man.
there’s something really melancholy to me about a really specific phase of modern culture that i dont think has a name. it started as a very masculine culture but sorta seeped out and overtook everything else.
lemme try to break it down into some buzzwords.
Zombies. Bacon. Beard. Flannel. Manly. Man Cave. Craft Beer. Sriracha Sauce. Shotgun. Hipster. Zombie Apocalypse.
Gentleman. ThinkGeek.
that one. remember that one? it’s not all thematically the same but i bet it conjured up a very potent feeling in you.
i’ve been watching this one series on youtube where these super talented dudes who make weapons from fictional worlds and it has a REALLY high production value (it’s called Man-At-Arms and it’s really good, here’s a link) and it reminds me a lot of popular reality shows from that era like Pawn Stars and American Pickers. that, in-turn, reminded me of that sort of culture as a whole. and it kinda just like. took me back a while. back in time to 2011 during the height of when internet culture and pop culture were eclipsing.
remember the time you first saw a meme on a product that was for sale in a department store? i do. it was some school notebooks with ragefaces on them.
if i may, i’d like to name that cultural phenomenon the Post-Geek Movement. it pretty much destroyed the negative social implications surrounding “Geek” culture.
it was no longer nerdy to like Video Games or Tabletop Games.
superhero movies were becoming appointment viewing.
people started looking for media inside the population instead of outwards at big budget corporations. when mass-production was out and artisan-made was in and, eventually, artisan goods became mass produced.
the weight of the internet became too heavy to be contained in it’s cultural bubble and when it popped it covered everything.
maybe i remember it a little more potently than the average person cuz i grew up in portland which was, like, the nucleus of this kind of stuff, but i feel like it still affected culture on a global scale.
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