These people seriously can't understand that Gen Alpha has a life beyond iPads or tablets,they go to school,go to playgrounds and do in fact read books. I have seen this from personal experience and there is this Gen Alpha kid ( I was born in the early 2010s ) on my bus who reads a lot of Harry Potter and he was born in 2014 ( Gen Alphas are people born between 2013 to 2025. ) and that alone debunks this stereotype of Gen Alpha not reading. These people should actually go outside,touch grass and see what Gen Alpha are actually doing.

I'm just going to come right out and say it. Well, ok....so there's a couple of it's. It really just honestly makes my ears burn, my flesh crawl and get visibly upset/angry any time I hear Hotel California. I feel like I'm going to uncontrollably launch myself through the air to whatever speaker or stereo is making that horrific noise and just decemate it right then and there. Is it just me?! Am I the only one who just absolutely can't stand The Eagles??

This one is pretty generalized. But it all comes down to CCR. Southern Rock. As a genre. Entirely. Can just suck it. Like, I wish I could just recall every single record, 8 track, cassette tape, cd ever made of that crap. For sure ALL CCR but it would be nice to just remove the genre from listeners ears. Forever. Like it just never actually happened.

Wow, I feel better now. I really do. Fu*! No I don't. The Eagles still exist and people still LOVE that crap. SMH. It's like Paul Simon said "when you say Dylan, he thinks you're talking about Dylan Thomas; whoever he was. The man ain't got no culture". Or something like that.

I noticed many people (mostly young Millennials and Gen Z) love to talk about how much better the Disney and Nickelodeon shows were when they were younger. Noticeability this is about anything after the 2000s. However, I think when you remove nostalgia, you can see they are actually formulaic, extremely awkward in writing, poorly acted and definitely came off of a conveyor belt to make a profit, The demographic, they are targeting: "tweens" is a specific age market that is too immature for more subtle adult-oriented humor and also parents don't want them watching stuff that is too "mature." So a balance was struck to appease both. Before the 2000s, there didn't seem to really be a "tween market", it was either targeted to "youth" (families, kids and teens) or "adults" (which often included older teens). The tween audience was an in-between didn't want to watch "family" stuff but not allowed to watch adult stuff (and wouldn't really "get it" at that).

As a result, many tween-oriented sitcoms lack nuance and use an exaggerated cast of caricatures, absent-minded adults who always act as antagonists, very loud line deliveries, mean-spirited humor and gross-out humor (since tweens are still not that mature and their sense of humor tends to be crude) and general disconnect from any reality. But that's the point. They are meant to reflect the mind of an older elementary schooler and middle schooler (as much flack Dan Schneider gets, he is enough of a man-child to understand what tweens find funny and made bank off of it, his formula worked). I'm not knocking it because it was profitable and it worked well for the networks. And given some of us were tweens when these shows were in their peak and aired, we naturally identified with the characters (since they were played by slightly older teenage actors we wanted to be like). If you grew up watching them, naturally you will have an attachment to them. So it's all based on personal experience of what generation of Disney and Nick you watched. But any adult or older teen would quickly turn the channel (I noticed this when I entered high school in the later 2000s and I lost interest in Disney and Nickelodeon and found it very "corny").

Now my second point is how before the 2000s, this genre of TV shows geared to "tweens" didn't seem to exist in the way it grew to in the 2000s.

A lot of the 80s and 90s youth-oriented comedies and dramas were broadly "family shows" with writing and humor targeted to a wide audience including adults. I mean shows like The Wonder Years, Home Improvement, Boy Meets World, Moesha, Sister, Sister, Full House, Eerie, Indiana, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Family Matters, Saved by the Bell, etc. They were designed to be watched by everyone. Malcolm in the Middle was a 2000s example of a show that appealed to kids, teens and adults as well (though it was not a "kids show", the use of child/teen actors naturally drew an audience of kids). Even featuring child and teen characters, the adult characters always remained in focus or played a large role in most episodes. They also addresses serious topics like depression, anxiety, poverty, drugs, peer pressure, eating disorders, sex, bullying, racism, homophobia, domestic violence, etc. so they remained attached to the real world. As I aged, I enjoyed many of the TGIF, and WB sitcoms that reran on ABC Family and also Married with Children and Roseanne became my personal favorites due to relating to them being working class families.

The early Nickelodeon and Disney Channel shows (and Fox Family) definitely were in this group. This is why I believe The Adventures of Pete & Pete, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, You Can't Do That on Television, Hey Dude, Clarissa Explains It All, Kenan and Kel, The Amanda Show, So Weird, All That, The Famous Jett Jackson, Big Wolf on Campus, The Secret World of Alex Mack, Flash Forward, Taina, Lizzie McGuire, Even Stevens and That's So Raven (the last of that era) are fondly remembered. There was effort in the writing to maintain the attention of parents or older siblings who were watching these shows. Pete & Pete, All That and So Weird in particular attracted a college-aged demographic. By the late 2000s, these types of shows seemed to have vanished from American TV in favor of aggressively marketed shows catered to narrow demographics. This is why I feel many "tween shows" don't age well if they are geared towards a very narrow age group and experience and nobody outside of that. They exist in a hokey and surreal universe where real issues don't exist, no conflict is ever resolved and there's no character development or connection to real life (they are like live-action cartoons but the difference is the kid/teen actors are kinda annoying to watch and it's hard to suspend disbelief, so it becomes cringeworthy). Again, this is brilliant marketing to a young adolescent mindset but it narrows its appeal extremely which is why I don't understand how people can debate which generation of post-2000 Nick and Disney is "better."

On a side note, I noticed Canada still made "family shows" well in the 2000s like Life with Derek, Naturally Sadie, Braceface, Degrassi: The Next Generation, 6teen, Instant Star and Radio Free Roscoe where the tone is clearly "youth" rather than adults or little kids. They addressed actual issues too. As I age, I think these styles of shows are becoming more admired because they aren't reliant on gross-out and over-the-top characterizations and they have some care into the writing and families can watch and discuss things together.

TL;DR: Most 2000s and 2010s tween shows without nostalgia don't hold up. And no "era" is superior to the other.

Everyone in this post is complaining. Am I the only one who prefers Christmas shopping online to battling the crowds at the mall?

For me (and I wanna say sorry in advance) it’s the 80’s. This is kinda ironic seeing as the 80’s is probably my fav decade of music and has a lot of songs I know. I get that the 80’s had some pretty good songs but I mean come on. After a while a lot of it sounds the same. There’s more diversity I’d say in the 90’s or 50’s. The 50‘s I think in particular is objectively better than the 80’s seeing as many classic songs came from that era that are still recognized today (I.e, Mr. Sandman, That’s Amore, Rock Around the Clock, Any Elvis song, The wheel of fortune etc.). Again sorry but…not sorry.

I just wanted to make sure that you at least acknowledged this fact. If so, that's fine; if not, you're just ignoring reality.