I imagine there will be a lot of Pokemon GO creepypasta. Things like people finding bodies or walking into traffic while playing already actually happened, so it's only a hop skip and a jump to cell phones haunted with specters of dead kids searching for Pokemon.
I'm really hoping for a fatal frame/they live sort of scenario, where the pokemon go ar camera keeps picking up things that aren't, and never could have been there. Odd doorways to other worlds, or distortions in time and space.
I don't think we collectively want to believe things were always bad and thats why we like nostalgic creepypastas. I for one like those types of creepypastas and find their horror effective because it takes something I'm familiar with, something that feels safe and happy and nostalgic, and makes it feel unsafe. Twisting familiarity into horror is effective in storytelling.
miiiwu she went to her Louisiana neighbourhood in ground grave after it rained cos the bones could be seen and she stole them for magic reasons and offered to ship them elsewhere. She also called those graves "poor man's graves" because they couldn't afford to be memorialized in a way that didn't make their bones show up after rain like others.
OMG I was in the facebook group where she tried to sell those bones!!! I remember that post! What a shitshow. I can see the negative nostalgia already forming in my mind...
My favorite stuff in general is stuff like the SCP archives. I cant even begin to think what we'll cherry pick for this time, since the bad news is incredibly oppressive and constant.
Justin Shananaquet SCP is just the dang pinnacle of Internet horror. The use of an in-universe approach and the dry scientific tone elevates the storytelling so much from basic creepypasta. And while it seems counterintuitive for Internet fiction, given that anyone can contribute to online content, the rigorous standards and moderation are what has kept it the best in my opinion. I hope it’s preserved for a long time.
Mary McGinnis its been so long since Ive checked read them but there was one that was a pill that could cure ANYTHING and one of the workers used it for a hangover. My favourite creepy one is the endless staircase that has a spooky face in it.
I think one of my faves of the horror focused SCPs is the one where you actually get to see everything thats normally redacted, the one with that giant coral monster thing? And then on the other side of the spectrum is that chicago defense AI that hacks the postal system to make sure poor kids get toys for Christmas. Also the spirit of Halloween trowing raves
I've already noticed a trend to nostalgize (is that how you turn that into a verb) that summer PokeGo was released. I think our turnaround time for this has shortened drastically, or at least for me -- there's something inherently more therapeutic for me to return to an event that occurred when I was an adult (and things were bad, but this thing one thing was good and I'm gonna cling to it!) than to one from when I was a kid (because I was a white lower middle class kid in 90s America, and everything seemed fine!).
I thought about Pokemon Go! too, and the summer it first released, when she asked what our future selves would cherry pick from this point in time. (And I also agree with you, that it's being nostalgized very quickly by those who participated in the game from the get-go.) That summer, but especially that first week, was so surreal in the sense that kids of truly all ages were meeting up in parks, and helping each other figure out the game and running around together chasing invisible pokemon.
I think some of it was just that it was really enjoyable, and got people outside, and gave people reasons to chat and have fun together, instead of hiding from each other (and the heat!). But part of it, I imagine, was the fact that shortly afterwards, we had the chaos of the election, and since then, it seems like there's been just...a lot of garbage running around. So I imagine that, for many people, it's also associated with that "last good time".
pokemon go really was a phenomenon. in my hometown, a tiny (10,000 people) rural town in the south, there were people all over the city square playing it. seeing my square at night, filled with people, made it feel so alive. weird to think that that was two years ago haha
Man, I love these videos. I’d never thought of this, but it makes a lot of sense. I feel like this applies to one of my old favorite hobbies, nuzlockes, in which you play Pokémon games but when Pokémon faint, they die. We write a ton of stories about it, making the games we so loved as kids grow up with us and become more serious and high-stakes. Though a lot of them remain hopeful, it can definitely get very dark. I don’t know, maybe it doesn’t apply, but it was the first thing I thought of.
3:35 - 3:41 I didn't have a childhood I could look back to in fondness. This is why I love negative nostalgia to the point of only listening/making sad vaporwave. Being reminded that the best time of your life was short and gone is worse than believing it's always been as shoddy as it is now, with some high points.
I'm gonna keep that point about how negative nostalgia is a tool to mentally rework the past to bargain with the present in mind when reading the next stories for Creepypodsta, a podcast im often a guest on about discussing and analyzing creepypastas. its on itunes, google play, and at funtimes.online - Thanks Jenna, this was awesome!
I think one thing that makes copypasta/creepy shit about old videogames so successful was the vagueness of old graphics. In most horror, things happen under the cover of darkness, in old creepy unlit corners, etc. You can't define the boundaries of whatever it is you're looking at, and that's creepy. Since older games couldn't make their graphics photorealistic, the mind has to take more leaps to get to what the object is. Some newer games emulate this very successfully. I'm thinking of Undertale specifically. I got that same "creepy old game where I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen in the space" feeling as I used to with Gameboy Pokemon, etc. Anyway, I'm not sure where this vagueness is nowadays.But it makes for good creepies.
this is interesting, because i personally enjoy horror-related and horror-themed media, although i consider myself a very happy and positive person. i myself don’t buy too much into negative nostalgia, but i find the concept intriguing, although it’s pretty pessimistic. i never really thought of creepypasta as a negative thing, even though it’d make me paranoid when i was younger. i was drawn to it a lot, particularly when i was younger. now, i’m less easily frightened and i can seldom find a creepypasta that is actually well written (penpal is my favorite though, extremely good read). but, being younger and more susceptible to fear, it didn’t matter as much to me how the story was written, because i focused more on how ~scary~ it was.
The obvious answer to what will get the negative nostalgia treatment in the future is Polygon video content, most of which already turns into some sort of creepypasta by the end of the series. y'all are troubled :)
a creepypasta where brian is haunted and psychologically tortured by a sentient piece of cardboard-- oh wait, a creepypasta about griffin's amiibo corner where he tries to put toad in his mouth and end up trapped in a hell dimensio-- OH WAIT,
I heard a great theory that the reason our generation (millennials) is obsessed with discovering the dark truths underlying mundane or childish things is because that we were the first generation to learn, as children, that "Ring around the rosy" is actually a song aboot the black plague. The reason I love this is because it's actually not. That song predates the epidemic, and scholars generally agree that it's just mostly nonsense, as songs for and by children usually are. So we've actually been making up "dark truths" since we were in elementary school.
I think that us 2000s kids will probably not idolize our youth as much as the 90s kids, not only because we have seen and make fun of that behavior, but also because we have grown up in a time directly after 9/11 where there isn't as much of an effort to shelter kids from the harsh realities of the world. If something does become nostalgically celebrated however I think it'll be Skylanders, it was really pervasive for a while.
I remember talking about the Iraq war as a child in school, and seeing reports of dead soldiers on the evening news. I was also basically always aware of 9/11 even if my parents didn't let me see it. So yeah I've kinda always been aware of the horrible stuff in the world so I don't think I feel as much nostalgia for that time, If there's any time I'd feel nostalgia for it would be the late 2000s and early 2010s because despite the recession at least it seemed like some stuff was getting better with increasing LGB acceptance (not T or Q though) and it seemed like there was at least a small move towards pacifism.
I really doubt anyone's gonna be nostalgic for the current era of 2016 through whenever the gods finally decide we've suffered enough. It's just gonna be remembered as "That period where we kept thinking things couldn't get any worse and were repeatedly proven wrong."
Wouldn't say negative nostalgia is a new idea necessarily - hauntology is a branch of cultural theory that's been around since 1993 which is literally defined as "The ideas of the past returning to haunt the present", a good essay on the subject here - rougesfoam.blogspot.com/2009/10/hauntology-past-inside-present.html
I think streaming stuff will be a, a big generational indicator in future media, and b, a huuuuuuge target for negative nostalgia. I mean, hell, there’s already massive amounts of compilations of bizarre, gross, or morally tone-deaf moments from twitch streams. The weird, specific type of frenzy that is a live chat seems like a parallel to other types of cultural hysteria (I know, that word sucks, but I can’t think of a better way to phrase it) like vandal mobs after football games.
These videos are sooooo great and so interesting! I'm loving the topics you've covered so far and can't wait to see more! I remember being really into the first creepypasta I ever read (it was that one about the bootleg pokemon game that was called Pokemon Black - before the real thing came out) and being completely spooked by it. I wonder if I was so struck by it because I loved pokemon so much as a child - so it had a big negative nostalgia affect on me - or if it was just because I'd never encountered at thing like it before. It's crazy now that there seems to be an active creepypasta fandom with people writing fanfic for these scary version of childhood characters. I wonder if this will show through in mainstream horror in the future! We've already had a slenderman game and marble hornets, not to mention films like unfriended or games like simulcra that lean into a kind of glitch-based, broken technology side of horror. Maybe stuff like this will become a new horror staple!
I want Polygon to make more videos like this. Don't get me wrong, I'll watch the staff play Jackbox games all day, but critical insight like this is valuable and can't be provided by others. I really hope we see a stronger push in this direction.
my god, that is so fascinating. you brought up what we'll be nostalgic about in the future, but if your theory about nostalgia comparing the past to the present is right, then it depends entirely on the direction the world takes. things could get a lot worse or a lot better in the next twenty years, and that could change the way we remember this decade entirely
"No one is writing creepypasta about Fortnite" thats were you wrong lady, also back in the day when Minecraft was still in Beta people wrote Minecraft creepypasta, the MLP creepypasta fandom was kickstarted with a gorefiction called Cupcakes which was posted shortly after the show came out. Creepypasta isn't exclusive to nostalgic content, its just that lost media is creepy as it is and making up scary stories about lost media makes it 1 easier to believe (especially when you are still young) 2 makes a already creepy thing scarier.
Oh damn, I was expecting something fun, not to be punched in the gut by the fact that negative nostalgia creates continuity with our current experiences lol Great vid
i feel like there won't be that much nostalgia for this period, or if it happens it'll be sooner than expected. Things seem to come and go so quickly, we tend to forget what was going on even just a couple of months ago
pokemon is always a target of this stuff, so I expect Pokemon Go will be too. Maybe we'll see some VR and 3D movie stuff, since those are fairly big rn. Potentially stuff like Cards Against Humanity too.
OH MAN I want to see CAH creepypasta/horror. Communicating with entities via CAH games. New, eerie or unsettling cards appearing in the middle of play. That's a goldmine.
it's possibly a little narrow to say that nostalgia has a distinct social "purpose," since it is a phenomenon that is emergent within individuals, as an isolated experience. It certainly interfaces with the collective via individual behavior, but the ways in which this happens is not a given; it is provided some cultural channels that are likely to change as culture changes.
Just coming to reiterate that Jenna is the powerhouse at Polygon now. As much as I love Simone's style and her opinions, Jenna is the name to know. (At least, until Susana Polo starts producing video content again regularly, then you can't make me choose!)
I was trying to play Fortnite but the server is having some issues and literally logged onto RUclips and thought “ man I wish this girl uploaded a new video in this horror media series, it’s like one of my favorite’s and the whole you freaking uploaded one about nostalgia like damn yeah I wonder how I’m going to be thinking about this part of my life 10 years down the line. I’m drunk.
Because if it is then I have experienced this personally with repressed memories comming back, turning what I thought was a great childhood into pretty much a horror story.
The only issue I have with this video is that these creepy pastas that she's bringing up are pretty old. Things are dark now, but they might not have been so much when they were originally posted. In fact, 'Ben Drowned' cropped up at the beginning of Obama's administration, or partway through, I believe. Therefore, the theory that we make our nostalgia dark to draw a line to the dark times today kind of falls through, a little bit.
Suppystar Many people on the right were filled with rage, terror and misery by the fact that there was a Black president. Racism has been a huge driver of dissatisfaction among white people in the Western world. But more generally, the decade since the start of the Great Recession has been characterised by insecurity and unrest. Obama was a decent president, but the world has been getting noticeably darker for more than the last few years.
That's a good point. At the end I did wonder if future generations WOULD do the same thing. 90s kids are weirdly unique in that - so the theory goes at least - we are more affected by nostalgia, generally speaking, because we've lived over a period of rapid advancement, especially in tech. So because our brain links the simplicity of things like dial-up, AOL, retro games and Windows 98 with the simplicity of childhood, we are profoundly affected by this kind of horror because it's so connected with simpler, safer, easier times. I wonder if my younger cousins who have never known anything less than broadband, large social media and smart phones would be as affected because they don't have that connection. On what you said about "making things darker because times are dark now" connection falling through, these creepypasta seem to coincide with when "grim and gritty reboots" were at their biggest (The Dark Knight Trilogy, The new Star Trek Films, Sherlock Holmes, The Amazing Spider-Man etc.) so I wonder if the negative political shift (ie our reality becoming darker) will push pop culture further into darker tones or if there will be a reversal where most of our media will become lighter and brighter as a form of escapism. Lots of people still like gritty reboots but a lot are very vocally sick of them now. Future generations may take up a more optimistic mantle as a reaction to our negative nostalgia trend or they may do the same thing, depending on how our society changes.
Haha this brings a thing strongly to mind: I was born in late 1989, November of '89, so I'm 29 years old at time of writing--roughly as old as The Simpsons. And I *grew up* on that show--and people nowadays will see the show as it is, which is limp dicked garbage, and the idea that it was once a cultural phenomenon is incomprehensible from today's perspective--but it's true, and I remember that time! Anyone who's seen the early episodes, which deal unequivocally with everything from the cult of psychosocialization to politics to theology, should understand when I refer to "Simpsons Mania" as an American cultural epoch (albeit a short one)--and anyone else can't be blamed for *not* understanding..! Because what "The Simpsons" is today is so far from what it used to be that the name in common alone is a fantastic standing example of the limitations of language haha. One of my earliest memories of anything, in life, ever, is of being little and watching the episode of The Simpsons with my family where Homer forgets to pick up Bart after soccer practice and, when he suddenly remembers, guiltily imagines him as a starved-to-death, picked-and-bleached-clean skeleton with spiky hair on top somehow haha. I only have a handful of memories older than that, and that one is early enough anyway to be one of those really surreal, impactful memories we all have a few of, if we're ordinary people haha. But I mention it to say: it's rare something so psychologically fundamental makes it onto the broad, lowest-common-denominator that is TV... and those sorts of meditations are deeply lost in modern culture--in a way only oldsters like almost-thirty-year-olds can bemoan haha. If I have any faith in the future, it has to do with rave culture haha. This is to say, as well: it may seem silly to apply dark theories to movies or shows whose creators had none of that in common, at least for their "intended" audience... but I like the self-critical aspect which is willing to see our most treasured childhood memories as potentially horrible and worth rejecting. It gives me faith in our species' ability to adapt haha.
I don't really agree with your conclusions here. People aren't trying to reconstruct the past as broken or miserable. Negative nostalgia is about collective fear memories that now seem strangely simple, unique, and even wholesome. I'm glad you brought this up though. It's a fascinating subject.
Don't like to be *that* person, but I hate found footage creepypasta. "Video game" cp too, but not to the same extent. I don't have any poll or statistic to prove it, but I know that many people find these types of creepypasta (along with some of the more popular ones), to be of the worst. They're not creepy, and they certainly don't give me that sinking feeling. I find myself rolling my eyes when I realize I'm reading one. Many aren't written well, although it may just be because the found footage topic itself is hard to write well. I've come to find, however, that a story doesn't have to be written well if the matter is pressing enough. There are stories I've read that I think about years later, not because they were particularly well written (although it does help), but because it suggested such a jarring idea, situation or twist. I realize this video isn't focusing on creepypasta, but on nostalgia. I wanted to voice my feelings on the creepypasta part, though.
fanfics in 2030:
I opened up the lootbox. But instead of the happy gold icons, hyper realistic blood poured out instead...
You joke but people might actually use lootboxes to tell genuinely good stories about corporate exploitation.
I imagine there will be a lot of Pokemon GO creepypasta. Things like people finding bodies or walking into traffic while playing already actually happened, so it's only a hop skip and a jump to cell phones haunted with specters of dead kids searching for Pokemon.
I'm really hoping for a fatal frame/they live sort of scenario, where the pokemon go ar camera keeps picking up things that aren't, and never could have been there. Odd doorways to other worlds, or distortions in time and space.
there already was when you wrote this
she's BACK her eye make-up is GOOD i am SCARED
I don't think we collectively want to believe things were always bad and thats why we like nostalgic creepypastas. I for one like those types of creepypastas and find their horror effective because it takes something I'm familiar with, something that feels safe and happy and nostalgic, and makes it feel unsafe. Twisting familiarity into horror is effective in storytelling.
man door hand hook car door
theres a post going around tumblr right now compiling old drama, like that girl stealing bones, etc - it strikes me as a similar impulse
Teddy McKrell THE GIRL WHO DID WHAT NOW
theres more maidsuokasenpai.tumblr.com/post/175849737587/best-tumblr-scandals
miiiwu she went to her Louisiana neighbourhood in ground grave after it rained cos the bones could be seen and she stole them for magic reasons and offered to ship them elsewhere. She also called those graves "poor man's graves" because they couldn't afford to be memorialized in a way that didn't make their bones show up after rain like others.
do u have a link i’m not on tumblr anymore but i lived for the old drama
OMG I was in the facebook group where she tried to sell those bones!!! I remember that post! What a shitshow. I can see the negative nostalgia already forming in my mind...
My favorite stuff in general is stuff like the SCP archives. I cant even begin to think what we'll cherry pick for this time, since the bad news is incredibly oppressive and constant.
Justin Shananaquet SCP is just the dang pinnacle of Internet horror. The use of an in-universe approach and the dry scientific tone elevates the storytelling so much from basic creepypasta. And while it seems counterintuitive for Internet fiction, given that anyone can contribute to online content, the rigorous standards and moderation are what has kept it the best in my opinion.
I hope it’s preserved for a long time.
What's your favorite SCP? I think mine is SCP-093, the red disk that opens up portals to another dimension. That one's stuck with me for a long time.
Mary McGinnis its been so long since Ive checked read them but there was one that was a pill that could cure ANYTHING and one of the workers used it for a hangover.
My favourite creepy one is the endless staircase that has a spooky face in it.
The Fae tunnel disguised as two Corgis.
I think one of my faves of the horror focused SCPs is the one where you actually get to see everything thats normally redacted, the one with that giant coral monster thing?
And then on the other side of the spectrum is that chicago defense AI that hacks the postal system to make sure poor kids get toys for Christmas. Also the spirit of Halloween trowing raves
The kid who found a dead body while playing pokemon go is definitely going to be remembered.
I caught this one at 666 views and Jenna turned into Simone and laughed for a second.
you've been blessed by the protector Simone. forever look at creepypastas in peace, because nobody's gonna mess with that.
I've already noticed a trend to nostalgize (is that how you turn that into a verb) that summer PokeGo was released. I think our turnaround time for this has shortened drastically, or at least for me -- there's something inherently more therapeutic for me to return to an event that occurred when I was an adult (and things were bad, but this thing one thing was good and I'm gonna cling to it!) than to one from when I was a kid (because I was a white lower middle class kid in 90s America, and everything seemed fine!).
I thought about Pokemon Go! too, and the summer it first released, when she asked what our future selves would cherry pick from this point in time. (And I also agree with you, that it's being nostalgized very quickly by those who participated in the game from the get-go.) That summer, but especially that first week, was so surreal in the sense that kids of truly all ages were meeting up in parks, and helping each other figure out the game and running around together chasing invisible pokemon.
Yes exactly!! It was... really, truly lovely. I met my neighbors! What a world!
I think some of it was just that it was really enjoyable, and got people outside, and gave people reasons to chat and have fun together, instead of hiding from each other (and the heat!). But part of it, I imagine, was the fact that shortly afterwards, we had the chaos of the election, and since then, it seems like there's been just...a lot of garbage running around. So I imagine that, for many people, it's also associated with that "last good time".
Oooh I like this and I think you're probably right. I forgot how close to the American election it's launch was.
pokemon go really was a phenomenon. in my hometown, a tiny (10,000 people) rural town in the south, there were people all over the city square playing it. seeing my square at night, filled with people, made it feel so alive. weird to think that that was two years ago haha
Man, I love these videos. I’d never thought of this, but it makes a lot of sense. I feel like this applies to one of my old favorite hobbies, nuzlockes, in which you play Pokémon games but when Pokémon faint, they die. We write a ton of stories about it, making the games we so loved as kids grow up with us and become more serious and high-stakes. Though a lot of them remain hopeful, it can definitely get very dark. I don’t know, maybe it doesn’t apply, but it was the first thing I thought of.
if you love nuzlocke runs that turn v dark, we got good news for you: bit.ly/2zIMZ9p
Polygon I LOVE THAT SO MUCH. Probably have watched it at least twice at this point, it’s so good.
i would watch a 1.5 hour documentary of this
3:35 - 3:41 I didn't have a childhood I could look back to in fondness. This is why I love negative nostalgia to the point of only listening/making sad vaporwave. Being reminded that the best time of your life was short and gone is worse than believing it's always been as shoddy as it is now, with some high points.
I'm gonna keep that point about how negative nostalgia is a tool to mentally rework the past to bargain with the present in mind when reading the next stories for Creepypodsta, a podcast im often a guest on about discussing and analyzing creepypastas. its on itunes, google play, and at funtimes.online - Thanks Jenna, this was awesome!
I love this series so much!
Also JENNA!!! What a LOOK!!
I think one thing that makes copypasta/creepy shit about old videogames so successful was the vagueness of old graphics. In most horror, things happen under the cover of darkness, in old creepy unlit corners, etc. You can't define the boundaries of whatever it is you're looking at, and that's creepy. Since older games couldn't make their graphics photorealistic, the mind has to take more leaps to get to what the object is. Some newer games emulate this very successfully. I'm thinking of Undertale specifically. I got that same "creepy old game where I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen in the space" feeling as I used to with Gameboy Pokemon, etc. Anyway, I'm not sure where this vagueness is nowadays.But it makes for good creepies.
this is interesting, because i personally enjoy horror-related and horror-themed media, although i consider myself a very happy and positive person. i myself don’t buy too much into negative nostalgia, but i find the concept intriguing, although it’s pretty pessimistic. i never really thought of creepypasta as a negative thing, even though it’d make me paranoid when i was younger. i was drawn to it a lot, particularly when i was younger. now, i’m less easily frightened and i can seldom find a creepypasta that is actually well written (penpal is my favorite though, extremely good read). but, being younger and more susceptible to fear, it didn’t matter as much to me how the story was written, because i focused more on how ~scary~ it was.
Jenna ;looks like a redesign of herself for a sequel game in the best way
still the best series going on polygon rn
Deathpacito
The obvious answer to what will get the negative nostalgia treatment in the future is Polygon video content, most of which already turns into some sort of creepypasta by the end of the series. y'all are troubled :)
a creepypasta where brian is haunted and psychologically tortured by a sentient piece of cardboard-- oh wait,
a creepypasta about griffin's amiibo corner where he tries to put toad in his mouth and end up trapped in a hell dimensio-- OH WAIT,
Car Boys was Creepy Pasta upon first upload
I can't wait for Fortnite creepypasta
Lol same. I wonder if there's dabbing creepypasta.
I would like about 500 more of these about 4 times the length
Wow this explains a lot about that person I dated who was way too into creepypasta and their mood towards hope.
Great job!! Jenna's writing is so concise - she always hits the nail right on the head. :)
I heard a great theory that the reason our generation (millennials) is obsessed with discovering the dark truths underlying mundane or childish things is because that we were the first generation to learn, as children, that "Ring around the rosy" is actually a song aboot the black plague.
The reason I love this is because it's actually not. That song predates the epidemic, and scholars generally agree that it's just mostly nonsense, as songs for and by children usually are. So we've actually been making up "dark truths" since we were in elementary school.
I think that us 2000s kids will probably not idolize our youth as much as the 90s kids, not only because we have seen and make fun of that behavior, but also because we have grown up in a time directly after 9/11 where there isn't as much of an effort to shelter kids from the harsh realities of the world. If something does become nostalgically celebrated however I think it'll be Skylanders, it was really pervasive for a while.
I remember talking about the Iraq war as a child in school, and seeing reports of dead soldiers on the evening news. I was also basically always aware of 9/11 even if my parents didn't let me see it. So yeah I've kinda always been aware of the horrible stuff in the world so I don't think I feel as much nostalgia for that time, If there's any time I'd feel nostalgia for it would be the late 2000s and early 2010s because despite the recession at least it seemed like some stuff was getting better with increasing LGB acceptance (not T or Q though) and it seemed like there was at least a small move towards pacifism.
Fiendzone is my new favorite polygon show! :D
I really doubt anyone's gonna be nostalgic for the current era of 2016 through whenever the gods finally decide we've suffered enough. It's just gonna be remembered as "That period where we kept thinking things couldn't get any worse and were repeatedly proven wrong."
This is literally the best content from Polygon.
That's because it's pretty much the only content from Polygon at the moment
You're the best, Jenna! The only reason I'm still subbed to Polygon.
Wouldn't say negative nostalgia is a new idea necessarily - hauntology is a branch of cultural theory that's been around since 1993 which is literally defined as "The ideas of the past returning to haunt the present", a good essay on the subject here - rougesfoam.blogspot.com/2009/10/hauntology-past-inside-present.html
I think streaming stuff will be a, a big generational indicator in future media, and b, a huuuuuuge target for negative nostalgia. I mean, hell, there’s already massive amounts of compilations of bizarre, gross, or morally tone-deaf moments from twitch streams. The weird, specific type of frenzy that is a live chat seems like a parallel to other types of cultural hysteria (I know, that word sucks, but I can’t think of a better way to phrase it) like vandal mobs after football games.
You're from before the pandemic if you remember when people thought an apocalypse would be fun and exciting.
Amazing series!!!
Mark my words, i think in the future we will see a lot of creepypasta revolving around Skyrim.
Too Many Cooks, Squidward's Suicide, and Unedited Footage of A Bear still instill massive fear in me.
I loved this though.
Polygon should do throwbacks to some of the older videos like these. They are excellent.
These videos are so good! Thank you for making them! It's great to hear about topics like these from an expert.
just started binging all of these, and boy howdy are they interesting! keep up the great work.
These videos are sooooo great and so interesting! I'm loving the topics you've covered so far and can't wait to see more!
I remember being really into the first creepypasta I ever read (it was that one about the bootleg pokemon game that was called Pokemon Black - before the real thing came out) and being completely spooked by it. I wonder if I was so struck by it because I loved pokemon so much as a child - so it had a big negative nostalgia affect on me - or if it was just because I'd never encountered at thing like it before.
It's crazy now that there seems to be an active creepypasta fandom with people writing fanfic for these scary version of childhood characters. I wonder if this will show through in mainstream horror in the future! We've already had a slenderman game and marble hornets, not to mention films like unfriended or games like simulcra that lean into a kind of glitch-based, broken technology side of horror. Maybe stuff like this will become a new horror staple!
I want Polygon to make more videos like this. Don't get me wrong, I'll watch the staff play Jackbox games all day, but critical insight like this is valuable and can't be provided by others. I really hope we see a stronger push in this direction.
"Collective mythology" is such an evocative and concise term for so much. I'm gonna use it all the time now. :-)
I love this tbh
these videos are really interesting and informative and i look forward to every fiendzone video
my god, that is so fascinating. you brought up what we'll be nostalgic about in the future, but if your theory about nostalgia comparing the past to the present is right, then it depends entirely on the direction the world takes. things could get a lot worse or a lot better in the next twenty years, and that could change the way we remember this decade entirely
"No one is writing creepypasta about Fortnite" thats were you wrong lady, also back in the day when Minecraft was still in Beta people wrote Minecraft creepypasta, the MLP creepypasta fandom was kickstarted with a gorefiction called Cupcakes which was posted shortly after the show came out.
Creepypasta isn't exclusive to nostalgic content, its just that lost media is creepy as it is and making up scary stories about lost media makes it 1 easier to believe (especially when you are still young) 2 makes a already creepy thing scarier.
This was a really cool video and I really love this idea of Negative Nostalgia. I actually really enjoyed this. Good job.
Jenna is back!! I really love these videos
This feels even more relevant in 2020.
Every episode of this series is so good
This is my favorite show on polygon right now
Oh damn, I was expecting something fun, not to be punched in the gut by the fact that negative nostalgia creates continuity with our current experiences lol
Great vid
i feel like there won't be that much nostalgia for this period, or if it happens it'll be sooner than expected. Things seem to come and go so quickly, we tend to forget what was going on even just a couple of months ago
Thanks for the cool analysis, Jenna!
Where is the cool jacket? We were promised cool jackets Jenna.
This video is fascinating, I love fiendzone!
Really cool video. Thank you!
My new favorite cultural analysis/ horror show (tied with switchblade sisters) is back, and subsequently, my week is saved
This show is GREAT! Really love it and expect more of it.
It's amazing how you can fit a college class's worth of stuff in less than 5 minutes ❤
pokemon is always a target of this stuff, so I expect Pokemon Go will be too. Maybe we'll see some VR and 3D movie stuff, since those are fairly big rn. Potentially stuff like Cards Against Humanity too.
OH MAN I want to see CAH creepypasta/horror. Communicating with entities via CAH games. New, eerie or unsettling cards appearing in the middle of play. That's a goldmine.
Nostalgia is a drug *Blasts Fandalites theme music*.
it's possibly a little narrow to say that nostalgia has a distinct social "purpose," since it is a phenomenon that is emergent within individuals, as an isolated experience. It certainly interfaces with the collective via individual behavior, but the ways in which this happens is not a given; it is provided some cultural channels that are likely to change as culture changes.
love these vids jenna!
Just coming to reiterate that Jenna is the powerhouse at Polygon now. As much as I love Simone's style and her opinions, Jenna is the name to know.
(At least, until Susana Polo starts producing video content again regularly, then you can't make me choose!)
Jenna, my queen 😍
I love this series!
I think it's going to be like, apps and stuff. Things we don't even think about now probably.
I'm sad the mcelroys are gone but this new reporter is really cool and does interesting videos!
"Humans desire continuity"
Bring me the orphan. Bring me my Yuvan.
I remember this. I am a 90’s kid. I belong to a community of 90’s kids. I was born in 2003.
aaahhhh this was so good and interesting!
I was trying to play Fortnite but the server is having some issues and literally logged onto RUclips and thought “ man I wish this girl uploaded a new video in this horror media series, it’s like one of my favorite’s and the whole you freaking uploaded one about nostalgia like damn yeah I wonder how I’m going to be thinking about this part of my life 10 years down the line. I’m drunk.
funny to me that Meatballs was used at the beginning, but wasn't pointed to as being not so acceptable now. but maybe that's a given?
I assume this isn't about like personal trauma, like it's not about repressed memories and stuff like that.
Because if it is then I have experienced this personally with repressed memories comming back, turning what I thought was a great childhood into pretty much a horror story.
Pokémon Go would make a very compelling creepypasta.
Damn Jenna's fashion is always fresh af
GREAT VIDEO! Nostalgia is great but lets not get CRAZY OK
Jenna is a legend
NOSTALGIA IS A DRUG
Wasn't "father and the cigarette" joke 'negative nostalgia?'
The only issue I have with this video is that these creepy pastas that she's bringing up are pretty old. Things are dark now, but they might not have been so much when they were originally posted. In fact, 'Ben Drowned' cropped up at the beginning of Obama's administration, or partway through, I believe. Therefore, the theory that we make our nostalgia dark to draw a line to the dark times today kind of falls through, a little bit.
Suppystar Many people on the right were filled with rage, terror and misery by the fact that there was a Black president. Racism has been a huge driver of dissatisfaction among white people in the Western world. But more generally, the decade since the start of the Great Recession has been characterised by insecurity and unrest. Obama was a decent president, but the world has been getting noticeably darker for more than the last few years.
That's a good point. At the end I did wonder if future generations WOULD do the same thing. 90s kids are weirdly unique in that - so the theory goes at least - we are more affected by nostalgia, generally speaking, because we've lived over a period of rapid advancement, especially in tech. So because our brain links the simplicity of things like dial-up, AOL, retro games and Windows 98 with the simplicity of childhood, we are profoundly affected by this kind of horror because it's so connected with simpler, safer, easier times.
I wonder if my younger cousins who have never known anything less than broadband, large social media and smart phones would be as affected because they don't have that connection.
On what you said about "making things darker because times are dark now" connection falling through, these creepypasta seem to coincide with when "grim and gritty reboots" were at their biggest (The Dark Knight Trilogy, The new Star Trek Films, Sherlock Holmes, The Amazing Spider-Man etc.) so I wonder if the negative political shift (ie our reality becoming darker) will push pop culture further into darker tones or if there will be a reversal where most of our media will become lighter and brighter as a form of escapism. Lots of people still like gritty reboots but a lot are very vocally sick of them now.
Future generations may take up a more optimistic mantle as a reaction to our negative nostalgia trend or they may do the same thing, depending on how our society changes.
Haha this brings a thing strongly to mind: I was born in late 1989, November of '89, so I'm 29 years old at time of writing--roughly as old as The Simpsons. And I *grew up* on that show--and people nowadays will see the show as it is, which is limp dicked garbage, and the idea that it was once a cultural phenomenon is incomprehensible from today's perspective--but it's true, and I remember that time! Anyone who's seen the early episodes, which deal unequivocally with everything from the cult of psychosocialization to politics to theology, should understand when I refer to "Simpsons Mania" as an American cultural epoch (albeit a short one)--and anyone else can't be blamed for *not* understanding..! Because what "The Simpsons" is today is so far from what it used to be that the name in common alone is a fantastic standing example of the limitations of language haha.
One of my earliest memories of anything, in life, ever, is of being little and watching the episode of The Simpsons with my family where Homer forgets to pick up Bart after soccer practice and, when he suddenly remembers, guiltily imagines him as a starved-to-death, picked-and-bleached-clean skeleton with spiky hair on top somehow haha. I only have a handful of memories older than that, and that one is early enough anyway to be one of those really surreal, impactful memories we all have a few of, if we're ordinary people haha.
But I mention it to say: it's rare something so psychologically fundamental makes it onto the broad, lowest-common-denominator that is TV... and those sorts of meditations are deeply lost in modern culture--in a way only oldsters like almost-thirty-year-olds can bemoan haha. If I have any faith in the future, it has to do with rave culture haha.
This is to say, as well: it may seem silly to apply dark theories to movies or shows whose creators had none of that in common, at least for their "intended" audience... but I like the self-critical aspect which is willing to see our most treasured childhood memories as potentially horrible and worth rejecting. It gives me faith in our species' ability to adapt haha.
When my nephew is my age (in about 28 years), he'll have some deep Fortnite nostalgia.
god she is so good, like wow
thank you :)
I like Creepypasta because I enjoy being scared
Not Kira me to
we have here a Spoopy Jenna
Essentially, "Make America Great Again" is a profoundly hopeless stance.
Can someone help me figure out what jenna's pin is?? Im watching this on my phone and the screen is too small to tell
I don't really agree with your conclusions here. People aren't trying to reconstruct the past as broken or miserable. Negative nostalgia is about collective fear memories that now seem strangely simple, unique, and even wholesome.
I'm glad you brought this up though. It's a fascinating subject.
Nobody gonna give credit to marble hornets for the slenderman clip?
Jennnaaaa! This is rad, yo.
I love jenna and this show. I want more cultural analysis of media.
well theres the one Minecraft creepypasta Herobine or something
I love creepypasta’s
Don't like to be *that* person, but I hate found footage creepypasta. "Video game" cp too, but not to the same extent. I don't have any poll or statistic to prove it, but I know that many people find these types of creepypasta (along with some of the more popular ones), to be of the worst. They're not creepy, and they certainly don't give me that sinking feeling. I find myself rolling my eyes when I realize I'm reading one. Many aren't written well, although it may just be because the found footage topic itself is hard to write well. I've come to find, however, that a story doesn't have to be written well if the matter is pressing enough. There are stories I've read that I think about years later, not because they were particularly well written (although it does help), but because it suggested such a jarring idea, situation or twist. I realize this video isn't focusing on creepypasta, but on nostalgia. I wanted to voice my feelings on the creepypasta part, though.
Gimme the mcelroys
Gimme that video games
This ownsssssss
Fucking nice!!!!!!