I am the youngest of three siblings, and the youngest by 10 years. Unlike my brother and sister, I grew up with the internet available from the get-go. Music, videos, movies, television seasons, articles, and various streaming services are available for consumption in a finite amount and an infinite capacity. Which brings up that feeling that I have never felt in vast amounts that my brother and sister can: nostalgia.
Recently, the Pokemon franchise turned 20 years old. Some of my favorite childhood memories came from playing that game along side my brother who gave up on the games soon after I really started to like them. Because of that anniversary day for the franchise, my brother told me he had that sense of nostalgia when I had posted about it on Facebook. He knows that I've still remained a fan of he series and I had to wonder what was the core differences between our consumption of media.
What kept me on certain games and movies we had watched together that fell into both our demographics? I had realized it was simply, the internet. My brother has his career because of computers and new software developments, but our consumption is different and I think it affects our senses of nostalgia. He can go back and watch "The Matrix" or "Hackers" or the first live-action "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie and be nostalgic and remember how much he loves them or how much he loved them at the time. In my personal experience, franchises like Pokemon that have proliferated to this day have never gone away. "Power Rangers" for example, is still going with new episodes, reboots and adaptations are what Hollywood blockbusters have been what most of movie goings in the 21st Century have been about.
Nostalgia is not dead, but it is selective. In the 21st Century, there is far more to the internet culture than the very positive or very negative things that are understood about it. Internet is media, and we will undoubtedly consume it differently than even those closest to us. Some will go and watch their favorite old movies on Netflix, others will just keep consuming. To millennials, some of us will never stop seeing what we had as little kids. They'll stay with us because the internet really is more of a media machine and historical database for it than we know.
