Writer's Block: Back to the Future

I'd relive 1987-1994 at the age I am now, with everything I have now. The late 80's and early 90's were the best not just because I was a kid then, but times were just simpler. It was before the non-geeks took over the internet and it took a serious nerd to boot up DOS...the skills and interests that once defined a select group of outcasts are now expected of today's youth. I remember when people looked at me like I had 3 heads for meeting a guy off an IRC chat and spending more time playing computer games opposed to console games or watching TV: Now people look at me like I have 3 heads because I refuse to start a Facebook page let alone meet some random schmuck off of it.

It was before the days of putting young kids on Ritalin and Prozac just for being kids and these counter-productive anti-bullying movements. (and how it doesn't make one iota of sense that the same school boards and watchdog groups who rain fire and brimstone about childhood obesity are the same morons who don't want kids to run around at recess, or even have recess? Are you kidding me? Am I the only sane person on earth?!)

There's some things that I think are great as a result of the non-geeks taking over the internet and the rise of e-commerce-- like the fact that musicians, filmmakers, and software developers are beginning to phase out the old way of selling their products and raising funds for both projects and growing their businesses. The Angry Video Game Nerd surpassed his funding goal on IndieGoGo to make an AVGN movie, and Tim Schaefer/DoubleFine Productions broke all Kickstarter records by raising nearly $2M in one week! (with a $400K goal, only 25% of which was going to go towards the game itself, with the rest towards the documentary film.) Let the publishers and venture capitalists cry all they want over never seeing a piece of the DoubleFine pie: it's what they get for saying adventure is a dead genre and refusing to put up funds for these projects, or putting up funds only on the conditions of massive payouts and meddling with the project to the point it's totally bowdlerized from what it was supposed to.

It's also pretty awesome that the very same game and documentary can be viewed on a device smaller than a sandwich. Since I'm also an audiophile, I also like the convenience of having every song I own all in one place-- no small feat considering the amount of music I own, and I still haven't gotten around to ripping my vinyl! I remember when my dad had a prototype CD writer in 1997 before they hit the mass markets, and it was a big, big deal that I was able to make mix CDs opposed to mix tapes. I also remember when the CD-Man upgrade from a Walkman catapulted you to royalty in the 6th grade. Now...you can get a CD player for $10 or less!

But despite the way some things changed for the better, I just think that for all of the modern conveniences we have now, we've paid a price in terms of society's outlook just not being as simple as they once were. Now that we're not occupied making mix tapes, leaving computer tinkering to us nerds, and having to make arrangements meeting up with people where you'd have to hope they were in the exact place at the exact time you specified-- people just feel the need to overcomplicate things.