Late 2000's revival

[Sharmat]

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...

[Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hkj-uvg2sRU]
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: https://an-master.net/wp-content/uploads...n-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.

[parsifal]

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.

[Sharmat]

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.

[parsifal]

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.

[Chud]

A lot of the '00s revival, I think, is simply a manifestation of the adolescent desires for total freedom and unrestrained emotion. Zoomers are the most repressed, dependent generation in history (largely b/c of internet social shaming), so it makes sense that they'd want to return to a time where (in their perception) people could express themselves as they saw fit, and deal with others without the whole world butting in. The most overt expression of this desire is in Zoomer music genres: Cloud Rap, HexD, "revisionist scenecore"; all characterized by sincerity and auditory "murkiness", resistance to the Hi-Fi Panopticon.