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This video of a high school in 2002 with the caption, “High school in 2002 looked so chill” has been making therounds on social media, causing many to wax nostalgic about this moment in time over 20 years ago.
I’ll admit, although I’m not old enough to remember high school from 2002, I did grow up in this era, and it even got me feeling nostalgic for days gone by. I know the cynical among us will say that the idea of “the good old days” is fictional, but to that I say, life sure was simpler and easier when I was a child with no responsibilities.
Anyhow, just looking at this video, you can tell who the outgoing guys are, who the popular guys and girls are, who the nerds are, who the tomboy girls are, who the quiet girls are, et cetera et cetera. The more things change, the more they stay the same. All I’m saying is, there’s a reason why teen stereotypes exist.
One big difference between 2002 high school and its modern counterpart is the distinct lack of smartphones. You see, back in these primitive days, after riding the woolly mammoth to school, these troglodytes wouldn’t even be able to watch TikToks on their phones instead of paying attention in class. Most cell phones looked like bricks, and only the highest end models had crappy little cameras that could only take 180p photos. And videos? On your phone? That’s some crazy futuristic Star Trek: Enterprise tech right there. We’ll be lucky if we ever have that in our lives. You see, this now viral video was shot on a camcorder, which is what we old people used to have to use to make home movies and clips for America’s Funniest Home Videos.
An Old SONY Camcorder, Revolutionary at the Time for Taking Digital Videos.
The lack of a ubiquitous recording culture made the recording of the kids in this video a novel concept for them, so some acted up and did funny faces, others were camera shy; this was a highly unusual thing for these students. It wasn’t dangerous being filmed, however. These kids were open to messing around and being goofy because after all, who’s ever going to watch this video? It’ll be just like mom’s stacks of old tapes in the closet that we always say we’re going to watch but never do.
Nowadays, videos are treated completely differently. Everyone has a phone with an HD camera that captures and immortalizes any stupid thing someone does onto social media, and if it goes viral? Good luck. That’ll never be lived down. On the bright side, the collective brain rot of our degrading society has ensured that the short attention span of the fickle public means your viral oopsie will only be a meme for a few weeks, tops. It could be worse, you could be like Star Wars Kid, have the meme stay popular for a decade and have your life ruined. Thank God I’m not this guy.
People today don’t want to go viral like this. At least back in 2002, if things went bad at school, you could escape it temporarily when you went home. But now? Now if that happens, your phone will be blowing up constantly and you’ll never be able to escape. From what I’ve been told and have even observed myself, Gen Z feels as though school is one of the most uptight and puritanical places in the world. They live in constant fear of messing up since they will be filmed and sent to the place where rationality, civility and decency go to die: social media. That brings us back to the original caption of the video: “High school in 2002 looked so chill.”
You Can Always Count on Social Media to Look Foolish
Now, most normal people responded to the Tweet like I did, pining for their old high school days or the simplicity of the early 2000’s. But of course, since this is social media, some people had to come in with their idiotic takes. Let’s look at some highlights:
Ah yes, the “omega racists,” the final boss of racists, they come after the psi racists. Are these kids racist because they were alive before BLM? One wonders if that’s the cause. Is it perhaps because this is a predominantly white school? I’m not too sure why our friend “penis delusion” with the cringe anime PFP seems to think this.
Well, I really doubt this jolly-looking fellow would do that. However, people did say that back then, but most people who did don’t hate gays now, and most likely didn’t then either. Everyone was made fun of for being everything, yes including straight white men. People would call each other faggot and retard and other such terms, but everyone was called something by everyone. I’m not going to pretend that when I was growing up, me and my friends didn’t say things like this, everyone we knew did. Yes, I am saying that people in their early 20’s right now who say they didn’t use words like this are damn, dirty liars. Maybe some adults harbored hate in their hearts then, I’m not going to deny that, but the kids? They were all very libertarian in that “live and let live” sense.
Of course, this Tweet above is ludicrous and comes from the drooling mouth of a nimrod who listens to a few too many true crime podcasts. It’s true, schools weren’t plastered with rainbows and pride flags and people’s identities weren’t being affirmed over the loudspeakers constantly, but that doesn’t mean that gay kids were being murdered. The youth these days love to make up fantasy versions of historical events they weren’t even alive for. I know they’re talking jive; I was there to disprove it.
But as I was saying before, everyone got their turn at being the butt of the joke, and yet we remained close friends and all deeply cared for one another. This is because no one took it too seriously, thus a strong bond formed. I can only speak for the male experience, but this is how guys strengthen their friendships, by insulting and making fun of each other in these not fully serious and often self-deprecating ways.
So? You are too, you silly moo. What’s your point? I saw this complaint a lot in the replies to the Tweet, and now I think I get the point. Psst, Twitter lefties, your racism is showing. I can see the equation computing in their tiny little brains, smoke billowing as the gears slowly grind. A lot of white people in video→ white people bad→ 2002 must be bad because too many white people. Such is the mind of a brainwashed bigot. It’s sad, really.
“Okay, we get the point,” I hear you say. “There’s no need to beleaguer this any longer. I know that the progressives and leftists of the internet hated this.” Yes, but why do they hate it? That is the question I want to answer. They don’t see the mocking people did in the past as simple joking with friends, they see it as real, unadulterated hatred. Is this because some of them were legitimately hated as kids? That’s a real possibility, given how much normal people hate them now as teenagers and adults. Or is it because they couldn’t roll with the punches back then? That’s more likely; these internet dwellers still can’t take a joke… they are a humorless group of bastards, aren’t they? These are good, personal reasons as to why they would act this way, but these are hardcore, internet leftists; there must be some deeply cringey and ideological drive behind this.
The answer comes from this smoking gun, a reply to another Tweet that circulated at the same time of this video regarding the beauty standards of women in the 1990’s in comparison to today:
Now, the discussion regarding the change in women, beauty standards and all that other fun stuff is something I’m going to carefully tiptoe around and not talk about today, but the answer is located in the reply: fascist. That’s the key to understanding this seemingly random hatred of people just having a good time all those years ago. Any nostalgic feeling that suggests the past was better than the present in any way is a fascist dog whistle. To the progressives, the past was nothing but a dark age, filled with bigotry and evil. Therefore, if you have any nostalgia of the past, then you are a counterrevolutionary who opposes the current paradigm.
To be blunt: this way of thinking is simply dumb, but for the socialist, it’s true. From their point of view, the march of progress (the present and future) is always better than the past. If you think the past was somehow better than the future, you’re a reactionary and therefore, a fascist. This is because to the leftist, a fascist is someone who venerates an idealized past. Of course, this isn’t what a fascist is, but they still believe this.
It’s very easy to poke holes in this logic, and a fun example for me is one of my favorite video game series: Fallout. If you lived in the post-apocalyptic, radioactive wasteland and yearned for the nostalgic pre-war past, you would be labelled a fascist under this logic because the nuclear holocaust was the result of the inevitable march of progress. Can you see why this is idiotic?
If I Lived in the Sanctuary Hills on the Left, Would I Be a Fascist for Yearning Nostalgically for the Sanctuary Hills on the Right?
And lest you think I’m extrapolating quite a lot from a single Tweet, a quick Google search will yield many, many more results.
Everything from the past was fascist because it doesn’t adhere to modern, moral standards. This is why everyone is insistent on remaking things for the “modern audience.” Viewing things and people from the past through a modern lens is dumb as hell, but I will save a longer discussion on that for another time. Of course, these same people never hold this view with regard to times like the New Deal era, so it’s not even so much that old is bad and new is good, but what they don’t like is fascism and what they do like is good. Time is merely a mask for their hypocrisy.
The whole crux of their argument is that pining for the past is fascism because some parts of the past really were better for some people in some ways, but this would make the progressive view of progress being a universal good completely false. This is why they hate the video from the beginning, and nostalgia in general, so much. These people honestly believe that every image of the past is propaganda. A happy family with a house and a white picket fence? Propaganda. Young people living in near racial harmony in the late 90’s and early 2000’s? Propaganda. This is why, to them, they can say that the culture and relationships of the past had no value. To wonder if there truly were good things that have been lost to time with the good things the future has brought means you have rejected their leftist worldview, and your heresy makes you a fascist.
To quote Linkin Park, “I tried so hard and got so far, but in the end, it doesn’t even matter.” Don’t worry if some terminally online knob head calls you a fascist. It doesn’t mean anything anymore, besides someone or something I don’t like. These people just need to chill.
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