‘Mad Men’ > ‘Clarissa Explains It All’
By Thoughtis
In 2007, Don Draper gave a speech in the 1960s about nostalgia.
He said something about Greeks and a wheel and people got excited for the show’s future.
Nostalgia is “delicate, but potent.”
We seem to only remember the last part of whatever’s said.
The headline and the end is all that matters.
Together we broke nostalgia.
Just as we killed all of the ninjas and the fails and the cats we have killed all the fresh princes and the houses full of John Stamos.
It was our fault.
It was too easy.
There has potentially never been anything in history less cool than the Yahoo News frontpage around 2007 (sorry Yahoo News frontpage) but we followed them into the dark and wrote articles that everyone would click on and considered going-viral a worthwhile pursuit regardless of content.
There is something undeniably brilliant about crafting the perfect viral article.
It absolutely takes a certain talent that not everyone has.
But getting there through 90s nostalgia is the equivalent of a GoDaddy commercial getting your attention with GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS in that there’s no substance but the GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS.
It’s like hanging out with an 8 year old which would be adorable if the blogger was actually 8.
Do you want to see all my Hot Wheels?
Do you like this toy and that game?
You say yes to the 8 year old and your heart swells two sizes too big.
You say no to the person who is probably older than you and getting paid to bond with you over experiences you didn’t share.
Mad Men isn’t new and its subject is old.
But instead of simply pointing at the 60s and saying “remember?” it uses that entry-point that gets your attention and does something different with it.
An article that uses Pogs in the headline can be potentially great as long as it’s not just pictures of Pogs.
There’s a reason that toy is no longer played with.
Clarissa doesn’t deserve being singled-out in this headline.
At the time that was a fine/great show.
But I’d like to think we all get that now.
There’s nothing left for it to prove.
We’re all on the same page, the past was awesomeeeee.
But does Clarissa really still explain it all?
Surely she didn’t cover everything.
Maybe I’m just ready for some more recent nostalgia.
What The Cohen Family Can Teach Us About Religion.
Effie From Skins Was As Hot As Global Warming, Which We Should Talk About.
Morality doesn’t exist, XOXO Gossip Girl.
I do not believe we need to start with anything more complex than “X’s and “O’s.”
But we need to start.
I remember my first beer.
I remember remembering my first beer.
The second time was much less fun but was a good party topic.
It’s the combination of the two that needs to happen.
Remembering my first beer, realizing it was a kind of weird experience in a frat house and talking about this with a friend who shared the experience was the most fun of the three.
Nostalgia isn’t bad.
It’s just fragile and needs to be used to create something new.
Clarissa needs to explain something I don’t already know.
That she existed in the nineties and so did I.
