Does anyone else prefer older pop culture?

Does anyone here prefer pop culture (ie, movies, music, tv, books, etc) from the past to todays? I\'m not talking about in some Nostalgia Goggles way either. For example, I\'d much rather read comics from the early 70s through the early 90s than any recent one. They\'re easier to follow (even the continuity heavy ones), and outside of Liefeld and his clones, the art is more impressive IMO.

I like stuff from the past, but honestly I prefer modern culture because in addition to being easily understood, there's just so much less racism and sexism to get past. For example, while Breakfast at Tiffany's was generally a charming flick, I have to skip past the scenes with an actor in yellowface.

Also, less likely to be surprised with a thousand cumulative pages describing architecture.

They can be fun to visit but I wouldn't want to stay. Most of the older pop culture has more modern adapted material kicking around these days so it is easier to enjoy from that point of view.

I'm an '80s kid through and through. Most things since about 1992 seem pretty bland and 'meh' to me. The stuff that I do like is the stuff that successfully carries on themes or qualities of the older material.

I'm a big fan of retro-70s Doom Metal, for example, and synthwave, as well as films and TV set in the pre-Britpop world.

Yes, very much so. Count me in as being a favorite of the following:

-Classical music pre-1945.
-certain pop/rock genres from the 1950s-1980s.
-pre-1970s films.
-20th century TV shows.
-classic novels, plays, and short story collections (1940s and before).
-visual art from the 1960s and prior.
-architecture from the early 20th century and prior.

I do like select quality visual art post-1960s, concert music post-1945, post-1960s movies, and more recent architecture examples, though.

Edited by BoltDMC on Jan 18th 2021 at 5:23:14 AM

Something about the crunchy camera quality of older movies/shows is more charming somehow. (By older I mean 80s and prior.)

I definitely tend to like older books over modern ones.

I do find myself preferring some older incarnations of stuff rather than newer incarnations. Mostly, while I do like the newer stuff, I find myself preferring the Heisei and Millennium Godzilla films and the respective OVA versions of Bubblegum Crisis and Birdy the Mighty, as well as Post-Crisis DC and 90s to early 2000s Marvel.

Edited by Anicomicgeek on Jun 4th 2022 at 12:08:52 PM

Definitely. The amount of modern culture that interests me is minimal

sometimes

Complicated. I can slip into reading many 2000s-era webcomics like settling into a big comfy recliner with a mint choc chip ice cream. Newer webcomics all seem to be written by kids who grew up in a tougher, harder world; they don't seem to know what lightheartedness is. On the flip side, 2000s-era webcomics are prone to all sorts of isms and the long-runners almost inevitably descend into pornography, which trap I'm struggling to free myself from.

I suppose I do, since most of the music I listen to is pretty old (and not just by music standards), and I haven't gone out of my way to watch new movies or TV shows (the last time I went to the movie theater was in 2019 to see Booksmart).

Edited by DreamCord on Jan 10th 2023 at 12:45:44 PM

My older pop culture goes back to the 1980s and the Reagan years.

Dungeons & Dragons

Iron Eagle

Night Court

Knight Rider

Airwolf

The Real Ghostbusters

I look around and I don't even know who 90% of the "celebrities" are, and most of them just seem so self-absorbed, like they'd take selfies during a major Earthquake self-absorbed

i reminisce on nostalgia like that to the point i dwell on it perhaps a little too often

While I do like new media and that there's still contemporary stuff that catches my eye, I have a passion for classic literature (especially the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald). In fact, outside of Guardians of the Galaxy and Barbie (2023) (which I just watched this month), I haven't consumed any new media that came out this year and I consider myself somewhat out of touch of media in general outside of Fate/Grand Order and the aforementioned F. Scott Fitzgerald.

it depends. i tend to favor 80s/90s OVA and i have a particular bias towards 90s cartoons and the first season of the Pokemon anime

ill also be that dumbass who insists hip hop was better in the 90s, though i do believe back then people were saying NWA were just poseurs lacking flow

but with video games, i generally prefer modern or modern-ish games. there are exceptions; i still regularly play Half Life 1, Unreal Tournament 2004, Doom, etc. been playing thru Marathon on my phone

My early childhood was in The '60s and I grew up (physically at least) in The '70s; a lot of things about The '80s were just flat and depressing to me and I felt kind of alienated by a lot of the music and the pop culture.....

I've watched and listened to so many shows, films and sounds of the 80s that I'm kind of numb to them, which is a shame because I was born in that decade.

On the other hand, I haven't tired of anything that came out of the 90s or 2000s just yet. Still find myself listening to all the pop band and even trash metal and rap of that latter era...I even find some room for Nu Metal.

I don't watch much television nowadays other than in the early evening, on weekends I watch variety shows so I get to see an artist perform the occasional upcoming song about to drop the following week, some songs I find catchy but I don't go out of my way to look it up unless it's everywhere. I quite enjoyed the songs on Barbie lately.

It depends. Some i appreciate wholeheartedly, others i can't help but feel like it could've been better in a different social circumstances or a different work culture, or just a different decision altogether (like, taking soccer for example, the bosman ruling being that free agency would be granted but the foreign player limit would be increased to 5 as a compromise, for example.).

Edited by Kinni454 on Feb 8th 2024 at 7:27:19 AM

The turning point for me was when I became twenty (early 1980s) and the BBC chose to piss about with the format and the theme tune of Top of the Pops. Now I'd grown up with that show on TV: it was the backdrop to childhood, adolescence and growing up. And to me, the theme tune had always, always, been an instrumental version of Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love. Abruptly, one Thursday evening in the very early 1980's... they changed it. to something that was anonymously tinkety-plinkety and tinny on synthesisers, and apparently in keeping with the new music of The '80s. Hated it. It was as if they were saying "If you remember the old theme tune, piss off, you're too old, we don't want you watching". That was pretty much at the same time that I realised I was out of key with the "new music" and I had to accept The '70s were now history and wouldn't be coming back. (Having Thatcher as PM didn't help, either.)

Edited by AgProv on Mar 21st 2024 at 6:35:18 PM

I think I miss the era where radio was really a free place to hear music and not a part of a big company that pushes the people what they want to hear.

Old radio stations where like a point of contact between several people, it was like having someone that really wanted to share music and opinions, at some point I wanted to work in the radio (in the end I made podcasts for 10 years and I felt happy about it).

But then, the big companies began to take one by one all the small radio companies and began to input what to hear, what to say and what to sell... like TV channels...

Like an old rock station that never minded to sacrifice commercial time to put the full version of November Rain (yeah, it was too long for commercial radio stations), to have the owners buy it and decide to change the music scheduled to pop music... it was sad.

Oh yeah, forgot that older pop culture also had casual sexism and racism as well.

And homophobia.

And ableism.

And several raced tropes

I like both old and modern stuff, but I find the current generation's inability to tolerate older stuff chilling. As in, the mere mention of older values is anathema. You don't have to agree with them but there is an element of empathy on accepting others' views for what they were without them constantly offending you, and it feels like that's missing, like it's all becoming an "us or them" thing where the default reaction to values we don't agree with is trying to push them back from us, or just go 'I don't want to watch or read this stuff because it makes me uncomfortable'.

Frankly, it makes me afraid for how the generation will treat the next generation when they don't agree with their values and want to forge their own as well.

Edited by TomWithoutJerry on May 7th 2024 at 11:14:09 AM