I’ll try to keep this post as brief as possible.

I spend a lot of time on the internet. Twitter and TikTok mainly. And I’ve been extremely online since I gained unlimited access to it in the early 2010s. I would say that the biggest shifts in attitudes and styles on the internet occurred throughout the 2010s, with 2016 marking a clear-cut turning point.

We transitioned from the hipster aestheticisms and YOLO branding of 2010-2012 to the more “baddie” Instagram aesthetic popularized by celebrities like Kylie Jenner, Selena Gomez, and Ariana Grande.

Now, some people have confused that early 2010s aesthetic for what we actually saw during 2016. Which was a cleaner, less quirky idea of what “style” was. Music also showed this as we went from Party Rock Anthem by LMFAO being a chart topper to One Dance by Drake and Sorry by Justin Bieber being the club-friendly radio hits. Things were less ironic; in order to be cool, you had to be calm (if you listen to the 2016 songs, they don’t feel as aggressive as LMFAO’s songs).

I was 16 during most of 2016. Old enough to remember everything and young enough to still be “hip” with the culture (although I’ve always been kind of an old man mentally). Most of my internet use around this time was on Reddit. Specifically, the meme subreddits such as dank_memes and me_irl. The tone back then was super depressing. Saying you were gonna kill yourself was a common punchline. Everyone circle jerked about how sad they were. These are common on the internet now, but were relatively new for the mainstream back then. The running joke was that 2016 was the worst year in history. Many high-profile celebrities died during this year (Prince, David Bowie, George Michael, Carrie Fisher), which led to people saying “DAMN YOU 2016!” every single time. That saying “damn you [year]” became normal for every subsequent year.

Reflecting on this period, I will say, I do not recall much nostalgia for say 2006 back then on the internet. I saw more nostalgia for the 00s from Zillennials and older Zoomers throughout these past four years than I ever did back then.

So what is it? Why have we been seeing so many people longing for the days of 2016? I’ve seen videos like this for the past two years, and they’ve only accelerated now that we’re exactly 10 years removed. Videos, such as this, are making the rounds, glorifying the aesthetics of the time.

My first instinct has always been: these are people around my age who miss being a teenager. This is still the likeliest explanation. A time before you worried about bills or felt like you were behind in life. I also miss that time period for that reason, and I also wish I could wake up exactly that year and do everything over and better this time.

But, this general analysis of the human condition doesn’t explain why this specifically. Why 2016, why not 2010, why didn’t this happen ten years ago for 2006? In which case, I don’t really know.

I suppose 2016 felt less cringe. The aforementioned millennialisms of the early 2010s weren’t as prevalent, so the time period doesn’t feel as dated. Speaking of things feeling “dated,” many of the interfaces we use now are not so far off from what we were using in 2016. I remember watching the 2014 film Whiplash and being shocked at how old the cell phones looked there, but if you put on Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016) the technology doesn’t really stand out that much. Many of the social media apps we use are the same as they were in 2016. You could realistically have had the same Instagram and Twitter accounts for nearly 20 years now. With the exception of TikTok, the way in which we use the internet today is about the same as we used it then.

Which is why 2016 is this comforting year. Where everything is the same, except you’re younger. It was right before politics got really weird. It was before we lived through a global pandemic. Clubbing still felt like a thing that people did. Youth had a defined image that we currently lack. It felt like a party compared to the way we experience life now.

When I was a kid, I remember the soundtrack to the world being oldies. Stuff from the 1970s and earlier. Boomers were always being pandered to by nostalgia. Decades later that pandering shifted to the 1980s, something I'm sure the Gen Xers must have appreciated. A year or two ago I realized that the nostalgia train has been in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

It occurs to me that there has been nostalgic pandering going for a long time and I just hadn't realized it. I assume it's because a lot of the most notable ones have been pretty bad, particularly in the case of movies like the Space Jam sequel or the Jurassic World series. But music has had it's share too. I remember hearing a lot of references to 90s hip hop, and old bands like Backstreet Boys and My Chemical Romance have got back together. I've also been seeing a lot of references to old TV shows like Gilmore Girls and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (though, to be fair, people never really stopped talking about Buffy).

Personally speaking, I'm not a fan of this. Yeah, the movies have been bad, but that's basically just the state of hollywood right now. But more than anything, I'm kind of disappointing by it. I'm more interested in new art, generally speaking, and more importantly, seeing all of these throwbacks is starting to make me feel old.

I dream with a new mainstream handheld console that is neither an extension of a regular console experience, a smartphone, or a wine-powered Linux machine

When I was a kid in Brazil, we had a manga and anime club in my town. It was somewhat official. At our gatherings, there were lots of manga and VHS tapes that we exchanged and duplicated when possible. There were always two or three kids, each with a Nintendo DS. Sometimes more. For us, they were the rich kids. Back in 2005, it was unimaginable for most kids to own a DS, or even a Game Boy for that matter. They connected their devices and played some kind of Pokémon. I pretended I did not care and did not pay them overt attention. My envy knew no bounds.

At least a decate later, when the PSP was already going out of fashion (and was therefore much cheaper), I managed to get a PSP Go. It came fullly cracked with hundreds of games. I loved that cheap little thing. I eventually graduated to a PS Vita, which I believe was the finest piece of hardware I ever had in my hands. But the proprietary memory card was pricey, and so were the games. I didn't have lots to play. It's a bittersweet memory.

Seeing how the Vita became an emulation powerhouse makes me regret selling it.

I never owned a Nintendo DS, but a friend of mine lent me his for several years. I loved that too, but the stylus felt like a gimmick, and I would have gladly swapped it for regular controls. I was not a fan of the dual screens either. But at least it was interesting, you know? They were trying to do something different, and I respected them for that.

Now I have two retro handhelds, the Miyoo Mini Plus and the RG35XX H (Anbernic). Cheap Chinese products, but decent enough. Setting them up correctly was not hard, but it was laborious.

Maybe I am crazy, but I still think handheld consoles could work in the mainstream. It won't happen, of course. But it would be awesome to be excited by hardware once again. Something unique that is not a phone or a way to play Windows games on the go. With games that are developed explicitly for handhelds, with UIs that are adequate for small screens and crazy features that wouldn't make sense in the living room. A sturdy piece of tech that is always there for you, suggesting nothing but escapism.

One can only dream.

TLDR: I think that I don’t like Pokémon games anymore because the battle system literally puts me to sleep, I can’t be bothered to “catch them all” all over again, and there’s just nothing else about the mainline games (not even the story or anything) that makes them interesting for me. Anyone else?

Disclaimer: If you love Pokémon, then I’m very happy for you. Seriously. This isn’t a rant about the games being bad (not even the modern ones). I’m not casting judgment on the quality of the games nor the people who buy and play them. This is 100% about my astonishment at how much my personal taste for video games has changed.

I decided to share my thoughts on this matter with all of you here to see if anyone has had a similar experience.

I only got into Pokémon in the year 2000, I think. I still managed to play Red, Blue, and Yellow before Gold, Silver, and Crystal released. Out of these six, the only one I never owned was Gold. But on top of that, I played the ever-loving heck out of Stadium 1 and 2. There is a non-zero chance that I invested more than 1,000 hours into all of these games combined. I even got my mother hooked on the Stadium games. It was wild.

Then gen III rolled around, and while I did get a GBA, I somehow never managed to buy a single new Pokémon game. My guess is that I was too busy fawning over all of the crazy, weird, and fun games that I was playing on the Gamecube, two of which I spent a lot of time on: Animal Crossing and Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. So, I totally missed out on Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, FireRed and LeafGreen. I also never played Colosseum or XD: Gale of Darkness.

I returned to the series on the NDS, with Diamond, which was a lot fun (at least I don’t remember anything negative about it), but that was close to the beginning of a period in my life where I played almost no video games, let alone Pokémon.

This may sound silly, but what I enjoy about Pokémon (or at least, what I enjoyed about gen I and II), was the adventure. Does that make sense? I loved exploring the world, befriending six “cute” creatures (I always was more interested in carrying the more animal and pet-like ones in my party), becoming the very best, like no one ever was, defeating bad guys, and learning more about the lore surrounding certain legendary Pokémon.

Side note: I did try to catch them all, but Celebi completely eluded me.

It wasn’t until like... I think, 2023? That I went back to the series and played Emerald (through cough cough “alternative” means), and forced myself to plow through the game until I beat the League. And I mean “forced”. It wasn’t like the game was bad, and I enjoyed the adventure to some extent (though the story didn’t quite “grip” me), but the grinding ground my gears (pun intended).

Yes. I had to grind. I can’t remember what my team was and at what level they were (I think around 55 each) when I reached the League, but I remember grinding at the exit of the Victory Road to raise their levels because my first attempt failed. (It’s definitely, at least partly, a skill issue. lol) I had, however, been grinding a little bit before each gym already, and whenever I did, I had to listen to podcasts or YouTube videos in the background or whatever, because I would literally fall asleep while doing it. lol

Most recently I tried HeartGold. Before that, I tried FireRed and White, and with neither of them, I managed to get past the third or fourth gym before I just couldn’t deal with the tedium anymore and gave up.

Fast-forward to this month of April.

I’ve decided to focus on GCN games, since there are many that I never had the chance to play. I replayed Metroid first (needed to scratch that itch) and had fun. Yesterday I finished Paper Mario TTYD, which was a dream come true. Been waiting 20 years to play it. I absolutely loved it.

But today I tried Pokémon Colosseum.

And... I think that I want to give up. lol

I just can’t anymore.

I think that I have become an Old Person™. lol Like, something about the battle system just literally puts me to sleep. I’m not kidding you. I was playing the game today, and whenever I had to battle, I began to feel Drowzee (pun intended).

I played for a little over an hour and then checked Bulbapedia, only to look at the list of “snatchable” Pokémon and think to myself: “Do I think that the ‘adventure’ in this game will be interesting enough to keep me grinding through all these many battles?”

My hearts tells me no. I don’t think that it will.

So, after all these years, I have to sadly conclude that I just don’t like Pokémon anymore. I can’t deal with the battle system. It’s too tedious for me. I also can’t deal with the grind of catching and raising them. Neither the adventures nor the stories catch my interest anymore. It feels all too repetitive, like I’m playing the same game over and over.

But do you know what the irony is? I have replayed Crystal a few times over the years—maybe a handful. It feels easy to pick up somehow. I still grind, but the grind doesn’t grind me down. And I am willing to bet that I could pick it up today and play it all the way to the end without getting tired. It must be the nostalgia. I don’t know how else to explain it otherwise.

I don’t think that my machine can handle playing gens VI to current through “alternative means”, so those are completely out of the question for now, but I have been following the franchise close enough that I feel skeptical that even those would entertain me.

So, I guess that’s it. I don’t like Pokémon anymore. It’s just a game but it somehow feels so tragic. lol

And I’m not sure what other GCN game to pick up instead. Any suggestions? Here are the ones that I have played so far:

• 1080° Avalanche
• Animal Crossing
• Burnout
• Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
• The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
• Luigi's Mansion
• Mario Party 4
• Metroid Prime
• Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
• Pikmin
• Resident Evil 4
• Sonic Adventure 2: Battle
• Star Fox Adventures
• Super Mario Sunshine
• Super Smash Bros. Melee

I’m mostly interested in 3D, third-person action adventure games—basically singleplayer games where you take control of a main character. I’m open to try out other genres though.

I'm curious what your sense of nostalgia is like?

For me I think it's reasonable low. Like I look back at certain things, events and people of my past and I will think fondly of them. But I don't think about it often, and I almost never think "I miss that thing", more so that I enjoyed it at the time and I'm glad that it happened.

What about you? How do you view nostalgia? Does it bother you that things aren't the same as before? What things do you miss?

I recently turned 36 and found a sense of nostalgia sending me down a rabbit hole, mostly around the "old internet" of my childhood. I know "old" is subjective, but for me, it was the time period of like 1998 to 2005 - my middle and high school years.

AOL had just really brought the internet to the masses. I remember the mad rush of trying to log in to the Nickelodeon chatrooms and messaging my friends on AIM. Up until AIM shutdown a few years ago, I would log on every once in a while to my old account and just look at the usernames - recognizing friends, and trying to place others.

I had a group called "Pokemon" on my account, which sent me searching to find anything on an old Pokemon Battler bot for AIM that was by a developer, "CoolKid". I got to the point where I was beginning to think it was something I made up, before finally turning up "SuperPokemon! by CoolKid" on archive.org. I wonder whatever happened to the developer, as nothing about them remains on the internet, but I wish I could thank them for all the fun times I had with my friends.

Which then led me down to thinking of some of the online friends from my past. In retrospect, I wasn't as careful as I should have been online, but I never had any bad experiences - everyone was super nice and helpful in the little communities I found myself in. I've only been here a few days, but tildes reminds me of that time in my life.

Curious to hear from others: What random hits of nostalgia do you have you had lately? Is there some random, highly specific thing from your past that you miss, like my AIM Pokemon battler?

What was your favorite web page back in the day that you would visit religiously and tell all your friends about but have since lost? Did it shutter permanently or did you lose the bookmark when switching computers never to find it again?

Back in the days of printed web page yellow pages and search engines you had to submit your page to be reviewed before it was listed, I had found a page about movie easter eggs, errors and insider information. It had factoids about nearly 1000 movies ranging from obscure facts, mistakes in editing, anachronisms, funny on-set stories and the like.

It was fun to read that this character was named after the art directors niece, the stunt car is visible losing 8 hubcaps in the main chase, etc. It was amazing to read how different movies would interact (IIRC, Kim Bassinger's gasp/jump reaction to opening the door in "Batman" was real due to them having a xenomoprh from Aliens there instead of Jack Nicholson since they were filming at the same time). It was also cool to read that certain characters made cameos in other movies (most people caught that Randolph and Mortimer Duke from "Trading Places" were in "Coming to America" but there are so many other not as obvious blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameos). I never would have noticed the car visible in the background of Johnny Cage vs Scorpion in the orchard fight in "Mortal Kombat" without this page--and now I can never unsee it when I watch it.

I don't know if I lost the bookmark or if the page shut down so I deleted it but any search I've undertaken for this page in the last few decades only seems to return listicles like "21 obvious anachronisms in modern movies!" but not my all comprehensive target.

Honorable mention to Damn Interesting (although I did find that one again after a few years). Although it's underwent some turbulance and changes since I first disovered it, I would often reread the articles and gleefully looked forward to each new article when I was younger. With article names like Lake Peigneur: The Swirling Vortex of Doom it was hard not to be intrigued.

What are those programs that you used back in the day (or even recently!) that you look back on fondly and think about how they once were-- or worse, programs that seemed to have just up and disappeared?

What made me think of this question, for me, was Opera. It had everything: browsing, RSS, and torrenting all in one browser. However, a lot of sites loved to break in it since it was the least supported and I eventually moved to Firefox (then Chrome, then Firefox...). Looking at the browser now-- and unsure if I'm just picky or its a case of enshittification, or both-- I'm just "meh."

I've seen discussions on here about nostalgia or nostalgic moments. It seems not only in this site, but others find themselves reminiscing about a time long passed. I've seen it popping up more and more. Some brush it aside as people being nostalgic about a time when they didn't have to work, but I find myself thinking that the increased rise of people reminiscing about the past is because the quality of life and/or the world itself feels so much worse than it did in the past. I've done this as well, too many times.

What're your thoughts on this?

The idea is simple: on any given day, I wanna know what TV show was on with new episodes 10, 20, or any number of years ago. To make it simple, let's restrict it to US television.

The reasoning behind it is that shows were made with that expectation (they are not "binge friendly"), and it was wonderful to have a different show every day of the week. It was magical to be able to randomly catch Monk, E.R., The X-Files, The Pretender, Psych, Star Trek TOS, or Early Edition on TV. Hell, even Game of Thrones made a lot more sense when I had to wait a week before watching!

So yeah, this is 100% about nostalgia. At least one day I week, I'm gonna watch whatever was on TV that exact day 10 to 30 years ago.

I'm gonna choose a decade and start from there.

But how could I do it, from a mechanical standpoint? I mean, where can I easily find the information of all the episodes that premiered on US TV exactly 10, 20, 30 years ago to the day?

Additionally, any tips on finding obscure 80s and 90s TV shows?

Thanks!

Edit: what I want it is really nothing complicated, I just wanna know what was on any day of the week for the past 30 years. No automation required!

Greeting everyone, first time actually posting on tildes so try and forgive me for any shortcomings as it's hard to tap out paragraphs on a mobile device.

So I wanted to ask you all, when you think nostalgia what specific idea or memory comes up for you?

When i give it some thought my specific memories of nostalgia are of the late 90s early 2000s. I picture a freshly constructed suburban neighborhood where there are no fences built yet, no trees planted or grown, and just grass everywhere - giving it a very liminal feeling. I reflect back on the hours spent outside until after dusk where the amber glow of the street lamps brought a feeling of warmth and coziness on a warm spring evening.

I also think about the technology, or lack thereof, at the time and how we used it. Beige computers transitioning to black ones as the 2000s crept up, using your big toe to turn them on, playing runescape or Sims Deluxe Edition mindlessly for an unhealthy amount of time etc. I think about the connectivity we had to each other, no smart phones, a wild west internet, and in my case a house phone with a kilometer long cord so that grandma can call europe with calling cards for hours on end while she tangles us all up with the cobweb of wires.

The list of memories can go on forever, but now I turn it over to you guys/gals.