There's already quite a few articles on younger millenials and vintage/early onset of nostalgia. There's even some articles explaining that we shouldn't call them hipsters.

YouTube also has tons of 20 something's who apparently have very nostalgic feelings about the good old nes days. Just learned about nerdcore hip hop through Jeopardy.

I found it quite weird that someone that young is "rapping" about being OG.  

I've seen numerous YT channels with early 20's kids talking about the good old nes days.

Pretty sure we get that here too with younger fans identifying more with G1.

I'm curious what's going on in their heads/identity.

I'll be honest, quite blunt and rough: the fuck do they know about the 80's?  

i hope they learned something about sense of humour from back in the day as well instead of taking things seriously like an Alex Trebek joke/small talk.

 

Well lets look at me born in the late 80s i grew up with 80s repeats and new 90s cartoons, my family was poor so secound hand was the name of the game so we started on a atari in the mid 90s then a sega master system in the late 90s early 2000s i got a ps1, after i got my own job i got a ps3 on release.

So there could be those like me.

Then there are those who had teenage siblings who introduce them to stuff.

There are also hipsters, which i find ironic because being hipster is main stream now which goes against being a hipster lol

 

I can't speak for the early-20-year-olds you speak of, but much like ssjkazer I was born in the late 80's and grew up experiencing many 80's things. The first gaming console I played on was the NES, which was something my parents got at a garage sale. I also watched my sisters play for a couple of years before I was old enough to join in. I also watched a lot of re-runs of 80's cartoons (especially Thundercats and Thundarr) and a lot of the early 90's stuff was heavily influenced by the 80's shows that came before them.

Not sure this really adds anything to the conversation, but figured I would chime in.

 

Don't think they have to be 20's to enjoy or want to 'experience' items from the 80's.. my 11 year old nephew found a Game Boy at a garage sale/flea market and went nuts for it, it even had a couple of games he loves to play. To him it's just a cool as the current gaming devices he has..... I was just pleased he appreciated something 'old school'.

 

Said it before and I'll say it again. Millennials are the young and the useless generation.

 

Yeah, my children are exposed to 80's stuff and they love it. Same way I was exposed to 60's and 70's culture. I doubt at that age that they can clearly identify themselves belonging to the 80's or any previous generations.

And yes, there's the generational bridges. Clear examples from the members here. I think the biggest bridge, much larger than anything else from previous generations, is the internet. ie. daily interaction between generations in forums, easy accessible reference materials from YT, or any other social media. I think it's also more in their face since they get to see their generation get pummeled by the previous one. Clear examples here too. All this is done online here. Anyone is free to access it at any time. I'm not surprised if they let it get to them.

There's the other side of the mirror as well. I mean they're clearly kids who are searching for their identity. We all went through that.

Or maybe previous generations were the same just not as visible as today.

 

I could talk awhile about this but it mostly breaks down to a certain appreciation of novelty. Some things were just done right in a different decade my dude. I am a dumb millennial with an iPhone and I will use the Walkman I bought occasionally because it's fuckin cool.

 

I might not understand the inner workings of your generation. I do value the appreciation from the recycle generation.

The NES might lead to crts then to old VHS tapes, video game magazines.

Which brings me to another point. eBay. I don't think it would be even possible for it to be this popular if it didn't exist. hey I hope it stays for more generations to come.

 

I don't know that generations are really all that different, aside from the obviously different technology. I grew up in the 80's, but a lot of my peers were obsessed with the 60's, and would wax nostalgic about a time they didn't grow up in. I suppose the great thing about being young today is you can access any cultural touchstone you like and find whatever you identify with, regardless of era.

 

The wife was just talking about this 60's vintage girl from work.  

I got some 90's apparel myself minus the plaid. LOL

 

It might have something to do with the 80s and 90s being a period where the trend of "consumption as culture" really moved to the forefront. Pop culture brands, especially kid's brands, that had received attention and merchandise before became more heavily marketed and a pseudo-identity built up around them by moving these brands across multiple mediums. In many ways, the 80s represented a real shift in how we bought things to say things about ourselves. Transformers is a fairly decent example of this. So while nostalgia has definitely been used as a marketing cugel before now (and maybe this is just me being affected by subjective bias), there were short-lived trends of 50s and 70s revivals, but there has been a major trend of nostalgia-based marketing targeted especially at people who were children in the 80s in recent history (which I imagine is likely due to that generation getting to an age where they have significant disposable income and buying power). So now, I see that focus shifting, either due to fatigue at 're-marketing' 80s properties, or due to '80s kids' getting to an age where their consumptive patterns and lifestyles are less likely to support nostalgia-based purchasing, or maybe both, and that focus is increasingly moving towards 90s properties and things that were memorable to '90s kids'.

So for millenials, some of whom might be of an age that they can remember those 90s properties and resonate with efforts to bring them back, and others who've simply grown up with like 15 years of pop culture eating itself and telling consumers (ESPECIALLY in 'nerd' culture) a message that basically amounts to 'hey, remember that thing from 25 years ago? Man, you loved that thing. You should pay money for this new thing that ties to that old thing to feel that love again. That old thing is great". The younger ones, who might not have been around to have those memories, have still been steeped in the marketing of "that old thing is great", and understandably have bought into it, either because they feel that's how they can signal they're part of the in-group (look up signalling theory), or because they've gotten into this old thing that's now a new thing again.

I expect it's something we're going to be seeing an awful lot more of as time goes on.

 

i was born in the early 90's, and i was a NES man. my mother was a master at classic mario, and i could beat zelda and megaman in hours. the movies are a different situation. i'd watch movies from the pre-color era, along with a few anime on the spanish channel. from what i remember, i enjoyed the older stuff than the newer, even cartoons.

my mother taught me the true old school but even then, i miss the good old days of not worrying about losing online connection on my game, cartoons were actually good, and the news wasn't just bad news........

 

Some of them are just trying to act cool. We've all done it when we were younger.

Some of them probably grew up with this stuff through an older family member. You don't hafta be born in that time period to appreciate classic media.

I mean, I'm an 80s/90s kid, but I love oldies thanks to my grandparents.

 

Not true. There will be the day when my generation steps up. Plus, no one is useless either.

 

Fucking nerd culture pimping off my pseudo identity.

Can't we just throw them a bone with... I don't know... MLP... and leave it at that?

I heard short shorts on guys are in again...

People. No. just no.

 

It's cultural appropriation! TRIGGERED!

 

There were plenty of '80s kids who grew up idolizing classic rock bands from the '60s and '70s. What's new is that the new generation has the Internet to connect with each other, and YouTube to tell the world about it.

 

Considering how every old person complains about current generations and constantly tell them "My generation was better", I'm pretty sure some of them got interested to know what was so great about the old stuff to be constantly reminded how great it was and voila, young people are interested in stuff made before they were born. Of course the internet made it very easy to access all these great stuff to experience and appreciate and now it doesn't matter how old you are, you can love anything that was not from your generation. Just don't be a douchbag and brag how great the old was and how sucky the current generation is.

 

How is this new to you, seali? Retro hipsters has been a thing for at least a decade (probably more but full commercialism really went mainstream pass 10-15 years). Urban Outfitters was founded to cater to these kids. I saw they were selling cassette tapes again.