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lorecoreyesterday at 11:56 PM1 replyview on HN

I feel like the last 30 years are significantly less distinctive than the prior 30 (actually 70+) years. The 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s all had iconic and partitioned cultures that are instantly recognizable. I feel like that started to fade a bit in the 90s (what I call the Pottery Barn decade). The 2000s have felt more "alive" to me than the 90s but they're also significantly more post-modern and less distinctive. I consider the 1980s "peak humanity", prior to mega capitalism and data driven marketing enabled by the rise of computing power. I don't think we could ever go back to an iconic and focused cultural decade like say, the 1960s.


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chubottoday at 12:00 AM

BTW Chuck Klosterman discussed this at length in this 2022 book on the 90's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nineties_(book)

I think it's a pretty deep point -- your memory and consciousness are shaped by the media environment (media being the thing that Klosterman thinks about obsessively)

And the media environment drastically changed after the 90's -- because of the Internet

I think his main point was about access to media in different eras, but it's worth reading directly if you feel like that