One big thing about all us folks under 35... we are generally done with broadcast TV. At least that's my experience. Broadcast TV has gotten so bad that I can't even watch Stephen Colbert's show anymore without blinking rapidly at the overwhelming ADD editing. (Exception: Supernatural or TCM stuff, but both get recorded so I can skip the commercials). We prefer our streaming and binging and that's cool with me.
But my cranky self has a problem with the punks who are pilfering old "feels" about TV series that peaked before they were out of elementary school.
YOU WERE 7 WHEN ROSS AND RACHEL KISSED YOU LITTLE TURDS YOU HAVE NO IDEA.*
YOU WERE 8 WHEN SCULLY HAD CANCER AND YOU WEREN'T THERE.*
YOU WERE 5 WHEN THE LAST EPISODE OF CLARISSA EXPLAINS IT ALL AIRED YOU ASININE NINNIES.*
AND DON'T YOU DARE PRETEND YOU UNDERSTAND TWIN PEAKS BECAUSE YOU WERE 2 YEARS OLD. (OK, I watched it ten years later, but it was on VHS and I was obsessed with Dune and Kyle MacLachlan before he was even anything on Sex and the City so shut up)*
*This is assuming you're the same age as Taylor Swift, you ingratiating hoodlums.
But Caity, you hypocrite, you are all about Gregory Peck and Ginger Rogers and Charlie Chaplin and Doris Day. NO. They are classic movie gods and goddesses. If you don't appreciate them, no matter your age, you don't understand film. I don't pretend to have BEEN THERE. I mean, Friends and Full House and Clarissa Explains It All are not even IMPORTANT. I sort of understand getting all feely about The X-Files because it was incredible television. But why would you want to pretend you were there for fluffy crap?
I'm talking about 27-year-olds on Tumblr making GIFs from Full House, which started airing 2 years before they were even born. And they're pretending like it's profound pop culture. Please.
But Caity, how do you know they're 27? Because most of the people using Tumblr are 27ish.
But Caity, you're making broad assumptions. How do you know the Full House GIFs aren't made by the 34-year-olds on Tumblr who actually remember watching Full House on TV just like you?
Because I'm 33 and I don't have time to make GIFs of Full House. I don't even have time to make GIFs of The X-Files, even though I wrote a physical letter to the fan club when I was a teenager and they sent me back an autographed postcard of Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny which is now framed on my wall. The only GIFs I ever made were my shitty Livejournal avatars in 2003 and that was when I was living in a dorm with walls covered in Lord of the Rings movie posters and didn't have a mortgage or an investment portfolio or pool to clean every week.
The OTG is watching Netflix too, don't get me wrong. Stranger Things was created by 32-year-olds. They get it. They totally get it. They are the OTG. We remember the 80s because we lived in them long enough to remember shit like Rick Astley on the radio before Rick Rolling was a thing.
I am so full of hipster-like rage today. Which is so millennial, I know. But it is also OTG. We do this too. It's a very fine line. But it's drawn in the very same digital sand we kissed goodbye while caulking the wagon and floating across the Green River...
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