Is Nostalgia The Internet's Crack?

[Bear Up North]

Serious discussion time. When I browse the internet these are some of my favorite places.....

Oldies radio stations
YouTube - Old movie scenes, trailers
YouTube - Classic rock songs, videos
Old time radio broadcasts (news, The Long Ranger, etc., yadda)

This browsing usually results in deep feelings of nostalgia. I am trying to reason with myself (an admirable foe ) by thinking that at my age being super nostalgic is one of the few things I have left, in other words.....normal for my age. Everything I hear or see at these net sites tends to take me back to people, places, events, love lost, love found, yadda. If there was no net (OMG) would I dig through stacks of CDs and long-playing albums? Or search out music (to the extent it is available on-line)?

Probably not.

My nostalgia would stay within my mind, memories of long ago, good or bad.

Bottom-line question for the brian of Cyburbia.....is nostalgia a drug, such as crack, easily available from "The Pusher".....otherwise known as the net?

Seriously.

Bear

[Hink]

Yes. It creates a comfortable environment and provides too memories of times you can relate to. I think it makes people forget about reality and go back to those times. So in the sense that it takes your mind off today, yes it is a drug. But I doubt it can do serious harm to anyone...

[ursus]

I agree with Hink. If nostalgia is a drug and the net facilitates it, it's still no harm.

What a poor place the world would be without reminiscence. If the net can fuel that, and at the same time bring you the reminiscences and nostalgia or people and places you otherwise wouldn't have (like yours, Bear.), and provide new stimulation - well then I say more power to it.

[Dan]

Buffalo is perhaps the most nostalgic city in the United States, and there's no shortage of "lost Buffalo" type Web sites. The sites aren't in the same vein as the wonderful Forgotten New York site, which looks for traces of the city's past in its built environment, but rather full of nostalgia for cultural institutions of the past; retailers, restaurants, businesses, and broadcasters. If I see one more link to a Sattlers jingle .... ARGH!

What's odd is that Buffalo's nostalgia seems much older than other cities where I've lived. When I lived in Denver, I noticed there was a lot of nostalgia for the institutions and businesses of the late 1970s and early 1980s; the oil boom years. In Buffalo, everybody longs for the late 1950s and early 1960s. I've seen more Canadian Web sites weeping nostalgic for the Buffalo television of my youth in the 1970s than those on this side of the border.

Cleveland seemed less nostalgic than Buffalo; I encountered a lot of pining for lost department stores, the "old" WMMS, and the character of neighborhoods before demographic shifts (the glory days of Cleveland Heights in the late 1960s, South Euclid when it was almost exclusively Jewish and Italian, Collingwood when it was predominantly Italian, etc), but not much else. In Austin, people seemed nostalgic for the 1970s and 1980s, in the days before the city was "discovered" by the outside world. It wasn't the weeping for department stores and radio stations that had changed their formats decades ago, but rather a lost "authentic" countercultural vibe, less traffic, inexpensive housing, and the like.

[ofos]

If nostalgia is the internet's crack, I'm not an addict. You did mean crack in the drug sense, not like the south end of a northbound plumber? No attraction there either.

[btrage]

I believe Facebook is the internet's crack.

[Tom R]

Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be. I personally hate the "good old days" emails. A lot of the '50s and '60s sucked.

Cleveland seemed less nostalgic than Buffalo; I encountered a lot of pining for lost department stores, the "old" WMMS,

WMMS was a VERY cool station in the early 1970s.

[Rygor]

WMMS was a VERY cool station in the early 1970s.

Like WKRP in Cincinnati?

[Tom R]

Like WKRP in Cincinnati?

No man, it was really like far out! VERY good music.