Glance around online, and you see more and more people discussing the besetting vices of Generation Y.
Oh, a lot of them are swallowing the revisionist psyop that’s dialed back the start of the Millennial generation to 1979 or earlier, so they use the term “Millennial.” But when you’re ragging on people who wax nostalgic about Saturday morning cartoons, Street Fighter 2, or Guns N’ Roses, you are talking about people whose formative years occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s, not the turn of the millennium.
Labels aside, the pathological nostalgia is real. So people wising up to the Popcultishness of Gen Y – by any other name – and calling it out is a positive development.
Because every big franchise that dominated pop culture in the 80s and 90s has long since succumbed to the Corporate IP Death Cycle. Gen Y’s beloved childhood brands are now skinsuits whose purpose is to fleece them at best and propagandize everyone first and foremost.
But so much money is still tied up in these zombie brands that the emerging counterculture will be fighting an uphill battle until consumers stop paying companies that hate them.
Which it’s in everyone’s best interests to do, if only to help beat inflation.
Few manifestations of Gen Y nostalgia reach the same level of morbidity as their pining for Blockbuster Video.
In case you forgot, Blockbuster Entertainment was a corporate leviathan that became a near-monopoly by making sweetheart deals with distributors and embracing shady business practices to put smaller video stores out of business.
If any aspect of the video rental market deserves to elicit a nostalgia pang, it’s the local chains nestled into strip malls, the Mom & Pop stores on Main Street, and the small retailers that devoted a corner of their floor space to renting out tapes and NES games in the 1980s. Not a soulless megacorp.
Maybe you could argue the beast that killed and replaced Blockbuster is more evil. And you’d be right. But even though Blockbuster embodied the 80s Mammon type of evil instead of the Current Year Moloch variety, we’re still well rid of them, and the best outcome would be for both them and Netflix to join each other in oblivion.
That said, the odious rise and belated fall of Blockbuster does serve a useful purpose.
It tracks almost exactly with the flowering and withering of late 20th century pop culture.
Watch this pictorial trip down memory lane:
“Hang out a minute,” I hear you saying. “Blockbuster kept growing until 2005. That’s almost a decade after Cultural Ground Zero!”
And I would reply that yes, the total number of Blockbuster stores nationwide started dwindling then. But that was a symptom of the decline that had set in long before.
As usual, Danny DeVito explains …
The “Getting an increasing share of a shrinking market” stage is what the Blockbuster Video … video shows happening from 1998 to 2005.
After that, it’s down the tubes – slow at first, then all at once.
Is the fall of Blockbuster a bellwether for the fate awaiting its Death Cult streaming successors?
Only time will tell.
Meanwhile, earmark some of your gift budget this Christmas shopping season for unique, thrilling entertainment from independent creators who value your business.
Shop the Blackest Friday Sale, get hot deals on exclusive perks, and help clinch our new stretch goal: these eye-catching and useful Burned Book-marks.
Get the new book early, get the whole acclaimed Soul Cycle in print and digital for less than on Amazon, and get us to $7K. Shop the sale now!
In this case, outside of extreme outliers, I think the one trying to push Blockbuster nostalgia are Millennials. That’s why it’s not catching on. Anything Millennials try to make a nostalgic movement fails because everyone around them knows what it’s like.
Every time I’ve been online when this subject comes up I’ve seen some very ridiculous defenses of this company always couched in the fact that “it’s what I grew up with” somewhere in there. Bo one in Gen Y grew up with Blockbuster: we were too old by the time it swarmed North America and blotted out all other options. We grew up with local stores. As I went into here: https://wastelandandsky.blogspot.com/2020/08/when-vultures-came.html
I still remember when that documentary was announced someone replied to me on Twitter that I was a “Gen X hipster” who missed an obscure coffee shop-level experience and wanted to feel superior to others. It took others in Gen Y (and older, yes) to actually explain that, no, Blockbuster was a worse and far more corporate experience than what local stores and industry offered customers. It wasn’t even close. They also purposefully damaged said local industries. If you’re a conservative or a trad or whatever and you are unironically pining for Blockbuster, I think you need your head examined. It was awful.
That said, I do understand what they ARE pining for, much like those who replay old multiplayer N64 games alone today. It’s the general experience that no longer exists anymore. That said, it’s still an inferior watered down version of what existed before, and I refuse to pretend otherwise. I will not be nostalgic for something I know led to the death of something objectively better.
It should also be stated that independent and b-movie started on a heavy downturn around the mid-90s and was almost beaten to death by the time Netflix became a real contender. They no longer had local shops to sell to. Even now it’s tough to make a movie and get any sort of support outside the system.
All that is to say that Blockbuster and everything it represented sucks. Anyone nostalgic for it should at least be aware of what they are nostalgic for.
Millennials were just born too late to have known how much fun the video rental experience was in the 80s. You could walk into a Mom & Pop variety store, go to the corner in back where they rented VHS and Nintendo, and find A-list releases and obscure gems alike, even on a Friday night.
Fast forward to 1990 – the year the first Millennials were born – when Blockbuster passed the 1K store milestone. Getting the hot new release became a frustrating ordeal. Popular titles were always out of stock, because they under-ordered to inflate demand.
The same went for games. Even if you ran straight to Blockbuster right after school on Friday afternoon, you’d be lucky to go home with a copy of Fester’s Quest or McKids. If you wanted to rent Batman or Super Mario 3, your mom had to go late in the morning on Tuesday after they finished processing last weekend’s late returns.
The punchline is that on-demand streaming should beat the pants off the old system. But the fact that it’s somehow worse is all you need to know about the state of society in Current Year.
“Millennials were just born too late to have known how much fun the video rental experience was in the 80s.”
That pretty much sums up this whole debate. I’m nostalgic for Blockbuster, because it was a staple part of my Millennial childhood. Do I need my head examined like JD says? Maybe, but for a whole lot more legitimate issues than a distant warm memory of going to a video rental store.
At the end of the day, I find the whole infighting about nostalgia silly. How can one be angry at a whole generation who has blinders on to “how it was” when they weren’t even born yet? Let alone were at the level of awareness to truly understand? It’s the natural order of things.
The “back in my day” resentment towards the younger kids is ridiculous.
Not here to refute any claims of slimy business practices on behalf of Blockbuster, because again, my generation including myself, were born with blinders onto whatever the rest of you were old enough to experience.
You make a good point. Which is one reason I’m glad Gen Y bashing is going mainstream.
Far be it from me, someone who likes the 1980s TMNT animated series and misses old Pizza Hut décor, to tell anyone what they can be nostalgic for. I apologize if you think I meant people such as yourself who have fond memories of the establishment when it existed.
My greater point is that I won’t stand for blatant revisionism of things I lived through from people who don’t even show any interest in understanding the perspective of those who came before them. It’s one of the reasons I detested fedoras before I ever became a Christian. Like Blockbuster? Sure, go nuts. Start raving about the things it invented and the industry it supported and enriched? Well, that didn’t happen and you’re idolizing untruth.
That’s all I was saying.
Even when it is directed towards something legitimately good it’s still dumb and lame to distort the real history of something.
For example, I’ve seen people claim that JRR Tolkien invented the idea of an epic quest, or a fantasy story about a band of travelers. Tolkien is a genius author and his books are masterpieces, but those ideas appeared earlier in both myths and older fictions (ex. the works of Frank Baum and Lord Dunsany.) Pretending like Tolkien invented these things doesn’t make Tolkien any better, but it DOES mean that people trying to write good fantasy will just make pale imitations of Tolkien rather than drawing from the same wells that Tolkien did to create something great.
Similarly there are ways that Blockbuster is preferable to the current situation, and you can definitely have personal nostalgia for it But that doesn’t contradict the idea that Blockbuster also killed something better that came before it did.
I can see where actual Blockbuster Nostalgia can come from. On the other hand you can see how absurd that type of nostalgia can get when you consider that one 00’s nostalgia list that said the 00’s were a time of prosperity and global stability.
Of course the real lesson is that unbridled nostalgia isn’t good even when its object is something that was legitimately great. That’s the trap that Generation Y falls into.
As much as I love Tolkien, a conspicuous subset of the counterculture – among the Catholic contingent in particular – desperately need to read another book.
Reading Tolkien – with some Lewis on the weekends and maybe, if you’re the deeper sort, some Chesterton, is not a sufficient foundation to build a parallel literature capable of engaging current audiences.
The ironic part is that Tolkien was not taken seriously until recent generations. Now it is about all they will read, discuss, and compare anything to. As a consequence they are missing a lot of great art and entertainment.
I’ve seen legitimately talented writers and projects dismissed because they aren’t done just like Tolkien would have done. Well, of course they’re not! The culture and society you need to create someone like him no longer exist! You need to address the times as they are with the people who currently reside in it. That doesn’t mean scrapping him, but it means not idolizing a man who would smack you upside the head for idolizing him.
Christians and general conservatives (and even moderates) would do well to try and connect with what is there instead of pining for a “there” that doesn’t exist. That is what the subversives are already doing.
All good, man. Sorry if I misunderstood your words as well.
I was born in ’92 so much of which you speak I have some fond memories over and I share in your righteous anger that those things were phased out in favor of sterile corporate aesthetics.
Speaking of Pizza Hut, I’m sure you have seen some of their recent commercials, decked out in the old Pizza Hut look, but point to me any Pizza Hut still standing that looks that way. It miffs me to no end for that kind of visual dishonesty. But they know who they are marketing to with that ploy. It’s all about those nostalgia dollars.
I get what you mean. My local Pizza Hut was recently converted from an actual restaurant into a grey brutalist shoebox slapped against a mini-mall with a takeout window and little else.
It’s a pattern I’m definitely no fan of.
Brian
Blockbuster never arrived in my town due to language. There were mom/pop stores but these were the depanneurs. I grew up going to Videotron. It wasn’t far my house and it was packed on Friday/Saturday nights. The selection was plentiful. One of the fun rituals was to wait for someone to drop off a popular movie so we could rent it to take home that night.
xavier
I think the only time I ever went into a real Blockbuster was when I picked up the Extended Edition of the Two Towers as a last minute birthday present. Pretty sure I got price gouged too.
Almost definitely.
I will not be nostalgic for the chain that put my uncle’s awesome video shop out of business. I wrote about that here: https://alexanderhellene.substack.com/p/the-video-shop
We were sold the illusion that “bigger = better” was progress. Large box stores and national—sometimes multinational—were better than locally owned because of cheaper prices and bigger selection. Those things might be true, but they are caused by, and caused, other things nobody seemed to take seriously at the time. So now a handful of conglomerates run everything. Progress!
There can be no progress but spiritual progress.
The West must relearn this lesson, however much time and pain it takes.
That is so well said I may have to steal it.
That is what mature artists do.
I was just musing the other day how all the local clubs, institutions, and even businesses, from when I was a kid are all gone now. Their replacements have just been rotting, empty buildings.
At some point we’re going to have to have other interests other than ourselves.
I will never wax nostalgic about the chain that put my uncle’s awesome video store out of business; read about it here: https://alexanderhellene.substack.com/p/the-video-shop
Yes, he pivoted to other businesses, but that’s not the point.
We were sold the illusion that “bigger = better” was progress. Large box stores and national—sometimes multinational—were better than locally owned because of cheaper prices and bigger selection. Those things might be true, but they are caused by, and caused, other things nobody seemed to take seriously at the time. So now a handful of conglomerates run everything. Progress!
Huh… As a millennial, I was kinda shocked to realize that I didn’t particularly care about blockbusters closing. Legitimately I have very few memories of being in Blockbuster and most of those memories are of me being mildly disappointed that the popcorn was unavailable because it was either out, broken, or we couldn’t afford it and the movie we were renting.
The other memory is being excited for the movie we were renting because outside of the extended The Lord of the Rings we didn’t have much in the way of movies, and most of the time we were getting Star Wars to watch while mom and dad went on a date night. Other than that, I get no feelings of nostalgia at the sight of Blockbuster.
That popcorn was such a freaking tease.
So I learned to make it even better at home:
https://brianniemeier.com/2021/03/how-to-popcorn/
I’ve actually seen that recipe twice on this blog. That being said, I bookmarked it so that, memory willing, I can share it with friend and we can have a taste of a past we never knew.
Please enjoy responsibly.
As a kid in the 90s, the main thing I remember about Blockbuster is how much everyone hated it. People were constantly complaining about the late fees and such. My family always rented stuff from Hollywood Video. Different chain, but largely similar experience, I think, in going to the (relatively) big store and browsing for movies and all that. So it’s a little funny seeing people waxing nostalgic about Blockbuster when it was so frequently disdained even back then. But I sort of see where they’re coming from, if you were a kid born in the early-mid 90s you feel sentimental about going to Blockbuster with your parents, but don’t remember any of the bad stuff about late fees and all that. Born in the late 80s myself, I’m sort of in-between, so I guess I can appreciate both sides here.
I actually had no idea that Mom And Pop video stores *existed*. I’d never even heard of such a thing until I was a teenager, probably, and by then it had more the connotation of a shady joint where you rented naughty movies, or something like that. You went to Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, those were pretty much your options. Maybe it’s just a symptom of where I grew up – in Houston, a concrete strip mall metropolis that was fertile ground for proliferation of big-chain everything. Looking back, it’s a bit unnerving how much my childhood was dominated by the Big Corporate Entity experience. I really didn’t know anything else existed. So for a lot of us, our nostalgia is disconcertingly wrapped up in Stockholm Syndrome. For those like JD and Brian who are a bit on the older end of Y, it’s all a bit more bittersweet I’m sure since your experience was less corporate and more local.
I noticed with some chagrin the original Blockbuster stores mark the corners of the Texas Triangle, roughly speaking. Sometimes, “everything is bigger in Texas” is a problem.
My family came back stateside in 1991, after Blockbuster crossed the 1000 store mark, so we never really had the local Mom and Pop video store experience. We’re such bookish people that “Let’s go rent a movie to watch together” wasn’t a big draw in the first place. By the time I did, the mom and pop places were gone, or places I wouldn’t go, so chain stores like Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, and Hastings are the only places I associate “let’s pick a movie to watch together” experience.
For reference, this was Blockbuster’s public image back in the 90s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwFfkyZg3RA&t=13s
I’m a young X / early Y, but living outside the US changes some things. In a city about the size of Chicago, I knew of three mom and pop video stores all requiring a car to get to; the one at the Athenaeum was the cool one, with anime and everything, but also the farthest one (it’d be like in the village if I i lived in the Bronx). Then there was a chain called Video Color Yamin that were more evenly distributed, but basically had nothing outside videos and ver very few games, no snacks or anything.
When Blockbuster arrived, with Pringles chips and Häagen-Dazs ice cream they became the hangout, specially in the strip mall of a long cul-de-sac street like mine. Maybe they put the mom and pops stores out of business, like they did with Yamin, but then they went out business themselves way before everywhere else due to the onslaught of pirate DVDs where you could just buy one for the price of a rental. They were backed out run by someone (or someone’s cousin) in the city’s revolutionary guv’ment, and the national agencies turned a blind eye to it because they hated America. Those who didn’t like the situation just turned to cable and to rewatching everything we already had…
For some folk, Blockbuster was all they had.