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DragonBallZinn [he/him] @hexbear.net

3d ago

Anti-nostalgia thread: what are y’all happy is gone and hope never returns?

With UlyssesT out there touching grass, I haven’t seen this thread in a while. What in the past do you NOT miss? It could be very personal or just something everyone experienced but doesn’t anymore.

For me, I am so fucking happy the food scene in burgerland has changed since the 2000s. People seem to enjoy more well-seasoned foods and healthier options seem to outstrip the unhealthy slop I remember in the 2000s. Even my yee-yee ahh Ohio suburb has changed somewhat noticeably to support fresh ingredients. Less WASPslop is always good.

How about y’all?

128 comments

The word "epic" being used colloquially, and tangentially related to that, the le bacon craze.
Open horniness online, I'm glad that's more frowned upon these days, especially the kind of "I can't wait for [teenage celebrity] to turn 18" creepiness that was generally accepted in the 2000s
- oh god, le manly bacon bearded redditor was cringy and i'm glad it ended

Disposable cameras. The wastefulness of an object made to be thrown away aside, they took bad pictures, and if you wanted to take more than 10-15 pictures of your trip you'd have to bring a bunch of the things with you. Price wise an inexpensive traditional camera and half a dozen rolls of film were about the same price of five of the things IIRC.
Smart phone UI design still sucks but its so much better than it was in the early-mid 2010s
- I worked in a camera/photolab once upon a time. I hated how wasteful those cameras were. There was ostensibly a recycling program from both Kodak and Fujifilm, but frankly the cameras were so damaged by the opening process that there was no point.
  We had to put the camera in a darkbox, and actually crack open the plastic shell and retract the film inside its canister (it was plain old 35mm) by touch. Good luck trying to open the shell by the plastic clips (that theoretically made it easier) by relying on touch alone.
  APS film cameras were even worse though. They were supposed to have this fancy autowinder system, but it frequently failed and jammed on cheaper camera models. 35mm may have been more finicky to load and unload for the average non-photographer but at least we could easily rescue film from 35mm cameras in the darkbox and keep the camera intact.
- Ah,disposable cameras. They also had the benefit of not needing film replacement. You can burn the film if you are not prepared. But Yea those were somewhat wasteful. They had some waterproof models too

Random homophobia in movies and tv shows back in the day for no reason whatsoever.
I was watching a Police Academy clip the other day, and while the 'Blue Oyster' bit from those flicks was always notorious, it's probably one of the only bits people remember from them. What really hit me was this scene (paraphrased because I don't want to go watch PA clips again just to get the exact dialogue):
Hightower waking up Mahoney in the middle of the night
Hightower:"I'm nervous about my driving exam, because I don't know how to drive."
Mahoney:"I can teach you, when is your exam?"
HT: "6 AM."
M:"Tomorrow!?"
HT:"Can you help me?"
Mahoney: "Yeah sure, why not? Sleep is for F**s anyway"
This of course is the brilliant, biting humour that the Rogansphere complains got taken away by Woke.
- This and the casual transphobia of movies too. Basically every 90s and early 00s comedy has the "joke" of a character sleeping with a woman who's then revealed to have transitioned and it causes the character to become violently ill
  I'm so fucking glad that one is gone from the mainstream
  
  transphobia as a gag is still shockingly common well into 2010s flicks

Newgrounds and flash animation in general.
Shock humour.
The huge amount of way more intense homophobia and sexism.
Sitcoms, fuck "Two and a Half Men".
Many more that I'm too sleepy to think about
- Flash animation? What's wrong with Flash animation? I like Flash animation! ...Hey that owl's talkin' about me!
  
  I always found that part weird. Like they threw in masons randomly just so the audience could have a "plausibly vanilla whitey" to relate to. Surely the fascists of the mid century didn't actually target free masons.... Surely
- Newgrounds and flash animation in general.
  Shock humour.
  Also the intersection of these two, these flash games with jumpscares that were all the rage for a while there in the mid 2000's. Fucking hated that shit and it got to the point that I started telling people I had a heart condition to guilt trip them into not doing that kind of shit to me (I don't, but I detest jumpscares with a passion)
  
  Oh man, loved me some Exmortis though
  
  I'm so glad I had enough insight the more awful animations/ games featuring characters from my childhood.
  Some things were good like Final Fantasy A+, but a lot was weird fanfiction at best and really disturbing at worst.
- Shock humour.
  On the one hand thank god morons like Dan Cook and Carlos Mencia are gone. But on the other hand I feel like general right-wing chuddery has replaced them.
- Sitcoms, fuck "Two and a Half Men".
  I feel like sitcoms are still around - Abbott Elementary is pretty popular right now. Stuff like
  and Schitt's Creek were also huge.
  I would say "maybe they're marginally better", but I'm not really into the genre to speak on it
  
  Abbott is pretty good
- I can't feel nostalgic for Newgrounds at all despite using it occasionally as a teenager. Most of the content was garbage and there was a horrible site culture of racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, etc. That site always sucked.

Does UlyssesT himself count?
On a more serious note, I'm glad the whole valorization of "nerd culture" seems to be dying/dead. There was a recent cultural shift of making "nerdy" shit "cool" and it got really obnoxious really fast, especially since a lot of fandoms still seemed to keep this victimhood mentality even as their interests entered the mainstream more and more. Obviously a lot of nerdy stuff is still popular, but I get the sense that a lot of people now consider the construction of whole sub-cultures around it is a bit cringe, it seems pretty normal now to just accept that most humans have a few niche interests and being into Star Trek or Steam Trains or Anime doesn't mean you have to do this performance of being a social pariah and you can just, like, be a normal person who also likes those things.
- On a more serious note, I'm glad the whole valorization of "nerd culture" seems to be dying/dead. There was a recent cultural shift of making "nerdy" shit "cool" and it got really obnoxious really fast, especially since a lot of fandoms still seemed to keep this victimhood mentality even as their interests entered the mainstream more and more.
  God I hate this one. In reality the only thing that was valorized was being a fucking treatler.
  
  It also valorized being a smug fucking dork online, the consequences of which are felt even to this day...
- I always saw that as geek culture. Geeks consume and obsess over things, nerds are people who like do maths puzzles in their spare time.
  Geek culture got celebrated for a while, but at least in my neck of the woods "I'm gonna stay in this weekend and research the history of the lathe" never became anything other than shunned and mocked.
  
  at least in my neck of the woods "I'm gonna stay in this weekend and research the history of the lathe" never became anything other than shunned and mocked.
  It might be because I surround myself with autistic people but if I said that most people around me would be like “Hell yeah”

Being an absolute asshole online. Sure places like reddit and 4chan still exist but it feels like in general the internet has gotten, nicer? Like the other day I was playing an online game in someone in chat was popping off anti-immigrant shit and praising Trump and the entire guild chat turned on them shitting on them and telling other players how to add them to your blocklist. The general edginess I used to see in the aughts online feels like it's dissolved into people being nicer, maybe it has something to do with irl being more ruthless than ever.
- I think some of that is because there are more older (by which I mean like 30+ or even 20+) people online. You'll still occasionally run across the YoU WoUlDn'T LaSt In A MW2 LoBbY types, and all I can think of is "Damn, sorry you failed to grow up and the rest of the world moved on". Some of us didn't like screaming slurs into a headset even back then.
  
  YoU WoUlDn’T LaSt In A MW2 LoBbY
  back button -> dpad over the gamertag -> a button -> mute player -> back button
  everyone i used to play with could do it in like 2 seconds lmao
  
  Even the people that do banter that can be seen as rude or toxic "go fuck yourself/mom/dad/goat" etc stuff can surprise you when somebody pops off a N word or something and then it's all "fuck off racist pos"
  It's a nice surprise to find.

Since you brought it up, I don't miss UlyssesT. dude was an asshole debate pervert, was on the other end of all of the worst interactions I ever had on here, and never knew anything about the things he was malding about to boot. It's a lot nicer now that he's gone.
Fake plants, I feel like I've been seeing less and less of them over the years and I hope that plastic garbage stays gone forever
AngularJS
People having their ringers on in public
Carpeted flooring, especially high-pile carpets
- I miss UT, but mostly because he was the only one close enough to the burning centre of the tech bro cult to actually be aware of the same things as me. Ah well at least everyone can mock Big Yud with me now.
  I really need to write my "people's history of transhumanism" one day
  
  Really? Cause he only ever talked about tech and tech culture like he'd heard about it in passing from an old hippie that was actively tripping on shrooms, his tech bro cult rants were always so off-the-mark they struck me as pure hallucination
- I second the fake plants. They're not fooling anyone. Stop with the fake fucking figs already.
  
  I recently overheard a young guy on a date(?) proudly tell his date that he decorated his new house/apt/whatever with fake plants because he can't keep plants alive
- AngularJS
  On the one hand, good riddance.
  On the other hand, React.
  
  I long for the day I can put "javascript" in one of these lists generically. Javascript is bourgeois decadence and it isn't even good

Smoking. I love my friends and family, but I hated how much they fucking reeked of cigarettes. I also hated when the died of illnesses that were obviously caused or exacerbated by their smoking. Most of the survivors have quit, and I really appreciate them taking the effort.
Also not nostalgic for old cars. I totally understand people vibing with them and thinking they're cool, but I gotta be honest about how fucking shitty the ride feels, how uncomfortable the seats are, and how much anxiety I'm feeling about the painful death I'm going to experience if we get into a minor crash.
- Old cars ride like shit and I wouldn't drive one in regular traffic because they're death boxes on wheels, but they look really nice and cute, and I wish I could drive them in a closed circuit at a reasonable speed.
  
  Part of me wants to take the old body and just modernise everything about how it drives, safety etc. But also I can't afford two cars (or even really one car).

The idea that you're not allowed to enjoy things that are for kids anymore once you become an adult.
- Exception for Harry Potter and Disney adults
  
  Approved
  
  idk, I don't make Lego my whole ass personality
- Nah we should bring that back and then some
  
  Why?
  EDIT: You post in c/games lmao if you play video games as an adult you would absolutely end up on the wrong end of this
  EDIT 2: Do you not care that this would disproportionately hurt neurodiverse people, or do you consider that a bonus?
  
  This ain't it chief

Anyone nostalgic for stomp-clap ho-hey music of the early 2010s played by people with ridiculous mustaches? Me neither.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJNYxpEAh68
  
  I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
  yewtu.be
  inv.nadeko.net
  yt.artemislena.eu
  piped.video

The stigma around mental illness and neurodiversity. It's not like we're ableism-free, far from it, but being able to just say "I suffer from depression", or "I'm going to therapy" and no one really caring, or, in the best scenario, being understanding and supportive, has made things so much easier.
Not to mention that I wouldn't be able to understand a lot of my life and work on a lot of self-hate and preconceived ideas about myself without the lens of AuDHD giving me a bit of an out for me to get care.

Restaurants with no vegan options
- Too real for me here. Can't even order the French fries most places here because they're fried in beef tallow.

Im glad he's gone, he was very annoying. A good comrade, but desperately needs to stay offline.
God I hope everyone continues the america hate train im so glad its dying

proprietary charging cables
2000s beauty standards
silver plastic home electronics
nimh and nicad batteries in everything that lasted all of 5 minutes
paper encyclopedias were kinda before my time but also seemed pretty bad
- Silver plastic was the worst

For me, I am so fucking happy the food scene in burgerland has changed since the 2000s. People seem to enjoy more well-seasoned foods and healthier options seem to outstrip the unhealthy slop I remember in the 2000s. Even my yee-yee ahh Ohio suburb has changed somewhat noticeably to support fresh ingredients. Less WASPslop is always good.
Comparing what my kid eats to what I ate at her age is always a trip lol.
On top of that, getting rid of smoking inside of restaurants and bars is probably a good thing.
- getting rid of smoking inside of restaurants and bars
  my state was early to that so I don't remember it much really, but holy shit yeah. I recently ran across an anecdote from someone probably 15 years older than I am and I could smell the place just reading about it online. Something about how in college his buddies would go and all smoke cigars in the basement dining room of the local pizza joint, but after a while the staff asked them to stop... so they switched to cigarettes and that was of course fine
  
  Something about how in college his buddies would go and all smoke cigars in the basement dining room of the local pizza joint, but after a while the staff asked them to stop...

I don't miss much because the 90s especially was kind of shit as a whole. But especially not missing the way women got treated in the 80s and 90s and up to the 00s.
I know its grim still, but oh boy how much nicer it is to live life when not nearly as many men think it is ok to just touch you.
All the cringe movies where the upper was normalized could also be forgotten.

This is more 2010s but I want to say rage comics, yet we can’t seem to rid the culture of that completely we just rebranded to wojaks or whatever
Computers having hard drives that failed every few years or would break after a drop or bump. SSDs are a godsend for more than just speed.
I haven’t been exposed to shitty reactionary nationalist slop music in a long time, I recall Bush having a weird cult of country and rock songs about how great he was and how America kicks ass or whatever. I know that still exists and Trump has some white “hip hop” sycophants slobbing his knob but I will pretend that doesn’t exist because it doesn’t get the same mainstream exposure.
General shittiness to marginalized groups seems less accepted today (but is making a comeback). Growing up even “socially progressive” figures would make jabs at trans people, gay people, mentally disabled people etc as punchlines. I hear that bigoted garbage more now than a few years ago but still far less common than during the aughts
- Agreed, especially with the “even socially progressive” part. I remember as a kid in the late 2000s “redneck” was the only clapback against CHUDs. Literally “don’t be racist because racism is for stinky poor people!” That being said, I don’t mind when it’s used tongue-in-cheek like how Trae Crowder calls himself “the liberal redneck” (and he’s been moving more to the left, which is nice.)

Unassigned seats in movie theaters
Memory cards for game consoles. Switch still has them, but they're not as necessary for saves alone.
Having to burn CDs.
Having to wait until a TV show aired at a specific time
- unassigned seats in movie theaters
  Couldn't disagree more, I just want to show up and buy my ticket at the window, I don't want to F5 the theater website a week in advance for the showtime I want. I hate online sale of tickets for just about all in person events
  
  I wonder if this is location dependent, I’ve really never had trouble getting a ticket at the theater right before. I basically never see a theater more than half full aside from like, opening night and I just don’t go to things on opening night.
  
  If you show up, wouldn't they just print you a ticket for a random seat and you have to go sit in that one?
- Switch also just uses the same medium as every other mobile device (microsd) instead of some proprietary bullshit

Traditional taxi service was always bonkers garbage for me. No idea why, just always taking forever to arrive, randomly disappearing, and taxi drivers taking an extra long route for "no reason". I only took them about once year when I couldn't walk or get public transport.

the chintzy consumerist aspects of geek culture/chic
"i fucking love science!!!!!!!!" - couldnt be me (it was). Hey remember Michio Kaku??
- How can someone who manipulates tensors for a living be as dumb as that guy was?
  
  string theory and its consequences i suppose
- what's he up to?
  
  Shilling for NEOM
  "we can create – perhaps out of the desert – a city that would be sustainable"
  Then appearing on Joe Rogan. That's the last I can tell.

My incorrect genitals (me commenting from the future)

Skinny jeans. Curse on mankind.
- They'll be back lol
  
  When I am general secretary any trousers more closely tailored than 1660s petticoat breeches will result in reeducation.

ADSL internet and dial up. Hard drives as boot drives. Those crappy 2000s era phones that filled the void between old school cellphones and smartphones. Only BlackBerry was decent, the rest were absolute trash. Cheapo digital cameras, thank goodness smartphones are good enough to take decent pictures now. Low quality MP3s. Modern lossy compression audio formats are so much better. Having to burn CDs and DVDs, that was a pain.
- Those crappy 2000s era phones that filled the void between old school cellphones and smartphones
  I liiiiked those, at least the later ones
  I probably didnt have one long enough for it to break down or for me to get sick of it though. blackberries were much better in most ways but expensive and not exactly tanks themselves.
  everything else is real as fuck but also very much problems of the digital age, created by the digital age lol
  
  everything else is real as fuck but also very much problems of the digital age, created by the digital age lol
  Yeah the start of the digital age was rough. Basically the quality of everything got downgraded in pursuit of being fully digital. The first flatscreen TVs were worse than CRTs, video and audio quality was rough, consumer grade cameras were bad, the internet was slow as a snail. But then it advanced to a quality that we could only dream of back in the day before everything was digital. Now we gave gigantic 4k HDR TVs, videogames that look like movies, cellphone cameras with incredible quality and zoom, and high quality digital video and audio formats that blow analog out of the water, and internet that downloads hundreds of gigabytes of data in a reasonable time. So it was all well worth it in the end.

Skinny jeans. They're coming back but I was so happy while they were gone
- Some of us have been wearing skinny jeans this whole time

Music keeps getting better.
- Ya, I need to broaden my music tastes more. I just keep listening to the same music I enjoyed before in my youth. But I heard the Grammy's were stacked this year with basically any of the albums of the year nominees being fit to win (at least other friends who are more into modern music have told me this) so that bodes well and fits with what you're saying.
  I think that's one issue with music streaming being so easy and algorithmized is it keeps me in my music bubble too easily.

I don’t miss early 2010s metalcore and pop punk
- I have bad news...
  
  Metalcore right now is as good as it was in the early mid 2000s. Pop punk is still shit tho but I don’t use social media, so thankfully I dont have to hear it

Movies are better than they were around 2010-11ish
- Leading up to 2010 the movies were also hot garbage. It's no shock we let Disney buy everything.
- I've found this is particularly true of horror movies - they were pretty bad from the mid-90s until the early-10s before the Babadook ushered in a new golden age of horror (It Follows, The Witch, Get Out, Hereditary etc)
  though now the genre is more popular than ever there's a high quantity of trash again, but that was even more true in the 80s golden age
  
  horror
  Because in practice late 80's early 90's slashers basically murdered the genre. They were too commercially successful at first and then quickly became trash until they burned everyone out.
  The indie and art house horror scene was still good in the 2010's and 2000's. Irreversable, Enter the Void, Let the Right One In, The Descent, Antichrist, Melancholia, The House of the Devil, 28 Days Later, Insidious, Ponty Pool, Pan's Labrynth, REC, Gozu, Ichi The Killer, One MIssed call, Ringu, the unfairly maligned Session 9, Martyrs, Ju-On
  Also Final Destination was ahead of its time. Nobody realized that they were ironic horror comedies. Also Teeth and Jennifer's Body were good in this category.
  The main problem you're talking about is that general audiences didn't think of horror as anything but JASON KILLS TEENAGER FOR HAVING SEX
- Other Guys and Due Date came out in 2010 , you’re wrong sir

You ever seen the original star wars where there is the clear implication of sexual violence by one of the heros? It is wild how poorly everything has aged
- Do you mean Empire Strikes back? I remember a lot of creepiness from Han in that one, but don’t recall much in the original
  
  Probably both. I just remembered one scene specifically whetr han catches Leia in a corner and she is visibly uncomfortable and won't leave until Luke shows up
- same thing in Blade Runner, with the same actor. oh right and in Raiders of the Lost Ark it's implied that Indiana Jones groomed Marion when she was a minor
  
  Yeah, that was not a great time in classic kids moves

128 comments