How Nostalgia Sells You a Lie

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Script: Courtney Bill
Editor: Sam Askew
Project Manager: Lurana McClure Rodríguez
Host: Levi Hildebrand

[xg]

I will say that I think a lot of vintage stuff is attractive to us is because our world is so colorless and corporately sanitized now, and people are craving color and character. Old fridges were colorful, old appliances were cute. Appliances now look like they were made for a hospital

[chadjones]

Sincerity and originality are due for a comeback

[pandaknowsimsadder]

Honestly, I feel like I have nostalgia fatigue. My subconscious is totally aware I'm being bombarded with it, so now it has the reverse effect. No warm fuzzies. Just the icky feeling that I'm being manipulated.

[JJMcCullough]

I’m kind of tired of people pretending nostalgia has some wildly counter-intuitive psychological explanation. I think sometimes people just sincerely like the things they enjoyed when they were young… because they were good.

[Rakadis]

I might be getting old and bitter. I mostly get sad when nostalgia is involved. So much of my childhood has been resurrected and destroyed for some quick profit...

[thecapone]

The psychology behind nostalgia is so interesting. It’s why fortune tellers and horoscopes work for so many people. We have selective biases.
I’ve seen so many videos on YouTube from the 40s to the present (those videos where someone is recording while riding in a car or going around the city) and invariably, everyone says why THAT era was the “best”.
I think the reality is, our childhood is always special because our parents helped to make it that way. Parents shield us from the outside world. We didn’t care about inflation, gas prices, or trouble overseas at 8 years old.
Our world was games and playing outside with friends.

And one day, believe it or not, some 25 year old is gonna look back at 2020-2025 as such a good time to be a kid. I think the most heartwarming thing is to realize that each of us, in our own way, serve to make a child’s memory of the present precious… Just like adults did for us, decades ago.

[TheSidwysDrftr]

This isn’t the only cause. Corporate Hollywood and gaming are learning to only lean on existing IPs due to the fact that many new ideas are massively flopping.

[Domihork]

One thing that I find really sad about this is that there's so much nostalgic content now (with all the reboots, sequels, revivals etc) that I don't really know what future generations are gonna be nostalgic about. Is their nostalgia just gonna be a reboot of our nostalgia?

[Phalaenopsisify]

This is one of your best videos in a long time. Regarding clothing I think the 90's was the last time regular clothes you bought in a normal store was decent quality. It seems like no matter how gently you treat clothes nowadays they fall apart in at best a few years.

[williamphillips]

I’m so glad someone is talking about this. I used to love going to the movies. But lately it’s remake after remake and I’m so tired of it. There’s no new idea

[piccalillipit]

*THE REASON IS SIMPLE* in order to maximise profits companies are only willing to do things they KNOW are commercially successful

They wont pay creative people to do NEW things - cos thats expensive and it might not work

[Xanderall]

Dude, "upcycling" is not an euphemism for "secondhand". Yes, you begin with previously owned or discarded items, but then you reuse them in such a way as to create a product of higher quality or value than the original. Like when you take wooden crates and transform them into side tables or kids' libraries and play spaces.

[markmattimore]

As a Gen-Xer I find it interesting that millennials are now experiencing the whole retro throwback to their childhood (and they somehow feel that it's unique to them). Every generation has gone through this. I remember back in the '70s and '80s there being a huge wave of '50s nostalgia targeted to baby boomers. My generation went through this in the early 2000s. Now it's millennials turn. Give it another 15 or 20 years and Gen Z will go through it as well.
Nothing is new. History is circular.

[Bro]

I was linked this video on Discord in regards to the Nintendo portion and I just have to point out and clarify a lot of the details since it feels misinformed.
7:59 While its true that Mario Bros. kickstarted Mario as the character we know today, it wouldn't be until the original Super Mario Bros. that truly sprung him into popularity and forever cementing it as Nintendo's main brand. Super Mario Bros. was especially a big deal in Japan where the best selling book in 1985 was a strategy guide on how to beat the game.
8:13 Before the NES, Nintendo released the Family Computer (Famicom) in Japan in 1983. When Nintendo wanted to release the system overseas in America, they would up rebranding and redesigning it into the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and test launched it in New York in 1985 and rolled out nationwide the next year.
8:17 The 240 million units number seems to come from the overall sales of the entire Mario franchise worldwide which does not strictly count games only released on NES (or Famicom). It appears that the video implies that Mario Bros. alone sold this much but this is not true. In terms of the actual numbers worldwide on Famicom and NES: Super Mario Bros. sold 40 million, Super Mario Bros. 3 sold 18 million, the International Super Mario Bros. 2 sold 7 million, and the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 plus the original Mario Bros. sold 2 million each, with a total of around 69~ million combined for Famicom and NES.
8:25 Weird to skip out on the Super Famicom and Super NES considering the Nintendo 64 did not catch on in comparison especially in Japan (to the point where the Nintendo 64 was outsold by the PlayStation and Sega Saturn in Japan).
8:40 Not really innovative or a new idea, other examples of plug & play consoles that let you play old classic games had existed prior. Most notably AtGames released a dozen or so systems before Nintendo decided to try the concept themselves. Nintendo just so happened to have been able to make a killing off of it which nostalgia was absolutely a factor.
8:48 Early 1990s? The library of games featured in the Nintendo Classic Mini: Family Computer and NES Classic Edition mainly consisted of games released between the mid to late 1980s with only a few select games with early 1990s release dates. Not to mention the peak of the Famicom in Japan was around 1984-1987 with the Famicom boom era whereas overseas and in particular North America, the NES was at its peak between 1987-1989. By the time the 1990s rolled around 8-bit systems were considered old news and while games would continue to release for older systems the main focus during that time was 16-bit.
9:33 This appears to be sourced from an image titled "Satoshi Matrix Top 100 NES/Famicom Games List" which is shown on screen to illustrate "the types of games Nintendo makes". This doesn't make a whole lot of sense as out of the 99 games listed, only 11 are either developed or published by Nintendo and the rest are third party. This image also includes unlicensed and bootleg releases such as Micro Machines and Pokémon Yellow. Less I mention how a handful of the games shown never released for NES but rather Famicom.

[tekdrudge]

I remember being a kid in the 90's and stuff from the 70's was really popular. They even came out with "That 70's Show"

[kellyro]

Selling nostalgia isn't a recent phase. They've been doing it since I was a kid in the 80's even, pandering to our parents. What I dislike about the more current nostalgia phase is that they just re-package old stuff (movies in particular) instead of taking any sort of time to be creative and come up with something completely new and unique. Why I got sick of the Avengers and Star Wars campaigns. If Disney gets their hands on it, know they're going to overuse it and milk it for all they can until it turns into a dried up, shriveled husk.

[Josh-yrgd]

"A Christmas Story" is a movie about nostalgia, which ironically became a nostalgic movie itself.

[Spoooookkyy]

“Even the advertisements of our youth are somehow nostalgic” that’s literally the best part, ads have degraded way more than everything else

[DarkMultiBigTrees]

I had parents who grew up in the 60s, and I remember being obsessed with the 70s as a late teen in the early 00s. I don't think it's that uncommon for teens to want a youth they didn't have.

[JaySee]

I hope phone makers get onboard with nostalgia and bring back the headphone jack. It'd be nice if appliances actually make the bulletproof and repairable appliances of the past.