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The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced

midnightmurmurations.substack.com

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Re: The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced

#151

Post by toyg »

happytoexplain wrote: post #19
toyg wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And let's be honest, that is also partially Clinton's legacy. Him and Tony Blair, with their "Third Way" triangulation bullshit, effectively moved the Overton window to the right for good. And here we are.

As a layman in politics, why did that shift things right in a bad way? Reading a summary of "third way triangulation" makes it sound good.

It accepted unfettered capitalism in a very fundamental way. Once you make it axiomatic that taxes should always be low, that the private sector is always better, and that massive inequality is just fine, you basically renounce all meaningful tools to fight for the little guy.

Plus, you can only triangulate effectively if there are two radical sides to play off of. Once your policies effectively disqualify one of those positions, you're left alone to face the other radical group - and they now have no incentive to compromise. Which is exactly what happened over the following decades.

Re: The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced

#152

Post by fragmede »

scottious wrote: post #69
moregrist wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I remember most about the 90s was the overwhelming optimism. Technology was going to make our lives better and unlock opportunity, not take all our jobs and render us irrelevant. To me, the weirdest thing about the AI hype cycle is the inherent nihilism of it all. If there's one thing I miss, it's the optimism. I used to be enthusiastic about what the tech industry was doing and where it was going. > The larger…

I miss the optimism too. What drew me to tech was how it felt like we were trying to make people's lives better. These days, it feels like tech is primarily interested in extracting value from us. I guess this is nothing new. Profits at any cost, and all that. I don't know, I'm just kind of sad about all of it. Even though my smartphone is like 100x more powerful than my first computer, it still feels like something…

It's all feels though. If you stare into the void, the apocalypse is coming. OTOH, bringing an AI assistant to every person in the world to make their lives better, is one perspective to take. It's all a matter of framing.

Re: The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced

#153

Post by technion »

i_am_a_peasant wrote: post #112

X-files was great for the first couple of seasons but then it went downhill, fast. I watched it start to finish twice, including fillers, and I gotta tell ya, past the first 2-3 seasons it really ain’t that great a show. I remember playing the live action video game that was split across several cd’s. that one was real nice. sometimes i still rewatch let’s plays on youtube about it. I feel like most people who are no…

Yeah, all my friends watched it when it was new. After an episode played we would talk about it the next day.

Im pretty sure none of us saw the final few seasons, with it moving to a late night time slot and noone caring.

Re: The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced

#154

Post by sethev »

It's fascinating to read the perspective of someone seeing X-files as a show from before their time. The clunky phones in the show, for example, were actually advanced technology that most of us had never seen in real life. The closest thing I'd seen was the IBM technician Brick that an uncle had.

> I want to twiddle the dials on a car radio

That's one thing I miss. As a kid in the early 90s, I used to collect car radios whenever someone was replacing theirs (which seemed to happen a lot more back then) - they were fun to take apart because so much of it was mechanical. Even the buttons to remember a station were mechanical and worked by using latches and levers.

Re: The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced

#155

Post by troad »

jeffbee wrote: post #99
NoSalt wrote: post #24

The X-Files was the right show at the right time; a "bubble" of the '90s, if you will. The internet and mobile technology was nascent. The world was getting bigger, but was still quite "small". I definitely feel quite privileged to have lived through this time, and enjoy all things '90s quite a bit. Any, and I mean any, attempt to remake this show is doomed to failure, and I wish they would just stop. Now, if you wil…

I wrote an essay for a private journal last year about how the X-Files mainstreamed anti-scientific and anti-government conspiracy thinking and thereby led to the downfall of American democracy in the 21st century. It valorized the fringe, presaged "do your own research" and consistently told us that the skeptic is always wrong, the believer is always vindicated. It wasn't a bubble of the 90's, it was a prescient blu…

The X-Files didn't presage it, the X-Files were inspired by it. Conspiratorial "do your own research" style thinking long predated the X-Files (both in existence and in popularity).

If anything, the 90s were the one era where that thinking had receded more than at any other time. Then 9/11 brought it roaring back.

Re: The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced

#156

Post by erentz »

moregrist wrote: post #31
detribaby wrote: post #12

There are still lots of us alive who have experienced this. And to us, X-files felt high tech for the time. This was a time period when I think people were just waking up to powers of computers and technology, in particular alien tech, due to the incalculable complexities of ideating and creating magical electrical boxes - microprocessors. How could humans be capable of doing this, after all? One poster already menti…

What I remember most about the 90s was the overwhelming optimism. Technology was going to make our lives better and unlock opportunity, not take all our jobs and render us irrelevant. To me, the weirdest thing about the AI hype cycle is the inherent nihilism of it all. If there's one thing I miss, it's the optimism. I used to be enthusiastic about what the tech industry was doing and where it was going. > The larger…

> What I remember most about the 90s was the overwhelming optimism.

To me it felt we were slowly making the world better for all. Progress was happening and would continue to happen.

Now it feels like we are rapidly on the path to a dystopian Elysium like future. A dystopia for everyone but the sociopathic ultra wealthy that want to rule over us. And they’re not even hiding their intent from us anymore.

Re: The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced

#158

Post by ramesh31 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #76
cestith wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s a list of albums just from 1998. Mezzanine from Massive Attack, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Big Pun’s Capital Punishment, You’ve Come a Long Way Baby from Fatboy Slim, and Hello Nasty from the Beastie Boys. The K&D Sessions from Kruder and Dorfmeister. Stunt by Barenaked Ladies. Then there’s one of my personal favorites, Mermaid Avenue from Billy Bragg and Wilco. You mentioned rock. How about Hellbilly De…

You're making his point for him.

Yeah I'm not sure if that was a troll actually

Re: The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced

#159

Post by tracerbulletx »

wat10000 wrote: post #103
scottious wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss the optimism too. What drew me to tech was how it felt like we were trying to make people's lives better. These days, it feels like tech is primarily interested in extracting value from us. I guess this is nothing new. Profits at any cost, and all that. I don't know, I'm just kind of sad about all of it. Even though my smartphone is like 100x more powerful than my first computer, it still feels like something…

There was the sense that tech and the internet would change human systems. Information wants to be free and all that. The individual power granted by tech would lead to individual liberty. Traditional power structures would crumble when faced with this. We didn't realize that it only felt that way because the people with power didn't care yet. Tech was like an ant crawling across a picnic blanket and thinking it's po…

This is a great point and way of saying it.

Re: The X-Files has made me nostalgic for a time I never experienced

#160

Post by tracerbulletx »

jrflowers wrote: post #147
travelalberta wrote: post #32

To anyone with this kind of nostalgia I'd recommend watch 'Perfect Days'. You can live however you want. While it is impossible to not have a smart phone at this point you get to decide how you use it. Want to feel like you are in the 90's? Stop using your phone. Consume only old or physical media if you want, get rid of streaming services. Go buy an old car if you feel like it. Go read a book. Anything you could do…

That is larping. No amount of wacky pomo carpeting and Outhere Brothers cassette tapes can actually transport you to a post-cold-war-pre-9/11 world. The nineties literally ended in a party where at least one person in the room thought they were going to die the next day. You cannot recreate that with a Doug t-shirt.

Works for the amish.
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