I miss when it was cool to like things.

For the last decade or so, probably a little bit more, what’s cool has been talking about how disaffected you are. This thing you’ve got is okay, you guess, but it’s not as cool as this other, older thing.  Games have become worse and worse as time goes on, entertainment is “dumbed down” for the masses, and nothing is any good anymore.

It bugs me. We delivered the Internet into a world where disaffection, detachment, and disinterest are in vogue, and it dominates the dialogue. Someone reading this is thinking “he must think he’s sooo clever with that alliteration in the last sentence”. Finding joy is vulnerability, it’s a place where They, the vague, ill-defined, but omnipresent They, can hit you.

Don’t believe me? Try this:

Pick a forum, any forum. Let’s go with games. Pick a game you love, and talk about how much you love it. Within the first page of comments, I’d bet the first ten or so, you get a response that’s “[your game] sucks”. Pick something you love: a game, a story, a movie, any topic. Post in a forum on the internet about why you like it and you’ll be told within a few responses why you’re wrong, and probably also why you’re stupid.

No one is surprised by this. “It’s the Internet”, is the common response, as if that were reason enough. The Internet is made up of people, and it’s a reflection of our culture. Have we really forgotten how to like things? How much fun it is to share the joy with other people?

Initially, I figured this was a sign of me growing old and crotchety, something that a few of my readers will probably chuckle at. So, I looked for some data. Here are some commercials from the 90s. Some Super Bowl ones for about 20 years, too. Here’s some 1995 Super Bowl ads. Why Super Bowl ads? Because they’re some of the most relevant (and expensive) ads on TV at any given time in the US. They’re a really big deal, and in order to be relevant they need to be on top of the cultural pulse– usually Super Bowl ads dictate the next year’s advertising trends in one way or another. Why ads? They’re meant to appeal to people, they’re painstakingly crafted to strike a chord with their audience, and there’s money in accomplishing that, so you know they’re trying.

Note the 1995 one, at about 3:00. The Chili’s ad is one of the first I saw watching several years of ads that’s directly mocking. Especially look at the Snickers ads. Now here’s one from the very next year. Much meaner than the enthusiastic older ones, and the first time we see the still relevant “not going anywhere for a while?” slogan. Interesting, that clever meanness lasts so long.

We picked up our trend for disaffection in the grungy 90s, and it’s lasted for 20 years now. We’ve got our Super Bowl cultural breakout commercial in 1995, the start of our spate of meanness. We’ve got our Super Bowl commercials pushing the envelope, trying to wiggle into a new cultural niche and do things people don’t expect. Shock value.

So, here’s 2014. Here’s some more context. Outside of that one ‘breakout’ heartfelt commercial, that interestingly wouldn’t have been at all out of place in 1990, we’ve got a bunch of dark, serious adventuresome car ads and some mocking “funny” ads. Lest you think that it’s not possible to be funny without mockery, note the wacky ads in the 80’s and even the early 90s. As an aside, I think it’s interesting that car ads tend not to change much over the whole 40-year spread I looked at, with a very small number of exceptions.

Super Bowl ads are a microcosm of the overall advertising sphere, but I’d venture a guess that most ads fit the same broad categories– mock something for a cheap laugh, sell product. It’s what we’ve been tuned to respond to for the last 20 years. Don’t talk about what’s good, talk about why other things are bad, and suggest that you’re better.

I look forward to the next cultural revolution, when it’s cool to like things again. We’re starting to get there, I think, as people get tired of the disaffectation and disinterest. I worry that we’ll have a lot of people who have forgotten how to legitimately enjoy themselves, or are incapable of adequately expressing it when they are. I sometimes worry that we’re already there, that people are doing things that they dislike because they don’t know how to do things they like anymore, and have latched onto the things they think they’re supposed to like, or once liked.

I hope I get to see people legitimately enjoying themselves, and not getting cheap kicks from putting others down. We’re emerging from a culture of disaffectation and disinterest to a culture that values passion and genuine interest, but we haven’t realigned our focus from putting down the things we dislike or disagree with back to the things we love and cherish. We focus on the negative, show our passion by vehemently disagreeing and fighting back against the things we disagree with, as if someone liking something we don’t is a crisis that we must rectify. I feel like it’s that culture that escalates to death threats and harassment, when it gets out of hand.

I’d love to see what happens when that turns into creative energy, or something positive. Maybe that’s a naive hope.

Rambly today, apologies.