Time Travel on the YouTube Express
Watching old commercials is like watching a sleeping America dream about itself
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Much has been written about my generation, the one suspended “between Gen X and Millennials” like an incomplete thought. Analysts have long groped for our defining traits: We are old enough to have morosely watched “Nirvana Unplugged” when it aired on MTV, but not too old to post Instagram stories about sheet masks. Ours might be one of the first generations to watch the fashions of our teen years return while we are still just able to pull them off. I’m a freelance writer who’s occasionally had to exploit her personal experiences to cultivate an audience in a rapidly diminishing digital economy. But I also made $36K a year at age 22 as an administrative assistant, which I know sounds unbelievable but was once a fair starting salary for an advanced computer user — even without a degree. I’m not especially old, but it’s still like I’m from another time.
The most notable thing about people born sometime between the very late 1970s and the very early ’80s, though, is the chasm that runs through our experience of media: If we try, we can clearly remember what it was like to experience the world without the internet. We can remember watching it arrive wild, raw, juddering, and adolescent. And we can occasionally wonder how, when exactly, it swallowed us all.
We’ve gamely kept up. We are literate enough to feel as overwhelmed by the invasive, corporate-utopian, rapid-fire post-truth era as anyone: “What if phones, but too much?” It’s nearly as if this is the only reality I’ve ever known, where I can’t spend a quiet moment without checking Twitter, clearing notifications on apps, experiencing anxiety about the discourse, agonizing over every word choice or every photo tag, editing my selfies. I wish I could unsee all the horrible posts from people I used to like. I wish I never had to find out just how many people think violent, oppressive dates are normal or that mental illness makes you shoot others. I wish immutable things like facts and time still had meaning.
I have a strange and vulnerable confession to make: I’ve started watching old television through the magic of YouTube. Suddenly, a young Boy George glitters as he walks across Phil Donahue’s stage. His…
