Nostalgia is Garbage

AI Art by @nightcafestudio

I'm sorry, there must be a price for this.

All nostalgia is garbage.

I am sick of it being used to milk money and attention away from me and steal the chance I (or any future generation) have of creating their own NEW things that future generations can be nostalgic about. Nostalgia is theft. It is used by lazy companies to steal the chance of us to enjoy something new, that "first experience" like the original viewers of Star Wars had back in 1977.

We will never have that if nostalgia is allowed to continue.

If I want the original movie, game, or book - I will go to the original and enjoy that. Any remakes will be ignored and rightly called the garbage they are. I don't care how "good" they are; if you remake the past, you aren't making anything.

From this point forward, I will create my own new ideas.

I will enjoy creators who have new ideas.

Do I fall prey to the nostalgia trap? Yes, I am human. Whenever I try to relive the past, do I walk away feeling empty and disappointed? Yes. Nostalgia is the equivalent of a high-fat and sugar diet. It feels great for the first few minutes, but you feel sick afterward. I have memories of the games I enjoyed, but I get let down every time I try to relive them.

Where would we be if they hadn't repeatedly remade the same games? Instead, the creators could do something new, and we could all experience that together for the first time? You could even say that today's version of "high fantasy" with that "planar focus" would be even better if it did not have to look back so much and clean up perceived past mistakes.

By being so chained to nostalgia, you hurt the world and the ideas you are trying to create. You spend energy cleaning up things you don't even need to address had you created something new to begin with.

And we get stuck in arguments about the past, asking which version is better. It is all toxic. It is used as wedge marketing to force customers to defend the "new stuff" versus those who "cling to the problematic past." The corporations make us fight as a marketing strategy, and they know nostalgia presses buttons.

Deny them the anger. Deny them the hate marketing. Deny them the clickbait articles. Don't waste your life on this.

Abandon all nostalgia.

New creations fix all the problems. Those are things we can unite behind and love together.

Instead, we have one foot in the past and another in a crappier future version.

With nothing new to enjoy.

And it is our fault.