*sigh* Playing With Wiki guides aren't like they used to be...
Basic Trope: Someone who believes that things from his/her childhood or past are automatically superior to the modern equivalents, usually despite them being no different.
- Straight: Bob, a music fan who grew up in the 1970s, insists that the rock music produced in the 1970s is superior over its modern equivalent, and refuses to be swayed on the matter.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob spends hours laboriously nitpicking between his favorite album from the 1970s and a modern album, using any minor difference to praise one and slam the other.
- Bob has an unconditional hatred for anything made after December 10, 1982, and for anyone who likes anything from after that date. Anything made before that, however, is automatically awesome, and anyone who doesn't like it has no taste and is probably a worthless person.
- Downplayed:
- Bob's favorite genres just happened to be most prominent in the 1970s, and while his dislike of modern music is never explicitly cited, it can be inferred through his other interests.
- While Bob acknowledges that there was crap in his day, he defensively states that "it was charming crap".
- Justified:
- Most people do base their tastes primarily off what was popular or what they experienced when they were younger, at least on some level, and tend to find it harder to be more flexible and incorporating of more modern things once they reach a certain point. In certain cases, this can lead to rejecting new stuff in favor of the old material they're familiar with.
- Bob is a time traveller from the past who still finds the future to be a little scary.
- The styles and genres that Bob enjoys are no longer being produced much, if at all; he is forced to rely on the past, but would eagerly enjoy modern productions in those favorite styles.
- Turns out, there were some aspects of life that were better in Bob's heyday. Firstly, Bob enjoyed a steady job and income, which his children greatly struggles with in an increasingly capitalistic and economically unstable world. He also remembered a time when there was a clear enemy for the community and the country to unite against, compared to how politically fragmented and partisan today's politics are, with a lack of a middle ground. His children acknowledges this, but ultimately rejects Bob's nostalgia, as his time was also a time rife with sexism and racism.
- Inverted:
- Bob prefers modern music to the music that was around in his childhood.
- Bob's children rudely tell their father that the stuff he grew up with sucks when compared to what they're into.
- Subverted:
- Bob complains about a new album, saying he likes old ones better. But he admits he likes other modern songs.
- Alternatively, Bob was born long after the music he likes had its heyday, but still insists that "things were so much better then" despite lacking firsthand experience.
- Double Subverted: However, he only likes a few modern songs which ape the stylings of the 1970s.
- Parodied:
- Bob literally wears a pair of 'nostalgia goggles' which enable him to filter everything around him to what it was like in his youth.
- Bob is a Disco Dan who is hopelessly stuck in the past.
- In a flashback to the past, we learn that Bob was exactly like this in his youth; he only likes the stuff from the 1970s because it is old now, and hated it when he was younger.
- Bob is listening to something and praising it under the belief that it came from the 1970s. As soon as someone informs him it's a modern song, however, he immediately changes his tune, calling it the worst thing he's ever heard.
- Zig Zagged: Bob gushes to Dave how much better the music was back in his day...then admits to Mike that some of it wasn't that great. But when he meets Mike, he's back to gushing about how oh-so-much better the 1970s were, even though Mike Isn't a Moron, remembered the previous conversation, and calls out Bob. He succeeds in shutting Bob up, for the moment.
- Averted:
- Bob never mentions what kind of music he likes.
- Bob listens to the music that was popular when he was younger, but is quite willing to listen to modern music as well.
- Enforced:
- The studio producing the show was iconic in The '70s and The '80s and is something of a Fallen Studio now. This show seems to be their biggest chance to get back on the public's good side. So they make Bob a fan of stuff from those days, including, coincidentally, their biggest hits... Now on DVD and Blu-Ray, get them wherever DVDs are sold!
- The director greatly prefers media from the past.
- Or on the flip side, the writer thinks modern times are better than when (s)he grew up & wants to point out why (s)he thinks people like this are wrong.
- Lampshaded: Two fans of modern music overhear Bob's complaining. One tells the other to ignore him; "He's just like that, let him get on with it."
- Invoked: A troll is intentionally criticising Bob's favourite music in order to provoke an angry reaction from Bob.
- Exploited: Postmodernism
- Defied:
- Bob refuses to listen to any music from his childhood in order to maintain a "neutral point of view".
- Bob is willing to listen to modern music and evaluate it on an even-handed basis.
- Bob doesn't possess rose-tinted glasses when it comes to the past; he likes some of what he grew up listening to, but freely admits that there was a lot of rubbish back then as well, and some of the modern stuff is superior.
- Discussed: Two music fans are having a passionate discussion about the relative merits of modern music versus earlier examples, and one of them points out that they need to make sure they aren't just embracing this trope.
- Conversed: "There's always one stick-in-the-mud who refuses to believe that anything he wasn't listening to when he was a kid is no good on these shows."
- Implied: Bob grins broadly when he hears a 'classic' rock song and frowns when he hears a 'modern' one.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob fears the end of his youth and his encroaching old age, and expresses this by lashing out at everything which is modern and which has changed from his youth. All this does is make him bitter and further isolate him from the people around him.
- Bob constantly talks about how much things were better in his youth. Turns out, when Alice and Carol investigate Bob's childhood, they find he actually blocked out a great deal of trauma.
- Bob's self-centered, petty and irrationally nostaglic attitude really gets on people's nerves and beyond that, they do not want to put with that anymore of Bob. When he incessantly goes on how modern stuff is inferior compared to the past, people call him out by showing him how much of the past was in actuality, quite horrible compared to how they are now (wars, homophobia, slavery, disease), and decided go to someone who doesn't have such an obnoxious, narrow-minded, universally discriminatory attitude towards modern things.
- When Bob pulls that nonsense on the wrong group, he is told that some of the old things aren't that great compared to the modern. Bob is still in denial with the great point they made, so he loudly tells that they're all trash compared to the originals. They decided that rather than put up with one of those people blinded by nostalgia, wisely ignored him and walked away. The next group Bob did that to were rather brutal, and left him with extreme trauma. Bob can no longer talk about the great old times without the bad memories of being almost dead by said group of people.
- Bob thinks too much about the past that this makes him sad and depressed because he can no longer relieve the good things that had happened.
- Reconstructed:
- After a lengthy process of self-examination, Bob comes to terms with the fact that he's not a young man anymore... but he still hates modern rock music.
- Bob eagerly embraces the fact that he's an old man and the fact that he can loudly and rudely criticise things that young people like and they have to just sit there and take it.
- Some of the artists that Bob loved in his youth are still around and rockin' but clearly aging. They have also updated themselves for each new generation of fans, while also attempting to appeal to nostalgic older fans. On one hand, Bob may have something to introduce his kids to (if they can get around the fact that these artists are probably older than their dad). On the other hand, Bob may be of the opinion that these artists lost something by staying around too long, just knowing that their advancing age now prohibits or makes improbable a lot of their earlier antics.
- Bob isn't going to ruin anyone's day for listening to modern music, but will politely decline anyone offering him to listen to it, while extoling the virtues of his preferred music.
- Bob acknowledges that some changes were needed, and he embraces the fact that his lesbian daughter Charlene do not have to put up with homophobia anymore, and his son-in-law Derek (who is of African heritage) can marry his other daughter Elaine without being stigmatized. He still laments how they struggle economically, though, and he hopes that there would be a time that has the best of both eras.
Back in my days, the main article actually had substance, and wasn't full of all the garbage you see these days!
