We've had our fun with Flopsie's & Bokito's crazy antics. Returning to an outspokenly nostalgic sentiment, I present to you: Arcadia 198X.
Arcades always have been one of my favorite things, they are a core memory and I associate them with the finer hours of my childhood. So for a while I wanted to do a video on some good old arcade stuff. But while composing the lyrics I came to realize a few things.
I had a couple of days off. Which gave me some extra time to dive deeper into the lyrics. Usually when I create something I pretty much go with my first idea and go full throttle with it straight away. But now I had plenty of time to revise over and over again. And each time I added a layer of depth to it.
At first this video clip was just going to be about as deep as "hey 80s arcade was cool am I right, Pac-Man and Donkey Kong and stuff haha", but it has become more than that. There's some social commentary that has been on my mind and I've managed to put that into this. The result is that with this video I'm showing what you already may feel: that the 2020s feel rather sterile and not so personal, as opposed to the 80s which had a more happy-go-lucky attitude, and where people congregated together more consistently.
While tech dependency definitely has grown, tech often gets a bad rep for being the sole reason why modern life feels a bit empty. But then I thought: hold on, it's not like the 80s were completely techless. Less intrusive perhaps, sure, but it wasn't the stone age, we had digital stuff. What is making a massive difference is that even tech based activities such as playing Nintendo games or the Arcade were usually still social activities. They acted as legit hangout places. Entire families or groups of friends would huddle around a console or an arcade machine and people got collectively into it. Think about it: when was the last time that you and like 4 other people together went excited over a simple game?
That's another core memory I have: me and my neighborhood buddies treated playing video games more or less the same as playing football outside, or playing "war" (basically hide-and-seek with toy guns and going pew pew pew), which we very often did. I remember it being weather based. Was it sunny, out we went. Was it rainy, then on to Super Mario! But the social factor remained, we visited each other on a near daily basis. No appointments, all spontaneously! We were competitive, aimed to obtain bragging rights, and consequently sometimes we got a bit rough with ourselves and with each other when we played outside (and inside even). But all in good spirit. We weren't afraid to get our shoes, hands, and knees dirty. That to me is the essence of the 80s, and that's what I am showing in this video.
Yes, we live in an age now where the smartphone has become a central and even essential part of our daily lives. We pay with it, in some cases we ID ourselves with it, we use it to take the train, for tickets, we navigate ourselves with it, we basically do most of our internet stuff with it, and much much more (oh, and apparently these things also can make phone calls). But that doesn't mean that we have to have excessive screentime and just doomscroll our lives away viewing content that's designed to mess with your dopamine levels. That goes to children as well. We have 10-year olds now who almost never go outside to meet other kids of their own age to do all sorts of fun stuff with. I can't remember the last time I've seen even a pair of kids playing outside, while back in the 80s there would be entire packs of us roaming the streets.
This is exactly why things like arcades also have become pretty rare, not many people visit them anymore. While kids still play games, but on their X-boxes and PlayStations, alone, in their rooms. Or are on their smartphones. They get a lot of crap for this, but you know something, older generations are still the ones who are responsible for the upbringing of our young ones. The same generations that lived through everything I've just said and shown in this video and therefore should know better yet still let it happen that we have alienated ourselves from our peers.
We're all so nostalgic for the 80s, right? Haha Pac-Man and Donkey Kong and stuff, right? But merely that isn't the 80s. What that decade and most of the other decades of the 20th century made what they were was that we generally lived through things together. Want the 80s back? Then put away your smartphone for once and actually make frequent family outings, or with friends. The arcade is a nice place to start. They are becoming increasingly rarer. Save them, save yourselves, and most importantly save the younger generations. That's how you create a new 80s.
Thank you for listening to my TED Talk, please like and subscribe.
On a sidenote: it feels like winter is over. The weather has been mild lately. I've been very anxious to get some yardwork done. Plus there's a bunch of other practical stuff on my to-do list, and places I need to be. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that in the foreseeable future I'll upload videos less frequent. Video editing is a time consuming business, which is fine in the winter. I mean, I live in the middle of nowhere and when it's like -8C all the time what else am I going to do around here. But now that the temperatures are somewhat pleasant again I'll be outside a lot.
So yeah, fewer videos. On the other hand: if I've got an idea I'll write it down and these ideas will have plenty of time to be worked out, hopefully resulting in quality over quantity, that sort of thing.
