Late 2000's revival
#1
Over two/three years or so, I've noticed a cultural trend which can only be described as a revival of late 2000s sentiments and aesthetics. The return of edgy anime-inspired video game protagonists, Naruto rip offs dominating the anime market again (think Demon Slayer, My Hero academia, etc), the reasserted importance of internet independence/customization and even a semi-ironic embrace of late 2000s fashion proper. Not to mention the half-hearted attempt at reviving nu-rock I've seen everywhere...


A clip from Final Fantasy Origins, the best example of the 2000's revival yet.

Now, what has is the driver of the revival? I believe that the COVID era has caused an implicit disillusionment in the trajectory of modern politics and culture over the last decade in many, even if they would never admit it. There is a genuine sense of all pervading restriction which when combined with the loss of sense of time that has resulted from the lockdowns (almost everything post 2020 blends together) pushes people either into nostalgia or to fantasies of the future as a way of regaining their freedom and grounding. The 2000s serves as a main target as it holds equal importance to the 90's for zoomers, enough in the past to properly reminisce about while still maintaining conscious memory of it. It doesnt hurt that the 2000's also preceded the mainstreaming of SJW leftism. 

[Image: Madoka-Magica-Main-Cast.jpg]
Expanding on my allusion to the return of late 2000s anime tropes, I think the return of magic girl/Touhou as a huge part of internet culture is maybe the best example of this,  even if it is largely being propagated by trannies. If you were even a casual viewer of anime in the late 2000's you know one of the things people were extremely hot for were the "deconstructed magic girl" shows, which have taken another life entirely through the "sobering" edits you see of otherwise cutesy anime girls looking depressed or doing drugs in front of their computer screens (possibly tie in here to the Evangelion revival?). Touhou has also had an upsurge in fan projects in games (I'm particularly fond of Touhou Luna Nights) art and music. 

I think this nostalgia extends to the political sphere as well, for the online right at least. The sudden resurgence of classical liberalism memes and genuine affection for Sargon and GamerGate (both recalls to better times themselves, before the SJW takeover) is an attempt to retrace ones steps before the collapse of the alt-right in 2017, really even before Trumps election or the issues that lead to GamerGate in the first place. Its no coincidence that most of the users inclined to posting affectionately about Sargon also love nightcore, a staple of 2000s internet culture.

One final point of interest would be the relationship between web 3.0 and 2000's nostalgia (particularly in the case of Milady) but I'll leave that for a future post where Ill properly expand on this OP with more specific examples.
#2
surely a large part of this is the simple lack of good cultural products in the present, forcing people to grope the recent past for anything of value. the eclectic mix of time periods (2016 politics, late 00s anime, late 90s/early 00s music and video games) suggests it isn't a simple case of nostalgia at the very least. generally these cultural artifacts date to "the last time before x stopped being good" in the popular sentiment.
#3
(05-09-2022, 12:39 AM)parsifal Wrote: surely a large part of this is the simple lack of good cultural products in the present, forcing people to grope the recent past for anything of value. the eclectic mix of time periods (2016 politics, late 00s anime, late 90s/early 00s music and video games) suggests it isn't a simple case of nostalgia at the very least. generally these cultural artifacts date to "the last time before x stopped being good" in the popular sentiment.

Maybe I didnt make it clear in the OP but the form in which 2016 politics has been memorialized is as a pointer to better times (the 2000's in particular, in the case of GamerGate). I honestly do think it is a uniform form of nostalgia, the only issue  is where exactly youd put a start and end date to the era which is being revived.
#4
it may very well be that the driver of political sentiments during the gamergate era was nostalgia for a time before politicization but it could also be argued the other way, that gamergate was by happenstance the first taste of politics for a certain cohort who were simply too young to grasp politics prior, so they simply have nothing earlier to reminisce about. both are probably the case i reckon, depending on the age of the person in question. either way this cohort is just now maturing to the point where they hold enough cultural influence to "bring back" that for which they are nostalgic, regardless of the pandemic. i think if it were a question of "covid era disillusionment" you wouldn't be seeing the same phenomenon both in our circles (where there is a generally optimistic sentiment for the future) as well as among trannies and normgroids, and in a few years when the alphas start reaching adulthood we will probably see a similar nostalgia for fortnite, the star wars sequels, and whatever political movements come to define their adolescence. at this point i will likely begin to contemplate suicide as i will feel my youth fading.
#5
The easiest way to answer why there's a concentrated interest in 2000s among Zoomers: their early experiences were around the time when Bush was still president, or before the Obama era could fully incur its wrath on American society. Speaking for myself, I was on the Internet as a five year old and was in an area with a low enough population for cultural delay. So up until ~2011, I had some physical media (gaming magazines for things I couldn't get my hands on, DVDs, etc.) to orient me, along with healthy doses of Newgrounds. At the time, my vision of America was contiguous to the sort of impressions felt by a Westaboo, completely devoid of politics: when I was imagining adult life, I thought everyone would be wearing leather or latex, music would be FAST, and everyone was tapped into a violent attitude. I thought American life was this scene from The Matrix, essentially.



I'm never going to get over my disappointment. Someone must pay.

The strange thing about cultural revivals is that, among the recent generations, there is no fixed point; 80s, 90s, and the aughts are all given some serious attention, with no consensus on what is most attractive today. The revivals are further complicated by the degree to which social dynamics are changed, which is why the early 10s are sometimes considered in such discussions. To be a social creature doesn't involve the plausible threat of punishment or repression. Certain problems of our time are preexisting in earlier decades, but as far as the younger audience goes, it feels comparatively freer. That the 2000s is focused on specifically at this moment probably has to do with how they imagined their future, the natural trajectories of music, movies, and, of course, video games. I am not sure if certain Zoomers realize the Obama era was an abrupt break in this timeline, but they have a faint idea of "something happening". They are certainly not "more happy" because of it. The predictable result? Imagining some alternate world where the aesthetics of that decade remained, and accepting it even if the imitation is more sterile than its counterpart.


This is unrelated to my earlier statements but I noticed something recently in tattoo design styles. I am not in that world and have not branded myself, so this seemed novel enough.

Here is what's known as a Tribal style, which was very frequent in the 90s and 00s.
[Image: tribaltattoo1.jpg]
[Image: tribaltattoo2.jpg]
(No clue why the male nipple is censored.)

[Image: Left-Godhand.webp]
I remember finding out the proper name for the style and immediately thinking "God Hand". Since this is the 2000s revival thread, you can already guess where I'm going with this.

[Image: cybersigilism0.jpg]
This is either known as Neo-Tribal but also described as Cybersigilism. As the former name suggests, it is an explicit homage to the earlier designs seen above. To be completely honest with you, this style is kind of cool to me, even if tattoo culture is comprised of mostly retarded people. We're getting very close to people branding HR Giger art on themselves. To segue this into another subject, if we sat a person putting this on their chest/back inside the Amarna Interrogation Room, they'd probably mention how they want to be the cooler older brother/older sister in the 2000s. This is a recurrent theme when speaking about the 2000s, and you can see why I'm saying this because there is already evidence of this.


The description: "Older Brother aesthetic from the early 2000s".

Some of the comments are the standard ones you find on any given music video, usually about a death, tragedy, or sobstory of some kind, but note the consistent statement about "cool older people" in their lives or wanting to "be" them. There's also one comment saying "I never had a 2000s older brother". I think the symbol of the "2000s brother" is a red herring, because they're suggesting a person who happens to fulfill certain aesthetic interests within that decade. What they're really wanting is an intimate connection with that period of time, and the persons involved in the fantasy are incidental parts. Nostalgia's presence on the internet, as I understand it, is varied and does not have the most fully conscious participants — they can feel an attraction to a certain decade but have to frame it in palatable ways. The conclusion of it being Obama's fault might not come so easily to them.
#6
I'm old enough to remember the early 2000's as they were underway. Even as a young prepubescent I was repelled by the music that was always playing over the bus speakers, over the retail stores, seemingly everywhere you went. By the fact my male summer camp counselors proudly displayed nipple and tongue rings. The music and video broadcasted at the time was genuinely atrocious - this is when Crazy Town, Limp Bizkit, and Korn were at their heights.

1999-2003 weren't "magical last years". The end of the traditional recording industry and the beginning of significant Internet culture just coincide in time because of the technologies that suddenly occurred in hand. I imagine the reason so many Zoomers are nonetheless attracted to "2000's aesthetic" is simply that it was the last span of time that fashions, gayming technologies, and movies are easily demarctated in terms of "era". We've since come to a point where it's difficult to tell that a movie was released in 2024 or released in 2014. Zooms seek nostalgia wherever they can grasp it.

________________________________________________________________________________________

On Obongo: He was a mere "Negro enough" cypher America leveraged as an excuse to further detonate cultural cohesion and appease the Black Eighth. He isn't significantly more a "Black Guy" than any 2024 recent-immigrant who deigns himself "POC". He was just some prefabbed suited cunt the government trotted out as an arbitrary indicator of "Change", to enact the things they already sought out to do.
#7
JohnTrent Wrote:The easiest way to answer why there's a concentrated interest in 2000s among Zoomers: their early experiences were around the time when Bush was still president, or before the Obama era could fully incur its wrath on American society. Speaking for myself, I was on the Internet as a five year old and was in an area with a low enough population for cultural delay. So up until ~2011, I had some physical media (gaming magazines for things I couldn't get my hands on, DVDs, etc.) to orient me, along with healthy doses of Newgrounds. At the time, my vision of America was contiguous to the sort of impressions felt by a Westaboo, completely devoid of politics: when I was imagining adult life, I thought everyone would be wearing leather or latex, music would be FAST, and everyone was tapped into a violent attitude. I thought American life was this scene from The Matrix, essentially.



I'm never going to get over my disappointment. Someone must pay.

The strange thing about cultural revivals is that, among the recent generations, there is no fixed point; 80s, 90s, and the aughts are all given some serious attention, with no consensus on what is most attractive today. The revivals are further complicated by the degree to which social dynamics are changed, which is why the early 10s are sometimes considered in such discussions. To be a social creature doesn't involve the plausible threat of punishment or repression. Certain problems of our time are preexisting in earlier decades, but as far as the younger audience goes, it feels comparatively freer. That the 2000s is focused on specifically at this moment probably has to do with how they imagined their future, the natural trajectories of music, movies, and, of course, video games. I am not sure if certain Zoomers realize the Obama era was an abrupt break in this timeline, but they have a faint idea of "something happening". They are certainly not "more happy" because of it. The predictable result? Imagining some alternate world where the aesthetics of that decade remained, and accepting it even if the imitation is more sterile than its counterpart.

Great post, John. I've seen what you are talking about called '90s cool'. Kind of a stupid name since it goes well into the mid-2000s. It was a freer more vulgar time. Back then you could say 'faggot'. Now you can't even say 'retarded'. I think normalfags would like to have this freedom again. To feel like they aren't being policed. 

Generally Neo-2000s stuff is pretty slow but this guy makes FAST stuff:

https://twitter.com/3dtestosterone/statu...9251675397

JohnTrent Wrote:[Image: cybersigilism0.jpg]
This is either known as Neo-Tribal but also described as Cybersigilism. As the former name suggests, it is an explicit homage to the earlier designs seen above. To be completely honest with you, this style is kind of cool to me, even if tattoo culture is comprised of mostly retarded people. We're getting very close to people branding HR Giger art on themselves. To segue this into another subject, if we sat a person putting this on their chest/back inside the Amarna Interrogation Room, they'd probably mention how they want to be the cooler older brother/older sister in the 2000s. This is a recurrent theme when speaking about the 2000s, and you can see why I'm saying this because there is already evidence of this.

It seems related to the revived cultural significance of Death Note. Its not just popular with our guys, its influencing underground fashion:

[Image: bn2SruV.jpeg]

I think of Death Note being more Baroque than this but it does have a lot of emo/grunge/punk influences. 'Dark' V-Kei maybe. 

So far I haven't seen this style been given a name (which is odd, especially for zoomers). I've only heard it referred to as "dressing like Ryuk". I think this is going to get more popular. I could see an edgy resurgence happening. I like it but maybe thats because I have my own idea of what it should look like.

Death Note itself is timeless. It was connected to the zeitgeist but it was also calling back to older things. I'm not surprized its popular again. 

JohnTrent Wrote:
The description: "Older Brother aesthetic from the early 2000s".

[Image: q31Qf4T.jpeg]

So many zoomers confuse the early and late 2000s and I don't get it. The 2000s was split in two. The PS2 era and the Xbox 360 era. I'm being pedantic but I think it is an important distinction. 'Y2K' got corrupted and is now a catch-all term for all of the 2000s. Thats partially the fault of trannies.

JohnTrent Wrote:Some of the comments are the standard ones you find on any given music video, usually about a death, tragedy, or sobstory of some kind, but note the consistent statement about "cool older people" in their lives or wanting to "be" them. There's also one comment saying "I never had a 2000s older brother". I think the symbol of the "2000s brother" is a red herring, because they're suggesting a person who happens to fulfill certain aesthetic interests within that decade. What they're really wanting is an intimate connection with that period of time, and the persons involved in the fantasy are incidental parts. Nostalgia's presence on the internet, as I understand it, is varied and does not have the most fully conscious participants — they can feel an attraction to a certain decade but have to frame it in palatable ways. The conclusion of it being Obama's fault might not come so easily to them.

What these people want is nebulous. They can tell stuff was cooler back then but they don't know why or how things changed. Even normalfags are tired of Obamacare hopepunk shit.

GraphWalkWithMe Wrote:1999-2003 weren't "magical last years". The end of the traditional recording industry and the beginning of significant Internet culture just coincide in time because of the technologies that suddenly occurred in hand. I imagine the reason so many Zoomers are nonetheless attracted to "2000's aesthetic" is simply that it was the last span of time that fashions, gayming technologies, and movies are easily demarctated in terms of "era". We've since come to a point where it's difficult to tell that a movie was released in 2024 or released in 2014. Zooms seek nostalgia wherever they can grasp it.

That is certainly a part of it, culture is stuck. I think it is more than just that though. People are beginning to crave cool shit again.
[Image: HfVqWXY.jpg]
I simply follow my own feelings.
#8
Albicacore Wrote:It seems related to the revived cultural significance of Death Note. Its not just popular with our guys, its influencing underground fashion:

[Image: bn2SruV.jpeg]

I think of Death Note being more Baroque than this but it does have a lot of emo/grunge/punk influences. 'Dark' V-Kei maybe. 

So far I haven't seen this style been given a name (which is odd, especially for zoomers). I've only heard it referred to as "dressing like Ryuk". I think this is going to get more popular. I could see an edgy resurgence happening. I like it but maybe thats because I have my own idea of what it should look like.

Death Note itself is timeless. It was connected to the zeitgeist but it was also calling back to older things. I'm not surprized its popular again. 
The style is called opium, yeah I spend too much time and energy on fashion-related stuff. There's also nu-archive, where instead of buying old rare rick owens/raf simons etc zoomers pretty much just trawl japanese auction sites for weird niche japanese designers
#9
ourokouros Wrote:The style is called opium, yeah I spend too much time and energy on fashion-related stuff. There's also nu-archive, where instead of buying old rare rick owens/raf simons etc zoomers pretty much just trawl japanese auction sites for weird niche japanese designers

I thought of it as different from opium because its mostly Japanese stuff like If Six Was Nine, L.G.B., 14th Addiction, etc. So yeah nu-archive. Its very specific. They don't really like Hysteric Glamour despite it being similar. Probably because its too American. Its pretty cool though. Suda51 likes it:

[Image: AoPLDMY.jpeg]
(Not a great photo but whatever)


He has great style.
[Image: f6ZedI8.jpeg]
[Image: 3dFKkYh.jpeg]
[Image: HfVqWXY.jpg]
I simply follow my own feelings.



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