alt Hacker NewsIf you enjoyed something as a much younger person, and enjoy it as a much older person, it is very unlikely that it is the thing itself that you are enjoying. To test it, you can try giving that thing to someone your age and see if they enjoy it (they will most likely think it's a nuisance). To experience it yourself, you can try what kids are into these days or even better try something that people used to like long before you were born, in which case you will very likely see these things as pointless quite quickly. If you observe these things, it is easy to see that nostalgia is enjoyable because it is about associating your youth and naiveté with the object of nostalgia. If you grew up, you would see that it is just some distraction that merchants brought to you to profit from your stupidity. If you realize this, you'll enjoy not having to deal with that shit a lot more.
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I'm not even understanding the topic of discussion. Nostalgia bad?
>To experience it yourself, you can try what kids are into these days
What do you mean? I'll try anything if I think it will appeal to me, but I don't know any children to ask what they're into to conduct this experiment.
>or even better try something that people used to like long before you were born, in which case you will very likely see these things as pointless quite quickly.
Like how long? I like classical music. I don't really like theater. I read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and liked it; I read Martín Fierro and hated it. What conclusion do we draw from all this?
>If you observe these things, it is easy to see that nostalgia is enjoyable because it is about associating your youth and naiveté with the object of nostalgia.
No, I don't agree. I don't agree that I derive nostalgic enjoyment from the examples I gave previously. I think that I can enjoy them because they're familiar things that I can engage with as a matter of routine. I can enjoy them for the same reason I biked to work through the same route for over ten years straight without getting bored. Someone completely new cannot derive that same routinary enjoyment. For example, DOOM is basically just as old as Duke Nukem 3D, but I only played it many years later, and so I never finished it (but I also don't think I would have liked it as much back in the day; the gameplay is just not as good. I should try other Build games to see how they compare). As another example, I should definitely feel nostalgia for Saint Seiya, but I tried multiple times just couldn't get through it. It's just for children, an adult can't miss the obvious plot holes. But I saw The Lion King in the theater and then dozens of times on VHS, and then dozens more times off my NAS 20+ years later, and loved it every time -- as an adult I just could better understand why it was so good.
>If you grew up
You're asking to be told off.
>you would see that it is just some distraction that merchants brought to you to profit from your stupidity. If you realize this, you'll enjoy not having to deal with that shit a lot more.
I don't "deal with" the things I like. I like them. Engaging with them is not something I'm forced to do that I have to cope with. Are you an alien? What do you do for fun? Stack rocks on the beach? Or is fun a foreign concept to you?
That is just blatantly wrong. I'm obsessed with staying on top of new music, and go to the cinema fairly often, but many of my favourite movies and music are way older than me. And books? Forget about it. I don't know if, in the grand scheme of things, many truly great novels were even written after I was born.
The idea that no generation can truly enjoy art created by previous generations is, frankly, laughable. And I don't see any reason why that would be different for games.
Sure, I love replaying some of the games I loved when I grew up. But I also love discovering classic games that I had never even heard of before. Likewise, there are many games I enjoyed in my youth that I just can't get into anymore. Sure, nostalgia is a factor, but it's just one amongst many.