I think the most telling thing is how much surface level that all was.
How much of that was based on consumerism, media franchises and the like.
Its as telling as it is depressing frankly.
Also we didnt see 2 millenniums and 2 centuries, we all came in for the tail end of one of the most important, we saw the close out to a single millennium and a single century
Y2K alone is an event that had some sort of shape on everyone one of us.
Like while the ipod swept the nation you probably dont know that before that, folks would just make their own MP3 players for their home stereo system or sometimes car system. Nerd and Geeks were actually capable back then with massive skill sets where as now adays you can just buy into being one.
Its not about what Mario, Sonic or whatever corpo mascot we view. Those are shallow things that matter little.
What matters is that we saw the world before, we grew up in that world before.
For my gen, its like the silent gen, when they first got electricity and still talk about that one day, to this day. In the future when were all old as absolute hell, were gonna talk about that period.
How we were there when the entire population came online. How we saw the transition of analog to digital, the advent of any digital problem we see now, the first communities form. Evolution of e-commerce, the techboom and bubble of that turn of millenium.
We got to experience video rental stores, we got to go to school not constantly pushed into screen or monitor.
We had a popular mainstream culture that anyone could jump in on and be a part of, people were generally nicer back. The food just tasted better, sodas just tasted better.
We saw nations around the world rise and fall. Every week on Carmen San Diego they had to explai how their geography was correct as of that exact week because the world was in such flux in other countries that things were constantly changing.
And this is all just the rose colored tint of a military brat who was living around Japan and Hawaii.
Everyone from every country will have a marginally different take, as well as age groups on this period of time pre net boom.
Though regardless, when I think back, Im not in awe over something as fucking worthless as a mario games, sonic films or fucking tik tok.
I think back about things that actually matter, not what the current corpo overlords want us to think matters IE material bullshit. I think back on witnessing the human condition, right before all of us got sucked into this digital hell.
If your profile is right and you are 13....well Christ, I prolly have wasted a lot of my breath but maybe something will click.
Still shocked the TOS age is so young despite the repo having games with straight up adult content.....
the golden age and fall of Disney films and parks, the collapse of the original World Trade Center in 2001, 8 Nintendo consoles and like 14 handhelds, a god awful live action Mario movie, a good animated Mario film and a second one soon, a trilogy of sonic films, the marvel cinematic universe, the rise of the internet, the invention of smart phones, tik tok being banned in the USA and being unbanned and being banned again and is now unbanned but soon is about to be banned again because it’s owned by a Chinese corporation, a recession, the last sunset of the 1900s, and you aren’t even 50 yet
