VH1 stuck gold in
2002 with I Love The ‘80s. It was pure, unfiltered nostalgia. I couldn’t get enough
of it.
But television
tested that. As did the Internet. And newspapers. And websites. And social
media. And now I am overloaded with “nostalgia” on a literal daily basis.
Things reached a
new low point when VH1 debuted I Love The 2000s in
June 2014 – less than five years after the decade ended and only six years
after VH1 already did nostalgia about the 2000s with I Love The New Millennium
in 2008.
Think about this –
it is 2014 and VH1 has already produced two hours of television of people
waxing poetically about 2007, which is a year we can clearly remember in our
heads. Unless we’re third-graders.
The nostalgia
craze continued over the Independence Day weekend when NatGeo followed up its
own series on the 1980’s with one on the 1990’s, the idiotically titled, “Last
Great Decade?”
Just a month
prior, CNN produced a look back at the Sixties because Lord knows if there’s a
decade we haven’t learned enough about yet it’s the 1960’s. I wonder why no one
watches CNN these days?
We live in an
incredible age of technology and we should never take for granted. But nearly
everything that has happened in the past 50 years – up to and including things
that have happened in the past few weeks – have been dissected and discussed,
ranked and debated, viewed and reviewed.
As events unfold,
we are now putting them into historical context immediately in real-time on
Twitter. I am guilty of it. Wednesday’s Brazil/Germany World
Cup game may be remembered more for what it spawned on social media – the most
tweeted about sporting event in history – than what actually took place on
the pitch.
Because of this
instant analysis, events are never allowed to ruminate in our minds.
Here’s my example
– the 2005 Belmont Stakes is the most exciting moment of horse racing I’ve ever
seen in my life. At the top of the stretch, Afleet Alex exploded by Kentucky
Derby winner Giacomo with a simply breathtaking move. It was absolutely
incredible. I watched an hour-long SportsCenter that night just for the
1-minute highlight. I did so the next morning.
And then the
moment was gone, left to live only in my head. No Twitter, no Facebook, no way
for me to relive or rehash this moment endlessly. In fact, I didn’t even see
the race again until three years later when a hero put up an extended version
of the race on YouTube.
Not only was it an extended version, it was the NBC television coverage, which
I had never seen, so I heard Tom Durkin’s absolutely classic call I was unable
to hear on-track along with his perfect explanation of the race – “Jeremy Rose
asked him to go…and he was going, going, gone.”
This year, I went
to see California Chrome go for the Triple Crown. He failed and the entire
event unfolded on social media for days afterward on social media. Especially
when Chrome’s moronic owner opened his mouth and inserted his foot about the
Triple Crown and we all jumped to our conclusions about
the series.
More succinctly put,
we have lost the benefit of time and perspective in our lives.
If we look west
toward Hollywood, we see that stars, well, they never ever go away. In the
music industry, the “one hit wonder” is a quaint notion because that “wonder”
can parlay that success into a multitude of crappy reality shows or junk like I
Love the 2000s.
Our big stars? They
become trending topics on a daily basis for nearly anything. How can we ever be
nostalgic for Justin Bieber’s Baby when we’re confronted with him every single
day? If you don’t go away, nostalgia is impossible.
Our news cycle is
currently constituted to churn through everything as quickly as possible, up to
and including President Obama. We never enjoy anything anymore. The Lego Movie
was released less than five months ago. It was awesome. Do
you know anyone still talking about The Lego Movie? It’s always about the next
blockbuster, which is opening next Friday, or the Friday after that, or the
Friday…
LeBron James is
the best basketball player on Earth and the greatest player since Michael
Jordan. Do we ever truly take a moment to enjoy him? If we don’t enjoy what he
brings to the game now, how are we going to do that in 10 years when VH1 is
asking Lil Bow Wow how felt watching Game 7 of the 2013 NBA Finals?
There’s nothing
to be done. Life has changed. We used to aspire to be great. Now we just aspire
to be heard.
There is
something nostalgic about the great William Nack pouring his heart out in
Sports Illustrated about
the passing of Secretariat.
There is nothing
nostalgic about Colin Cowherd or Skip Bayless trolling
people on Twitter.
Maybe it’s not social
media that has ruined our ability to create nostalgia – maybe it’s us.
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