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Facts that make you feel old


Chilly McFreeze

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35 minutes ago, jazzygeofferz said:

I saw that Sleeper released an album last year, gave it a listen. Sounds like it could have come out when they were at their peak. Their first album turns 25 this year. I bet Louise Wener's kids are the same age I was when I bought that album. 

Louise Wener was born the day England won the World Cup.

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11 hours ago, BomberPat said:

Now, with Amazon, YouTube or Spotify open in front of me, I could find every single one of those albums by obscure bands and have them all in an instant, but there's just so much of it that I don't know where to begin

This is why I've fundamentally changed how I buy and listen to music.  

I got to the stage where I had hundreds of gigs of mp3s downloaded and never listened to any of them, and with Spotify it's even worse.  So I've gone back to basics.  I buy music on vinyl and listen to it on my record player; I also make mixes of the records I buy and make an mp3 of the mix and have that on my iPhone.  I have a bunch of mates who do the same, and we all swop mixes just like in the old days.

It's really a hell of a lot more satisfying, and means I listen to interesting and rare music that I hunt down, rather than whatever an algorithm suggests.

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10 hours ago, SuperBacon said:

Contrast this to when The Sopranos ended. If we'd talked about the final series anytime in the 6 months since it finished, I would've been able to discuss every single plot detail with you.

I wonder how much of it is down to just broader information overload. I was thinking about it in terms of my early wrestling fandom, in the mid-90s and then again from mid-2000 onwards, the extent to which I was obsessed with it was completely out of proportion to how much I actually watched. I'd be lucky if I caught an hour of content a week, but the space it occupied in my brain, and how much it dominated conversation, was vast. Every playground chat in 2000 was about what was going to happen on RAW this week, whether or not Ken Shamrock was coming back, and so on. 

Now there's just so much more content, and so much more information, out there, that no one thing can take up that space in your brain. The quality of TV might, in many respects, be "better" than it ever has been, but the sheer quantity of it means it doesn't linger in your memories for as long - and quite often, when we're nostalgic for old media, the memory is far better than the reality.

10 hours ago, Loki said:

This is why I've fundamentally changed how I buy and listen to music.  

I got to the stage where I had hundreds of gigs of mp3s downloaded and never listened to any of them, and with Spotify it's even worse.  So I've gone back to basics.  I buy music on vinyl and listen to it on my record player; I also make mixes of the records I buy and make an mp3 of the mix and have that on my iPhone.  I have a bunch of mates who do the same, and we all swop mixes just like in the old days.

It's really a hell of a lot more satisfying, and means I listen to interesting and rare music that I hunt down, rather than whatever an algorithm suggests.

I need to get back into this kind of thing - CDs used to be my main expenditure, especially when I was getting paid weekly; every week, down HMV, scanning the new releases wall, and sinking a good £40-£60 on everything that took my fancy. I ended up with literally thousands of the things - some I'd listen to once or twice, some would be in constant rotation. Gradually I got into the habit of ripping them to mp3 to put on my iPod, and that changing how I listened to them. Then HMV closed, and I lost touch with what was new out each week, so just fell out of the habit of buying them.

I'm lucky to have two decent record shops, and one half-decent second hand records and memorabilia shop, near me, so if I were to get back into vinyl I would be well positioned to do so. But CDs fell by the wayside as I stopped knowing what was out there, and the CD sections in shops started shrinking, to the point that I'll still have a look through them every couple of weeks, but rarely buy anything. My iPod battery is fucked, and runs out if you press a button too many times, so my listening habits on the move changed from music to podcasts, and now that I share an office at work I rarely put the radio or Spotify on any more, so I'm probably consuming less music than I ever have. And the local music scene in Jersey has died a death, so I'm rarely going to gigs any more, which means I'm not engaging with live music, or spending as much time with people who I'd naturally discuss new music with, and time and money I used to spend going to gigs and festivals in England tends to go towards wrestling shows now.

I do try and make better use of Spotify than I used to, though, and have discovered some fun new stuff from it. But a lot of the time I'll forget all about it soon afterwards.

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I think there's a lot of truth there. I didn't get Sky until 2001, and before then I was able to keeop up with almost every soap going (except Emmerdale and Hollyoaks) know exactly which comedy shows would be on on Friday nights and what I would watch live and what I would tape. I've got vivid recollections of entire series' I wasn't particularly interested in. As soon as I got Sky I completely lost track of everything and only kept up with stuff I put an effort into watching or bought on DVD. That was probably a net positive, but still. 

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13 hours ago, Loki said:

This is why I've fundamentally changed how I buy and listen to music.  

I got to the stage where I had hundreds of gigs of mp3s downloaded and never listened to any of them, and with Spotify it's even worse.  So I've gone back to basics.  I buy music on vinyl and listen to it on my record player.

I still carry a cd wallet in the car, people have taken the piss out of me for it but theres something satisying about loading in an album and just listening to it from start to finish. 

If it wouldnt ruin me financially id also do the vinyl thing.

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I think there's also an added element of shared experience, too. Whenever something momentous and memorable happened on a popular TV show, the very next day there'd be loads of people talking about it at the water cooler or among their circle of friends. Nowadays, with so many series on offer, and with no fixed TV schedule, there's much less chance of so many people simultaneously seeing the big moments and chatting about them like they used to. 

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This thread is self-qualifying if, like mine, your brain insists on singing the title to the tune of "Don't It Make You Feel Good," released by Stefan Dennis 31 years ago.

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On 1/28/2020 at 12:10 PM, BomberPat said:

I've always put it done to the overwhelming nature of choice - when the music you hear is dictated by radio, the music press, and what you can find in the shops, your experience is being curated. To find an album by an obscure band you love in a local record shop, or to hear a new track that blew your mind on the radio, was a moment you'd remember, and would dictate your purchases, and therefore your taste. Now, with Amazon, YouTube or Spotify open in front of me, I could find every single one of those albums by obscure bands and have them all in an instant, but there's just so much of it that I don't know where to begin, so I end up not listening to any of it, just retreating to a safer choice. That seems like a near universal experience for all but my most committed muso friends, and I see it reflected in the tastes of students at work, and younger people I know.

I've seen this described elsewhere as a "paradox of choice" whereby when a person is confronted with more choices than they can reasonably decide upon, they become anxious that their choice is not the right one for them and/or to do so would be exhausting and resource consuming.

A simple example would be tomato ketchup in a local supermarket - in an ordinary supermarket, when you get to the condiments isle and look for tomato ketchup you spot the supermarket's own brand, Heinz, Daddies and maybe one or two more brands. If a single new brand of tomato ketchup is brought in for sale, you may be tempted to buy a bottle and try it to see if it tastes better than what you usually buy.

Now say instead the supermarket goes from stocking 3-5 different brands of tomato ketchup to stocking 40 different brands overnight - suddenly, many shoppers now popping in to buy their usual tomato ketchup will find themselves overwhelmed with the options available, wondering how out of all these choices which one will be the "best". Some shoppers will (at least initially) not feel too bothered and will just buy their usual brand, but many of them will at some point later on wonder if any of these new brands are any better, or at least as good but much cheaper than the brand they presently buy, having seen the supermarket have one such brand on a special offer or from talking to others who've tried them. For many others, the choice now available is too overwhelming for them to make a conclusive judgment on their own in terms of cost, the time taken to make comparisons and holding the mental knowledge of what different tomato ketchup's tasted like which may have been several weeks ago.

Also, those brands which a significant batch of shoppers are negative on will likely see the product dumped before it is fully used. and a different one bought at the next supermarket trip, adding to food waste.

Over time, these 40 different brands will almost certainly be whittled down as the supermarket decides to no longer stock brands that are not selling enough, or that some brand manufacturers will stop production of tomato ketchup for whatever reason. Eventually this might go down to five or less but it is also possible (especially in an extremely busy & large supermarket) that there is enough justification to still stock anything from between 10 to 15 different brands if it makes business sense to do so. The regular shoppers in that supermarket will have a reasonable idea of what brand of tomato ketchup they want and will continue to buy - however for new shoppers (living away from home for the first time, or just recently moved into the area) this element of choice can still overwhelm many of them. In any case, this sense of being overwhelmed will often lead to feeling anxious about making the correct choice, especially if you are shopping for a family of picky eaters or money for shopping is tight, and when trying so many different brands none of them are at least as good as the main brand you used to buy - but you don't know if any of the other brands you've tried are better?

This "paradox of choice" is often used to refute right-libertarian & other free-market fundamentalist arguments concerning a claim that offering a consumer more choice is always good, and is a positive example of free markets at hand - of course, the above points mentioned show how it is impossible for most consumers to make a completely rational choice on what brand of tomato ketchup to buy, not to mention other factors outside of their own control e.g. one of the traditional brands responding using their capital resources by selling their product on a short term basis either on wafer thin margins or even at a loss in the hope of driving the new brands out of production and hence the market, putting the price back to normal or higher once most of the new competing brands have been eliminated for consumers to choose.

The Paradox Of Choice essentially claims that choice on its own isn't bad - it's that too much choice is nearly always not a good thing even within a consumer market - even if there is some sort of eventual "correction" from this overwhelming choice, it can't easily conclude that the end result is the right one given the doubts and resources of consumers as well as the behaviour of different brands selling their product to ensure long-term profitability based on their own resources, resulting in even modestly popular brands being eliminated and thus no longer an option to the shoppers.

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