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Best decade for entertainment


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Best ten year period for entertainment, and your response has to encompass at least three of the following: music, TV, movies, books, comics, and video games. For the sake of this discussion it can include any ten year period.

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I was hoping for a little more conversation about it instead of just naming a decade and moving on. That's why I listed the criteria.

 

I haven't had a chance to finish my post yet. I should write it in something else and then post it because I keep getting interrupted.

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2009-present

 

I think HBO alone alone carries it. I don't think so much high quality content has been available. Breaking Bad, Little Big Lies, Better Call Saul, GoT, Planet Earth II, Parks and Rec, Modern Family, True Detective

 

Video Games: I don't play console, but I have a few computer games I love! Crusader Kinds II, World of Warcraft, Cities: Skylines, and Tropico are probably my top games of all time.

 

Books: I enjoy reading now more than I ever have, but the books are like 90% recent non-fiction. When I did read a lot of fiction, the books I enjoyed most were fairly evenly distributed throughout the decades. Even though there hasn't been a series this decade that has been on par with say Foundation or the Ender series through CotM, I think the quantity of high quality doesn't compare.

 

Movies I would say 1995-2005

 

Music: 1991-2001

 

I do not read comics because they are dumb.

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It's hard for me to find a ten year period that goes that strong for that long, in any category. Like the early 80's were great for music, toys, movies, but the late 80's sucked, IMO. Not counting the summer of 89, which was perfect.

Same for the 90's. First half of the decade was awesome and the second part sucked. Except, again, for 1999, which was pretty awesome.

And again with the 2000's, the early part of the decade was great but the second half blew.

The past ten years for TV, film, and video games have been great but music has gotten so much worse. I would have to rank every category's best decade separately because I don't know if they all line up together very often, to me.

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There has been great music in recent years for sure— but a ground breaking paradigm shift to the art itself? I haven’t witnessed that. The 21st century has debut some amazing bands, but none of them have broken out as obvious game changers that are going to effect the scene for decades to come.

 

Sabbath, The Beatles, NWA, Sex Pistols, Nirvana... like them or not, they changed things and you knew it from the start. I haven’t seen a band come out and do that in the 21st century.

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I think everyone expected the Strokes to do this, in music circles anyway, but it didn't happen. At least not in a full on pop mainstream way. They have influenced several bands since and they influenced a particular sound at the beginning of the century that some still carry on with. But that was no where near the level of influence in which Tank refers.

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I'm starting to wonder if it's even possible anymore. It's not as if we can only listen to music through the radio and whatever albums our older siblings handed down to us. There's so much more music out there and so many more ways to get it, I have a hard time seeing anyone breaking through to a large enough degree as the bands Seth mentioned.

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I'm starting to wonder if it's even possible anymore. It's not as if we can only listen to music through the radio and whatever albums our older siblings handed down to us. There's so much more music out there and so many more ways to get it, I have a hard time seeing anyone breaking through to a large enough degree as the bands Seth mentioned.

I'm pretty split on this... and it's this way for movies too. Filmmaking tech has become so cheap, anyone can make a feature these days, and there are SO many ways to get content out there.

 

...but at the same time, getting seen and heard is the part that's become harder given how everything is so curated now. Part of me is excited that there are fewer gatekeepers, and true talent that may have gone undiscovered may be seen and heard. I've had two movies and two seasons of TV made, and when people ask me what I do, and I tell them, they've never heard of the stuff. I got theatrical releases and my show is on Hulu... but it's all about that algorithm. Based on my viewing habits. Hulu doesn't pimp me my own show. All our advertising is going to platforms I don't interact with. If I weren't writing it, I would have no idea it existed.

 

I'm generally not one for complaining about "kids today" and social media, and the internet age...

 

...but there's something to be said on the topic of basic human discourse and reason when there were three TV news outlets, six radio formats, and a spectrum of cable channels and magazines that were so specific, you knew what the content would be. Not everyone liked the same stuff, and sure, you could be getting .45 singles from the punk record store, or trading VHS in the back of Maximum RocknRoll or Thrasher magazine... but we could at least be aware of what other scenes were.

 

These days we can't even share fundamental objective truths anymore.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The 1970s is the best decade for entertainment using the criteria above. There are certainly decades that surpass it in different areas, and I don't even like everything that I'm going to list, but it all adds up.

 

Music: You have the Beatles at the beginning of the decade, you still have a couple of good albums from the Beach Boys, Pink Floyd, Lynyrd Skynyrd, all the way through the beginning of New Wave with the Cars and Blondie, and you have the great punk bands: Sex Pistols, Clash, Ramones.

 

Video Games: This is where it all started. Pong. Breakout. Space Invaders. The Oregon Trail. Lemonade Stand (I loved playing this on the Commodore 64 as a kid)

 

Movies: This isn't even fair: Jaws, Star Wars, The Godfather I & II, Alien, Halloween, Close Encounters, Rocky, Dirty Harry, Blazing Saddles, Animal House, Superman, Grease, Rocky Horror Picture Show, A Clockwork.

 

Comics: Claremont's X-Men

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There has been great music in recent years for sure— but a ground breaking paradigm shift to the art itself? I haven’t witnessed that. The 21st century has debut some amazing bands, but none of them have broken out as obvious game changers that are going to effect the scene for decades to come.

 

Sabbath, The Beatles, NWA, Sex Pistols, Nirvana... like them or not, they changed things and you knew it from the start. I haven’t seen a band come out and do that in the 21st century.

Can we have a musical act/TV show/theatrical film that can achieve that transcendent status such as a Beatles/Star Wars/and whatever the TV version of that would be? I've often wondered if this is even possible..I say no but I can't really explain why.

 

I mean, Avengers EG is literally the biggest movie of all time, but I doubt anyone will care about it 40 years from now the way we do about ANH.

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GoT and Stranger Things are probably the closest you'll get with TV, but they're nowhere near Cheers or MASH. The Marvel movies are huge, but haven't quite penetrated all of our society the way that Star Wars did. While it may not be the exact same, there is still culturally important entertainment being made. In this case I'm talking pop culture, of course.

 

Oddly, I think the problems are at odds with each other: it's a combination of too many options and too much media being produced by a smaller and smaller number of companies. We have a eof choices but a lot of it is entertainment by committee, so it's bland and uninteresting.

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I don't think we need anything world changing, but it will eventually come when there's new technology to create it.

 

Having some type of common culture is good, though.

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I'm starting to wonder if it's even possible anymore. It's not as if we can only listen to music through the radio and whatever albums our older siblings handed down to us. There's so much more music out there and so many more ways to get it, I have a hard time seeing anyone breaking through to a large enough degree as the bands Seth mentioned.

I agree. I think it is also how we consume music. I have Spotify and listen to the same 1500 or so songs. If I do find new music, it is through a Spotify algorithm.

 

https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100

 

I don't recognize a single song on this list and I recognize only a handful of names. I used to work in radio and I made a pledge to myself that I would never be that old guy that says today's mainstream music is terrible. I try to listen to the music on the top of Spotify charts, but I do not like the overly processed nature of it.

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I got my kid a shirt at Hot Topic and I was literally the old dude asking if all the names I was seeing on the TV shirt wall were "actual bands."

I mean that is a legit question. H&M did a range of T shirts and jackets with a bunch of fake metal band logos on them, because they had decided metal was fashion a few springs ago. But a designer stuck an Absurd logo in there for a laugh (absurd are a Black metal band with strong NS leanings) and H&M got in hot water over it.

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I'm starting to wonder if it's even possible anymore. It's not as if we can only listen to music through the radio and whatever albums our older siblings handed down to us. There's so much more music out there and so many more ways to get it, I have a hard time seeing anyone breaking through to a large enough degree as the bands Seth mentioned.

I agree. I think it is also how we consume music. I have Spotify and listen to the same 1500 or so songs. If I do find new music, it is through a Spotify algorithm.

 

https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100

 

I don't recognize a single song on this list and I recognize only a handful of names. I used to work in radio and I made a pledge to myself that I would never be that old guy that says today's mainstream music is terrible. I try to listen to the music on the top of Spotify charts, but I do not like the overly processed nature of it.

But today's mainstream music IS terrible. In every way.

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