation is indeed due to progressivism (rebranded and slightly modernized communism) and the authoritarian bent it takes wherever it reaches. Censorship, Panopticon. In a way it's a weird kind of corporate "wokeness" that crushes culture.
This is actually of what the video is talking about. I like synthwave too, but with the internet and social media, everyone can just operate in their little subculture that suits them. There is no mass culture any more, which is why there will never be anything that feels like Friends, Seinfeld, Nirvana or Oasis again. For such a thing to happen, people need to be consuming culture together. Before smartphones and social media, people were limited by the amount of TV channels, newspapers and magazines that existed. Now everything is vast and infinite. We are living in far more atomised way than before. You can go into whatever little world you like with your phone. It is in this sense that the year 2000 had more in common with 1960 than it does with now. You can only have large cultural waves if everyone is looking in the same places. Now, the places are infinite. It might have sounded good before it happened but the result is that there is no mass culture left. There is less to unite us than ever before in living memory.
The 80s did end. But shows like VH1's I love the 80s in the mid 2000s and 2010's, and then Kavinsky hitting the scene in the late 2000s is what kickstarted the 80s revival. Started in Europe around Italy and went from there after channels like NewRetroWave dropped in 2013/2014 that highlighted this kind of music.
I was having a discussion similar to this with my mom; specifically concerning music. There's no big musical movement anymore like grunge, or, what I experienced in my youth, nu metal. The internet fragmented the music scene and now everybody just listens to their own niche artists; smaller but more dedicated audiences. I now listen to synthwave and not too many people have heard of it.
I’d say the closest thing to a big musical movement is the rise of hyper-pop in like 2020 & artists adapting that sound to other genres Edit: I’ll say that hyper-pop WAS the last big musical movement with the youth (so far). Its effects can still be felt/seen in pop and hip hop today, mostly
Plenty of people have heard of synthwave. You sound like a "hipster" who says they listen to "underground" artists like Arctic Monkeys, Mac Demarco, and Tame Impala.
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e not really, no, whenever I say I like synthwave I get asked "what is it?" And more besides... I don't expect people to know artists like lazerhawk or scattle, it's quite niche
Was talking with my brother about this exact topic, we grew up in the 90s. I couldn't agree more when you said as children we were surrounded by this boom of incredible and ground breaking art and it shaped our world view. I'd say human creativity peaked around the early to mid 2000s. Just go back and look at the quality of films/video games that came out during that time, every year was exciting. Now we're in a trough it seems and I'm waiting for things to pick up again.
I view the 80s as the peak as it gave us so many of the iconic franchises to this day, but there's a good argument from anywhere from the 50s-early 2000s. A lot of good stuff came out of the early 2000s and it still had that unique feel that the 80s/90s did.
The 80s was the peak for our culture, But the 2000s was the peak of civilization, The mid-late 2000s were as good as they were ever going to be. Everything since has been a series of rapidly diminishing returns despite "progress" being made technologically.
There was plenty of garbage in those years too. You're viewing it years later when we forgot about the trash and only remember the memorable games, movies, music, etc.
Every time is a retread to some extent and the 90s was the same. It’s more specific example but in the UK we had Britpop take over in the mid 90s, and a lot of that music was heavily inspired or straight up borrowing from the 60s.
@@user-vi4xy1jw7eyou didn't have annoying people saying that if you didn't like this movie or games bigot, sexist or some kind of phobic, you did have people saying that the fans and audience were entitled and spoiled and were horrible people for their opinion on a movie or games, you didn't have the psycho drama that revolves around modern entertainment, if you didn't like something bad back then you just moved on. We didn't have a culture that revolves around victemhood Olympics and constantly trying to piss people off for attention 24/7 like nowadays, we didn't have the drama constantly about weather you like something or not, you wasn't transphobic for liking Harry Potter and you weren't a sexist for not liking the new ghost busters movie
Back then, going to the internet was an event. I remember gather around with friends and family to look up a site and wait minutes for the page to load, it was tedious but i remember enjoying it more. Now we got everything on one device and it's quicker yeah, but it feels boring like there's nothing special about it anymore. I think the perfect balance between technology and life was before the iphone. You wanted to contact somebody? You called them. You wanted to look something up? You used the computer. You wanted to listen to music? You used your ipod or mp3 player. You get the point. I think there is still hope for the new generation. They just need to realize and wake up.
One important thing changed noticeably in our culture: everything is so political. Polarization is nothing new in politics, it's part of democracy. But in most of the west, political junkies were a clique of their own, and radicas were a clique inside another. Now everything gets politicized, not even children movies are exempt, and you are expected to have an opinion on everything; the environment, aliens, inflation, aliens impact on environment and inflation... And everything is left or right, liberal or conservative. This might be the worse part of the end of monoculture. Politics is not getting any better, only noisier.
You could also be a centrist and make interesting centrist media that wasn't afraid. Simpsons made fun of left and right, loved by all. Now Simpsons is an irrelevant leftist mouthpiece.
thats another one killed by the internet, the biggest impact is short form content. with short form content like tic tok or early twitter, there is no space for any context. all you get is a single short thing with zero context, and this effectively trained everyone to ignore context as a result. making everyone reactionary and incapable of hearing opposing views because their brains had been trained to ignore everything outside the short box the see in front of them. the hyperpolarization is only exacerbated by the echo chambers created by the content algorithms. these algorithms that only exist because of the oversaturation of available content, because the sheer volume of content that exists is greater than anyone could ever hope to consume in a single lifetime. someone born in 1985 could by the time the year 2000 arrived could effectively consume the majority of all available content from the 1920s-1990s giving them a wide variety of opinions and world views. but if you start right now, it would take (numbers from 2019) 1.8 trillion years to watch everything just on youtube... let alone all other media. an impossible task. this equally trains people to embrace what the algorithm does and only spend time viewing what they specifically like, effectively no one ever goes outside their comfort zone to experience anything new, no one ever "wastes" time listening to opposing viewpoints. this is how the internet has trained them. as a result, the average person no trained by the internet, when they hear an opposing viewpoint its automatically wrong, and the other person is either an idiot, insane, or an evil monster. because they have been trained to effectively be incapable of listening to context or opposing viewpoints or just anything that makes them uncomfortable.
everything has ALWAYS been "political" though, in the past it was easier for straight white people to ignore that fact but now they can't and that makes them upset. This notion that kids movies aren't political is bullshit.
creativity comes from boredom and frustration. It's a lot harder to be bored (and therefore creative) when you have endless entertainment available in the palm of your hand, all the time. Until people learn to get offline and be bored again, I don't see culture getting back to anything like what it was in the 90s and noughties.
I don't know man. Things were much less polarized in 2008 compared to now... so it is a huge shift but I saw it coming already in early 2012 and 12 years later it has just gotten worse... On top of what you mentioned though the ''monochramy culture'' or whatever you called it, I didn't have a word for it before but it does make sense. It seemed like a lot of people were fixated on many of the same bands. I think being a fan of Alice In Chains in the early 90s would actually make it easier for you to talk with others compared to now where people are much more elitist with their views. But that isn't to say I haven't done the same myself.
I think about this every day. I was a kid/teenager through the whole 2000s, and it was a great era to grow up in. But minus the early 2010s, the 2010s had a soul crushing feeling of society becoming a culture of one that is that of fast diminishing returns. Now after 2020, I feel like I'm on a completely different timeline and I dont like it. Very few things read as they did when I was growing up. I feel so far removed from my little sisters childhood than I do from my parents and even grandparents. And I grew up in a very noticeable different world than my elders. But I have a connection the the things they grew up with, where as my little sister( who's 17 years younger than me) vaguely knows a slight bit about the world I grew up in, but she turns her nose up at it or just doesnt even get it every time I try to introduce her to it. This is foreign to me since I was introduced to my parents and grandparents childhoods and while I didnt like all of it. I, as well as many other Millennials did enjoy their younger year experiences.
Sounds accurate, I blame activist, SJWs and wokeness for ruining the 2010s decade they made everything political and revolve around constant drama for attention and to push their political ideologies into everything
One prime example of this stagnation is that they are still selling Ninja Turtles in every toy store. This was a cultural phenomenon nearly FORTY years ago yet it still hasn't gone out of style. This would be like finding Howdy Doody toys in the 90s stores.
You can make this argument for so many things. Nothing new is ever created. Just the same characters and their stories being retold over and over again.
@@swashbucklemchrue2323 actually Howdy Doody first appeared in 1947, so I think it’s just 8 years between Batman and him. Also, the Tarzan brand is just as good an obvious example of cultural stagnation, at least for the 1930s-60s when lots of Tarzan merch (on what’s now a Star Wars kind of scale) were sold out almost every year in those decades!
I was born in 97 and i feel the same way as the others in the comments. Everything from music, cartoons, movies and even cars felt better when i was kid. I don’t watch any new movies they’re making now nor listen to new music. Even cars of this era feel exhausting to me with all the useless screens and tech inside, I’m much happier driving a simple Toyota 4Runner or Tacoma from the early 2000’s. The internet was a new exciting place back then as well. Wish I could sometimes go back in time and relive that lost era.
When I was young, I couldn't wait to grow up and earn my own money and have my own freedom. Once I got there, I looked around and realised the world isn't as fun as it used to be.
My main passion is cars and I see this shift in that culture too. New cars designs and their ads prioritise touch screens. Even the proven silhouette of the 911 which hasn’t really changed shape in decades, needs a big wide screen inside. Old cars modified for fun may not have the screens inside, but their connection to culture is to be constantly shared on short videos online. Feels like the attention economy effects just about every hobby when you look into it!
@@lovelydolltime8006hundred percent agree. Your not allowed on your phone whilst driving but your allowed to fiddle around with setting of your touch screen (radio, heating, etc)
Worst one in my opinion (about the cars hehe) is what they did to the latest Mustang dash. Horrible rectangular touch screens replaced those iconic gauges and mustangy accents. The exterior still carries the Mustang essence (ugly upturned headlights suck though) but the interior is horrible and unoriginal.
I see it too. So many new cars are nigh indistinguishable from each other nowadays, giving rise to a sort of an "aerodynamic blob" design that lacks the flair/pizzazz/"that thing" from older cars. I believe that part of it is that to make vehicles "safer," companies just increase the ride height of their vehicles, so that instead of being crushed, whoever is behind the wheel does the crushing of the poor bastard who likes his classic roadster/other smaller car. Additionally, the point you and others have made regarding screens is spot on; when every interior features a ridiculous screen in the center of the dash, rather than buttons/dials/etc. they all blend together, going back to the "blob" design I mentioned earlier.
I’m in my 40s… I’ve never been so bored and uninspired by society and popular culture. I tend to be very positive and optimistic about life, but man, 2010 onwards has been very, very lame. Everyone is a victim, everything is everyone else’s fault, and we’ve lost the ability to find artistic value and commonality as a whole. Instead, we have douches blocking highways, spray painting art and monuments, and just… Blaaaaaaaa. Here’s to better times ahead!
Weird I'm 25 and I actually felt that exact same way around 2010 as a kid. I remember loving early 2000s and then all of a sudden I remember how boring and uninteresting things became. Wrestling, games, movies, clothing style everything started to suck to me.
Awesome video I’ve been thinking about/ saying things about this topic in pieces for years But never have I ever been able to summarize it as beautifully as you did Good stuff man!
I think our era is like 1930s America. Cultural explosion followed by a mass economic depression. We remember plenty of cultural artifacts from the Roaring 20s, but almost nothing from the Great Depression except shanty houses and breadlines. WWII, as horrifying as it was, seemed to restore culture.
The stagnation of culture isn't just in the US. It's been universal since the internet matured. Cultures and sub-cultures are created via some form of isolation and the arts and music come from that isolation. The isolation of American blacks created so many music genres and the same can be said of the gays too. As the internet, gay acceptance and multiculturalism removed the isolation, everything stagnated. No new music genres have really sprung up since the 90s and the fashion, lingo and culture of all the ethnicities have begun to homogenize.
Its also because its cheaper for corporations to monetize. If you have one popular clothing style its cheaper than 40 styles. Homogenized culture is cheaper. The only good news is that there is more than one corporation and the people in charge can never share with each other. So they'll keep tryinh to one up each other.
Creativity is mostly dead due to creative fields like film, TV, and advertising no longer being staffed by misfits but by credentialed careerists from the suburbs who all had helicopter parents and structured every minute of their childhood. Film studios are now controlled by financial interests and refuse to take risks, instead choosing to create Terminator 13 over and over again. Most industries have been regulated into oblivion, making innovation impossible except in tiny niches of the market not yet heavily regulated, like tech and SaaS (which is why basically all innovation is taking place in a digital realm). We no longer tolerate boredom, because we have dopamine machines in our pockets 24/7/365. Boredom is a great source of creativity and change. Cultural stagnation is also a consistent trend of falling empires. It was a prominent theme early in Edward Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," for example.
A few things you said were great signals that you understand little to nothing about the world, and are just parroting the broken record talking points of pseudo intellectuals, like constantly blaming suburbia for every problem and bringing up the roman empire. First of all the best way to create a healthy civilization is the family unit, who have their own single family home and their private space, away from the crowds. Suburban life does exactly that, though small towns are even better. Second, whenever somebody compares the US to rome, I know that person does not posess critical thinking skills. Rome was a regional power, the US is a global power. Learn geopolitics and you'll see the US is here to stay for good, likely being the last country standing after everybody else is gone. Lastly, you managed to make an extremely good point which is a big contrast compared to the rest of your comment. We no longer tolerate boredom. And we have dopamine machines in our pockets 24/7/365. I could not agree more with this. Growing up without internet (I was born in the 1990s), having only 6-7 channels on the TV, being patient while waiting for your favorite cartoon show to air on weekend mornings, were some of the most important lessons anybody can learn. Even with that experience, this new tech is conditioning it out of us to be patient. You can imagine what it does to people who grow up with this and never learn the earlier lesson. And another thing that had a catastrophic effect on people - the internet has conditioned people that they're never wrong. Due to talking with internet comments in pretty much full animosity, theres no shame, or sense of guilt, or humility. Its always the other person who is wrong, never you. The same argument that was dismantled on one comment thread 5 minutes ago, can be used up over and over again on other threads and videos till it sticks. And then, you're right. You knew the whole time you were right you just needed to find the right group of people to confirm that.
@@DesertStateInEU I didn't blame suburbia, I don't think suburbia is part of the problem at all. I blamed the switch in who makes up creative fields from largely misfits who did not possess college degrees (actual free thinkers) to credentialed college graduates who are more risk-averse and likely less talented. Suburbia is sort-of related to that, but no I would absolutely agree that a strong nuclear family is the core of a strong society, at least in the west. The point I was making hinged much more strongly on the point about "helicopter parents [who] structured every minute of their childhood" thus harming their ability to be creative. It's effectively the exact same point as the boredom point you so charitably gave me credit for. That's also wild to assume that no comparisons can ever be made to the Roman Empire or "you don't possess critical thinking skills". Our culture has many similarities to other falling empires, and I would argue that it's just the ever-constant hubris of "current year-ism" that makes you believe America will last forever. There are a number of historical trends that always precipitate the decline and fall of empires, which we are currently seeing. Like the removal of sound money, an obsession with gender and the subsequent role-reversal of the sexes, declining birth rates among natural born citizens and an increasing reliance on foreign-born workers and soldiers, declines in religion, decadence and materialism (Epicurianism in the Roman era), the list goes on. America is technically more stable than other first-world countries and won't immediately fall, but it's historically illiterate to act like there's nothing to worry about with the American Empire.
@@BarnJ Alright the first 2 paragraphs I agree with, and even with the signs of declining civilizations, such as the removal of cash, and the other things you listed. But the roman empire example no. Look at the USSR. It fell hard, so hard that it changed the world. Yet in just 20 years Russia is back and stronger than ever. In fact even Italy is still here, way more powerful than the roman empire ever was. The US is such a global power that it will outlast every other country. Sure economic declines happen, even cultural declines, but whatever can make the most powerful country in the world disappear like the mayans, will make the entire world disappear.
13:00 It's not that there only so many chord progressions or haircuts and story ideas, It's that we're limiting ourselves to think that. And if you really think that, then you either haven't been appreciative enough of haven't done enough exploring. Martin Scorsese turned 80 years old and he says that he has finally begun to get an understanding around film making
9:42 I like to say that the Walking Dead had this same effect with its first 3 seasons. I remember it being the talk of the town with anybody each time a new episode would air on TV. I think this same collective buzz got stirred up again with the Force Awakens, but immediately died down after that movie, because all of its shortcomings and how disappointed people were of it and how it began to divide people.
I am a 90's kid. For me, video games stopped developing anything new and interesting in 2015. At that point something happened in video games that rymes with gate, and shifted producing nothing new, but opened up for me the video game media and their focus on politics, not games and mechanics in games. Monetization after 2015 in video games just became predatory, and today you have games as a service. Considering TV, Breaking Bad for me was the last great series. Nolan is today the last director that I think can draw crowds in theatres and make something new. After the death of Akira Toriyama, as well as Kentaro Miura, I can't see that anime will interest me with anything new anymore. Music, I can't say anything new about it as I never follow new music but listen to very old pop/rock music.
for anime i will argue it has actually become more new now... it's just that since avg. age of Japanese is now 40 years...... they now making isekai anime targeting that age group which may appear bland....compared to teenage targeted shonen anime like dbz,naruto,fairy tail,one piece or bleach
This is so thought-provoking! I love it. Agree totally. But I also wonder whether it's always easier to understand a period once some time has passed after it. Kinda like that concept that some music gets better as it gets older. Is it hard to look at ourselves as clearly as we can understand the previous decades?
If you weren't a grownup before 9/11, you can't really grasp how hard the world flipped upside down. It's a much darker, meaner place now. Edit: new car paint with all metal flake removed, leaving a bland cream finish with no pop. That is the epitome of modern culture to me.
@@urbanlegendd6646 Hank is right though yeah, sure the world was never perfect and never will be. But the pre 9/11 world was much more optimistic it had a party vibe to it is the best way I can explain it. Post 9/11 is like someone flipped a switch and said the party is over.
Wow, you covered a lot in just 15 minutes! As a Baby Boomer, I am used to fashion, design, literature, movies, music, advertising, etc. changing in rapid and cool new ways. I think things have been slowing down since the early 90s. Since the early 2000s, the boredom has set in. I've been looking for the ideas of younger people as to what is happening and I appreciate your viewpoints. I would add we are also losing our 'third places' where young people can get away to relax, congregate, and share ideas and creativity. (Third places are also an excuse to style oneself.) I'm glad you covered the economic issues that keep young people unsettled and insecure as well. People suffered terribly during the Great Depression but that was largely a shared experience and that is reflected in 1930s culture and fashion. Thanks!
I'd say if we suddenly woke up 20 years into the past we'd instantly notice the differences. The technology, the fashion, the vernacular, the types of ads and brands that existed back then. Even things that are piss easy these days like organising to meet up with a friend. You'd have to be given instructions on where to go, or know how to read a map in real time and pay much more attention to your immediate surroundings in the real world. These days skills like memorising street names aren't all that common, unless you work for Uber or other such companies. Back then, for the average Joe you wouldn't have a smartphone with Google Maps to help you navigate the city. Some people wouldn't even have cellphones, so you'd be calling their home phone and give their parents/roommates a message for you to call them back. To tell the time you'd have a watch, or ask a stranger to give you the time. Going back to this way of living would be a self-imposed challenge if you were to do it these days. And you'll be quickly called out for not being with the times if you try it. At worst your friends might even get mad at you for being hard to reach if you didn't own a phone and don't have at least 1-2 messaging apps installed. What is especially striking is how older generations (so people who were adults going into the 2000s) generally picked up the phone when someone rang them. In this day and age calling someone born in and around or after 2000s nets you a 50-50 chance of them picking up if it's not in a work setting. Older people will prefer phone calls or face-to-face to written messages, and will get miffed if you don't answer. For younger generations it's being called that is a cause of frustration. The amount of times I thought: "what the fuck does this guy want?", or "who the hell is calling me?", or "ohh not this again, why can't this idiot just type 3 words on his fucking keyboard and leave me alone already?", or variations of these phrases whenever someone calls me highlights how different our approach to communications is today. The early 2000s lead to the 2010s where everything got smaller, sleeker, darker. And now the 20s are sort of indulging in (while at the same time critiquing) the "brain rot" content that lasts less than 10 seconds and overstimulates your brain. In any case, I noticed a gradual shift from "gritty", "depressing", "lacking soul" content in mainstream media to more "colourful" and "positive" content in recent years. Like compare the MCU movies from end of 2010s to movies from the early 2010s, sure writing quality has gone down since, but at its best flicks such as Thor: Ragnarok and Infinity War have much more personality and dare I say "fun" in them than for instance Sony's Spider-Man duology. These Spider-Man movies aren't bad films, in fact I do really like them, but only they do perfectly illustrate my point that movies could really reinforce how, umm - fucking depressing life could be during that decade. Compare Raimi's shots of Spidey swinging across New York and landing on old-fashioned buildings, and him interacting with cheesy over the top characters in a vibrant setting; versus edgy Sony Spider-Man swinging across a grey city, filled with identical glass buildings, and dealing with somber melancholic characters in a fairly cold world. That's how I remember the 2010s. Black and grey technology. Minimalism and efficiency everywhere. No more colour. That is until the end of the decade where things were allowed to become a bit lighter in tone, both literally and metaphorically. Anyways, I kind of went into a rant towards the end, my point is: things have changed. Only, now I don't know where we are going. Have fun reading my nonsense!
I've chosen to live like it's the 2000s and its given me a sense of peace and happiness in this stupid modern world I'm stuck in. And besides, who actually cares about "being with the times" (other than stupid conformist sheep)?
yes this is what he mentioned is the rise of the internet and associated technology is easily the most noticeable change. There have been some cultural trends like dubstep and EDM and game of thrones but it doesnt seem to have the same relevance as the past decades many would agree.
9/11 and the response to it gave the western world PTSD and we've been in an existential tailspin ever since. The internet fragmented everything and provided people an opportunity to retreat into themselves. I'm wholly convinced that the covid pandemic lockdowns were only possible because of 9/11. Those two events bookend a chunk of time that need to be studied.
I don't mean to say you're overrating the 911, but c'mon, if 911 gave the world a global PTSD then we as a species all must be living in a constant PTSD throughout our history, as there had been much and much more gruesome acts of terror not even too long before 911, in 2001 we even still had plenty of people who witnessed WW2, Hiroshima nuclear massacre, holocaust, Vietnam, Korean war, regular terror attacks in post-Soviet Russia, Yugoslavia war, and many many other stuff. I don't mean to devaluate the tragedy, but compared to all the other stuff in the 20th century the 911 was a rather bleak accident that I only remember seeing on TV as a kid with just slight confusion, continuing to play chess with some other kid
911 was the death of truth in our society. Ever since then things have just got worse as time goes by. Our governments shifted from pretending they were democratic to actually growing in overt authoritarianism. The veil of freedom was lifted and the ugly truth of what we actually live under was there with anyone who had eyes to see. Our political parties all merged into different colours of the same shit. The left went from equality for all to outright cultural communism and now it's perfectly legitimised on main stream tv to be racist to white people. We're all living in a top down society driven by a shadow hand towards war, famine and depopulation. Yes, 911 traumatised us.
In which bubble are you living in? 911 was arguably the lamest "bad" event in the human history. Idk how it was in the us, but in the othern western countries it was in the headlines for some time and not long after nobody gave a shit about it and went on with their lives. There is no way it actually had any significant long term effect on society.
It was special to witness the jump in technology from the mid 90s to the mid to late 2000s specifically in movies and entertainment. After that it has seem to stagnate as movies from the late 2000s could almost pass as a movie that came out today. You couldn’t say that about a movie that came out in 2007 and compared it to a movie that came out in 1990
I always show people that David Bowie clip because it's amazing how spot on he was AND that the interviewer scoffed at him for it! Awesome reference, well spoken and great video.
I was born in 1999. I grew up in the 2000s, and I enjoyed the 2000s very much during my childhood. Countless classic cartoons entertained me (and even taught me some English before I study it in school, since I'm Macedonian), many toys and gadgets and in general optimistic about the future. But that optimism disappeared in the 2010s when I started to notice things becoming bland, and I didn't enjoy my teenage years (sure, there were some good things, but in general my teenage years were boring). And now at the age of 25, I don't enjoy many things that are mainstream (music, tv shows, other media) and don't have a very positive outlook for the future. But I hope I'm wrong, and we start to see positive global cultural changes. Cheers from N.Macedonia!
im 32 and i never used a phone. i've used a PC since 1997 when I was 5 and just learning how to interact with things. dad bought the family a gateway desktop that came with a bunch of educational games and all this new and exciting technology and that was how I learned. Iphones definitely are the death of society.
I feel that, instead of there being less potential culture-shifting moments, especially in music, there's less drive towards putting culture on a mainstream stage. Innovation, nowadays, exists in the little crevices online, where people don't have to give a second thought to commercial appeal
All excellent points. Here is the silver lining: I think that the evolution of culture is actually slowing down to what it NORMALLY is in historical terms. Our ancestors largely did live in times where you did largely the same things your grandparents did. Things got better or worse as princely states rose and fell, but the average person didn't feel this so much
you hit the nail on the head with Monoculture. with the advancement of the internet. everyone can fit into their own perfect world. rarely do we share the same interests as the person beside us
I used to watch movies, TV and sports all day for decades now I watch UA-cam when I'm taking a break from playing video games I have nothing in common my co workers to talk about
I disagree. Because of the internet, I’ve met people who share the same interests. I’m sure they said the thing about the television, it’s going to destroy families and family time.
I feel like when there's any terrible event happening (that define a period) people tends to look back at stuffs from previous decade with nostalgia such as the 80s during 2000s or 90s during 2010s... Currently it's 2000s nostalgia because today's adults are kids during 2000s which remembered 2000s differently from adults who grew up during 70-80s (popular opinion back in 2000s often regards the period as the worst decade, a reason why so many movies back then were full of gritty self-serious stuffs)
That's an explanation, but it still doesn't change the fact my Dad could have safely hitchhiked to California to meet friends there (he did) and I'd never try that. He was able to feel connected enough to random people in a way that would have made my skin crawl just 30 years later.
@@2beJTI don't get the point of your comment. Are you saying it's less safe now to hitchhike or that people now are just more aware of what can happen, leading you to never entertaining the idea of it? Regardless, it's a personal anecdote.
@@2beJT They had lots of serial killers back then during 70`s especially in places like California for example . Hitchhikers were sadly the most common targets because they jump randomly into an stranger cars , only to be never heard from again . yes , lots of people did hitchhike back then and most came out fine but few did not ; some of which die in most grumesome matter like being tortured and/or raped before being killed .
I'm grateful to have anyone watching at all, but comments like this are really motivating for the grind. Thank you! Plenty more ideas in the tank, just need the time haha.
Subversive and unique movements do exist currently theyre just completely underground, because big corporations consider them too risky to promote, it also doesn't help that declining birth rate means that the majority of the population are middle aged so popular aesthetics essentially haven't changed in 20 years. They'res plenty of unique stuff on tiktok because its basically entirely young people
Great video!!! I love topics like these I always find them so interesting. I do agree agree about the stagnation starting around 2008. Also I think UA-cam and Netflix are huge parts of the slow death of monoculture. Also the decline of MTV going into reality tv full time is a good measuring stick. The last time for me when MTV played a video where people would quote the lyrics was Gwen Steffani Hollaback song "This shit is bananas" B-A-N-A-N-A-S. which was in 2005 I remember seeing it on MTV all the time. The same year later UA-cam came out ironically and changed everything.
2024 is like living alone in a crowd full of NPCs. I talk to them via internet just like I talk to ChatGpt. The only friends I have are from the pre-Covid era. I feel like we're still in lockdown somehow and it's not gonna change. Something is off and there is no vibe anymore. That's all I can say.
I find this topic fascinating, and always wondered if it's just people "growing up" but I've noticed both people older and younger than me have come to similar conclusions. I think the monoculture thing hits it on the head, as it feels like we're not all "watching the same thing" anymore (Endgame is a good example of the last phenomenon though). All I can say is that time seems to fly quicker now as an adult: I was born the same year as Vice City is set, and let me tell you, the first 16 years of life felt like an eternity, and the last 16 has felt like a blink of an eye, and as a result, it doesn't feel like much has changed, except technology got a lot "smarter" lol. Great video analysis!
Feel the same, I think time feels quicker as each year is compared to an ever increasing # of total years lived, making each passing year a smaller % of the whole
Anxiety is one of the biggest factors for why culture has stagnated so badly. Today, people are too scared to leave their houses, much less have adventures. People are too anxious to have opinions and speak there minds for fear of being political or being cancelled. Also, thanks to social media and Hollywood, it seems like fame and money is all that matters.
Hey dude. Just giving you a heads up I shouted out this video in my latest video. It really inspired me and I just wanted to thank you for the great content!
I think the 2010s had its own identity. Was it the best? No but it had an identity. However the 20s will be the worst decade ever. This is why albums n movies are flopping. Nothings changing! Like you said we still have 40-50 yo at the top. There’s nothing new and no youth! For example Kevin hart still out here thriving. Decades ago his time would’ve been up. There’s no comedian to take his spot. So he stays. No teenage heartthrob. No boy or girl bands. No variety. Just the same stars from yesteryear and reboots. If you’re old. You’re winning rn. I go to the club and all I hear is 00s hits. It’s insane. We hit a wall in technology and creativity. But seems like the puppeteers wanted this. Sucking the life out of us. Sad facts. Great video.
I agree that nothing really moving theese days. To me it's like after around 2007, nothing really changed, nothing really "new" happened, only a few very small insignificant things. It's like time came to a standstill. What I would give to live in a world without smartphones, where new music still has the same styles as 60's-80's, where films and TV shows aren't all dramatic, loud and "in your face", where cars still look like cars. Basically a world that's like the latter half of the 20th century, but with high speed internet, computers as powerful as today's, and *definitely* NO smartphones.
Very detailed views and reasons but zooming out it is basically the economy and how people feel about the future in this environment. This explains every trend of every generation here and on other continents.
I love the way you put your thoughts together on this. I’ve been wondering the same thing. Being a gen-x guy I grew up with amazing cultural phenomena like Ghostbusters, Michael Jackson, Goonies, ET phoning home, and genesis does what Nintendon’t etc. Despite having all the technology in the world to connect to one another we’ve never been further apart. Loneliness is a new epidemic. Being trapped in the view of what you can see in the screen in your hands has caused us to be isolated and not living life anymore. No one can experience something without posting it on their timelines 💪🏿🇺🇸🔥🇺🇸🔥🇺🇸✊🏿
Man this are some solid ass facts Gta san and vc were groundbreaking, combining satire and free roam , then aorund 2013 shit got bugger with realism in gta v We had cgi 3d cartoons competing with drawn ones We had white culture back then , shows like 24 , songs like you belong with me , shows like snallville and VD Eminem , southpark and family guy were out of pocket Deathnote and last airbender came out in that era Cartoon network, nickelodeon were having their golden years Numetal , brit pop and alternative, hip-hop and rnb were all competing in the market Culture back then was super diverse and the world had more nuance and relatability, todays culture just seems like fast food content everywhere
There's a meme doing the rounds on Facebook (ironically enough) which stated that in the Y2K era, the internet was a place you went to for a few hours, then you shut your computer off and went back to normal life. Now, the internet is part of everything we do - I feel like that's a big part of it.
Our Prof asked us what philosophers and other authors are formative for our generation. The answer is as sad as it can get: no one. Not because no one is reading anymore, but because there aren't generation defining things anymore.
there are they just aren’t as important because everybody already did everything already there is nothing left to do now than just use the technologies we have at our disposal and see where that’ll take us you have to takes risks and not care what others think to do something like that and honestly the world is ending so who cares about culture if the world is dead so is culture
Whenever I watch a movie from the late 00s it doesn’t seem too far from today although it is still dated. However whenever I see actual photos from that time, like my own home photos, it does seem a lot older.
the second half of the 20th century saw an unprecedented rise in living standards for huge numbers of people which lasted just long enough to enable the creativity boom ascribed to this time. as the economic boom tapered of, the wealth gap increased, creativity decreased. look at any wealth gap graph; the curb starts accelerating exponentially upward in perfect correlation with the creative stall.
As a kid from the early 2000s I remember asking my grandfather what the 1980s were like and he just gave me his copy of vice city and since then it got me obsessed with it
I'm really feeling my age lately, born in 82, but the more i think about all the experiences i had the more grateful i am. Growing up without a cellphone had its disadvantages but wasn't so bad as i made my own entertainment, not staring at a phone all day. Culture went through some crazy ass ebbs and flows and it was cool to see some stuff go through growing pains.
The bulldozing impact of neo-liberalism and woke culture is also a factor; the elite have hijacked cultural milestones in order to "modernise" (i.e. destroy) them and cancel culture makes everyone walk on eggshells in order to avoid cancellation. Finally, preoccupation with pleasing the algorithm in order to maintain your income is another problem. That's some of the worst conditions for creativity.
Lmao you’re just a socialist, but instead of accepting that you actually care about the world and other people, you channel your sadness at the world into contempt and resentment for other people. Grow up dude
Yeah, it's always the others, say the right-wingers who unleashed their stupid culture wars upon us. You are the ones who want to force their ideology on everyone else, who want to tell people how to live, whom to love, what to think, how to speak, and even what books are allowed to read. I'm so tired about the whining every time a video games gives players the option to play as a female character. It's such a nonsense and it's so unnecessary.
While we may have entered a period of stagnation there are positives to it. For one people's world view is far less influenced by a board room of executives. This has also allowed marginalized groups to a greater voice in the zeitgeist, which has lead to greater acceptance of these groups than in previous generations. Furthermore I personally appreciate more people being niche interests, because it makes it easier for me to enjoy things that would have been isolating in the past. Its just far easier to find people with shared niche interests nowadays.
How do you know that that board room of executives intentionally didn't allow marginalised groups into the mainstream?How do you know they actually opposed it?Did you talk to them?Behind closed doors were any listening devices are jammed using NSA tech. The kind of stuff that isn't on the market. Seems like a big leap to assume they played no part in this. What if that was their plan all along and you did exactly what they wanted you to do?Again have you ever talked to any of them to see what they really think?Have you?
A lot of it also has to do with globalism, neoliberalism, corporatism, and the rise of pc culture. All of these things are eliminating any differences in culture across communities and nations, thereby making everything feel bland and sterile and eliminating any risk in starting something new.
Plus the shrinking youth population combined with the self-censorship they impose on each other means there is no counter-culture. The 90s/00s had goths, punks, stoner dudes, and the whole skateboarding phenomenon. The 2010s and 2020s "counter culture" is to repeat the same corporate talking points about diversity and inclusion to create a more homogeneous society
This, read the liberal manifesto by Guy Verhofstadt. It talks about making a monoculture if consumers through multiculturalism and destruction of the nation state and religions
Agent Smith in the Matrix really wasn't kidding when he said that the year 1999 was the peak of the human civilization.
he also wasn't kidding about the virus known as Outdated farm machinery that destroys cultures
He also compared life in the Matrix to being in a zoo. I think he might have been on to something...
2020 would be more accurate
@@franzeusq"The peak of human civilization being in 2020"? Of all the years to pick, that's yours? I'd love to know why.
He also said that humanity is like a virus. Which it actually is. Agent Smith perhaps was less of a bad guy that we've all made been made to believe
The best example of this cultural stagnation is the now decade year old GTA5. Nobody playing that game for the first time would have any reason to think it isn’t set in 2024, besides maybe the absence of Tik Tok
This is spot on.
and with the release of gta 6 we will be able to compare the two and see... actually not that much of a difference in terms of the contents of the game itself, the cultural references and the technology present in it.
@@horiascarlat6109 No you can tell, just listen to the jokes.
They've been clear the next game is going to be woke, no more "punching down", etc. Look at the protagonist, I'd go so far to say GTA 6 is the end of GTA.
@@darthbigred22 lol, female playing character isnt "woke". and the trailer very much showed us how big of a parody of the real world 2024, on one will care if there are jokes in a gta game
@@darthbigred22Rockstar will never make a woke game.
It's globalisation my man. Everything is the same everywhere. Im from Poland and if you go out to the streets of any big city you gonna see zoomers with broccoli hair and air pods listening to some shitty mumble rapper while recording tik toks. And I bet that you can see that in New York and London. Western culture became homogenous and stagnant because everything is the same everywhere. Being born smack dab in the middle of the 90s I witnesed insane growth of the technology, the jumps from ps1 to ps2 to ps3 were insane. Jump from ps3 to ps4 was minor in comparison and from ps4 to ps5 is non existend. Everything is just incremental now. We are in the late stage of Roman empire when people are becoming more and more lazy, art regresses and technology stagnates.
Touch grass go live life find happiness
@@SahilKhan-jo3et blah blah blah
Technology isn't really stagnating, artificial intelligence is the prime example. But to be fair, that's not really technology but scientific innovation
Technology is stagnating despite the mass production of artificial intelligence? Also weird take that people are becoming lazy when it's become a common trend in the US, Canada, and UK for young people to work immense hours yet receive little payment.
@@altechelghanforever9906 hardware is stagnating, look up moores law. Real quantum computers could change things up
You also have to remember how much of pop culture came from underground counterculture rather than mainstream pop culture. Rock music, indie movies, pre crash video game development and distribution, anime OVAs making their way overseas in the 80s and 90s before toonami and adult swim came on the scene in the early 2000s. You can argue the internet and the instant speed of word of mouth these days doesn’t allow smaller subcultures to ferment and grow into larger cultures icons in the future.
I think its because the internet and globalization have eliminated regional differences... nothing unique is being formed anywhere because we all get the same everything fed to us via the internet.
Even regional accents are slowly disappearing. I'm from New England, and when i was growing up we ALL had accents to one degree or another. (No R sound if it was at the end of a word for example) We had our own words that meant totally different things to what they meant anywhere else.
Now? Its the same as anywhere else. None of my kids have any accent at all really, and mine is nowhere near as thick as it used to be.
Echoed my thoughts exactly. Young people make new shit up and it gets monetized immediately, or has to go on corporate platforms so it can be monetized. Things can't be underground, people can't experiment and make mistakes and grow as artists before they hit the big time if they ever had a chance.
Corporations took over counterculture and made it mainstream.
@@pilouuuu that's just a speedbump, then a turnabout...
What we considered counter culture, our kids consider to be the domain of turbo dorks. My 16 year old and his friends are EXTREMELY conservative. They're at the gym 3 or 4 times a week, they read stoic philosophy, the Bible, and western classics, they dress nice, and consider degeneracy and disruptive behavior to be cringe AF.
Turns out that you cant be the dominant culture and the counter culture at the same time; and i think that's irreconcilable for the left... they cant wrap their heads around blue hair, degenerate behavior, loud music, and substance abuse being mainstream and thus completely uncool.
@@ianmedford4855Gen Z are the New Victorians. It’s a reactionary movement to all the horrors, excesses, and uncertainty of the times!
Culture just went corporate. No taking risks, no controversy. Yet a lot has changed in different areas that are maybe not as noticeable visually. Take the last year with the rise of publicly available a.i. there are loads of changes ahead in the next two years. You’ll see.
then the corpos thought that mainstream culture was without risk, then realizing that the culture was that of a few loud progressives.
The thing with companies in general so that you may call them 'late stage capitalism' is that they have reached their full market potential. There's no more possible audiences to reach organically, so they have to water it down to reach a few more people or make it so efficient that there's no room for creativity anymore. This is all because shareholders demand an even higher profit every year. So the answer is stock market investors, who became more cautious and demanding after the 2008 crash.
@@renaatsenechal I don't know, man. Gaming companies for example, could easily make more money by dropping all the woke nonsense, stop making female characters ugly and just makes good games again. Just look at the popularity of Stellar Blade and Black Myth Wukong.
@@renaatsenechal I don't agree, things have gotten more popular these days without having to be watered down, they haven't reached everyone or everything, the problem IS that they're trying to reach everyone and everything, but not to benefit every individual, only themselves. COD for example. They've made it "easy" for people who aren't that good at shooters, at least for the first few rounds before they're beaten down the next 5 games because they've done "so good" when they were just competing against other weaker players.
@@renaatsenechal exactly. Nothing more to say other than that this is the state of not only culture related industries but the entire western economy. Venture capitalists fear for their profits so they try to maximize profits or buy up real estate or infrastructure in a big way, so they can ensure others steady flows of profits. I just can’t see how this can end well, without the lower classes loosing big time. Even the ones who seem to be well off will probably be sucked into the vortex when the market crashes.
Early 2000s had so much more to explore online.....blogs and message boards....all written and commented on by actual individuals (with a few trolls for entertainment) ....I'm convinced the old internet has been supressed and replaced by google and facebook based bots......even YT has a set formula with promoting the rise and fall of certain content creators, play the game or get bypassed by the algorithm.
I miss old UA-cam
also UA-cam comment sections have degraded so much, I think 20% if not more comments are bots
@@BananaPhoPhillyits also wayy too obvious how filtered the comments are. If the algorithm finds something even slightly offensive about your comment it will be hidden away.
Yup. Most of the old net has been buried or erased entirely. For instance, you can barely find any images that were posted to the internet before like 2012 on Google Images now.
@@LifeofBrad1 I have a bunch of web pages and images I saved as pdfs incase they ever went away.....I never thought it would actually happen some day
The commercialization of social media and then Covid and post covid is what shut everything down. I said it before. The 2020's is where fun and culture dies.
I used to feel like that too but getting older and learning about human history made me realize we're not the first ones to feel this doom it's been happening though all of recorded history and beyond. and whoever first said history always repeats was a extremely wise person. we go through cycles in society the Internet and social media has definitely changed things that's new but I believe we are all craving for human connection deep down and things will turn around
I think eventually things will work themselves out, look how many layoffs there are in the video game industry. And the Hollywood box is not what it was pre-pandemic. People will just get bored of the safe, focus-tested stuff.
COVID is not to blame - the stagnation of culture began LONG before that.
You sound like a boomer who is like "in my days everything was different..."
@@lf2052Getting older you should also realize that civilizations can and did collapse. I'm sure some Babylonians thought they were just going through a phase right up until their fall.
The death of Nerd Culture is probably the most noticeable aspect of Monoculture to go by by. It started grass roots, swelled until it became suffocating, and then expired after End Game.
Broadening the demographic killed nerd culture. Companies appealed to people who didn't like nerd stuff in the first place and destroyed the original vibe. Now its just generic slop.
@@EresirThe1stThe same can be said for every subculture of music, films, art etc. Once they enter the mainstream that is filled with oppertunists, frauds, posers etc. What matters is to allow a growing audience without surrendering to the mainstream. Or what made it awsome in the first place.
So is that why the internet has been shit since 2017
Nooo not the nerds...😭😭🤓
nah that's normie culture. nerds be doing their own thing without the popular cultural wave
Social media has mentally castrated this world
From everything that I have seen over the past decade I agree
Not really the internet just opened their eyes, we live in a heirachy to our job's, wealth, social status. I can tell you don't have a job, it's a self interest world. The real truth this is a survival of the fittest type world, maybe someday you will understand that. We are just organic talking virus that's all we are.
Everyone has to walk on eggshells today. You can't make innovative or edgy content anymore, or at least: corporations won't let their authors do it, because they're too scared of social media reaction.
@@souljastation5463 Sounds like a you problem to me.
@@ambskater97 "you problem"????? how????
I find it rather ironic that we have better technology for content consumption than ever in the history of mankind while at the same time the creation of new content and culture is pretty much dead.
That's is ironic, I blame the combination of woke culture and monopolies that are afraid of taking risks or offending people. Ironically woke culture is basically destroying entertainment and destroying the golden gooses of money making series and franchises and pissing off more people than if they were trying to push the boundaries
There's a lot of content creation, but the innovative stuff is buried in niche subgroups. The Internet and social media is about scale, so for big budget stuff- if it's not a safe bet for scale - it just never gets made. At least it seems like only the safest, milquetoast stuff gets greenlit. My teenage nieces were complaining that the 2024 remake Mean Girls is so sanitized compared to the original 2004 version.
All I'm gonna say is 'Limitation breeds Innovation'
There's better ways to consume and you complain that people are consuming more? That's not ironic at all
Nah. The main difference is that culture is more decentralized today compared to the past where you had the TV as the main and a common source for culture. The thing is that information in decentralized systems tend to propagate rather than be broadcasted, and people have more agency over the how the information propagates.
In simpler terms, it's like you saying that culturally there's nothing new over, say, Japan. You don't live there, you have no idea what's going on there unless somebody that does tells you. Everybody now lives in their own "country" culturally. There's innovation and stuff happening everyday, just not in your bubble.
A huge thing is as technology improved & subcultures fractured into tiny micro cultures the corporate business world consolidated to an extreme. There isn't the ecosystems to support the micro cultures. There is more experimental music today globally than ever before but there are 3 labels that control 90% of music releases. Look at every medium and it's the same story. A few monopolies with total control & a million basement hobbies with nothing in the middle. There are people creating the next thing every day but it gets crushed before it even had a chance to grow. Auto companies makes the same 3 crossovers in the same color with different badges instead of having unique products for different people. Mergers & acquisitions killed culture. Standardized killed creative expression. A soap ad, music tour announcements & pictures of your pets have to fit in the same Instagram box. It's not a cultural failure it's a business choice. We should be in a golden age but maximizing markets cuts it off. Thankfully things do occasionally slip through & there are a million amazing things down in the cracks.
Totally agree. If only we had a way of connecting people to things organically without it becoming bastardized and for-profit as soon as it finds any success.
I agree with a lot of this, but stuff like the auto companies making the same three crossovers has to do with tightening safety regulations (which is why so many cars look the same) and sales. People love crossovers. Car companies see the demand, so the trend continues. What's the point in doing anything else if they're successful? If/when the trend dies, then something else will take it's place. It's always been like that with vehicles.
What doesn't get crushed by mergers, acquisitions and monopolies, get cancelled and destroyed by cancel culture and mods of woke lunatics who are obsessed with controlling everything every hobbie has to preach their narrative and messaging or be silenced and destroyed
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e It seems like internet culture is a little immune to it.
When you mentioned the cars you're right. I think the only company actually making new kinds of cars is Tesla, with the Cybertruck. People may hate it, but it is different and innovative.
It's because this whole nightmare we have now started in 2008 specifically. Phones, social media, bad games, bad music, and most of all - the first serious world economic crisis.
2008 is like a cutoff point past which little makes any real sense for those of us who have been there in the 90s and 2000s.
2007 was the last year that had any of that mid-90s to mid-2000s feel that we all want to go back to but never will, since today, the world is broken in ways which are already visible through the cracks. It will get a lot worse.
Reading this actually makes me wanna crawl in a hole and die. The world was in such a good place then people had to go ruin it
Glad I'm not the only one who noticed. 2007 was the last good year for a lot of things.
"bad games"
you say that in the same year that Metal Gear Solid 4, GTA 4, Devil May Cry 4 was released and a few months later Assassin's Creed 2.
our culture declined between 2013 and 2016
The mid 90's feel was pretty much done by 2004.
@@1kracuauker797 And we better not mention Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead, Gears Of War 2, Dead Space, Persona 4, etc, etc, etc.
2008 was one of the most packed years in gaming history.
San Andreas did the same thing Vice City did in terms of capturing the aesthetic of the time period it was portraying, but except with 90s west coast hip hop culture
every GTA does that, it's what these games are about.
but videos like these start from the conclusion and not from the data -.-
Gang culture. The west coast is just gang culture. Horrible place to be.
There is a major difference between now and the early 00s. Now the internet is dead, is just a improved version of cable.
Ironically that basically how I saw when I first got on in the early 2010s the internet and what I feel in love with movies and free tv show at the touch of my finger tips, video game reviews and retrospectives, history documentary and all the horror movies I could ever watch and I feel in love with the internet, honestly I mainly just used UA-cam and couldn't care less about taking to people for a literal decade I don't think I talked to a single person online before 2020, now UA-cam kinda sucks so I actually talk to people online because I'm bored and the Internet sucks but I've been basically spending too much time on it so it a habit like smoking is, it doesn't feel like a improvement version of cable anymore the magic is gone to much drama and divisive political stuff nowadays
@@shaneriggs6678 breh Internet in early 2010s was basically the same as it is today. Major corporations already owned most of it. You just grew up.
The reason why old farts like me rever Internet in the 90s and very early 00s is because it was complete anarchy. I mean imagine no UA-cam, no Facebook nor social media at all, no Google even if you're old enough. Pure chaos. Interested in, idk, anime? Let's say Google is there already. Nowadays you'd probably join some group on some social media page and have it all available right away, back then you'd see 100s of weird forums with random people, or IRC chats, made by some dude in his basement as opposed to some corporation. Truly we didn't appreciate te complete beautiful anarchy of it all and the freedom which came with it until it was all sterilised.
@@aw2584 well I was never really cared about talking to people online so I basically just completely ignored the internet until around 2010 , I only reason I even started to care about the internet was UA-cam had access massive amounts of movies, tv shows and game reviews, I only talked to people nowadays online because modern entertainment sucks and culture war politics drama basically makes me feel depressed and kinda just talk to people for who the hell even knows
@@aw2584 That's so true. People built their own websites in html, they usullay looked like crap but they had a soul and the raw opinions and passions of the creators. There were countless forum sites, etc. non controlled or censored by some giant corporation. There was a real spirit of freedom and self-expression. Nowadays everything feels restricted, soulless and castrated.
What the f*** are you talking about?Internet has always been nothing but improved cable.
If you look purely at the online space the culture shifts every year or two. That's where it went. Compare the 2014 meme game to now. The reason it isn't offline is because the physical space has become a dumpster fire. Economic failure, demographic changes, lack of 3rd spaces, anti-free speech actions, etc. have all coalesced to make a low-trust fragmented society.
Someone explained to me that their kids never go out into the real world because nobody can afford to drive a car around. Gas is high, cars are expensive and the internet connects them just fine enough.
Makes me sad knowing all the fun I had going out into the world, but the kids will figure something that works out for them. It sure seems unsatisfying to me though.
Even the Internet has gotten that way now. Every platform has nebulous tos that are enforced arbitrarily to suppress whatever the corporation who runs it happens to dislike. Then there's the AI either deleting or hiding every single post it flags as problematic (ie: not the most bland milquetoast nothings possible). And then there's the people who want to shut down anything and everything because its offensive or problematic or abusive so they can look so virtuous online.
@2beJT Thr new generation is so low iq and brainwashed the state will tell them what to enjoy.
Anti-free speech actions? Huh?
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e mass bannings of "offensive content" and "hate speech" which are really just nice words whatever the corporation which runs the site disagrees with, combined with shadow banning and hiding content.
You ever see a comment here that has 25 replies listed, but then you click "show replies" and only see 5? That's because the other 20 were hidden by a bot for mentioning controversial or brand unsafe topics.
GTA4 really encapsulates the sarcastic and jaded nature of everything then. the people, the adverts, the music, everything. fresh off of 9/11 and other events, the world was so out of it, that being out of it became it
Don't forget it was a world dominated by war. Tons of war movies and war videogames, everyone knew or had someone that was away in the war, and all anyone cared about is finding that motherfucker bin laden.
Culture has been incredibly stagnant since the late 2000s, this is a fact. It's a concept known as "cultural ground zero", and it has been explored by many writers.
I'm guessing you're a fan of David Stewart? I really enjoy his videos on the subject. I think he JD Cowan, and Brian Niemeier knocked it out of the park with that theory.
I like Mark Fisher and his concept of hauntology. It's pretty chilling that he's dead now.
Because of woke.
Yeah, people are too afraid of offending somebody, so nobody uses original ideas anymore. Best to play it safe and reboot something that everybody loves.
@@finnpendleton4615
I get the Feeling that Wokeness i slowly Dying in 2024 it began arround 2008 and now it FINALLY Starts to really Bore and Piss People Off.
And now AI is here to kill the remnants of what little culture we still had left going on by now..
Either that or it will kickstart some much-needed creativity, only time will tell
You gonna back up your fear-mongering with some actual evidence?
The 2020’s are already 🐂💩 Now just imagine what the 2030’s have installed for us…
I was born in 1999. The world has changed so fucking much throughout my life. The world has changed so much since i entered highschool..
I'm also a 1999 baby. The world has changed, but it also hasn't. I dunno, I'll talk to people younger than me by over half a decade at my job and half the time I forget they're not even my age. Maybe it depends on the type of person.
I was born in 2001, and my life as a 2000's kid isnt the same as now, a 2020's young adult. Truly the world has changed a lot in 20 years.
Same here. It's "changed" in an unfortunate way.
everything's different but nothing has changed
Being born in 1993 and actually remembering 9/11, you really see some crazy shifts.
As someone born in 2004, I feel like I'm at the very tail end of consciously witnessing this perceived shift in culture. I entered grade school in the late 2000s, middle school in the mid 2010s, had nearly half of my high school experiences before the Pandemic, and started College at the end of the covid craze. I was 16 when everything shut down. As a 20 year old, my life experience is short to none compared with the rest of this comment section, but I so deeply miss the last grasps of the analog days of my childhood. Whatever I remember left of it... Big box TV's, playing with my mother's phone's retractable antenna, reading movie listings and the comics in the newspaper, our family's computer room, physical photos and photo albums of my childhood. Oh how I appreciate the little time I had before the world became numb to its own desires and passions...
I'm glad other people have noticed this. I have mixed feelings about it. On the positive side I can still wear the same kinds of clothes I wore back in the 90s and still look current. On the negative side it's boring and everything since the late nineties has just blurred together. Music hasn't even moved forward that much. That's probably the biggest disappointment. Throughout the 20th century new genres of music were popping up regularly. Now it's just the same stuff we had 30 years ago. Fortunately unlike my parents who hated my music I can enjoy the music young people make today because it's basically the same kind of music I grew up with. Young people also seem to like older music more than my generation did so that's also a positive.
Have you been ignoring the merging of rap and country?
Right? No new genres, just new sub-genres, mixes of two old things.
Then again, must we constantly get completely new things culturally? I don't know the answer to this question yet.
Music has actually been moving forward a lot, you just need to look in the right places… although older music is still very popular
@@no_not_that_one where exactly. It's all remixes and mashups of the same old stuff that came before.
@@badart3204 So like Eminem wears a cowboy hat nowadays, or what?
I remember being 13yo in 2009 watching new cartoons thinking something feels off. I know now that all of the cartoons were very similar and extremely sanitized.
Cartoon Network had some really funny cartoons around that time like Flapjack and Chowder. 2010 to now every cartoon looks like Adventure time and cal arts
This is what happens when corporations control everything.
Lmao, like they weren't in the 80s or 90s
@@kleiner3469 In 80's and 90's the world weren't too globalized and monocultured as is now
It's called "Late-stage Capitalism".
@@PseudonymsAreGovnoYaEbalGoogle we've been in "late stage Capitalism" since around the 50ies-80ies. The real problem can be gleaned from your own analysis of the perceived cause. In reality the stagnation is indeed due to progressivism (rebranded and slightly modernized communism) and the authoritarian bent it takes wherever it reaches. Censorship, Panopticon. In a way it's a weird kind of corporate "wokeness" that crushes culture.
@@vornamenachname594 you're correct it's called Globalist-Socialism the opposite of Nationalist Socialism history rhymes once again this time
Judging by the amount of synthwave UA-cam recommends me the 80's never actually ended.
Ended as a culture but lives on as a sub culture the same with heavy metal scene
This is actually of what the video is talking about. I like synthwave too, but with the internet and social media, everyone can just operate in their little subculture that suits them. There is no mass culture any more, which is why there will never be anything that feels like Friends, Seinfeld, Nirvana or Oasis again. For such a thing to happen, people need to be consuming culture together.
Before smartphones and social media, people were limited by the amount of TV channels, newspapers and magazines that existed. Now everything is vast and infinite. We are living in far more atomised way than before. You can go into whatever little world you like with your phone. It is in this sense that the year 2000 had more in common with 1960 than it does with now.
You can only have large cultural waves if everyone is looking in the same places. Now, the places are infinite. It might have sounded good before it happened but the result is that there is no mass culture left. There is less to unite us than ever before in living memory.
The 80s did end. But shows like VH1's I love the 80s in the mid 2000s and 2010's, and then Kavinsky hitting the scene in the late 2000s is what kickstarted the 80s revival. Started in Europe around Italy and went from there after channels like NewRetroWave dropped in 2013/2014 that highlighted this kind of music.
I was having a discussion similar to this with my mom; specifically concerning music. There's no big musical movement anymore like grunge, or, what I experienced in my youth, nu metal. The internet fragmented the music scene and now everybody just listens to their own niche artists; smaller but more dedicated audiences. I now listen to synthwave and not too many people have heard of it.
I’d say the closest thing to a big musical movement is the rise of hyper-pop in like 2020 & artists adapting that sound to other genres
Edit: I’ll say that hyper-pop WAS the last big musical movement with the youth (so far). Its effects can still be felt/seen in pop and hip hop today, mostly
Can't say I've heard of hyper-pop
Plenty of people have heard of synthwave. You sound like a "hipster" who says they listen to "underground" artists like Arctic Monkeys, Mac Demarco, and Tame Impala.
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e not really, no, whenever I say I like synthwave I get asked "what is it?" And more besides... I don't expect people to know artists like lazerhawk or scattle, it's quite niche
Synthwave seems like it somewhat popular
The reason why the Beatles look like they went through several lifetimes is because technically they did with all the LSD they took
Nah. Their handlers controlled all that.
@@EmoDKTsuchiyathis. Based tavistock noticer
The smiley face became a symbol for acid-house culture. Acid is also another name for LSD. ;)
Was talking with my brother about this exact topic, we grew up in the 90s. I couldn't agree more when you said as children we were surrounded by this boom of incredible and ground breaking art and it shaped our world view. I'd say human creativity peaked around the early to mid 2000s. Just go back and look at the quality of films/video games that came out during that time, every year was exciting. Now we're in a trough it seems and I'm waiting for things to pick up again.
I view the 80s as the peak as it gave us so many of the iconic franchises to this day, but there's a good argument from anywhere from the 50s-early 2000s. A lot of good stuff came out of the early 2000s and it still had that unique feel that the 80s/90s did.
The 80s was the peak for our culture, But the 2000s was the peak of civilization, The mid-late 2000s were as good as they were ever going to be. Everything since has been a series of rapidly diminishing returns despite "progress" being made technologically.
There was plenty of garbage in those years too. You're viewing it years later when we forgot about the trash and only remember the memorable games, movies, music, etc.
Every time is a retread to some extent and the 90s was the same.
It’s more specific example but in the UK we had Britpop take over in the mid 90s, and a lot of that music was heavily inspired or straight up borrowing from the 60s.
@@user-vi4xy1jw7eyou didn't have annoying people saying that if you didn't like this movie or games bigot, sexist or some kind of phobic, you did have people saying that the fans and audience were entitled and spoiled and were horrible people for their opinion on a movie or games, you didn't have the psycho drama that revolves around modern entertainment, if you didn't like something bad back then you just moved on. We didn't have a culture that revolves around victemhood Olympics and constantly trying to piss people off for attention 24/7 like nowadays, we didn't have the drama constantly about weather you like something or not, you wasn't transphobic for liking Harry Potter and you weren't a sexist for not liking the new ghost busters movie
Back then, going to the internet was an event. I remember gather around with friends and family to look up a site and wait minutes for the page to load, it was tedious but i remember enjoying it more. Now we got everything on one device and it's quicker yeah, but it feels boring like there's nothing special about it anymore.
I think the perfect balance between technology and life was before the iphone. You wanted to contact somebody? You called them.
You wanted to look something up? You used the computer.
You wanted to listen to music? You used your ipod or mp3 player.
You get the point.
I think there is still hope for the new generation. They just need to realize and wake up.
One important thing changed noticeably in our culture: everything is so political.
Polarization is nothing new in politics, it's part of democracy. But in most of the west, political junkies were a clique of their own, and radicas were a clique inside another.
Now everything gets politicized, not even children movies are exempt, and you are expected to have an opinion on everything; the environment, aliens, inflation, aliens impact on environment and inflation... And everything is left or right, liberal or conservative. This might be the worse part of the end of monoculture.
Politics is not getting any better, only noisier.
Well said!
You could also be a centrist and make interesting centrist media that wasn't afraid. Simpsons made fun of left and right, loved by all. Now Simpsons is an irrelevant leftist mouthpiece.
thats another one killed by the internet, the biggest impact is short form content. with short form content like tic tok or early twitter, there is no space for any context. all you get is a single short thing with zero context, and this effectively trained everyone to ignore context as a result. making everyone reactionary and incapable of hearing opposing views because their brains had been trained to ignore everything outside the short box the see in front of them.
the hyperpolarization is only exacerbated by the echo chambers created by the content algorithms. these algorithms that only exist because of the oversaturation of available content, because the sheer volume of content that exists is greater than anyone could ever hope to consume in a single lifetime. someone born in 1985 could by the time the year 2000 arrived could effectively consume the majority of all available content from the 1920s-1990s giving them a wide variety of opinions and world views. but if you start right now, it would take (numbers from 2019) 1.8 trillion years to watch everything just on youtube... let alone all other media. an impossible task.
this equally trains people to embrace what the algorithm does and only spend time viewing what they specifically like, effectively no one ever goes outside their comfort zone to experience anything new, no one ever "wastes" time listening to opposing viewpoints. this is how the internet has trained them.
as a result, the average person no trained by the internet, when they hear an opposing viewpoint its automatically wrong, and the other person is either an idiot, insane, or an evil monster. because they have been trained to effectively be incapable of listening to context or opposing viewpoints or just anything that makes them uncomfortable.
everything has ALWAYS been "political" though, in the past it was easier for straight white people to ignore that fact but now they can't and that makes them upset. This notion that kids movies aren't political is bullshit.
@@cattysplat wrong it's plenty relevant troll.
creativity comes from boredom and frustration. It's a lot harder to be bored (and therefore creative) when you have endless entertainment available in the palm of your hand, all the time. Until people learn to get offline and be bored again, I don't see culture getting back to anything like what it was in the 90s and noughties.
Damn no wonder why GTA IV hits extremely different playing it today.
I don't know man. Things were much less polarized in 2008 compared to now... so it is a huge shift but I saw it coming already in early 2012 and 12 years later it has just gotten worse...
On top of what you mentioned though the ''monochramy culture'' or whatever you called it, I didn't have a word for it before but it does make sense. It seemed like a lot of people were fixated on many of the same bands. I think being a fan of Alice In Chains in the early 90s would actually make it easier for you to talk with others compared to now where people are much more elitist with their views. But that isn't to say I haven't done the same myself.
I think about this every day. I was a kid/teenager through the whole 2000s, and it was a great era to grow up in. But minus the early 2010s, the 2010s had a soul crushing feeling of society becoming a culture of one that is that of fast diminishing returns. Now after 2020, I feel like I'm on a completely different timeline and I dont like it.
Very few things read as they did when I was growing up. I feel so far removed from my little sisters childhood than I do from my parents and even grandparents. And I grew up in a very noticeable different world than my elders. But I have a connection the the things they grew up with, where as my little sister( who's 17 years younger than me) vaguely knows a slight bit about the world I grew up in, but she turns her nose up at it or just doesnt even get it every time I try to introduce her to it. This is foreign to me since I was introduced to my parents and grandparents childhoods and while I didnt like all of it. I, as well as many other Millennials did enjoy their younger year experiences.
Sounds accurate, I blame activist, SJWs and wokeness for ruining the 2010s decade they made everything political and revolve around constant drama for attention and to push their political ideologies into everything
One prime example of this stagnation is that they are still selling Ninja Turtles in every toy store. This was a cultural phenomenon nearly FORTY years ago yet it still hasn't gone out of style. This would be like finding Howdy Doody toys in the 90s stores.
Pretty sure Batman toys are still sold, and that’s a character who predates Howdy Doody by nearly 20 years.
@@swashbucklemchrue2323 60s Batman is completely different from 90s Batman who is quite similar to 2000s Batman.
You can make this argument for so many things. Nothing new is ever created. Just the same characters and their stories being retold over and over again.
@@swashbucklemchrue2323 actually Howdy Doody first appeared in 1947, so I think it’s just 8 years between Batman and him. Also, the Tarzan brand is just as good an obvious example of cultural stagnation, at least for the 1930s-60s when lots of Tarzan merch (on what’s now a Star Wars kind of scale) were sold out almost every year in those decades!
I was born in 97 and i feel the same way as the others in the comments. Everything from music, cartoons, movies and even cars felt better when i was kid. I don’t watch any new movies they’re making now nor listen to new music. Even cars of this era feel exhausting to me with all the useless screens and tech inside, I’m much happier driving a simple Toyota 4Runner or Tacoma from the early 2000’s. The internet was a new exciting place back then as well. Wish I could sometimes go back in time and relive that lost era.
I think this video is criminally underrated.
When I was young, I couldn't wait to grow up and earn my own money and have my own freedom.
Once I got there, I looked around and realised the world isn't as fun as it used to be.
So very true
I am so happy i discovered you. You Go big my man💪💪🔥
My main passion is cars and I see this shift in that culture too. New cars designs and their ads prioritise touch screens. Even the proven silhouette of the 911 which hasn’t really changed shape in decades, needs a big wide screen inside.
Old cars modified for fun may not have the screens inside, but their connection to culture is to be constantly shared on short videos online.
Feels like the attention economy effects just about every hobby when you look into it!
This is exactly why I don't plan on purchasing any newer model cars. Plus, touch screens inside of cars are a major safety hazard.
Tesla cyber trucks are the new latest thing when it comes to cat innovation design . They`re different from other cars.
@@lovelydolltime8006hundred percent agree. Your not allowed on your phone whilst driving but your allowed to fiddle around with setting of your touch screen (radio, heating, etc)
Worst one in my opinion (about the cars hehe) is what they did to the latest Mustang dash. Horrible rectangular touch screens replaced those iconic gauges and mustangy accents. The exterior still carries the Mustang essence (ugly upturned headlights suck though) but the interior is horrible and unoriginal.
I see it too. So many new cars are nigh indistinguishable from each other nowadays, giving rise to a sort of an "aerodynamic blob" design that lacks the flair/pizzazz/"that thing" from older cars.
I believe that part of it is that to make vehicles "safer," companies just increase the ride height of their vehicles, so that instead of being crushed, whoever is behind the wheel does the crushing of the poor bastard who likes his classic roadster/other smaller car.
Additionally, the point you and others have made regarding screens is spot on; when every interior features a ridiculous screen in the center of the dash, rather than buttons/dials/etc. they all blend together, going back to the "blob" design I mentioned earlier.
I’m in my 40s… I’ve never been so bored and uninspired by society and popular culture. I tend to be very positive and optimistic about life, but man, 2010 onwards has been very, very lame.
Everyone is a victim, everything is everyone else’s fault, and we’ve lost the ability to find artistic value and commonality as a whole. Instead, we have douches blocking highways, spray painting art and monuments, and just… Blaaaaaaaa.
Here’s to better times ahead!
Weird I'm 25 and I actually felt that exact same way around 2010 as a kid. I remember loving early 2000s and then all of a sudden I remember how boring and uninteresting things became. Wrestling, games, movies, clothing style everything started to suck to me.
Im 29 but the turning point was around 2012 for me. But yea I completely agree with you.
That second paragraph describes hippies in 60's-70's, though?
You nailed it.
@Iunanec Not entirely. What is your point?
Awesome video I’ve been thinking about/ saying things about this topic in pieces for years
But never have I ever been able to summarize it as beautifully as you did
Good stuff man!
I think our era is like 1930s America. Cultural explosion followed by a mass economic depression. We remember plenty of cultural artifacts from the Roaring 20s, but almost nothing from the Great Depression except shanty houses and breadlines. WWII, as horrifying as it was, seemed to restore culture.
So we're heading towards WW3...
Oh definitely. WWII also helped science a whole lot too. Gave it a hell of a hand
Great comment, I also noticed the similarities!
GTA 4 is the perfect distillation of 2007-08. Especially the whole “War on Terror” defining America
The stagnation of culture isn't just in the US. It's been universal since the internet matured. Cultures and sub-cultures are created via some form of isolation and the arts and music come from that isolation. The isolation of American blacks created so many music genres and the same can be said of the gays too. As the internet, gay acceptance and multiculturalism removed the isolation, everything stagnated. No new music genres have really sprung up since the 90s and the fashion, lingo and culture of all the ethnicities have begun to homogenize.
Its also because its cheaper for corporations to monetize. If you have one popular clothing style its cheaper than 40 styles. Homogenized culture is cheaper. The only good news is that there is more than one corporation and the people in charge can never share with each other. So they'll keep tryinh to one up each other.
Creativity is mostly dead due to creative fields like film, TV, and advertising no longer being staffed by misfits but by credentialed careerists from the suburbs who all had helicopter parents and structured every minute of their childhood.
Film studios are now controlled by financial interests and refuse to take risks, instead choosing to create Terminator 13 over and over again.
Most industries have been regulated into oblivion, making innovation impossible except in tiny niches of the market not yet heavily regulated, like tech and SaaS (which is why basically all innovation is taking place in a digital realm).
We no longer tolerate boredom, because we have dopamine machines in our pockets 24/7/365. Boredom is a great source of creativity and change.
Cultural stagnation is also a consistent trend of falling empires. It was a prominent theme early in Edward Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," for example.
A few things you said were great signals that you understand little to nothing about the world, and are just parroting the broken record talking points of pseudo intellectuals, like constantly blaming suburbia for every problem and bringing up the roman empire.
First of all the best way to create a healthy civilization is the family unit, who have their own single family home and their private space, away from the crowds. Suburban life does exactly that, though small towns are even better.
Second, whenever somebody compares the US to rome, I know that person does not posess critical thinking skills. Rome was a regional power, the US is a global power. Learn geopolitics and you'll see the US is here to stay for good, likely being the last country standing after everybody else is gone.
Lastly, you managed to make an extremely good point which is a big contrast compared to the rest of your comment.
We no longer tolerate boredom. And we have dopamine machines in our pockets 24/7/365. I could not agree more with this. Growing up without internet (I was born in the 1990s), having only 6-7 channels on the TV, being patient while waiting for your favorite cartoon show to air on weekend mornings, were some of the most important lessons anybody can learn.
Even with that experience, this new tech is conditioning it out of us to be patient. You can imagine what it does to people who grow up with this and never learn the earlier lesson.
And another thing that had a catastrophic effect on people - the internet has conditioned people that they're never wrong. Due to talking with internet comments in pretty much full animosity, theres no shame, or sense of guilt, or humility. Its always the other person who is wrong, never you. The same argument that was dismantled on one comment thread 5 minutes ago, can be used up over and over again on other threads and videos till it sticks. And then, you're right. You knew the whole time you were right you just needed to find the right group of people to confirm that.
@@DesertStateInEU
@@DesertStateInEU I didn't blame suburbia, I don't think suburbia is part of the problem at all. I blamed the switch in who makes up creative fields from largely misfits who did not possess college degrees (actual free thinkers) to credentialed college graduates who are more risk-averse and likely less talented. Suburbia is sort-of related to that, but no I would absolutely agree that a strong nuclear family is the core of a strong society, at least in the west.
The point I was making hinged much more strongly on the point about "helicopter parents [who] structured every minute of their childhood" thus harming their ability to be creative. It's effectively the exact same point as the boredom point you so charitably gave me credit for.
That's also wild to assume that no comparisons can ever be made to the Roman Empire or "you don't possess critical thinking skills". Our culture has many similarities to other falling empires, and I would argue that it's just the ever-constant hubris of "current year-ism" that makes you believe America will last forever. There are a number of historical trends that always precipitate the decline and fall of empires, which we are currently seeing. Like the removal of sound money, an obsession with gender and the subsequent role-reversal of the sexes, declining birth rates among natural born citizens and an increasing reliance on foreign-born workers and soldiers, declines in religion, decadence and materialism (Epicurianism in the Roman era), the list goes on. America is technically more stable than other first-world countries and won't immediately fall, but it's historically illiterate to act like there's nothing to worry about with the American Empire.
@@BarnJ Alright the first 2 paragraphs I agree with, and even with the signs of declining civilizations, such as the removal of cash, and the other things you listed.
But the roman empire example no. Look at the USSR. It fell hard, so hard that it changed the world. Yet in just 20 years Russia is back and stronger than ever.
In fact even Italy is still here, way more powerful than the roman empire ever was.
The US is such a global power that it will outlast every other country. Sure economic declines happen, even cultural declines, but whatever can make the most powerful country in the world disappear like the mayans, will make the entire world disappear.
@@DesertStateInEU ok that's your opinion and you're entitled to it.
Culture became stuck in the early 2000s and itll get weird once yhe last gasp of the current paradigm dies
When do you think that will be?
This is the best youtube essay i've seen in months. Great work, dude.
13:00 It's not that there only so many chord progressions or haircuts and story ideas, It's that we're limiting ourselves to think that. And if you really think that, then you either haven't been appreciative enough of haven't done enough exploring. Martin Scorsese turned 80 years old and he says that he has finally begun to get an understanding around film making
9:42
I like to say that the Walking Dead had this same effect with its first 3 seasons. I remember it being the talk of the town with anybody each time a new episode would air on TV.
I think this same collective buzz got stirred up again with the Force Awakens, but immediately died down after that movie, because all of its shortcomings and how disappointed people were of it and how it began to divide people.
I would say game of thrones was even bigger
I am a 90's kid. For me, video games stopped developing anything new and interesting in 2015. At that point something happened in video games that rymes with gate, and shifted producing nothing new, but opened up for me the video game media and their focus on politics, not games and mechanics in games. Monetization after 2015 in video games just became predatory, and today you have games as a service.
Considering TV, Breaking Bad for me was the last great series. Nolan is today the last director that I think can draw crowds in theatres and make something new.
After the death of Akira Toriyama, as well as Kentaro Miura, I can't see that anime will interest me with anything new anymore.
Music, I can't say anything new about it as I never follow new music but listen to very old pop/rock music.
Akira toriyama scarcely made anything new, he just made more and more dragon ball. Anime is still awesome
Dune (especially part 2) are worth watching imo, it was an incredible experience in theatre, somethng becoming extremelly rare nowadays
sorry to ask but what rhymes with gate that you are referring to?
for anime i will argue it has actually become more new now... it's just that since avg. age of Japanese is now 40 years...... they now making isekai anime targeting that age group which may appear bland....compared to teenage targeted shonen anime like dbz,naruto,fairy tail,one piece or bleach
@@SoAaron_ Gamergate
This is so thought-provoking! I love it. Agree totally. But I also wonder whether it's always easier to understand a period once some time has passed after it. Kinda like that concept that some music gets better as it gets older. Is it hard to look at ourselves as clearly as we can understand the previous decades?
And potentially, we are in a transition period that will be just as important as any other and have its positive sides.
If you weren't a grownup before 9/11, you can't really grasp how hard the world flipped upside down. It's a much darker, meaner place now.
Edit: new car paint with all metal flake removed, leaving a bland cream finish with no pop. That is the epitome of modern culture to me.
Yea the past was sunshine and rainbows before 9/11…..got it buddy
@@urbanlegendd6646 Hank is right though yeah, sure the world was never perfect and never will be. But the pre 9/11 world was much more optimistic it had a party vibe to it is the best way I can explain it. Post 9/11 is like someone flipped a switch and said the party is over.
@@ToeTag9899 are speaking for everyone or are u speaking from ur perspective and experience?
@@urbanlegendd6646 General
@@ToeTag9899 did you experience the 80s and 90s…. be honest ?
Wow, you covered a lot in just 15 minutes! As a Baby Boomer, I am used to fashion, design, literature, movies, music, advertising, etc. changing in rapid and cool new ways. I think things have been slowing down since the early 90s. Since the early 2000s, the boredom has set in. I've been looking for the ideas of younger people as to what is happening and I appreciate your viewpoints. I would add we are also losing our 'third places' where young people can get away to relax, congregate, and share ideas and creativity. (Third places are also an excuse to style oneself.) I'm glad you covered the economic issues that keep young people unsettled and insecure as well. People suffered terribly during the Great Depression but that was largely a shared experience and that is reflected in 1930s culture and fashion. Thanks!
I'd say if we suddenly woke up 20 years into the past we'd instantly notice the differences. The technology, the fashion, the vernacular, the types of ads and brands that existed back then.
Even things that are piss easy these days like organising to meet up with a friend. You'd have to be given instructions on where to go, or know how to read a map in real time and pay much more attention to your immediate surroundings in the real world. These days skills like memorising street names aren't all that common, unless you work for Uber or other such companies. Back then, for the average Joe you wouldn't have a smartphone with Google Maps to help you navigate the city. Some people wouldn't even have cellphones, so you'd be calling their home phone and give their parents/roommates a message for you to call them back. To tell the time you'd have a watch, or ask a stranger to give you the time.
Going back to this way of living would be a self-imposed challenge if you were to do it these days. And you'll be quickly called out for not being with the times if you try it. At worst your friends might even get mad at you for being hard to reach if you didn't own a phone and don't have at least 1-2 messaging apps installed.
What is especially striking is how older generations (so people who were adults going into the 2000s) generally picked up the phone when someone rang them. In this day and age calling someone born in and around or after 2000s nets you a 50-50 chance of them picking up if it's not in a work setting. Older people will prefer phone calls or face-to-face to written messages, and will get miffed if you don't answer. For younger generations it's being called that is a cause of frustration. The amount of times I thought: "what the fuck does this guy want?", or "who the hell is calling me?", or "ohh not this again, why can't this idiot just type 3 words on his fucking keyboard and leave me alone already?", or variations of these phrases whenever someone calls me highlights how different our approach to communications is today.
The early 2000s lead to the 2010s where everything got smaller, sleeker, darker. And now the 20s are sort of indulging in (while at the same time critiquing) the "brain rot" content that lasts less than 10 seconds and overstimulates your brain. In any case, I noticed a gradual shift from "gritty", "depressing", "lacking soul" content in mainstream media to more "colourful" and "positive" content in recent years. Like compare the MCU movies from end of 2010s to movies from the early 2010s, sure writing quality has gone down since, but at its best flicks such as Thor: Ragnarok and Infinity War have much more personality and dare I say "fun" in them than for instance Sony's Spider-Man duology. These Spider-Man movies aren't bad films, in fact I do really like them, but only they do perfectly illustrate my point that movies could really reinforce how, umm - fucking depressing life could be during that decade. Compare Raimi's shots of Spidey swinging across New York and landing on old-fashioned buildings, and him interacting with cheesy over the top characters in a vibrant setting; versus edgy Sony Spider-Man swinging across a grey city, filled with identical glass buildings, and dealing with somber melancholic characters in a fairly cold world. That's how I remember the 2010s. Black and grey technology. Minimalism and efficiency everywhere. No more colour. That is until the end of the decade where things were allowed to become a bit lighter in tone, both literally and metaphorically.
Anyways, I kind of went into a rant towards the end, my point is: things have changed. Only, now I don't know where we are going. Have fun reading my nonsense!
Honestly I don't think I would have any problems with going back 20 years
I've chosen to live like it's the 2000s and its given me a sense of peace and happiness in this stupid modern world I'm stuck in. And besides, who actually cares about "being with the times" (other than stupid conformist sheep)?
Some people that are broke still live like this.
yes this is what he mentioned is the rise of the internet and associated technology is easily the most noticeable change. There have been some cultural trends like dubstep and EDM and game of thrones but it doesnt seem to have the same relevance as the past decades many would agree.
"Have fun reading my nonsense!"
buddy, I skipped all that
9/11 and the response to it gave the western world PTSD and we've been in an existential tailspin ever since. The internet fragmented everything and provided people an opportunity to retreat into themselves.
I'm wholly convinced that the covid pandemic lockdowns were only possible because of 9/11. Those two events bookend a chunk of time that need to be studied.
i for one can’t wait till gen alpha is like “omg who knew a two year lock down stunted my growth”
I don't mean to say you're overrating the 911, but c'mon, if 911 gave the world a global PTSD then we as a species all must be living in a constant PTSD throughout our history, as there had been much and much more gruesome acts of terror not even too long before 911, in 2001 we even still had plenty of people who witnessed WW2, Hiroshima nuclear massacre, holocaust, Vietnam, Korean war, regular terror attacks in post-Soviet Russia, Yugoslavia war, and many many other stuff. I don't mean to devaluate the tragedy, but compared to all the other stuff in the 20th century the 911 was a rather bleak accident that I only remember seeing on TV as a kid with just slight confusion, continuing to play chess with some other kid
911 was the death of truth in our society. Ever since then things have just got worse as time goes by.
Our governments shifted from pretending they were democratic to actually growing in overt authoritarianism. The veil of freedom was lifted and the ugly truth of what we actually live under was there with anyone who had eyes to see. Our political parties all merged into different colours of the same shit.
The left went from equality for all to outright cultural communism and now it's perfectly legitimised on main stream tv to be racist to white people.
We're all living in a top down society driven by a shadow hand towards war, famine and depopulation.
Yes, 911 traumatised us.
@iustin898what?
In which bubble are you living in? 911 was arguably the lamest "bad" event in the human history. Idk how it was in the us, but in the othern western countries it was in the headlines for some time and not long after nobody gave a shit about it and went on with their lives. There is no way it actually had any significant long term effect on society.
It was special to witness the jump in technology from the mid 90s to the mid to late 2000s specifically in movies and entertainment. After that it has seem to stagnate as movies from the late 2000s could almost pass as a movie that came out today. You couldn’t say that about a movie that came out in 2007 and compared it to a movie that came out in 1990
I always show people that David Bowie clip because it's amazing how spot on he was AND that the interviewer scoffed at him for it! Awesome reference, well spoken and great video.
I was born in 1999. I grew up in the 2000s, and I enjoyed the 2000s very much during my childhood. Countless classic cartoons entertained me (and even taught me some English before I study it in school, since I'm Macedonian), many toys and gadgets and in general optimistic about the future. But that optimism disappeared in the 2010s when I started to notice things becoming bland, and I didn't enjoy my teenage years (sure, there were some good things, but in general my teenage years were boring). And now at the age of 25, I don't enjoy many things that are mainstream (music, tv shows, other media) and don't have a very positive outlook for the future. But I hope I'm wrong, and we start to see positive global cultural changes. Cheers from N.Macedonia!
This was a good algorithmic score. New sub
Love it when UA-cam gives me and others a gem
I feel like the internet on a desktop computer is amazing but the invention of the smartphone damaged society.
im 32 and i never used a phone. i've used a PC since 1997 when I was 5 and just learning how to interact with things. dad bought the family a gateway desktop that came with a bunch of educational games and all this new and exciting technology and that was how I learned. Iphones definitely are the death of society.
I feel that, instead of there being less potential culture-shifting moments, especially in music, there's less drive towards putting culture on a mainstream stage. Innovation, nowadays, exists in the little crevices online, where people don't have to give a second thought to commercial appeal
All excellent points.
Here is the silver lining: I think that the evolution of culture is actually slowing down to what it NORMALLY is in historical terms. Our ancestors largely did live in times where you did largely the same things your grandparents did. Things got better or worse as princely states rose and fell, but the average person didn't feel this so much
you hit the nail on the head with Monoculture. with the advancement of the internet. everyone can fit into their own perfect world. rarely do we share the same interests as the person beside us
I used to watch movies, TV and sports all day for decades now I watch UA-cam when I'm taking a break from playing video games I have nothing in common my co workers to talk about
I disagree. Because of the internet, I’ve met people who share the same interests. I’m sure they said the thing about the television, it’s going to destroy families and family time.
@S2k_562 Don't be ignorant...
I feel like when there's any terrible event happening (that define a period) people tends to look back at stuffs from previous decade with nostalgia such as the 80s during 2000s or 90s during 2010s...
Currently it's 2000s nostalgia because today's adults are kids during 2000s which remembered 2000s differently from adults who grew up during 70-80s (popular opinion back in 2000s often regards the period as the worst decade, a reason why so many movies back then were full of gritty self-serious stuffs)
That's an explanation, but it still doesn't change the fact my Dad could have safely hitchhiked to California to meet friends there (he did) and I'd never try that. He was able to feel connected enough to random people in a way that would have made my skin crawl just 30 years later.
@@2beJTI don't get the point of your comment. Are you saying it's less safe now to hitchhike or that people now are just more aware of what can happen, leading you to never entertaining the idea of it? Regardless, it's a personal anecdote.
theres literally no society anymore
@@bahshas touch grass
@@2beJT They had lots of serial killers back then during 70`s especially in places like California for example . Hitchhikers were sadly the most common targets because they jump randomly into an stranger cars , only to be never heard from again . yes , lots of people did hitchhike back then and most came out fine but few did not ; some of which die in most grumesome matter like being tortured and/or raped before being killed .
Short answer: social media Fd everything up from society's social norms to everyone's mentality
Every time I watch one of your vids I look at your sub count and go...huh??
Keep going dude, you're gonna blow up more and more, awesome video!!
I'm grateful to have anyone watching at all, but comments like this are really motivating for the grind. Thank you! Plenty more ideas in the tank, just need the time haha.
Subversive and unique movements do exist currently theyre just completely underground, because big corporations consider them too risky to promote, it also doesn't help that declining birth rate means that the majority of the population are middle aged so popular aesthetics essentially haven't changed in 20 years. They'res plenty of unique stuff on tiktok because its basically entirely young people
Great video!!! I love topics like these I always find them so interesting. I do agree agree about the stagnation starting around 2008. Also I think UA-cam and Netflix are huge parts of the slow death of monoculture. Also the decline of MTV going into reality tv full time is a good measuring stick. The last time for me when MTV played a video where people would quote the lyrics was Gwen Steffani Hollaback song "This shit is bananas" B-A-N-A-N-A-S. which was in 2005 I remember seeing it on MTV all the time. The same year later UA-cam came out ironically and changed everything.
This video needs at least 1 million views! Some intriguing ideas that more people need to hear.
2024 is like living alone in a crowd full of NPCs. I talk to them via internet just like I talk to ChatGpt. The only friends I have are from the pre-Covid era. I feel like we're still in lockdown somehow and it's not gonna change. Something is off and there is no vibe anymore. That's all I can say.
This video is an absolute masterclass in video essays. Thank you for sharing
I find this topic fascinating, and always wondered if it's just people "growing up" but I've noticed both people older and younger than me have come to similar conclusions. I think the monoculture thing hits it on the head, as it feels like we're not all "watching the same thing" anymore (Endgame is a good example of the last phenomenon though).
All I can say is that time seems to fly quicker now as an adult: I was born the same year as Vice City is set, and let me tell you, the first 16 years of life felt like an eternity, and the last 16 has felt like a blink of an eye, and as a result, it doesn't feel like much has changed, except technology got a lot "smarter" lol. Great video analysis!
Feel the same, I think time feels quicker as each year is compared to an ever increasing # of total years lived, making each passing year a smaller % of the whole
I think about this all the time. The last 25 years are all blended together. Thanks for the video, it provided clarity.
Anxiety is one of the biggest factors for why culture has stagnated so badly. Today, people are too scared to leave their houses, much less have adventures. People are too anxious to have opinions and speak there minds for fear of being political or being cancelled.
Also, thanks to social media and Hollywood, it seems like fame and money is all that matters.
nobody gets "cancelled" spare me.
Hey dude. Just giving you a heads up I shouted out this video in my latest video. It really inspired me and I just wanted to thank you for the great content!
I think the 2010s had its own identity. Was it the best? No but it had an identity. However the 20s will be the worst decade ever. This is why albums n movies are flopping. Nothings changing! Like you said we still have 40-50 yo at the top. There’s nothing new and no youth! For example Kevin hart still out here thriving. Decades ago his time would’ve been up. There’s no comedian to take his spot. So he stays. No teenage heartthrob. No boy or girl bands. No variety. Just the same stars from yesteryear and reboots. If you’re old. You’re winning rn. I go to the club and all I hear is 00s hits. It’s insane. We hit a wall in technology and creativity. But seems like the puppeteers wanted this. Sucking the life out of us. Sad facts. Great video.
Media companies are making shitty contetnt on purpose because they want to push a political message, not make art.
The 2010 felt like a retread but at least it was the first retread so it felt fresher.
Basically, cultural creativity is dead.
People who are 40 and 50 are practically infants relative to the people who are truly at the top
What? There's still new up and coming comedians, teen hearthrobs, and boy/girl bands. Sounds like you're just out of the loop.
I agree that nothing really moving theese days. To me it's like after around 2007, nothing really changed, nothing really "new" happened, only a few very small insignificant things. It's like time came to a standstill. What I would give to live in a world without smartphones, where new music still has the same styles as 60's-80's, where films and TV shows aren't all dramatic, loud and "in your face", where cars still look like cars. Basically a world that's like the latter half of the 20th century, but with high speed internet, computers as powerful as today's, and *definitely* NO smartphones.
i'm just here to quip that light years is a measure of distance, not time. thanks for your intuitiveness.
Very detailed views and reasons but zooming out it is basically the economy and how people feel about the future in this environment. This explains every trend of every generation here and on other continents.
Quality narrative TV is still in the sway of a true golden age. It has replaced mainstream film as the barometer for storytelling and iconography.
I love the way you put your thoughts together on this. I’ve been wondering the same thing. Being a gen-x guy I grew up with amazing cultural phenomena like Ghostbusters, Michael Jackson, Goonies, ET phoning home, and genesis does what Nintendon’t etc. Despite having all the technology in the world to connect to one another we’ve never been further apart. Loneliness is a new epidemic. Being trapped in the view of what you can see in the screen in your hands has caused us to be isolated and not living life anymore. No one can experience something without posting it on their timelines 💪🏿🇺🇸🔥🇺🇸🔥🇺🇸✊🏿
Man this are some solid ass facts
Gta san and vc were groundbreaking, combining satire and free roam , then aorund 2013 shit got bugger with realism in gta v
We had cgi 3d cartoons competing with drawn ones
We had white culture back then , shows like 24 , songs like you belong with me , shows like snallville and VD
Eminem , southpark and family guy were out of pocket
Deathnote and last airbender came out in that era
Cartoon network, nickelodeon were having their golden years
Numetal , brit pop and alternative, hip-hop and rnb were all competing in the market
Culture back then was super diverse and the world had more nuance and relatability, todays culture just seems like fast food content everywhere
There's a meme doing the rounds on Facebook (ironically enough) which stated that in the Y2K era, the internet was a place you went to for a few hours, then you shut your computer off and went back to normal life. Now, the internet is part of everything we do - I feel like that's a big part of it.
Our Prof asked us what philosophers and other authors are formative for our generation. The answer is as sad as it can get: no one. Not because no one is reading anymore, but because there aren't generation defining things anymore.
there are they just aren’t as important because everybody already did everything already there is nothing left to do now than just use the technologies we have at our disposal and see where that’ll take us you have to takes risks and not care what others think to do something like that and honestly the world is ending so who cares about culture if the world is dead so is culture
Been looking for this video for 10 years.
Fantastic essay. Finally some good content on my feed
Your channel has become one of my favourite channels. Keep up the great work!
I really appreciate that, thanks!
1980s was the Golden Age of movies
Like high middle ages
Your going to say :
What was Horror movies in 1970s :
70s the greatest decade for Horror films it was a decade that just said fuck it let's go nuts
What was horror movies in 1980s :
80s when the Slashers, Monsters, and Stephen King ruled the box office
I imagine its something that many people notice, but also many question themselves, wondering if they just didnt see it.
Whenever I watch a movie from the late 00s it doesn’t seem too far from today although it is still dated. However whenever I see actual photos from that time, like my own home photos, it does seem a lot older.
the second half of the 20th century saw an unprecedented rise in living standards for huge numbers of people which lasted just long enough to enable the creativity boom ascribed to this time. as the economic boom tapered of, the wealth gap increased, creativity decreased. look at any wealth gap graph; the curb starts accelerating exponentially upward in perfect correlation with the creative stall.
As a kid from the early 2000s I remember asking my grandfather what the 1980s were like and he just gave me his copy of vice city and since then it got me obsessed with it
Dude. Our culture greatly changed since 2008. Identity and gender politics went through the roof.
It actually started in 2000 or weimar germany if you look farther.
Internet trends are probably the only thing I can actually pin point eras after the 2010's
holy shit no wonder i always felt like history just keeps repeating itself.
I'm really feeling my age lately, born in 82, but the more i think about all the experiences i had the more grateful i am. Growing up without a cellphone had its disadvantages but wasn't so bad as i made my own entertainment, not staring at a phone all day. Culture went through some crazy ass ebbs and flows and it was cool to see some stuff go through growing pains.
The bulldozing impact of neo-liberalism and woke culture is also a factor; the elite have hijacked cultural milestones in order to "modernise" (i.e. destroy) them and cancel culture makes everyone walk on eggshells in order to avoid cancellation. Finally, preoccupation with pleasing the algorithm in order to maintain your income is another problem. That's some of the worst conditions for creativity.
I stop reading whenever someone uses woke unironically.
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e What's the correct term then?
Lmao you’re just a socialist, but instead of accepting that you actually care about the world and other people, you channel your sadness at the world into contempt and resentment for other people. Grow up dude
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e What word would you suggest we use instead to describe this phenomenon?
Yeah, it's always the others, say the right-wingers who unleashed their stupid culture wars upon us. You are the ones who want to force their ideology on everyone else, who want to tell people how to live, whom to love, what to think, how to speak, and even what books are allowed to read. I'm so tired about the whining every time a video games gives players the option to play as a female character. It's such a nonsense and it's so unnecessary.
This video's thumbnail should be displayed at museum. Pure art.
While we may have entered a period of stagnation there are positives to it. For one people's world view is far less influenced by a board room of executives. This has also allowed marginalized groups to a greater voice in the zeitgeist, which has lead to greater acceptance of these groups than in previous generations. Furthermore I personally appreciate more people being niche interests, because it makes it easier for me to enjoy things that would have been isolating in the past. Its just far easier to find people with shared niche interests nowadays.
How do you know that that board room of executives intentionally didn't allow marginalised groups into the mainstream?How do you know they actually opposed it?Did you talk to them?Behind closed doors were any listening devices are jammed using NSA tech. The kind of stuff that isn't on the market. Seems like a big leap to assume they played no part in this. What if that was their plan all along and you did exactly what they wanted you to do?Again have you ever talked to any of them to see what they really think?Have you?
What an amazing video essay! So many painful truths in such little time.
A lot of it also has to do with globalism, neoliberalism, corporatism, and the rise of pc culture. All of these things are eliminating any differences in culture across communities and nations, thereby making everything feel bland and sterile and eliminating any risk in starting something new.
Plus the shrinking youth population combined with the self-censorship they impose on each other means there is no counter-culture. The 90s/00s had goths, punks, stoner dudes, and the whole skateboarding phenomenon. The 2010s and 2020s "counter culture" is to repeat the same corporate talking points about diversity and inclusion to create a more homogeneous society
This, read the liberal manifesto by Guy Verhofstadt. It talks about making a monoculture if consumers through multiculturalism and destruction of the nation state and religions
oh spare me the "globalism" dogwhistling troll, sorry if the existence of LGBTQ people and minorities makes you butthurt.