No, not since 1948, that's way too far back. Since 1998 instead :
- No more fans. Apparently "Michael!!!" was the last gasp of "Franky!111". A few actresses still have a minor following, but to quote Margo, "those people... they're nobody's fans!" Indeed they are not, the only performer with a "following" is the camwhore. The last time any sizable group of young people gave a shit about a performer was when a Republican took their phones and published the content for public ridicule.i Even the "Michael!!!" girlies were mostly ethnos, but by now the behaviour is 100% sorrybop ; and if one could remake Cocksucker Blues today, it'd be entirely not of the same cloth, but very very imported-polyester.
- No more comedy. Evidently impossible between the Scylla of the batshit insane absorption into the self and the Charybdis of "fragmented verticals" (by reason of nobody being capable to maintain interest in the outside world for long enough to come to any kind of similarity with anyone else), but it's a sad loss indeed. Remember when there was Carlin and you could watch Carson dominate Doug the Headii and know thereby why and wherefore your identity exists and works in the world ? Well... no more. All they have these days are a bunch of cancerous fags putting up some ridiculous pretense to continuity on absolutely no basis.
- Elvis is actually dead. No kidding. Like Hitler and Oscar Wilde, Elvis has joined the list of symbols devoid of meaning, capable of experiencing "revivals" in form only. I expect the kids currently pre-teen will hit on a major "fashwave" thing but with the king instead of the fuhrer. These are after all the same thing, no ? They all lived contemporaneously (ie, "before we were born") in that country far away (ie, "Europe") where inexplicable things occur. No ?
- The MMORPG fucking died. Remember how cool the notion was, back in the 90s ? Well, it went nowhere, which is to say gone to China.
- America. Woosh. It's called "the US" now, and it fucking sucks.
- Countries. Remember how back in the 90s there existed this concept, whereby if something's a country it can do things and prevent things from being done ? Forget about it. Some of the orcs don't know it yet, or prefer to pretend like time's flowing slower where they live and so they still got some ; but with the fall of Ceausescu's regime the last actual defenderiii of the "neamestecul in treburile interne" principle went away, and the result is... well... stupidity, what the fuck could it be.
- Paper money. Remember how Dean Acheson (US Treasury guy), Vincent Auriol (French president), R. K. Shanmukham Chetty (Indian finance minister), C. D. Deshmukh (Indian Fed head), Eleanor Lansing Dulles (State Dept party favour / slut), John Maynard Keynes (1950s Piketty, or whatever, W. J. Bryan, same thing), Pierre Mendès France (French PM), Henry Morgenthau Jr. (Chief Jew of 1950, principal financier of WW2), Leo Pasvolsky (Cordell Hull's catamite, author of the "UN Charter"), William Ludwig Ullmann (Soviet spy), Robert F. Wagner (Prussian citizen, only vaguely German participant), Pierre Werner (Luxembourg "Christian-Socialist" PM) sat down in New Hampshire somewhere and came up with an ICO ? Well, it went away. SFYL. (You're not still HODLing, are you ?!)
- Faggotry. Hey, remember how Clinton was hopping up and down about "an epidemic" atop some quilt or whatever in the "National Mall"iv ? Yeah, ok, nobody gives a shit about faggots anymore. Like, at all.
- Drugs. Remember how you could buy heroin in the ghetto and there was a social expectation cocaine be presented in a bowl along with the cigars at any serious party ? Yeah, that's all gone. They grind up aspirin and snort that, now, and psychotic as they are they actually report "effects" from it. Oh, right, and veterinary tranquilizers, let's not forget those.
- I should probably also add sex on the grounds of how every girl I talk to hasn't had any "in like forever", but then again what explains all the children ? Flies ?!
- Space exploration. Hey, remember NASA ?
- Basic literacy and numeracy. Remember how back in the 90s you could rely on someone you're talking to on the Internet having read some things and acquired the ability to sum integers up to arbitrary values ? Yeah, that's all gone now. Even better than gone : they'll think it's your fault their brain doesn't work, you're making them anxious. Can't you speak simply of simpler things ?!
- Television. They had "networks" and shit back in the 90s, remember that ? Like ADG and NFS and whatever the heck ? CPS ? Yeah, that's right, very badly designed web browsers with no buttons were a thing at some point, back in the day of cathodic tubes.
And here's what hasn't changed : "tablets" (omfg, just like in Startrek!!!) came and went ; cellphones came and went (imagine what'd happen if you could instantly talk to anyone -- why, you'd discover in a few years there's no one you want to ever talk to!) ; "3D cinema" (feel the... eh, whateverv) experienced another 1970s style revival ; "wikipedia" (a whole new world of "information superhighway" bla bla bla!!1) came and went ; "animal rights", "alternative power", "electric cars" and all the rest of the periodic inane bullshit sorta-came and sorta-went in the dribbly style it always has an' always will.
There's probably more, but... whatever.
———- Yes, I understand you'd much prefer to not think of it in those terms. Nevertheless, the only component of sexual interest in the whole fappening business was the public humiliation ; nobody cared directly about the marginal assets of the adolescents and confused post-adolescents involved. [↩]
- No, it's not "Just continue -- you want flowers ?" "Why, they think you were dead ?" ; no it's not "what are you talking about, you got a face that could hold a three day rain!" ; it's not "Don Rickles has just returned from the veterinarian, where he gets his monthly distemper shot ; he'll be in the lobby after the show to insult your mother" ; it's not even "you didn't want to jeopardize your career working gay bars, that's why you didn't get married" nor "you've done more pilots than an airline proctologist" nor "he's not gonna respect you in the morning". It's something else and now I can't fucking find it. [↩]
- This is not a joke, it is exact history ; but then again the clueless are readily entertained. [↩]
- The pantsuited half recently misremebered Reagan's outlook on the topic, too, for immense lulz value. Here's the quote :
"While the Reagans were strong advocates for stem cell research and finding a cure for Alzheimer's disease, I misspoke about their record on HIV and AIDS. For that, I'm sorry."
Was it deliberate, as an inside "self effacing" joke ? Or is senility setting in ? [↩]
- Did I review "the four dimensions of Greta in 3d" ? No ? I can't imagine why! [↩]