True Left

from r/retrogaming

TechCynic
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1y ago
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Lots of good answers here already, but I’d like to suggest one more: 9/11. Or, more specifically, the way it impacted the American psyche.

There was a huge cultural shift towards darker, edgier, angrier TV, movies, and games after that happened. Games were already moving that way since Mortal Kombat made its big splash, but IMO 9/11 really turbocharged it. We had just come off a decades-long tech boom and an unprecedented period of relative peace, the Soviet Union had recently fallen, and the world had celebrated the start of the third millennium, and then bam — huge tech crash combined with the deadliest attack on American soil since the Civil War. Anger and nihilism exploded across the US, and I think the cultural zeitgeist reflected it.

Movies, music, TV, clothing -- everything really did a 180 from the 90's in the post 9/11 era, especially once the Iraq war started. Look at campy Sliders, Stargate SG-1 and Star Trek compared to the doom and gloom dark dramas like Battlestar Galactica (not saying that's a bad thing at all). I feel like the '08 recession reset the trend by hitting a low water mark, and then the tide started rising.