I've been using smol.pub since the 21st of August and this will be my 24th post. They don't all have nostalgic themes, but enough of them do to recognise a pattern. So, why do I write about the past? What follows is an exercise in thinking about that.
A birthday not so long ago saw me starting my 7th decade. I've lived for more than 3,200 weeks and, if I live to what the UK's Office of National Statistics identifies as the average life expectancy for men born in the same year as me, I've got around 1,200 weeks left. I'm over 70% done. It's fair to say that this focuses the mind a little, although let's keep this in perspective - all being well I've still got a quarter of my lifespan to complete, and within reason it's up to me how I do that.
On the other hand, I've already had a lot of years of youth and health and fitness. I've been to a lot of places on 5 continents, had a lot of experiences, spent decades working and almost as many decades married and raising a family. I've done a lot, had many interests, read a lot of books, and so I have a lot of material which other people might find interesting. In a sense it's parts of the history of the late 20th and early 21st centuries through a personal lens, my particular experience of things rather than the Wikipedia article about them.
Ah, well, that's a reasonable question. Firstly, I don't expect that many people are reading my posts, although I've had a few emails and mentions, which I appreciate very much. But if I wanted hits and likes or replies, I wouldn't be writing in geminispace. Primarily this is for me, and I think in part it's a common enough search for the warm glow of nostalgia, and in part momento mori. Tick tock...
I also would like to think that geminispace has more people like me who have been around the block a few times than you find in some other places on the internet, and certainly that's the impression I get from the many posts I read here from other people. And my experiences may match theirs from earlier decades, or be very different but nonetheless interesting to read.
A lot of nostalgia is effective because its readers believe the world used to be better, that society used to be better in a general sense, but inductive reasoning has its limits and must be treated with caution.
It's no accident that people like me write with affection about 35mm film cameras and paper maps and Sunday afternoons listening to the radio. We don't write about cancer survival rates in the 1970s or the prevalence of smoking or the disparity in men and women's wages, so it's cherry-picking. It takes things from the past and implicitly grafts them into the present day in a kind of thought experiment which says look, this thing was good, simple, on a human scale. The technology then left decision making and control with the user rather than with some massive corporation which seeks only to exploit you and sell your data and target you with advertising. So don't forget you could still use that thing or do that activity, or something like it, if you would put your phone down for 5 minutes.
There is nothing inherently virtuous in only having 3 TV channels, using film cameras, cassette tapes or a safety razor and a badger bristle shaving brush, but there is a kind of focus and simplicity to be had from looking away from some parts of the modern world for a while, especially the parts of the online world which are turned up to 11 and want to convince you that your only purpose in life is to consume, and thinking about alternatives. The world didn't use to be like this, and we were no worse for it. And those 1,200 weeks I mentioned - better to spend some of it writing this kind of thing than consuming content on a billionaire's ad sales platform.
Email: kdan01 [at] posteo [dot] net