Look at the massive amounts of money thrown at it going as far back as the 1920’s – back when science-fiction wasn’t even called SF yet, back when we named micro-genres after their authors.
The idea that it ever wasn’t is a retroactive fantasy invented by marketers to sell you a sense of identity, you fool.
Its marketing 101.
What you’re actually talking about is maker/creator culture which historically was seen as “a geeky thing”:
The idea of inventing the geek moniker and selling this idea to you that it totally encompasses you, and that to be a maker/creator is inherently geeky is just marketing.
But it wasn’t until sometime in the early 19th century that, “the Scottish word geck, meaning ‘fool,’ changed to geek and began being used to describe a certain kind of carnival performer.
The entire point of it was “I feel like a side-show, who’s always second fiddle to someone who’s inferior”:
The character of Sideshow Bob in the Simpsons is a pre-70’s pre-Starwars “classical” geek, right down to his speaking and mannerisms.
People did always love it, they just didn’t always talk about it as if they did. Look at the classics which actually persist through the ages. They are all pretty “geeky” for their time, actually! What do you even think stage-performance culture is, like theatre-kids and muzzos? Hell even the hyper-technicality of jazz was seen as hella geeky shit in its day.
And yeah, you can also argue cultural-relativism:
That the people of today think the world has always been the way it is now right up until they get old enough to realize it isn’t – and then they get old enough again to realize that it was, actually, just not in the ways they thought.
So yes, what’s actually happening is just, “the past was always”, actually? The idea that it wasn’t and isn’t is actually the bullshit artifice of our era designed to sell you brand identity?
“The good old days” never existed!
The entire platform of nostalgia-marketing is about stealing your memories to replace them with fake ones so you can be tricked into buying shit you don’t need!
AND YES, THAT EVEN INCLUDES NEGATIVE MEMORIES!
REDUCTIONIST SOLIDARITY WITH A SIMPLE “US VS THEM” NARRITIVE IS THE VERY BACKBONE OF MARKETING!
The magnitude of how much something is remembered is defined by its conversation in the present. Most of the people who obsess over Garfield now for example, did not read Garfield! And you know what? THAT’S OK!
The positive memories are the ones which persisted, and as such they tend to be the ones which define the cultural memory of a thing!
Why? Because while human negativity bias means we tend in the short to medium term remember the negative stuff more powerful, positive memories are the ones which win out overall in the long term, because they’re the experiences humans are most likely to talk about when defining themselves.
Lucian’s “A true story” was science fiction of its day in 2nd century AD, literally dunking on travel-logs by writing an absurdist fantasy where men get swallowed by a 300km whale, travel to outer-space, and get feminized into trees by drinking wine.
And so I’m going to write on the end of this post as they did upon Lucian:
καὶ τὸ τέλος ψευδέστατον μετὰ τῆς ἀνυποστάτου ἐπαγγελίας
And
I’ll say it again:
There is no such thing as “a 7/8/9/1/20’s kid”!
Its marketing designed to appeal to your deepest fears:
That you experienced what you experienced alone,
and that nobody understands you.
Don’t let marketers manipulate you.
This is theft, and it is gaslighting.
THIS PERSON FELL FOR A TONY ZARET POST. LAUGH AT THEM.
