Freddos, Tamagotchis, and the Collapse of Western Capitalism
"Hey, Apple!...Global Financial Recession!"
This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about nostalgia and the chokehold it has over us. “The good ol’ days”: a mantra echoed by mums, dads, grans, and grandads across these isles for generations.
I remember being confused as to why adults were always bigging up their childhoods when they sounded like such a shit time. “Aye, sure, sounds class,” I say, looking over my DS, stylus in hand, ready to go ham on Nintendog belly rubs, while my grandad reminisces about the good times he had running around the slums of Scotland pushing bike tyres with a stick. These light-hearted stories would inevitably be followed by tales of how hard everyone had it back then.
Sure, being on four packs a day at the age of twelve sounds rough, but I’ve just had yet another Tamagotchi die, so who really had it worse? (Him. Obviously.)
But I digress. Nostalgia, like a Siren, has us all in her trap. I never thought I’d be like that, but now that I’m 30, I catch myself slipping under her spell. It’s easy to see why. Look around: it’s hard not to want to switch off from the world entirely and let the Vengabus carry you back to simpler times. That’s if it even shows up!
Music is nostalgia’s most effective gateway drug. One song is all it takes. Embarrassingly, this happened to me recently when I heard a track by the Danish Eurodance band Aqua. Suddenly, I was back in a more colourful era. The era of the primary school disco. The good old days. Primary three. Back in what felt like one of the happiest years on record: 2001, if you discount the month of September, anyway.
After three minutes and twenty-four seconds, who am I kidding? I listened again. After six minutes and forty-eight seconds, I realised I’d taken a full hit of that sweet, sweet nostalgia ice™ vape. And just like that, you’re thinking about only the good times.
You start thinking about only paying 10p for a Freddo. About the era of Le Coq Sportif, Kappa, and Umbro tracksuits. While Tony and George were out committing war crimes, we were out committing crimes against fashion.
But as the songs fade and the buzz wears off, hindsight kicks in. You realise they weren’t really the good old days at all. While I was pretending to be straight and battering strangers with a jumbo-sized purple dildo on the streets of Los Santos (why the fuck did my mum think it was a good idea to buy me GTA?), people were queuing outside Northern Rock and RBS, wishing they had a non-pixelated jumbo purple dildo with which to leather the bankers who’d stolen their savings.
While we were annoying our parents with quotes from the Annoying Orange and chatting shit about rusty spoons, they were fighting for their lives as the global economy collapsed around them.
So yes, nostalgia can be a cosy blanket. A brief escape from the state of current affairs. But we can’t get carried away ripping hits from the copium pipe. Nostalgia without reflection is just a gateway to conservative ideology. Trying to stop progress never ends well. And I think we all know this, even if we pretend not to.
This has been an insomnia-fueled ramble.