how do you just get up and deal with the fact that there’s a last time for everything. there was a last time you sat on your dads shoulders and there was a last time your mom tucked you into bed. there’s going to be a last time you kiss your sister on the head and there’s going to be a last time you hug your best friend. there’s going to be a last time you feel exactly as you feel right now and there’s going to be a last time that person says i love you. i need to lay down
Iain Thomas, The Light That Shines When Things End
how long are radio stations gonna say “80s, 90s, and today!” We’ve entered the third decade of “today”
I work at an oldies station. Every six months we sit down look around the table and someone goes “Y'know, we could start adding ‘90s to the mix. It’s within our format.” We all nod and no one plays anything produced after 1989 because time stopped here sometime around 2003, and no one wants to be the one responsible for whatever consequences come from breaking that fragile illusion.
not to be boring, but I’m boring
There’s a reason for that, and it’s Napster and iTunes. People could suddenly buy and listen to whatever music they wanted to, whenever they wanted to. Starting around 2003, we were no longer all forced by media conglomerates to listen to the same few songs anymore, endlessly repeated on the radio till we were sick of them.
So our taste scattered, in a way that I find really beautiful. The long tail was born. The rise of the indie musician began. The 1,000 true fans theory (briefly) become a possibility, and record labels lost their chokehold grip on both artists and listeners.
But! Also!
Collective nostalgia also froze at that point. After 2003, we only culturally shared the experience of a song or two a year, and often we did that for a reason external to the song itself – like a dance or a controversy or the rise of a new platform (“Gangnam Style,” “WAP,” “Old Town Road”). The songs that we have in common now, we no longer have in common because we are forced to listen to them four hundred times a month by record labels, radio stations, and MTV, but for other reasons. The advent of truly open personal choice in music was also the end of collective music culture.
2014 Tumblr wasn’t about whatever Tik Tok thinks it was about. 2014 Tumblr was about overanalyzing Captain America: The Winter Soldier and that one website that let you play Cards Against Humanity online
And it slapped
me on a date: tell me your thoughts on 2014 tumblr them: oh that place? lol that was so cringe I- me, shoving breadsticks into my purse: I have to go
secret government agent: *punches me in the face* SAY IT! me:nogovernment agent: say 2014 tumblr was cringe and the new culture is better! me: *spits blood at the agent’s feet* fuck you
“[whatever Tik Tok thinks it was about]” I came out to have a good time and I’m honestly feeling so attacked right now
because 2014 tumblr had the best snemes (snake snail memes)
none of you denying it now would survive the Skeleton War
Beautiful Internet Era Too Good For This World, Too Pure
girls don’t want boys, girls want a return to actually wholesome memes
when I die I want 2020s tumblr to lower me into my grave so you can let me down one last time
I will climb 90-post-per-day blog archives to find 2014 tumblr content. I crave that mineral
this post is the real last meme of 2014
“average site spawns 3 iconic memes a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average site spawns 0 iconic memes per year. 2014 tumblr, which lived outside Plato’s cave & spawned over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
I'm a musician, a christian, a writer, a nervous wreck, a Max Bemis enthusiast, a father, a son, and a friend. 
