Wondering about outfits that could be worn repeatedly, not just one time as an experiment.

EDIT: I should have clarified: I mean provocative not only in the sense of sexual, but also as weird, politically challenging etc

I’d argue 90s nostalgia is much stronger this decade than it was in the 2010s, the 2010s was full of 80s nostalgia besides that grunge revival in the early 2010s

Many times on here, people talk about certain technologies as if they are epic watersheds in human development. And sometimes they are. But often they have precursors and are not as totally modern as people think they are. Many people in the past would recognize the basic idea, even if only as a piece of science-fiction.

Take for example the smartphone. The iPhone was first released in 2007, and while it was revolutionary, it was also basically a fix for things that made PDAs difficult, like having the keyboard onscreen. And including a phone. But PDAs and cell phones had existed for a while, so if you showed a 2026 iPhone to someone from the 1990s, you might be able to explain "its a PDA and a cell phone combined!" (Although even that was possible in 1996).
Before the 1990s, the idea of a smartphone would still be understandable, it would just be science-fiction. But the idea of a portable computer with telephone, television and radio would be familiar things, just combined together. So as far back as the 1920s, the idea of combining these technologies would have been understandable.
It is when you go before about 1900, maybe before the 1880s, that it would be totally incomprensible by any existing technology or experience that people had with things.

And this goes for a lot of technology. Show a modern drone to someone from the 1950s, and they would be amazed at what remote control airplanes are like---but they would understand, this is a remote control airplane. Show a drone to someone from before 1900, they would have no way to understand it.

(Paragraph about motor vehicles deleted because it for some reason triggered a filter? Readded in comments.)

So when it comes to what technology is "modern", it comes down to:
1. When would people recognize it as an extension on something they already had?
2. When would people understand the principles behind it?
3. When would it be totally incomprehensible?

I find it very interesting that even though 3D was a pretty big trend during the 50s, 80s, and 00s/10s, the return of 3d wasn't really advertised as a comeback. What are some other examples of this happening?

Talking about todays era of politics overall

I've been thinking about a strange paradox in how we consume music today. Older music seems to be more popular and accessible than ever before, especially among younger generations. Yet at the same time, it feels like older artists and bands no longer command the same level of cultural reverence they once did.

Back in the 2000s artists like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones were treated almost like untouchable musical royalty. There was a certain god tier status that older music had, and younger generations were often told that modern music couldn't compare to the greats of the past.

Nowadays, thanks to streaming services, TikTok, and social media, younger listeners have unprecedented access to decades of music. Artists like Fleetwood Mac, Radiohead and the Deftones have found enormous audiences among people who weren't even alive during their original popularity. Songs like Mr Brightside, Unwritten, Creep, Iris dominate the streaming charts. The distinction between old and new music seems increasingly blurred.

But even though older music is more accessible and widely consumed, the idea of certain artists being universally recognized as musical legends seems to have weakened. Younger audiences might enjoy a Radiohead or Deftones song much as a contemporary pop hit, but they don't necessarily regard Radiohead superior simply because they're an older, established band.

As well as that, there's been a lot of talk about how younger generations are forgetting artists like REM, Jimi Hendrix, Beastie Boys... and a lot of people just kinda accept "ehh they just have their own artists". But back in like the 2000s, there used to be much more reverence for older music. I wonder what changed?

how will people react if i offer something radically different to this “bad vibes” feeling you describe currently in this decade, almost leaning towards a denial of it?

my body can’t tolerate how negative people are

it’s not the material conditions that i’m in denial of, it’s the idea of bleakness that people have conjured up and sentenced ourselves to as an excuse to not do nothing

bleakness is a huge trigger word

i wanna censor it every time i read it on this subreddit

i dont care if it’s the “truth” or whatever

what i’m asking is where is your agency at???????

what if i told you we’re the ones who say what the truth is, not them

i want you to literally forget about the truth and become in denial and delusional

which are all just negative toned ways to say “let’s pave our own way and not listen to billionaires”

i want you to be in touch with what makes you happy and keep spreading that and expressing that

i want you to be silly like this

i’m done with all this “seeing reality for what it is” crap

surely we’re supposed to be past that stage now

we’ve grown eyes, nice, now when are we gonna grow arms and hands?

i want your heart to take the wheel

i want you to kick out anything and anybody that blocked you from having a idealistic vision

i want you to abandon all parts of your adulthood that made you abandon your childhood

that’s what i’m gonna do now, and have been doing

because this is what the future is gonna be

goodbye

i'm lovin it

What made professional wrestling so massive back in the 90s and early 2000s? It genuinely felt like a cultural phenomenon, especially during the Monday Night Wars and the Attitude Era. WWE and WCW were pulling in huge audiences, and guys like Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, Hulk Hogan and the Undertaker were household names, even among people who didn’t watch wrestling.
Nowadays, WWE is still successful, but wrestling doesn’t seem to have the same mainstream cultural relevance it had back then. So what made that era so special? Was it the larger-than-life personalities, the rivalries, the storylines, or the fact that wrestling felt more unpredictable back then? And why has it seemingly lost some of that popularity? Is it nostalgia, changes in the product, or simply the fact that entertainment is much more fragmented nowadays?

COVID-19 lockdowns destroyed our mental health. They created a cascading effect on our economy and set the stage for decades to come. The 2020s started on this note.

The 2010s were marked by a general sense of unity among the peoples. We were united more or less despite the rising cause of populism sweeping the globe as it is doing today.

Compare that to the 2020s, and it shows how everyone is now angsty and on the verge of crashing out in public. The number of fights recorded in 2020s far surpass the 2010s. With this, I fear for the future of humanity that we would not live till the 22nd Century.

I just remembered how big these two artists were back then...they were the face of young musical super-stardom..but for some reason their careers ran dry.

After Home Alone a lot of studios decided to make kids films where the kids were either fending off criminals and/or put in positions of power. Films like this would include 3 Ninjas (and its 3 sequels), Blank Check, Rookie of the Year, Little Big League, and Camp Nowhere. As for what ended this subgenre, it was no one thing, CGI films just became more popular than live-action kids films.

Great-man theory is a theory of history that, per wikipedia, claims "history can be largely explained by the impact of great men, or heroes: highly influential and unique individuals who, due to their natural attributes, such as superior intellect, heroic courage, extraordinary leadership abilities or divine inspiration, have a decisive historical effect"

Following on from 2016, the rise of Donald Trump began a trend of conspiracism on the right. That the state consisted of The Swamp, and that Donald Trump alone could "drain" it. In fact, this used to be the dividing line between right and left - that the right was characterised by conspiracism and great-man-theory, and the left was characterised by more systemic theories of power, a belief that systems can lead to outcomes even without anyone individually wanting that outcome, even if they all know it's coming. BLM led to people broadly coming aware of over-policing and the way this sometimes was just an outcome of circular systems, which led to self-reinforcing behaviour. Increase in arrests in black areas => more policing => more arrests

But, Trump's management of the government has been very very... direct, to put it kindly. What trump wants, trump gets. Which means that during our current period, great man theory has just proved to be more accurate. As a result, the left has also began to adopt a great-man theory of sociology. With both camps pointing towards the same theories of power, this theory of power will become cyclical, manifesting itself in reality through hyperstition.

Some cultural context worth noting is that irony, camp, and kitsch are aesthetic elements that feature commonly in riddim, the subgenre of dubstep to which AD belongs. Every image featured in this post was taken from his soundcloud page and accompanies some track of his. For those curious, here's an example of one of his tracks. If this is your first time listening to riddim, I wouldn't expect to enjoy it unless you have an exceptionally strong taste for novelty.

AD was most active during the early to mid 2010s. However, the choice of images almost feels more like an ironic throwback to that period than a work contemporaneous to it. The images capture something about the zeitgeist of the early 2010s internet that is too on the nose to be an accident. It's as if he could see how we would remember them. I'm curious about everyone's thoughts on this?

I just watched this video of this guy comparing Cartoon Network schedule from 2012 vs today in 2026, and he’s correct about the comparison. There was a time when Cartoon Network aired anime in the mornings and it hyped the kids up. Also, Adult Swim started at 9pm in 2012, instead of 5pm today. Cartoon Network from 2012 was a very different world compared to Cartoon Network today.

It seems like such a garish, neon-soaked alternate world. It's mostly in gritty crime dramas/thrillers. The music in these movies and shows is usually some weird cheesy rompler synth-country rock jam (reflecting synths of the era such as the Roland D-50 and Korg M1), with the occasional blues thrown in. In many cases the setting is a rural desert or mountain town. Early Tales from the Crypt and Twin Peaks exemplify this perfectly

Even recent movies like Love Lies Bleeding (released in 2024 but set in '89) intentionally harken back to this vibe. It's dated ofc but something oddly charming about it