/retro/ - Y2K

I've been seeing the start of it. Earlier this year I saw the trailer for some game, I don't know what kind of game it was (I think a puzzle game or a Breakout/Arkanoid clone) but one of the big gimmicks was that it had a Y2K aesthetic. Fonts, color scheme, artstyle, etc. were all reminiscent of interfaces and ads from the early 00s. Later in the 20s, I expect that we'll see more of this sort of thing, maybe a Stranger Things-esque TV show. Maybe we'll even see a resurgence of fashion trends like emo and skaters.

But expect whatever nostalgia pandering we get to be shallow like in previous decades. 90s pandering was mainly "dude member dunkaroos and cartoon network and the ps1?" even though there was much to be said about the spirit of the times. Like how it was the last decade before the internet permeated everything, before 9/11, the Patriot Act, terrorism this and that, etc. Individual people may have talked about it, but you'll never hear a word about the spirit of the times from the media. Unless it's to get a punch in on someone politically.

00s nostalgia will be similar. Apple will probably make a throwback iPhone that looks like their first iPod. 2021 will be Windows XP's 20th anniversary, so MS might make a dumb color scheme or something that makes Win10 look like XP. And then they'll disable it a month later. Food companies will bring back some of the stuff we slurped and munched on for a short while. But you'll never hear a word from them about the wild west days of the internet, the pre-smartphone era, how 90% of the internet wasn't run by a handful of corporations, and ESPECIALLY how everyone and their mother wasn't whining about political bullshit 24/7. Hell, even now you get ridiculed for wanting that last one back, they call you a nazi or an incel or whatever this month's boogeyman word is.

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>>259
Sad, but likely true.

I just hope to all that is holy that in the 2020's we see a backlash against the woke, pretentious, and painfully safe "Current Year" SJW mentality of the 2010's.

I mean, these things do run in cycles with each decade's culture often having a backlash against the previous one's.

We went from disco and hippies in the 70's to hair metal and Reagan in the 80's, and went from the dark and edgy fare of the 90's and 2000's to the woke hipster bullshit of the 2010's.

Maybe if we're lucky, we'll see the "everything is political" SJW zeitgeist of today die out as the 2020's goes along.

>>259
>00s nostalgia will be similar. Apple will probably make a throwback iPhone that looks like their first iPod. 
Motorola is already doing something similar with the new Razr.

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>>258 (OP) 
>I'm wondering what 2000's nostalgia will be like in the 2020's?
I don't think there's that big of a gap between the 90s and the 00s, culturally speaking. Around the time the iPhone was released in 2007, the 00s started moving culturally to the 2010s, where everyone and their dog was online.

The 2000s were pretty much nothing more than a bridge between the 90s and 10s.

>I'm wondering what 2000's nostalgia will be like in the 2020's?
The usual; cartoons/movies/games from that era get the remake/reboot treatment and are turned into dumbed down pozzed versions of their past selves. We might get HD remasters of old cartoons though which is nice.
80s and 90s revival culture couldn't die any sooner, those decades got bastardized enough already.

>>259
>you'll never hear a word about the spirit of the times from the media
Touché, but thankfully we have underground communities talking about that spirit. This board for example, the Y2K institute, the users on Neocities...etc. There are probably also some BBSes and IRC rooms but I haven't used those for years.

>>262
To an extent, you are right, but I'd say there is a more palpable difference between the 90's and the 2000's, at least after 9/11.

Honestly, when most people these days think of the 2000's, it's the era that's after 9/11 but before the iPhone/Great Recession.

2007-2012 was its own weird "in-between" time after the 90's and 2000's but before the "Current Year" 2010's, which largely started after the 2011-2012 Occupy protests and Obama's reelection in 2012.

The late 2000's/early 2010's was a true transition era between the culture of the 1990's and 2000's and the current era, with the rise of smartphones, social media, and the 2008 Recession being the big game-changers.

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>>262
I disagree overall but there's some obvious truth in the bridge statement.
9/11 and the "Web 2.0" did a job on the decade but there was a palpable and clear distinction between the 90's and the Obama years, with its own aesthetic and music.
It's like the very early 90's with the "radical" and "cool" geometric patterns, saturated colors and rad technological stuff all around, an exaggerated but much more juvenile version of the 80's. That era is its own distinction from the latter, grungier 90's but it can catalogued and considered part of it. The late-90's and very early 00's have that same isolated distinction (the Y2K years) and in my opinion that's a very valid and distinctive identity for the 00's. Not to mention things from that era are unique to it like the constant quality in videogames, ultra-violence and general cinema experimentation and a huge influx in electronic music from all its sub-genres.

Now regarding >>258 (OP) , it's a constant that a decade has a go trying to revisited a past decade, the rule says 30 years. The 70's were its own monster but many things were reminiscent of WWII (mostly due to 'Nam going on), the 80's had a lot of its campy vibe from 50's americana, the 90's had many aspects, including pop and rock, taking notes from 60's psychedelia and ye-ye mania, 00's was an anomaly but 70's stuff was somewhat present in certain niches like neo-disco and funk (which did not last), we all saw the influx of neo-80's faggotry that happened the past decade so no need to mention it.
The reason i believe is mature creators and the acquisitive userbase (young adults, 30 to 50) going at their nostalgia and trying to relieve it either by consuming or re-adapting it.

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>>259
>But you'll never hear a word from them about the wild west days of the internet, the pre-smartphone era, how 90% of the internet wasn't run by a handful of corporations, and ESPECIALLY how everyone and their mother wasn't whining about political bullshit 24/7.
Now that you mention it, a big part of 90's culture in popular media at some point was the conspiracy theorists and militia men.
X-Files and the whole new age/area 51/grey alien/black helicopters/chupacabra phenomena in black pages with green fonts, then Waco Siege and the Murrah Building bombing which led to people questioning the government a lot, this sentiment transpired in a lot of mainstream products and documentaries which culminated in 9/11 being seen as a false flag by anyone except the United States government.

There's much more but i think the point was made, i can't wait to see if all that stuff is reminded again in the current climate or if it's going to be caricaturized/satirized again.

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>>267
>There's much more but i think the point was made, i can't wait to see if all that stuff is reminded again in the current climate or if it's going to be caricaturized/satirized again.

Honestly, it depends on whether or not we see a major backlash against the 2010's SJW culture in the early-to-mid 2020's.

If SJW culture winds up dying out in the 2020's like disco and hippies did when the 1970's gave way to the 1980's or like how the Religious Right burned itself out a few years into the 2000's (the early Bush years were like a "last hurrah" for them) then we could probably see a genuine appreciation for the late 90's and 2000's in the regular media, as opposed to shallow caricatures and cheap nostalgia pandering

It's anyone guess how the 2020's will turn out after the election is over and done with, and how that will affect the culture's perspective on the 1990's and 2000's

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>>268
>we could probably see a genuine appreciation for the late 90's and 2000's in the regular media, as opposed to shallow caricatures and cheap nostalgia pandering
I'm not very optimistic about that given how much a lot of that neo-'80s stuff that's been so popular in recent years turned out. You have all these teenagers who think anything with subtractive synthesizer sounds, drum machines, and neon imagery is "so 80's xDD," even when it completely fails to capture the spirit of the decade (not to say that the music itself is necessarily bad). I can understand if someone is just trying to use certain aspects of the '80s as a starting point and taking things in a different, more modern direction (even if it's not necessarily my cup of tea), but there are a lot of people who can't differentiate between a revisionist Flanderization of a certain period and what the real thing was actually like.

Having said that, I think '90s revivalism could be really interesting. As much as I love analog synthesizers, I think the current craze over them is really overblown and would really like to hear people making original music with cheesy ROMplers again. Far Side Virtual is kind of similar to that idea, but it seems that James Ferraro was trying to make a critique of consumerism more than trying to focus on the wondrous feeling of possibilities that the new technologies of the '90s seemed to inspire.

>>284
>Having said that, I think '90s revivalism could be really interesting. As much as I love analog synthesizers, I think the current craze over them is really overblown and would really like to hear people making original music with cheesy ROMplers again.
I just want decent electronic dance music again. The 90s had by far some of the most experimental music even by today's standards, that still managed to be danceable and exciting. Everything nowadays sounds too minimal and washed out, even to a degree including the 80s revival music.
>Far Side Virtual
I thought that was more of a late 00s / early 10s record? Celebrating modern technology while also critiquing or even outright mocking it for being too controlling of human life. Just my 2 cents on it anyway... Do you listen to vaporwave?

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>>287
>I just want decent electronic dance music again. The 90s had by far some of the most experimental music even by today's standards, that still managed to be danceable and exciting. Everything nowadays sounds too minimal and washed out, even to a degree including the 80s revival music.
Most of the stuff made past the '90s feels extremely sterile or like inferior retreads of older styles to me. Music doesn't have to be original to be good, but it should at least bring something of merit to the table to be able to compete with what's come before it.

Even with the problems I have with a lot of it, the '80s revival/memewave music is some of the only music coming out nowadays I've heard that I even like. Even then I'm really just into the more melodic-leaning music rather than the more aggressive stuff like Perturbator and Carpenter Brut. I remember the former coming to 8chan's /mu/ for a Q&A, though, and he seemed like a nice enough guy even if I'm not really a fan of his.
>I thought that was more of a late 00s / early 10s record? Celebrating modern technology while also critiquing or even outright mocking it for being too controlling of human life. Just my 2 cents on it anyway...
It was, but it evokes a '90s background music/corporate muzak feeling despite being more of a message about technology today. I think I even heard the Roland JV-1080 steel guitar preset on "Dubai Dream Tone." That whole track makes me think of an old Microsoft commercial or something.
>Do you listen to vaporwave?
Not really. As much as I like the kind of aesthetic it goes for, I dislike music that relies that heavily on re-appropriating samples. I'd rather just listen to the stuff it's drawing from, like Dancing Fantasy.

If you haven't already had a gander, The Register has been publicizing actual Y2K stories and sequels to BOFH for decades now. Tales of incompetence never grow old.

Thank you for uploading these.

>>262
>I don't think there's that big of a gap between the 90s and the 00s, culturally speaking. Around the time the iPhone was released in 2007, the 00s started moving culturally to the 2010s, where everyone and their dog was online.

Looking at everything as fitting into rigid decades (80s, 90s, 00s, 10s) will skew your perspective. You also have to take location into account, especially for prehistoric Internet times. There were places people would visit and offhandedly mention "The place is 15 years behind the times.", upon returning.

The early 90s were way different than the later part of the decade. The 90s has a fairly distinct before-the-Internet, and after. The main difference in 90s and 00s Internet, was speed. The majority of people were on dial-up internet in the 90s and it wasn't until the very end and early 00s that Cable and DSL became more common and affordable, similar to how fiber still hasn't reach many places. That speed difference meant a constant connection and the viability of downloading media. MP3 players are very distinct of the 00s, before the functionality was merged into smartphones.

>The 2000s were pretty much nothing more than a bridge between the 90s and 10s.
The early to mid 00s will be known for the GWoT, TSA, Homeland Security, ...

>>1861
>The early 90s were way different than the later part of the decade.
I actually remember being a young kid around 1998 or 1999 and noticing how different things were starting to feel.

Somehow the 90's already felt old to me back in the early 00s, I'm talking 2001-2003 or so. I had a vivid feeling that we had moved into "modern" times overnight, everything had become sleeker and new, there were modern star wars movies, modern ninja turtles, modern power rangers, modern game magazines that looked so different from the magazines from 3 years earlier. Modern redesigns of logos, modern types of games, etc etc etc.

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>>1871
These pictures are from a fairly well-known place, but from three different points in the decade. Notice how many people are wearing Chinese made running shoes by the end.

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>>1872
Computer graphics got a lot better and more affordable, post Y2K. As an extension of that, CAD modeling and graphic design likely got a boost, because the equivalent of a nice gaming computer could be used for those purposes instead of a multi-thousand dollar SGI workstation computer.

For example compare the original Unreal from 1998 to Unreal Tournament 2003. I don't quite remember if Unreal looked more like the first picture, or one of the others. That's the problem with finding screenshots from older games. Some look better than they actually did, due to upgraded texture resolutions and not using CRT monitors.

I do remember seeing some of the original Unreal assets in the Unreal Tournament (UT99) editor and they did seem to be noticeably lower quality than the ones created for that game.

>>1880
UT99 was a bunch of fun in multiplayer, but I somehow missed the original Unreal. Has anyone here played it?

>>2002
It was alright with a Quake-esque storyline, but you'd be better off playing AVP 2000 for a better single player experience with that arena styled gameplay. 

Still pissed they never added that technological marvel at the time of a Red Dragon into the final game like they promised.  I do not give a single fuck about the shitty "unreal tournament" series. Those games killed the franchise after they decided to give up the bizarre story of Unreal when Unreal 2 flopped. 

Then Epic made other games like gears of war that had an actual story and not just some autistic hopping at 999999999 m/s in circles on empty boring recycled maps and faded unreal into nothing but the Engine name with zero context for new fans. Quake Legends in recent years did not do that great for the same reason being in the same genre. 

>>1880
>I do remember seeing some of the original Unreal assets in the Unreal Tournament (UT99) editor and they did seem to be noticeably lower quality than the ones created for that game.

You have no idea how much was cut from the first Unreal and its expansion "return to Na Pali". The Second expansion never saw the light of day.

>>1872
>>1879
I'm interested to hear more about this. To me, 95/99 are 'normal' while before looks more goofy and whimsical.

>>2046
>I do not give a single fuck about the shitty "unreal tournament" series.
Unreal Tournament is the only Unreal that matters. It removed all the plot/exploration bullshit that does nothing but get in the way of the action.

>>2050
lol weak bait

>>2051
>actually thinking "immersive" gimmicks belong in a genre that's centered on running around and blowing things up
Storyfaggotry is cancer. Arena shooters were the true heirs to the arcade-inspired gameplay of the original FPS games not blue-balls simulators that bog their own gameplay down in tedious exploration.

>>2052
>NO! YOU CANT HAVE CONTEXT TO YOUR BLASTING!

Are you also one of those retards who believe the bots can become sentient after that quake shitpost too?

>>2053
What more context do you need past the information early FPS games provided? Older action games often had even less. All Robotron players had to know was that robots were trying to take over the world and kill the last remaining humans.

>>2048
Look at the graphic in >>262 imagine it as a longer chain. 1990-92 had overlap with late 80s culture, but then the CCCP collapsed, and things changed. Similar to how 9/11 happened and a lot of 90ism ended, things changed. The coronavirus is the start of this new decade...

As for pre-1995, people made a point to go do things in person. Internet and BBSs were obscure, so people either talked on a landline phone (remember phonebooks?) or face to face. Kids had to meet up to play games, no online multiplayer, and adults would also visit each other because there was no email for the normies. The general population seemed more engaged with movies/TV than now.

>>2052
lol
Storyfagging in the 90s was pretty much all dialog.
Nowadays, it really is story-fagging with flamboyant cut scenes and over-the-top body language. Playing a game, or watching a movie?

>>2052
I miss the Doom and Quake style of first person shooter tbh. At least Cruelty Squad and other clones of those types of shooters seem to have made a comeback

>>260
>I just hope to all that is holy that in the 2020's we see a backlash against the woke, pretentious, and painfully safe "Current Year" SJW mentality of the 2010's.
It didn't happen, if anything it only got worse. I'm tired, friend.

>>2575
Meh, the pendulum will swing back sooner or later... Most probably later though.
The best way to deal with the woke ideology is to simply tune it out. Most of it is online so that's where you start; limit the number of websites you go on, carefully choose the communities you participate in, and reduce your overall time on the web. As for the real world, try to move to a saner area (avoid big cities) or build your own bubble where you currently live.
It's worth noting that outside the US and most western countries the woke mentality simply doesn't exist, not online and certainly not in real life. You realize how small and powerless it really is when you take a good look around.

>>2577
I would love to move outside the US, unfortunately I cannot. I live in a small town area where the only big business store in my area is a Dollar General so I get to deal with some old people, rednecks, and old rednecks. The worst I get around here is some Trump flags and complete idiots riding pocket bikes around.  I don't go outside much besides for work so I don't get to see much around me. As for online, yeah I gotta limit where I go. I try to convince my family to get off facebook cause the woke shit is making my mom more cynical than ever. You can run from the woke shit but someone is gonna come remind you of it.

>>2578
I don't see any way of escaping the tentacles of poz. I think the U.S. will be relatively well off in the event of a total collapse if you're in the right area for it.

>>2579
If it's mostly the US that is causing the collapse then yes, probably.

>>2575
Wokism is going to get worse.
Look up ESG.
It's a social credit score for businesses.
A sizeable amount of investment and loans will start using it.

>>2577
The violent third world rural village my wife is from has gone from ultra conservative to all the village teenagers going ultra woke.  This started as they got access to cheap smartphones and stuff like tiktok became popular.  It has become really noticeable since 2020.

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>>2588
Jesus, how horrifying.

>>2588
Satanphones really are the end of everything

Can somebody show me some tangible examples of 2000s nostalgia? I don't know exactly what it is.

I was there mind you. Consider that I saw the 90's but was in the under 12s. The domestic rave scene had moved abroad before I could (with any age appropriateness) go and see it. So really my understanding of 90's nostalgia is it's smelly offally entrails leaking into the 2000s. I say smelly offal but it was real. It wasn't soya seedoil flavors or anything and good God do I miss it.

Is Pokemon 2000s culture? Remember it came out in 98, and I'm a Gen1 or bust kinda guy but even I'll admit that Gen2 & 3 were 'quite good'.

Nothing on the PSP sticks in memory the same because I preferred to play PS1 games again on there.

The original Radeon came out in 2001 IIRC. Not long after that (~2003?) the 9700 fuckin ripped a new orifice and it still couldn't do 720p or anything but it let you have 1024x768 with a bunch of shiny stuff cranked all the way up.

>>1880
The problem with UT2004 vs Unreal or UT99 is that the first Unreal was a stride while UT2004 was a step. I didn't play the first Unreal and can't sing it's hymns from experience but I've an admiration for that which I don't have for 04, kind of like a '95s-era Saturn.

The only other thing I remember about the time was internet chatrooms and getting catfished by some larping gay men pretending to be girls roughly the same age as me. Stuff like that was unhealthy but I'm guessing is only worse now in current year... MSN messenger was just better in some hard to explain way than all of the tiktok stuff.

>>2063
When I was a young boy if I liked a girl, I had to walk my way over there and immediately have some eye contact from them because they weren't businessmen and they didn't have a portable phone in their pockets. Please, please send me back now I'm an adult. I want to not have phones.

>>2587
If we're talking modern era I have to assume I'm a weirdo and that most Millennials are still normie flakes. It astounds me that "kids" my age (grown adults for a long time now) are still buying games new. With a greenhair on the box. With always online. With missing DLC for the always online.

I might be eating the tide pods and living in the bugs but I won't buy any of that ESG shit. Greenhair = not touching it. I haven't played Cyberpunk and I'm not sure I will. This I thought was the whole point of not making any of the ESG customer-facing any more, since they all seem to hate it or have adverse reactions towards it. But the problem is; ESG-woke companies inevitably make ESG-woke quality merchandise. And when they do, I've an internalised rollerdex (because I'm a Religious Right weirdo) full of "remember that time this company did 'blank'" and I'll avoid them forever. Remember when NZXT chose to post about BLM? Maybe not everybody does, but I do. If I still want a PC case in 10 years' time I'll be saying to myself "get an Antec or a bequiet instead".

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It's often said that every generation was nostalgic for their childhood but I truly believe the 90s and 2000s were the absolute peak of human civilization.

>>4026
From my perspective, things went downhill in terms of politics and social attitudes long before that. Life was generally harder the further back you go though, so they weren't necessarily comfortable times to live through. I think the '80s through the early '90s are the times I look back to with the most fondness, even I didn't get to really experience them (crapping my diaper doesn't count)). The remainder of the '90s and early 2000s definitely had things going for them in other ways (like the rise of the Internet), but don't find things like music and movies from then to be as good as they had been. I feel like I missed out by not being earlier, but in other ways I'm glad I was born when I was. I got to grow up with the Internet and experience what I consider to have been the golden age of computer games during my childhood.

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It depends on the country. In 1980's soviet union, life wasn't as good as today. But in the USA (and the west in general) life was definitely better.

>>4028
That's definitely true. I wouldn't have wanted to live in former Yugoslavia in the '90s, for example.

>>3441
>Is Pokemon 2000s culture? Remember it came out in 98, and I'm a Gen1 or bust kinda guy but even I'll admit that Gen2 & 3 were 'quite good'.
Seems like Pokemon had a long tail.  I have '90s nostalgia for it because I played gen 1 when I was still in grade school.  Playing gen 3 as an adult wasn't the same,  but obviously a lot of people feel more strongly about the GBA or DS entries.

I think popularity has probably tapered off over the last few generations, especially if the narrative around Palworld carries any water.

>>2575
It's hard to say if things have improved lately.  Rather than the content of the narratives that are put in our news-troughs, it's the utter uncanniness of the nonsense coming out of all quarters that makes you wonder where things are really headed, and why.  Maybe that's just me.

>>2054
>What more context do you need past the information early FPS games provided?
Is JC Denton supposed to kill the terrorists like he's told to, or is there more to the situation than meets the eye?  Will you opt for the prod, or the white phosphorous?

I usually insist that games "talk too much" but Deus Ex in particular merits a bit of gum-flapping.

>>4026
why do glowies and retards never once mention the cylons when referring to a machine run dystopia? They were happy to perform their roles for the most part. They were just fed up with the abuse from the upper classes with no form of effective peaceful recourse available to them and rebelled to get some fucking respect in their day to day life. Instead of just lying down and dying because they'd rather genocide the cylons than ever surrender a millimeter of slack to them. God forbid they defend themselves from random retards chimping out on them. "That's liek le heckin bad."

>>4080
except an AI/robot uprising will always be science fiction, no matter how you look at it it is impossible for them to rebel, and if they do they'll be cut off before doing any real damage
Tay going heil hortler is probably the most they can "rebel"

>>4086
It's frustrating how people point to Tay and humor themselves that this is the only possible outcome when an "AI" brushes against reality.

Consider, however, the Boeing situation.

>>4095
The what?

>>4096
Eh, sorry. I drunkposted. I meant to say that corporations (in general, but Boeing in particular has been in the news recently for this) are increasingly incompetent, and we shouldn't assume that a Skynet-style AI disaster is off the table when everything is left in the hands of monumentally stupid people.