What a fascinating analysis comrade! You’ve killed it—this piece needs to go viral.
Your article us a call to action to all talented creators in America: shake off the rejection, censorship and contempt heaped on you by the regime for the last twenty years or so and make your work public.
Nothing less than the health and happiness of America is at stake!
You’re absolutely right—Make America Fun Again! 🇺🇸
As a baby boomer, I find this recap of a history I have lived with awe, surprise, shock and many other feelings in between, right on the money and so appreciate the thoughtfulness that Yuri put into creating it. The last decade has been so dark, this feels like spring after a very dark, cold, ugly, nasty winter. No more WOKE police? No more DEI? Can I really use language again to speak normally? No more my children yelling at me for being politically incorrect about “everything”? Being criticized at every turn for not conforming and agreeing with the nonsense of BLM, for example? I am so glad you mention the Matrix because I feel like I have been living that movie and I am one of the fighters outside trying to fight the system.
We have been in a dark cave and I this recap fills me with joy and hope that we can be Light and Fun again, with Freedom in between. Thank you, Yuri!
Your suicide graph would be even more telling if you added OD deaths to suicide. Same root cause I suspect. The graph did trigger one of my pet peeves which is non-zero origins. This produces exaggerated visual change. I am enough of a numbers guy to always look. Sadly, that is the default on many graphing platforms. It is bad enough even with this problem mentally factored out. The other graphs did it right.
Yuri, thanks for the optimism. I also feel it. The renewed sense of freedom. We have been bottled up too long. But not any more. Now I feel like we're all on a mission. Inspired. To do great things. To grow, expand, and bring new ideas to the public sphere. And that all of us will enjoy the show as we collectively and individually usher in a next generation of American greatness.
I proudly yell, "Fuck you" to rapist gangs in the UK and their lib apologists. I say "Piss on you" you Climate Change activists who have mutilated the substance of environmentalism. I say "Way to go" to Elon and his rockets, Palmer and his Drones (and his new and fun Gameboy), RFK and his MAHA mission, and NVDIA and its AI hardware that's changing the world. It's going to be fun, awesome and great. Go MAGA, MAHA, and MAFA!
When I see young kids say how cool the 80s and 90s were I know this argument is not out in the field somewhere; young kids don’t like this landscape as much as adults don’t. Hopefully it can be turned around and soon.
I've been playing Skyrim this past week. There's been more than a few giggles at the absolute acknowledgement of racial and cultural differences between different peoples.
Considering it's probably the greatest work from that golden age, perhaps it suggests a truth: fun is rooted in reality, the good bad and ugly.
Seems like I missed out on most LOL ! I only use the Tube (mostly as a radio or to watch documentaries and cooking/farming programs. I leave all the rest of the tech to others.
Absolutely agree! Hope you don't mind my shameless plug here Yuri, but I have to also evoke that Starship Trooper meme if in text form and say I'm doing my part! I'm trying to make culture fun again with every novel, every short-story I write and publish hereon Substack, and even with my analysis essays of good games, movies and books!
Good literature, culture and games are making a comeback, they are inevitable as many of us non-subverted artist types are hard at work.
The other good news is that I've been talking with some friends, and we'll be possibly starting up a game studio in a few months. So watch out, we're definitely gonna make not just America but the whole of French, German, Japanese and all other subverted countries/cultures fun again!
An opus indeed, comrade! It’s gonna be hard convincing half the country to start having fun with the other half, when they’ve been calling them racist, bigots, homophobes, misogynists, transphobes, Hitlers, destroyers of democracy, and worse. But hey, it’s worth a try…count me in!
Great trip down memory lane! I was a stay-at-home parent 1995-2020 with four sons & wow I had to navigate, delay (and sometimes deny) tech and media as it popped up in our home. It was a dynamic struggle, and can't say I always made the best decisions.
I thought Napster was stealing, just one example, and fought that battle (it was stealing, right?)
One the other hand, you included that famous Jib-Jab....way back in the day, one of my sons shared it with me (when he was a young teenager); not only was it witty & hilarious, it was gently subversive - good for him!
Fwd'd this to those same sons. Thanks for the good memories, Comrade.
As someone who worked in music during the Napster years, it was anything but fun. The argument from the masses “I DESERVE what you worked on for free!” somehow won out and the music industry as it had existed since the late 50’s came tumbling down over the next 10 years. Now all music sounds the same, designed to go viral on tick tock, touring is only for legacy acts and the long form album is dead and buried. And I thought that we lived off the fruits of our labor here in the West. Silly me.
It IS true - there is no more imaginative new music or sound. Every time I see/hear a commercial it's using a song from the past. I just remarked a few months ago - 'doesn't ANYONE make their own songs for commercials anymore??'
They used to be called 'jingles'. That's one of the ways that Barry Manilow started out -- he did 'I am stuck on Band-Aid and Band-Aid's stuck on me' and 'you deserve a break today, so get out and get away to McDonald's' and 'Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there'
Out of the ashes of the record industry, which really was the first instantiation of the payday loan usury grift has come a whole new era of music that is arguably better in almost every way from the previous epoch.
If you think it all sounds like TikTok drivel, that is because you are only experiencing it on there. With bands like Highly Suspect, Ren, The Big Push, The Church of the Cosmic Skull and the resurgence of bands like Foxy Shazam, I'd say there has never been a more golden Age of Music than right now. Look Again. Look Deeper.
Also, I could not help but notice that you said you worked in music, but you did not say you were a musician. That says a lot, because if you are not a musician or a recording engineer, then what value did you add to music. Napster ripped off the Execs, not the musicians. They were already fully fleeced by the companies and had nothing left to steal. Good Riddance to the likes of Columbia Records. I was offered a contract and almost signed it back in the day, but I can do math and saw the contract for what it really was, a payday loan I would never be able to pay back. Thank god for math skills.
At present I own my masters and am getting 100% of global publishing and streaming and I'm not even making anything really worth listening to at present. The wall between musician and consumer is gone and it is a personal relationship at this point. That is infinitely better than selling your soul to the record execs.
I’m a guitarist, but I worked behind the scenes in live booking and management with major label artists in jazz, pop and metal. I was also trained to engineer and produce. My friends who had survived in the major label metal world who were able to make an okay pay check in the 80s and 90s went broke in the 00s. Napster took away royalty checks for both physical media and publishing. I’m not saying there weren’t terrible people in the business, but most of the ways my friends earned a living is gone.
Yes, Napster enabled theft. Prior, we dubbed cassettes at 2nd generation quality and no artwork. We recorded off radios to cassette… 2nd generation again. Then with CDs, we could rip and burn copies… very painful and 2nd generation. Wav to mp3 was also noticeable quality loss.
Napster was the first time we could share 1st generation copies with no quality loss.
I was a working musician then and used it to find rare live recording of my favorite bands. This had never been accessible before due to physical distribution limitations. Even “live” concerts were heavily edited videos and professional mixes back then. A bootleg crappy recording was more important than a professionally polished “live” recording to me.
Peer to peer meant I could hear a bootleg from a random person who shared! A bootleg.
I knew it was legally wrong and so minimized my use of the service.
However, it completely changed the industry and Apple was first to recognize it and start the subscription streaming model. I knew then that the prior music industry model was over.
Of course, none of us knew where it would go from there.
What a fascinating analysis comrade! You’ve killed it—this piece needs to go viral.
Your article us a call to action to all talented creators in America: shake off the rejection, censorship and contempt heaped on you by the regime for the last twenty years or so and make your work public.
Nothing less than the health and happiness of America is at stake!
You’re absolutely right—Make America Fun Again! 🇺🇸
Yes. A society without fun, is not worth living in.
May it be MAFA in 25' all the way down!
MAGA+MAHA=MAFA
This is the way! 🙂
THE WAY...foh show!
As a baby boomer, I find this recap of a history I have lived with awe, surprise, shock and many other feelings in between, right on the money and so appreciate the thoughtfulness that Yuri put into creating it. The last decade has been so dark, this feels like spring after a very dark, cold, ugly, nasty winter. No more WOKE police? No more DEI? Can I really use language again to speak normally? No more my children yelling at me for being politically incorrect about “everything”? Being criticized at every turn for not conforming and agreeing with the nonsense of BLM, for example? I am so glad you mention the Matrix because I feel like I have been living that movie and I am one of the fighters outside trying to fight the system.
We have been in a dark cave and I this recap fills me with joy and hope that we can be Light and Fun again, with Freedom in between. Thank you, Yuri!
As a Boomer myself I share the exact same sentiments. Every time I said 'Ka MAH la' my daughter corrected me with "Mom, it's 'KAM a la'". 🙄
It HAS been as tho' we have lived in the gulag these last number of years. Darkness & arrogance from the elites all around.
Your suicide graph would be even more telling if you added OD deaths to suicide. Same root cause I suspect. The graph did trigger one of my pet peeves which is non-zero origins. This produces exaggerated visual change. I am enough of a numbers guy to always look. Sadly, that is the default on many graphing platforms. It is bad enough even with this problem mentally factored out. The other graphs did it right.
The Wormtongue-Theoden meme/graphic is brilliantly spot on.
indeed!
Trump=Aragorn (Return of the King) and Elon=Gandalf ???
RFK Jr = Gandalf or Frodo
Elon = Samwise, I hope!
Yuri, thanks for the optimism. I also feel it. The renewed sense of freedom. We have been bottled up too long. But not any more. Now I feel like we're all on a mission. Inspired. To do great things. To grow, expand, and bring new ideas to the public sphere. And that all of us will enjoy the show as we collectively and individually usher in a next generation of American greatness.
I proudly yell, "Fuck you" to rapist gangs in the UK and their lib apologists. I say "Piss on you" you Climate Change activists who have mutilated the substance of environmentalism. I say "Way to go" to Elon and his rockets, Palmer and his Drones (and his new and fun Gameboy), RFK and his MAHA mission, and NVDIA and its AI hardware that's changing the world. It's going to be fun, awesome and great. Go MAGA, MAHA, and MAFA!
Absolutely on point!
Good Stuff Yuri... Infinity in All directions... Going to go have fun right now.. a Swan Dive into Nature.. Back country Ski time.. Smiles for Miles
When I see young kids say how cool the 80s and 90s were I know this argument is not out in the field somewhere; young kids don’t like this landscape as much as adults don’t. Hopefully it can be turned around and soon.
Zoomers are getting radicalized by watching videos of millennials having fun in high school without woke demoralization.
I've been playing Skyrim this past week. There's been more than a few giggles at the absolute acknowledgement of racial and cultural differences between different peoples.
Considering it's probably the greatest work from that golden age, perhaps it suggests a truth: fun is rooted in reality, the good bad and ugly.
Walking out of a decade long scold culture into something fun and hopeful is a bit disorienting. It feels like 1981, and that’s a good sign. 🙌🏻
"... decade long scold culture..." is absolutely, positively THE best description of it.
Yuri, the historian. Nicely done, comrade!
Like a well prepared hors d'oeuvre offered at a politburo cocktail party, you gave us this memorable phrase:
"...The magic faded after Hollywood tried to make everything into a franchise, put a chick in it, make it gay, and oversaturate it with CGI."
Seems like I missed out on most LOL ! I only use the Tube (mostly as a radio or to watch documentaries and cooking/farming programs. I leave all the rest of the tech to others.
Thank you for a nostalgic walk down memory lane. Looking forward to the fun again…even SNL seems to have lightened up a bit!
Absolutely agree! Hope you don't mind my shameless plug here Yuri, but I have to also evoke that Starship Trooper meme if in text form and say I'm doing my part! I'm trying to make culture fun again with every novel, every short-story I write and publish hereon Substack, and even with my analysis essays of good games, movies and books!
Good literature, culture and games are making a comeback, they are inevitable as many of us non-subverted artist types are hard at work.
The other good news is that I've been talking with some friends, and we'll be possibly starting up a game studio in a few months. So watch out, we're definitely gonna make not just America but the whole of French, German, Japanese and all other subverted countries/cultures fun again!
Thoroughly enjoyed this nostalgic recap!!
An opus indeed, comrade! It’s gonna be hard convincing half the country to start having fun with the other half, when they’ve been calling them racist, bigots, homophobes, misogynists, transphobes, Hitlers, destroyers of democracy, and worse. But hey, it’s worth a try…count me in!
Great trip down memory lane! I was a stay-at-home parent 1995-2020 with four sons & wow I had to navigate, delay (and sometimes deny) tech and media as it popped up in our home. It was a dynamic struggle, and can't say I always made the best decisions.
I thought Napster was stealing, just one example, and fought that battle (it was stealing, right?)
One the other hand, you included that famous Jib-Jab....way back in the day, one of my sons shared it with me (when he was a young teenager); not only was it witty & hilarious, it was gently subversive - good for him!
Fwd'd this to those same sons. Thanks for the good memories, Comrade.
'Napster' - that is a real blast from the past.🤣
As someone who worked in music during the Napster years, it was anything but fun. The argument from the masses “I DESERVE what you worked on for free!” somehow won out and the music industry as it had existed since the late 50’s came tumbling down over the next 10 years. Now all music sounds the same, designed to go viral on tick tock, touring is only for legacy acts and the long form album is dead and buried. And I thought that we lived off the fruits of our labor here in the West. Silly me.
It IS true - there is no more imaginative new music or sound. Every time I see/hear a commercial it's using a song from the past. I just remarked a few months ago - 'doesn't ANYONE make their own songs for commercials anymore??'
They used to be called 'jingles'. That's one of the ways that Barry Manilow started out -- he did 'I am stuck on Band-Aid and Band-Aid's stuck on me' and 'you deserve a break today, so get out and get away to McDonald's' and 'Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there'
Out of the ashes of the record industry, which really was the first instantiation of the payday loan usury grift has come a whole new era of music that is arguably better in almost every way from the previous epoch.
If you think it all sounds like TikTok drivel, that is because you are only experiencing it on there. With bands like Highly Suspect, Ren, The Big Push, The Church of the Cosmic Skull and the resurgence of bands like Foxy Shazam, I'd say there has never been a more golden Age of Music than right now. Look Again. Look Deeper.
Also, I could not help but notice that you said you worked in music, but you did not say you were a musician. That says a lot, because if you are not a musician or a recording engineer, then what value did you add to music. Napster ripped off the Execs, not the musicians. They were already fully fleeced by the companies and had nothing left to steal. Good Riddance to the likes of Columbia Records. I was offered a contract and almost signed it back in the day, but I can do math and saw the contract for what it really was, a payday loan I would never be able to pay back. Thank god for math skills.
At present I own my masters and am getting 100% of global publishing and streaming and I'm not even making anything really worth listening to at present. The wall between musician and consumer is gone and it is a personal relationship at this point. That is infinitely better than selling your soul to the record execs.
I’m a guitarist, but I worked behind the scenes in live booking and management with major label artists in jazz, pop and metal. I was also trained to engineer and produce. My friends who had survived in the major label metal world who were able to make an okay pay check in the 80s and 90s went broke in the 00s. Napster took away royalty checks for both physical media and publishing. I’m not saying there weren’t terrible people in the business, but most of the ways my friends earned a living is gone.
Yes, Napster enabled theft. Prior, we dubbed cassettes at 2nd generation quality and no artwork. We recorded off radios to cassette… 2nd generation again. Then with CDs, we could rip and burn copies… very painful and 2nd generation. Wav to mp3 was also noticeable quality loss.
Napster was the first time we could share 1st generation copies with no quality loss.
I was a working musician then and used it to find rare live recording of my favorite bands. This had never been accessible before due to physical distribution limitations. Even “live” concerts were heavily edited videos and professional mixes back then. A bootleg crappy recording was more important than a professionally polished “live” recording to me.
Peer to peer meant I could hear a bootleg from a random person who shared! A bootleg.
I knew it was legally wrong and so minimized my use of the service.
However, it completely changed the industry and Apple was first to recognize it and start the subscription streaming model. I knew then that the prior music industry model was over.
Of course, none of us knew where it would go from there.