Where does your interest in retro things come from?

[ignika98]

Despite being born in '98, I grew up in a third world country that was at least 10 years behind the west. So I experienced a weird mix of early 90s and early 2000s culture, aesthetics and media when I was very young. I also visited America quite often as a kid, basically once a year. So I wasn't absolutely clueless about what was "modern" back then. It was this weird mix of growing up around 90s stuff, knowing it was out of date but at the same time appreciating it cause it was all I had, and getting glimpses into the early 2000s every time I would visit America.

I think growing up between two decades of culture has made me interested in things both old and new. I feel nostalgia for old dial up modems and beige computers, but also for flip phones and mp3 players. I grew up playing the Nintendo GameCube, but I played Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask on it because those were the only games I had. Whenever I see old stuff, whether it's from the 90s or the 2000s, I feel a sense of nostalgia from the experiences I had as child, but also a sense of wonder from not being able to truly experience those decades.

 

[punishedgnome]

I feel a sense of nostalgia from the experiences I had as child, but also a sense of wonder from not being able to truly experience those decades.

I feel the same way about the 80s. I'm old enough the vaguely recall the last couple of years of it, but it has this weird other-worldy mystique in my mind. Stuff like all the weird early home computers and wood grain finishes.

 

[Virgiltosh]

I don't understand. Nobody around me has a guess either. I guess there's just something magical about inserting a floppy disk into a PC to test the program you've worked hard to make, the spinning of tape drives on old mainframes as your website comes online, and scheduling a date with your crush on a PDA or Handheld PC.

Note that most of the old technology I take interest in is almost never objectively superior to the newer tech it sits next to. It has less to do with using said technology, and more to do with the experiences I would associate with usage of said items, and wish to have, but won't reach.

 

[SimplyJojo]

Is there a specific reason you're interested in retro media, old internet, or other retro content? Did your interest start with anything in particular?

Personally I feel my love for retro is more of an emotional one. It just takes me back to days where I didn't have to overthink about anything. Where the world was shades of bright yellow and green, instead of the murky brown feeling it is as of late. To know there was once a time when life was more happy gives hope that it'll happen again. Especially with everything going on in the world, the escape that nostalgia brings is unmatched. I don't care what some may say; there is nothing wrong with living in the past, as long as you don't get completely lost in it.

 

[Jaggreaney]

stuff just had sovl back then

 

[Silence The Mothers Song]

My interest roots from the fact that usually older stuff from new industries tend to be the most creative and beautiful pieces of work.

With video games for example, older games were a lot more fascinating imo because there wasn't a specific demand for a specific genre aside from shooters, and especially since publishers didn't know what the audience wanted, there wasn't a status quo to fulfill, thus allowing the most innovative and complex storylines and games to be birthed (or atleast that's my theory)

This applies to many other things, like webcomics and newer forms of media that had no "basic outline" of what usually worked, so the creators that would step up to make shit did so solely because they felt like it.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that older retro shit had this honest curiosity behind the creativity, and that creativity always shone such a "soulfulness" and unconventional strange beauty that I've always found so much more fun and joy interacting with then the modern instalments.

 

[Snooper]

Because I've been online for over 20 years at this point, I still remember how great it used to be before people became politically obsessed in every corner of the internet and stopped drawing a line between OTI and IRL. I feel immensely disappointed to have seen both the rise and fall of online culture in my lifetime, and I would love for future generations to be able to experience what I experienced back in the very late 90's and early 00's. I think zoomers and the generations that are going to come after them missed out on a true golden age online, and the fact that they will never be able to experience the true peak of online culture outside of socialmedia and the giant corporate owned hellspaces is immensely depressing.

 

[consonant]

I'm not that old so how much I've liked retro things has always been interesting to me.
I think it's because most of the time things that are retro are pretty new to me, they stand out from all of the modern things I see today and that makes them refreshing. Obviously because they're old, so whatever it is will be rare and not seen before to me because it's defunct. But also I feel like older things are usually made with better values, they tend to value function over form or there's more passion in them, and these are values that usually create things that I respect and enjoy. Not like newer things don't have passion but I think it's just more common for anything that's old, because people were usually in times where everybody thought they weird or they were doing something that would make no money, so it'd make sense that only the passionate were trying anything.