Sunday 5 February 2012

Age Is A Number With An Impact



Time is one of the most mysterious things in the world. It isn't completely concrete, yet we use it as a measurement. It is something that can manage to change your title as a human being. Time is what separates those that can drive a car and those that can't. Time is what makes a piece of bread into a moldy mess. Well that and bacteria and fungi covering the bread, but that's besides the point. Time is capable of changing what you are able to do and what you able to become.  The amount of time something can manage to last in this universe is something that can create a huge impact on how people view it.  But how exactly does time warp our vision on this world? You're about to find out. 

Standards: The Good Of Today Isn't The Good of Yesterday



You ever heard older people say the phrase, "back in my day" after you do something that seems to irritate them? Like how you decide to date someone of a different race and they disapprove. Or perhaps you wag your finger sternly to a bratty kid instead of spanking them for their misbehavior. Or maybe the geezer's just rambling on about how this new-age music sounds awful. Those are all different things that relate to a person's standards. Now I can't really talk about the first two examples for two simple reasons. One, racism is bad, so I can't really be a devil's advocate. Two, disciplining a child isn't something that I can really conserve about since I don't have a child and I don't know how to properly go about the subject. The third one, on the other hand, is better for me to focus on because it bases itself on the public's subjectivity in different decades on pop culture.



Movies are part of something I like to call the "quality time-shift". In a sense, movies have always been equal in the amount of crap they spew with the amount of gold they create. The problem is that it's never consistent with how much of each should come out in a period of a year. Sometimes a lot of good movies come out altogether in a brief period of time. Other times a lot of crap movies come out altogether in a brief period of time. Depending on when these movies come out and how long the "crap" or "gold" is leaked out creates this skewed perspective that a period of time is worse with the quality of of it's films than another or vice versa. Another thing to take into consider is timing. But we'll get to that later.



Music is based around being fragmented in it's quality. What do I mean by this? Well, to become really popular in music you have to really be good at what you do in your genre of music (or be lucky, but I'm not here to start a flame war about some popular band (*cough* The Beatles *cough*)). Otherwise, you don't really stick out to the audience and you'll be forgotten (unless you make a huge comeback or you go out with a bang...either literally or figuratively). Now, popularity isn't what we're talking about, but let me further explain this. See, the reason that this sort of phenomenon occurs is that the music industry is based on eras. Take disco for example, everyone used to love disco...for about 12 seconds. Then everyone didn't care for it.  That's because the music industry creates different sets of standards for different movements. That's why there are people that actually like music that most would consider deplorable. It's because at a young age, these people were brainwashed to follow these standards and possibly enjoy them. At least that's my theory.



Video games aren't based so much around time-affected standards as you'd think. Sure, you could argue that what a retro gamer considers difficult is different than what a new-age gamer considers difficult. I'm not saying that this sort of thing doesn't exist, but standards are much more affected by a different time mechanic rather than the simple passing of time being part of the problem. That mechanic being nostalgia.

Nostalgia: Time's Nuclear Power






Nostalgia, for those of you who don't know, is the bittersweet feeling of going back to older times. Like nuclear power, nostalgia can either be used for good or for evil. For good, nostalgia can advertise a product. For evil, it can suck a fanatic dry out of their cash. For good, nostalgia can make a customer feel happy that they've returned back to older times. For evil, it can turn them into a blind puppet that will praise anything that is thrown at them. Movies and music do fall under this trap as anyone who's seen the Star Wars prequels or been to a comeback concert where the musician that used to be good back in his hayday is now worn down could tell you. Despite that, video games are the United States of nostalgia as they use it a lot as good and as bad. It is something that turns gamers against each other and it is the major cause of anger amongst the community



The effects of nostalgia on video games are so powerful that it manages to pit a certain category of gamers against each other. That's right, retro gamers fight amongst each other because of nostalgia. For you see, there are clingy retro gamers and self-aware retro gamers. Now the way these two work is simple. Suppose as a child, these two have teddy bears. They love this teddy bear. Then they give it up because they grow up. Now let's say 10 years go by and they go back to see the teddy bear. It's all dirty, a bit torn up and it smells weird. The clingy retro gamer will hug it and remember all the good times it had with it, avoiding the problems that it has. The self-aware retro gamer will hug it, but then it will see something wrong with it. It will notice that it wasn't the teddy bear of before. This gamer will try to fix the teddy bear to get the teddy bear of before or abandon it, thinking that the good times were all in the past. Now does this happen all the time? Not exactly. Sometimes the teddy bear is exactly the same as it was before. Sometimes it's better. It depends on what we're talking about.

Timing: Forgotten To Recognized


Timing is a simple concept. People have to wait for the right time to do an action so that it has the fullest effect. It is what can separate a low-life with no importance to the greatest hit that ever came to be. The problem with timing is that it doesn't really impact the opinion of how people view something. Just because something terrible managed to get through at a time where everyone swarmed over it doesn't make it good. It's still bad. Yet, the tragedy of this is that if you don't pinpoint the proper moment to strike, you may end up being overlooked. That's why terms like "overrated" and "underrated" are abused. It's because something got incredibly lucky or something was covered by projects of greater importance.

Importance: Does The Old Fix The New?


Someone once said that you should learn from the past in order to create the future. Someone also said that you shouldn't let the past impact the future. Which one of these people is right? If you answered that the first guy is right, then you're probably that guy who thought the rapture would happen in 2011. If you answered the second guy, then I guess you probably make the same mistake over and over again. In a sense, both of these people are right and wrong. It all depends on what matter we're talking about and the intensity of what happened. If you're into science, why would you care what Shakespeare wrote? You woudln't. If you're into English...why would you still care about what Shakespeare wrote? You would if you wanted to become a better writer. How about if you never shoplifted anything before and you get caught doing that. Should you get a longer punishment than someone that did it before? Depends...did you shoplift a candy or a TV?

Now I know that you're thinking that this isn't so much based on time as it is on the minor details. The thing is that people sometimes consider the importance of it more than they consider the time on when it happened. Or they think that since it's an old concept it isn't worth being important. That why sometimes things that aren't broken end up getting fixed and why it's harder to believe someone that could actually be telling the truth.



Time is an odd part of our universe. But I hope I spent yours well with this blog. .