Splash No. 170 - Two Thousand and Late
Two Thousand and Late
Out of nowhere, I’ve been experiencing inescapable waves of nostalgia about the late 2000s and early 2010s. Without warning, ten years have passed since I was a freshman in high school with a terrible mop of hair that covered my forehead and a dumb phone. It simultaneously feels very recent and very far away. I have plenty of memories of listening to LMFAO or Cobra Starship on the radio on my way home from school and feeling very suave in my Hollister sweaters and playing the brand new Xbox 360 edition of Minecraft.
Yet, in spite of all of these memories, I know that things have drastically changed since. Obviously, I’m a full-fledged adult now, which considerably changes things, but even among all of my memories, I still wonder what everyday life was like without the constant connectedness of phones at the time. Even if I remember the cultural moments and the big events, my rose-colored glasses make it feel like time used to pass more slowly, less anxiously. I romanticize the idea of using Pandora and YouTube to listen to music that supplement my iTunes collection — appreciating the smallness of the catalog I could access. I think about how much easier it was to put some random channel on TV rather than comb through the millions of shows across five or six streaming services. I think about how my video game collection was never more than a dozen or so games and kept me entertained for years on end. I think about all the inconvenience that we just accepted, and often just felt like a part of the journey — the physical act of buying a video game disc, or getting home in time for a show, or printing out the MapQuest instructions to figure out where to go. And with any journey, it was often part of the enjoyment of the whole experience.
The world we have now is still amazing. It’s never been easy to know what to do in emergencies, to have expert advice available to you at any time, for people to connect with others. Yet I can’t help wonder why we would let the small benefits convince us to let technology eat our lives as much as it has. Sometimes on TikTok, I see kids who never really experienced a world without smartphones romanticize the 00s and 10s, and lately, it’s started to make a lot of sense. Even with the horrific fashion of the era, there was something special about the slightly-connected era that preceded the ever-connected era we live in now.
For the month of September, I decided to spend some time away from Twitter, and have found the world to suddenly be a little quieter and calmer. I’d become so used to hearing people’s opinions on everything, to the point that it’s become second nature to have a take about anything. It had felt normal to have a take about every piece of content I consumed, rather than just let it be. Without Twitter, that voice in my head has calmed a little bit. And based on this experiment, I wonder how I could try and live more like the romanticized past. Perhaps I start calling people instead of texting them more and further remove myself from social media. Since last week, I’ve gotten my hands on an iPod (thanks Maasi), so I don’t necessarily need to be attached to my phone to listen to music. Maybe I’ll load it up with some Black Eyed Peas hits, take an inconvenient journey, and just enjoy the slowness of it all.
Drops of the Week
ALBUM - Really From by Really From - one of my favorite albums of the year! Jazz instrumentals with emo-influenced vocals!
ARTICLE - "You Call That Poetry?" by Ian Daly - fun piece about the most expensive word ever written and the poet who wrote it!
POEM - "Matamis" by Jon Pineda - a diaspora poem that is relatable as someone who struggles with my family's tongue
With each day, we can move closer to a more equitable world. Reminders:
Donate to Help Afghan Refugees Settle in NorCal Mutual Aid Networks
Anti-racism resources
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Nostalgically,
Nikhil