Nostalgia Filter: Difference between revisions
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There is a tendency for adults to see newer material in a medium (be it music, film, animation, or comic books) as inferior to the older 'classics' that they knew in their youth.
There are many causes for this. First, people's tastes are generally based on the art they knew as they grew up, and they continue to inform themselves on this basis. Second, tastes refine as one matures; what may have seemed brilliant to a child or teen would seem crude or laughable to most adults, but the memories of how great something from one's youth seemed linger long afterward, making the familiar examples seem better than more or less equivalent modern ones in comparison. Third, change in most art forms comes in waves, rather than developing continuously, and the transition from one wave to another can be jarring and
However, it is likely that the most important cause of this nostalgia is a consequence of [[Sturgeon's Law]] combined with the passage of time: As new material is released, the vast majority will be of mediocre or worse quality, but over time, a powerful selection pressure causes all but the best material (and in some infamous cases, the [[So Bad It's Good|worst]]) to be rapidly forgotten, leaving an increasingly inaccurate impression of the overall quality of the genre over time. This is known as "the nostalgia filter", and can be easily demonstrated by a careful review of the period works that are ''not'' remembered today.
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Of course, this is certainly not to imply that newer is automatically better or that the Nostalgia Filter applies to every single case; just because a person prefers an older work to more modern things doesn't mean they only like it because of nostalgia. Sometimes the older work ''is'' better, or at least has its own appeal that the present things don't -- even beyond "Charm", which is often thrown around to describe stuff mostly to just mean "It's nostalgic".
Sam Viviano, art director of ''[[Mad Magazine]]'', has a saying which defines the
You'll notice that this trope sometimes overlaps with the [[Periphery Hatedom]]. Almost always, when people complain about how new stuff sucks, they bring up examples of things which were marketed towards the youth of their own generation as examples of "good" or even "classic" works in the genre. Never mind that 20 years ago, when it was being marketed towards them, the adults back then were saying the ''exact same thing'' we are today. It's a neverending cycle.
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Don't give me that liberal bullcrap. }}
** [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2253#comic And again.]
* Skewered [http://benzaie.com.over-blog.com/article-gaming-in-the-90-s-sucked-70449258.html here] by Benzaie, who alleges that all the problems that gamers complain about today (genre oversaturation, [[Mission Pack Sequel
* This [http://twitter.com/#!/Discographies/status/5687865124069376 tweet] by Discographies on [[Journey (band)|Journey]] sums up the phenomenon perfectly.
* [[Candle Cove]] starts out playing this trope straight, but is later [[Subverted Trope|subverted]] as we learn about all the gory details.
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