LJ Idol: Season 9, Week 11: Recency Bias
Here is where I channel my inner Andy Rooney. Remember him? For you younguns, he was a longtime correspondent for 60 Minutes on CBS, with a weekly column describing the world as he saw it. Think of a less vulgar version of Stewart or Colbert today. Lots of cynicism, with healthy doses of funny and heartwarming. I miss him.
I might also want to channel my inner Gene Siskel. I miss the guy, quite a lot. Ebert carried on his calling in life very nicely, but it wasn’t the same without the pair of them. I imagine the both of them now critiquing movies in whatever afterlife has cinema, passing the popcorn and the playful banter, panning on flicks that aren’t worth the film they were made on.
And I might want to channel my inner Beavis. Immature, irreverent, and just plain bone-headed most of the time, but without them we wouldn’t have had The Simpsons, or Family Guy, or King of the Hill, among others. Those stupid kids made us laugh at things so idiotic as an inability to say the word Fuck when spray-painted on a wall, or blowing up their house trying to light a cigarette off the stove. I’ve done something they never did - I’ve “scored” (at least twice!).
The 80’s were great. We had such humorous, witty, sarcastic comedians that nobody has matched since. Unless of course you’re a product of the 21st Century, and you have a love for Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, the adults-only animated comedy of Adult Swim, or any number of Ebert’s contemporaries.
The Beatles remain the bestselling music group of all time. Why for? Music has largely moved on in terms of style, but people feel nostalgic for it. I had hair bands, followed by grunge alternative. Through Queen, Rush, and Nirvana we froze in time musically, even though today’s musicians often have clear lines back to those who came before. The people who loved New Kids On The Block are often the very same people that thumbed their noses at the Backstreet Boys or N’Sync.
I grew up with a Commodore 64. I programmed in BASIC and played many games considered legendary today. The Nintendo and Super Nintendo produced many titles that are still every bit as fun to play today, in this day and age of fancy graphics and voice acting. A simple, compelling game is still a great experience - chess hasn’t gone out of style either. While you’re not going to convince me to go back to the days of wall phones and BBS-connected computers (if you were a hobbyist), there was something pretty nice about the comparative complexity and simplicity of what I grew up with.
We operate with a certain recency bias; specifically, a bias against the present day. We have the idea of the experiences we had in our youth to be somehow better than what we have today, no matter how much better or worse our lives are now. It was part of our formative experiences, as the background of our lives at home, at school, and in the community. That song that was always on the radio, or the major news story of our time, especially if we had some sort of personal connection to it, had its share of making us who we are.
Things happening today do not have the same pull on us. Perhaps they should. Have we become numb to our present so as to protect our idea of the world having been a better place growing up? The Cold War sucked. The fuel crisis of the 70s was pretty shitty. The Cuban Missile Crisis was pretty fucking scary. Nobody likes thinking about Korea or Vietnam. We still have our scary tragedies today, from the Twin Towers disaster to the Boston Marathon, to our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. How much has really changed?
I think it’s a mixed bag. Gay and lesbian people can get married in almost half of the states in this country. Cannabis is becoming more and more accepted, reversing a legacy rooted in racism. We pay for this with an even more polarized government than any I can recall, and corporations with more power over the general public than ever. But on the whole, I think it’s foolish to live in this fantasy world of The Good Ol’ Days That Never Were. They weren’t so good, nor were they so bad. They were times. Embrace the good of today for what it is, for there is a lot, and we should not be so jaded as to miss the everyday beauty just because of some idea of what was (and still is) beautiful in our minds.
I might also want to channel my inner Gene Siskel. I miss the guy, quite a lot. Ebert carried on his calling in life very nicely, but it wasn’t the same without the pair of them. I imagine the both of them now critiquing movies in whatever afterlife has cinema, passing the popcorn and the playful banter, panning on flicks that aren’t worth the film they were made on.
And I might want to channel my inner Beavis. Immature, irreverent, and just plain bone-headed most of the time, but without them we wouldn’t have had The Simpsons, or Family Guy, or King of the Hill, among others. Those stupid kids made us laugh at things so idiotic as an inability to say the word Fuck when spray-painted on a wall, or blowing up their house trying to light a cigarette off the stove. I’ve done something they never did - I’ve “scored” (at least twice!).
The 80’s were great. We had such humorous, witty, sarcastic comedians that nobody has matched since. Unless of course you’re a product of the 21st Century, and you have a love for Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, the adults-only animated comedy of Adult Swim, or any number of Ebert’s contemporaries.
The Beatles remain the bestselling music group of all time. Why for? Music has largely moved on in terms of style, but people feel nostalgic for it. I had hair bands, followed by grunge alternative. Through Queen, Rush, and Nirvana we froze in time musically, even though today’s musicians often have clear lines back to those who came before. The people who loved New Kids On The Block are often the very same people that thumbed their noses at the Backstreet Boys or N’Sync.
I grew up with a Commodore 64. I programmed in BASIC and played many games considered legendary today. The Nintendo and Super Nintendo produced many titles that are still every bit as fun to play today, in this day and age of fancy graphics and voice acting. A simple, compelling game is still a great experience - chess hasn’t gone out of style either. While you’re not going to convince me to go back to the days of wall phones and BBS-connected computers (if you were a hobbyist), there was something pretty nice about the comparative complexity and simplicity of what I grew up with.
We operate with a certain recency bias; specifically, a bias against the present day. We have the idea of the experiences we had in our youth to be somehow better than what we have today, no matter how much better or worse our lives are now. It was part of our formative experiences, as the background of our lives at home, at school, and in the community. That song that was always on the radio, or the major news story of our time, especially if we had some sort of personal connection to it, had its share of making us who we are.
Things happening today do not have the same pull on us. Perhaps they should. Have we become numb to our present so as to protect our idea of the world having been a better place growing up? The Cold War sucked. The fuel crisis of the 70s was pretty shitty. The Cuban Missile Crisis was pretty fucking scary. Nobody likes thinking about Korea or Vietnam. We still have our scary tragedies today, from the Twin Towers disaster to the Boston Marathon, to our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. How much has really changed?
I think it’s a mixed bag. Gay and lesbian people can get married in almost half of the states in this country. Cannabis is becoming more and more accepted, reversing a legacy rooted in racism. We pay for this with an even more polarized government than any I can recall, and corporations with more power over the general public than ever. But on the whole, I think it’s foolish to live in this fantasy world of The Good Ol’ Days That Never Were. They weren’t so good, nor were they so bad. They were times. Embrace the good of today for what it is, for there is a lot, and we should not be so jaded as to miss the everyday beauty just because of some idea of what was (and still is) beautiful in our minds.