The 80s were the decade of self absorption and me-me-me. Think American Pyscho. Everyone was too self-absorbed to care Christian Bale was murdering people. (Or maybe it was all in his head?)
The 90s, in response to the hair-sprayed look-at-me bangs of bad metal bands, were all hair down over the face like in the grunge bands that were saying please don’t look at us. We don’t want to be noticed, we want to disappear, and we don’t care about anything anymore.
In the 2000s, we wanted you to look, but it was going to be on our terms. Our voice, our image, our persona on whatever platform we were posting our own little story on.
The 2010s were a total rebuke and loss of trust in everything manufactured, glossy, contrived, mediated, and spoon fed. We don’t want anymore of it because we are most certainly over it.
The question is, how cyclical is all this? Will we return to the self-absorption of the 80s next, or is there another phase? Or do we keep expanding outward because there is so much of us now? Everything will always be new. And why do the framework of 10s matter so much?
If this is all a loop, does anything matter any more other than the present? If it isn’t, does everything matter more? Or not?
This was part of a larger conversation with Joe and Adam over Friday night beers at Krug Park.
