Reeling In The Years

Long post warning!...

While I did enjoy last nights episode, I can't help but feel that the 2010s is just too recent for a series about it to feature very interesting content. Most of the events featured in last nights episode (which of course is the most distant in time from us) seemed totally familiar to me and nearly contemporary.

I remember in 2010 when the RITY series for the 2000s was broadcast, I felt it was too soon to have created such a series as we were all mired in the depths of the recession at that point and I felt that the series would have too much of a sort of knowing hindsight-biased concern with the economic factors contributing to the recession. That said, by 2010 the world of the early to mid 2000s seemed very different and distant so there was some entertainment value in watching episodes about those times. But then I wonder how much of that is personal because I was a teenager over the 2000s and your subjective experience of the world and in general changes a lot in those years.

I would definitely have preferred if somehow the production of the 2000s series had been held off until now; the world of the 2000s would seem so distant and interesting if viewed freshly from this point in time. The first series of RITY was broadcast in late 1999 and covered the 1980s. I was too young at the time to have cared to watch it but I can imagine that for adults of the time, it would have been a much more enjoyable programme to watch than the 2010s or 2000s series, for a few reasons. For one, things had never been better economically in this country by late 1999, so viewers looking back to what would have seemed then to be the far-off days of the 1980s could have enjoyed watching it. I imagine viewers would have felt a sense of "look how bad things used to be/ look how different things were" and also there would have been a much stronger nostalgia factor for adults looking back on footage from 10 - 19 years earlier on in their lives. In 1999, people didn't have the kind of internet access we have had since the late 2000s, so they were much less exposed over their lifetimes to footage from the past, and even information from the past, than people have been for the past 15 years or so. Life was much slower and less information-dense back then, despite peoples sense at the time that their world was high-tech, and a look back at footage of the 1980s would have been a stimulating treat.

The second season, covering the 1990s, was broadcast in late 2000. Again, I was too young to be watching it at that time but I imagine that since even in 2000 people weren't yet heavily exposed to media and information about recent history in general, even footage from 1 - 10 years previously would have been enjoyable to watch. If you have ever watched the Irish history series "Seven Ages" which was broadcast in 2000, it has in my opinion a real "end of history" feel to it. By 2000 it seemed for Ireland that the troubles in the North were over, the economy was fixed/the way it should be and we were now a modern and normal country. 1999/2000 is like a sweet spot in history. I really like the 1990s series because it has such a strong sense of optimism from it, a sense of Ireland growing up, and personally that was the decade of my childhood.

The series on the 1970s was broadcast in late 2002 so to many viewers it would have had enormous nostalgia value at the time, showing them footage from 22 to 32 years previously. I remember watching episodes of RITY at the time, in my early teens, and loving the episodes of the 1970s the most! It was long enough ago to me that it seemed like a different planet, a simpler time. I loved the music, the look, the footage of the All-Ireland finals, everything seemed so raw and full of life! In contrast the 80s episodes seemed bleak and poverty-stricken and the fashions looked harsh (mullets and big hard-man looking moustaches), and I think the 90s episodes just seemed too recent but I can't quite remember.

The series of 1962 - 69 was broadcast in late 2004 and would have shown events from 35 - 42 years previous, so would have been either sheer history to many viewers or, for the older viewers, highly nostalgic footage from childhood or youth, and so I imagine it was entertaining viewing to most.

In late 2010, when the 2000s series went out, most people had had access to reasonably fast internet (and therefore information saturation) for maybe 2 - 3 years, and so while the events of the preceding ten years would have seemed more familiar to viewers of the 2000s series than the events of the 1990s series would have seemed to viewers in late 2000, the events of the 2010s are massively more familiar to us adults (ten years older) in 2021 after having lived the whole of that decade absolutely bombarding ourselves with information morning noon and night and in turn being bombarded with information.

The past just doesn't seem as distant or interesting anymore. Every year feels the same to me. Music seems bland and overproduced and soulless. Technology doesn't genuinely impress us anymore. 2015 doesn't feel that different from 2017 or 2019. Fashions and hairstyles don't seem to change much year after year. Every country in the world seems to be homogenising in a sort of shallow globalised instagram culture. Even pre-covid, life just stopped seeming fun or satisfying. Everyone is sated entertainment-wise but not in an enjoyable way. We're having AI forced on us that we don't want. Our phones listen to us and the idea of genuinely having privacy like in the past seems quaint and remote. People meet each other on sterile dating apps instead of organically. Everyone knows too much and is too invested in political stuff, especially stuff only Americans should care about (nobody cared about politics in the 2000s or 90s since we were at "the end of history"). Cocaine use seems to have become casual and not taboo. You can see your social media posts from the late 2000s in some cases and often still retain "friendships" with people you haven't seen in that long, making the past seem unnaturally familiar. Sex has massively lost it's allure as everyone is oversaturated with hyper-sexualised imagery from the internet, music, tv shows, social media, fashions in dress and make-up. The economy supposedly boomed in the second half of the decade and yet it never had the real universal feel of a boom that I remember from the 2000s (and understandably so) and my generation and the one after mine are completely fu'cked for the most part when it comes to buying a house and getting on with their lives. Nobody knows or cares about their neighbours anymore and there is little sense of patriotism or meaning in life for many people. Even pre-covid, many people were unhappy. I could go on but I won't. Maybe it's just in my head but I feel like a lot of things are getting worse and not better! I'm sure the kids of today will look back on the 2010s with nostalgia some day and that my views are possibly very biased.

I will watch the rest of the series though as I did really enjoy the episode nevertheless LOL

ReginaldSmythV wrote: »

Must have. Definitely said 5-1 last night.

Can confirm it did. I remember that match too and thought at the time "I'm sure it was 4-1".