It Appears Gen X Has Gone Full Boomer As Trads Do 'Look What They Took From You' To Sixpence None The Richer
The trad phenomenon online appears to have moved from idealizing the 1950s and jumped to 1998 if a recent tweet by @HistoryInMemes is the start of a wider trend.
While the Twitter / X account generally posts old, interesting videos without much commentary, this morning it added the right dollop of trad-speak onto a video of Sixpence None The Richer performing their iconic hit "Kiss Me," writing, "The world you grew up in no longer exists."
The phrase is one of many trad-speak catchphrases that have become memes over the years, such as "Reject Modernity, Embrace Tradition," "We Have to Go Back," "Remember What They Took From You," etc. The account also sports a Roman bust as its profile picture, which is typical of history accounts on Twitter that go viral for promoting trad ways of thinking.
Such phrases are generally applied to videos of white families from the 1950s, so it came as some surprise to Twitter users to see it applied to a performance of a song that came out a mere quarter-century ago and is still quite popular.
Perhaps as you'd expect, memes about the tweet swiftly followed.
The phrase itself also became a jumping-off point for people to post less fondly remembered tracks from the 1990s.
Still, while the post's quote-tweeters largely gathered to dunk on "returnposting" about Sixpence None The Richer, folks in the replies seemed eager to agree with the sentiment that the performance constituted the height of global culture, suggesting that Gen X may be adopting for Gen Z the role Boomers played for Millennials.
Share Pin
pocketlint60
Nostalgia is a mental illness.
DonKonga
Thinking every annoying trend is a mental illness is…not a mental illness but it is dumb.
Geigh Science
I disagree. Blindly believing that the past was better is stupid, and you do tend to overlook a lot of the things that really bugged you when you were actually living through them. But at the same time, acknowledging the good things in your past and appreciating your own memories is actually one of the best things about being human. Imagine if all you got out of your experiences was just the momentary sensation of them and then it was just gone forever. Hardly anything would be worth doing at all. As it is, both the anticipation and the memory of an event are in some ways more important than the experience itself. And nostalgia is a big part of that- it's this really heady mix of happiness and sadness that's pretty unique among emotions and I kinda dig it. A lot of other people do too.
But nah, let's just completely write off a big part of the human experience as just "mental illness lel". The vibe is similar to those insufferable motherfuckers who watch Rick and Morty and then start telling everyone that love is just a chemical reaction. Fucking barf.
pocketlint60
You know you're right actually, I have to correct myself.
Nostalgia isn't a mental illness, but I think the internet fosters a mentally unhealthy obsession with the emotion of nostalgia. I've seen older families members just become consumed by constant, unending hate for the world as it exists today which is sparked by the cultivation of a constant sense of nostalgia in media. If you spend too much time feeling that way, you start to place blame on why the good old days are gone, and when you LIVE in that feeling, you will accept any and every scapegoat placed in front of you. I'm sick of seeing nostalgia pandering everywhere on the internet because I just see the beginnings of the same thing in a younger generation. It just makes me think it's time we stopped being content to love the past and try to think about preventing the future we hate so strongly.
From what I can tell the word that most accurately describes this isn't nostalgia, it's Declinism.