I’ve noticed — especially in my life, I’m not sure if it’s commonplace for everyone else — you kind of go in a circle. You start off liking all this shit as a kid, and then you’re told to grow up a little bit, and you go until you reach a point. Then you go back to the shit you used to like as a kid and realize, Hey, you know what? This is more me than I have been for the past couple years.
Giallo Julian on becoming more yourself.
The next lines of this quote link this feeling to nostalgia, which . . . kinda? But as someone who is a known Nostalgia Disliker, I actually think this whole phenomenon is something else.
When I was a kid I had this folder of quotes, and one of them — which, ironically given the above, I think I got from a Vampire: the Masquerade sourcebook, and they got from somewhere else in turn — was something along the lines of we don’t really change as we get older, we just become more the people we are. And I think this progression some people go through, of “enjoy The Thing, discard The Thing as cringe/childish, rediscover The Thing,” is more related to that than it is nostalgia per se. Particularly for people who were in some sort of alt subculture in their teens, then shed that to “fit into” the corporate adult world in their twenties, before realising that was making them feel miserable and false, to the point that, by the time they’re in their thirties or later, they run out of fucks and just go back to what they really had always enjoyed.
The reason I wouldn’t call this “nostalgia” exactly, is because nowadays “nostalgia” tends to be a toxic force in pop culture. It’s wanting things to return to a false past, to a childish lack of accountability, and to undo aspects of (specifically) social progress. But the rediscovery I’m talking about isn’t that. People who go through it — and I’d say Grim Beard, the guy being interviewed in the linked article, is a pretty Ur-example — are usually pretty upfront about the fact that a lot of the things they enjoyed as a kid were, uh. Not always great? Both in quality and in attitude to, for example, marginalised people. And rediscovery isn’t a return to how things were so much as it is picking the things that were cool and did work and bringing them forward in ways that discard the parts that weren’t and didn’t. Like, you can wear leather coats in summer and sunglasses at night without all the weird fucking racism and misogyny and shit. You can enjoy your old 90s eXXXtreeeme!!! media for the fun schlock it is without going to bat to defend its gross bits and/or creators. Like. I promise these are things you can do. That people are doing! And, importantly, you can make new things with modern sensibilities that nonetheless have the same vibe and joy as whatever it was that made your heart go hell yeah as a child.
Like I said, I don’t think this is nostalgia, exactly. I don’t think we really have a word for whatever this is. But it is definitely a thing, as I think a bunch of middle-aged Millennial goths, punks, emos, metalheads, weebs, and furries are discovering . . .
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