Weekend Lounge ~ The Gen Y Experiment is Over

Welcome to the weekend!

We've talked about the lonely generations reaching middle age and what we can do about it, but how about going back a little and seeing where it first became visible? Today I have visual evidence of the originating point for an entire generation, the one most well known for being trapped in their memories and nostalgia. I'm, of course, talking about Gen Y. An entire generation that came of age during the eye of the hurricane that cracked during Cultural Ground Zero and bottomed out during their early adult years in the '00s.

We all know how that story went in that first quarter block of the 21st century. But what was it like being Gen Y before everything collapsed? Well, I can actually give you an example of what my generation was like right this very second!

The above video details the rise and fall of Generation Y centered on one figure who was infamous in the early popular era of the internet. This was the early '00s back when social media was just getting off the ground and Gen Y was learning how to use YouTube to express themselves. In case you haven't realized it yet, the subject is about the Spoony One himself, one of the early wave of those internet reviewers. While it might seem odd to bring up this one figure and his downfall, and you might even consider him an outlier to that generation, there is a very good reason that his rise and fall endures as a cautionary tale despite the countless internet figures that come and go everyday. No one is waiting for the Gamedude to return, for example.

It's been nearly two decades and yet still people think of Spoony. Why is that? Why of all those figures is he the one that elicits the most nostalgia for that specific time and place that is gone now, more than others from the time? Even the above video maker, being a younger figure, was a member of his audience who looked to him to learn about certain things. Even now he still thinks Spoony has something the others didn't. Let us look into why so many think so, and ponder if that is truly the case or just wishful thinking.

The Angry Video Game Nerd is still popular. He's still working at it. It is the same with the Nostalgia Critic. James Rolfe and Doug Walker are the names everyone in these circles knows. These two are still among the biggest in their niches despite the passage of decades since their early beginnings. Most of the others have disappeared, some have imploded, some have even died (RIP Armake21), but despite it all, there is one critic that so many await a return for to this day to resume his career as if nothing has happened. That is Spoony. If you know anything about the era, you are even probably nodding your head along with that, even if you might not understand why. Why is it that nostalgia for Spoony remain over all the others?

The logo you might remember

Unfortunately, there is a realization here, and one his audience all knows deep down. He cannot really return, and we will get to why that is soon. I promise, we will discuss it soon enough! First let us discuss his initial popularity to set it up.

The early era of internet critics back in those early days of YouTube and social media were mostly just AVGN rip-offs. We all know it now, but we also all knew it at the time. There was a demand for over the top deconstructions of childhood favorites, and boy oh boy were many Gen Ys ready to fill that niche. There were almost as many angry reviewers as there were stars in the sky, and none of them really lasted beyond that initial year or two.

Most of these figures are watched for nostalgia's sake today, ironically, though they are an interesting window into an era of the internet and culture long gone today. Despite that, however, there were a few that stood out in the crowd. Aside from the above big dogs like James and Doug, the one that almost reached their level, and many would say even now was their equal, was Spoony of the Spoony Experiment. But he wasn't just an angry reviewer. Unlike the others, he wasn't a character, he wasn't overblown or cartoony, he was just himself and really excitable and personable about what he covered. Spoony loved cool things, movies, games, TV shows, wrestling, whatever, it didn't matter. His excitement was palpable, whether he liked something or not and it was always fun to hear him talk about what he enjoyed.

In those days, it was like meeting a friend and talking about things you both had in common, and it was refreshing. For Gen Y guys, we all knew someone like him, or had a bit of him inside us, or understood where he was coming from even when we didn't agree. For younger audiences he was like an older brother showing them obscure and wild entertainment from the fringes you might never have seen otherwise. Even now in the modern corporate and "professional" YouTube world there isn't really anyone else like him. The world to Gen Y was exciting, there were cool things to be found everywhere, and those things were going to be good in the end.

And then they weren't. This is where we get to those days of the later '00s where the bleakness started to take hold of the generation. Spoony was not only not an exception to this: in many ways he was the posterchild for it all. Those were rough times.

Spoony's downfall was a tough one to watch, even at the time. Though he became an internet punchline, unlike many other early internet figures that crashed and burned, Spoony's was different. Even as he faded away, to this day a not-insignificant amount of people await his return. There is a good reason for that, despite everything that happened, many still wait for him. It will probably never happen, and it should be discussed why.

As mentioned before, check out the above video for details on what exactly happened. In retrospect, his "controversies" are actually quite tame (and water under the bridge at this point), but one part sticks out more than all of those. There is a moment in Spoony's rant at the end of his Ultima series, the last large project he did before he flamed out, that tips his hand. One can feel his despair over everything he loved turning to shit, getting worse, and imploding, and that there was nothing he could do about it. This was clearly meant to cap the video off with a gag, but his clear disappointment over his precious memories being destroyed and being forgotten by the passage of time and corporate avarice, and how nothing will ever be good again, ended up reflecting the feelings of much of his audience at the time. The elephant in the room is that we all knew it was true, and we all knew we lacked the power to save anything at the time. It was the source of Gen Y's despair at the time.

That rant is a good example of that era of Gen Y existence when the warmth of youth has finally faded and left us in the empty cold of the late '00s/early '10s, a hopeless era where loneliness and alienation became common, and it did not feel like any light was coming. The realization was that everything we thought we loved was purposefully being destroyed (and it was), and that without it our generation did not think we had meaning otherwise.

Infamous, but not the low point.

This is why Spoony will not return. Not because he cannot get past that despair, he can, (we very much all can) but that the realization is that those products are not what made those times great. It wasn't the IPs, the logos, or the carboard boxes and jewel cases. Those could be cool, but they weren't the source of enjoyment. When the nostalgia fades, what remains are the ideas, the spirit, the connection, and the sense of higher purpose al the best art and entertainment points toward. At this point, Gen Y is not reveling in the past: they are moving forward using the past as a way to shine a light into newer unexplored territory of the like we never imagined back then.

The reason Spoony can't come back is because there's no more nostalgia for him to mine, and he doesn't need to do that anymore. It's been recorded and shared with the world. His part in that Experiment is over. So now what? If Spoony wanted to come back, it would have to be to move forward in the same way his cohort is starting to. He wouldn't be able to do the same thing anymore.

Were Spoony to return, not only would his demons have to be beaten, but he would have to be in a better place to show those waiting for him a better way out of the pit not only he, but his entire generation, had been trapped in. Some are still there, too. In essence, they may think they want Spoony to taken them back to the past, but what they actually want is to be brought to the future, and they still think he has the ability to that. Maybe he does.

Does the above sound strange? Are members of Gen Y, or his younger watchers in the Millennials, really still waiting for a reviewer who stopped reviewing years ago? They are waiting for something, and probably more than they think they are. Well, the audience waiting for him is waiting for him because he reminds them of themselves. Spoony has always been a reflection of who the audience thought they were, wanted to be, or knew someone like. They live in the same fallen world as he does and wish desperately for the parts of them left behind in that nostalgic haze to also be saved with the rest of them. If he can make it, they all can, essentially.

In the '00s we were told everything old sucked, was useless, and had no value. Now, in the '20s, a quarter of a century removed, we realize how wrong that was. If it had no value we wouldn't have been able to connect with any of it, we wouldn't have huddled around YouTube comments on videos and pages (until those were removed) had countless response videos, or taken to forums and social media to talk amongst ourselves over it. We ad it all in a cloak or sarcasm and irony to detach ourselves, but we all knew it mattered. That is why when it disappeared, a level of despair fell over us all. We didn't realize what we had until it was gone. It was the connection itself that mattered, and that is why we still talk about these things even so many years removed from them.

The old days were good, not perfect, but good. We salvaged what we could from them to bring what mattered forward, but those days are gone and over with now. We can't just marvel at and swim in the past. We need new ways to look forward. We don't need dead IPs, franchises, or corporations, to rule our future. We need to be able to look ahead to something better than what we grew up with. Spoony himself is a relic of that era, but he's also a person. He's a human being who can't live there any more than we can. You can visit the past anytime, but no one else is there anymore.

It is the same when a new multiplayer FPS comes out and people hope against hope for it to be a draw for multiplayer. They want desperately to return to the good times. They want the "community" to return, be it Call of Duty, Overwatch, or even Unreal. They all know it won't happen, it can't happen, but they desperately desire that lost connection again.

But what was the essence of that connection? Playing with strangers? No, it was a variation of an earlier phenomenon.

When one looks at old photos of LAN parties over two decades ago you just realize none of these new games will ever compare, and they don't. Part of the appeal has always been friends, acquaintances, and neighbors, getting together to have fun over the same thing. We all desired that connection. We don't have those anymore, though. There are no communities, no one has the time, and everyone is off in their own little spaces, which means there will never be anything that lives up to the way it once was. That's just the blunt truth.

Waiting for Spoony to return is a lot like waiting for those local communities to return. They're gone and not coming back. You can go back to the past but, again, no one else is there anymore. One can build something different, perhaps something better, but it will only come from taking in what came before and applying it to the future. That is what Gen Y's job will be: to be the preservers and the ones carrying the memories forward to apply in new situations. Our job is to not linger and drown: the hour is much, much too late for that.

At this time, I think most of us have figured this out. We are building, working, and striving for something better. The age for lingering and pining is over and done. That's a good thing: we can always improve and grow.

If Spoony does come back I would hope he's a completely different person, like the rest of us, finished with living in the past and hopeful for a better future. I would hope he could escape those demons of those darker years and build something new. They are over for the rest of us now, but it doesn't mean we have to leave everything behind. We just have to understand where we are now, and what we can offer that no one else can.

Gen Y's worst days are behind us. It won't be perfect going forward, there will be a lot of rough waters and tough times, but we're finally moving out of the pit of the past and ready to carry ourselves forward. It's about due, but we finally know what we can do now. We don't need permission, we don't need to bend the knee to people who hate us, and we don't need to fade away. We won't be defeated. In fact, we will win.

You can just do things, you know.

It's pretty great.

Check out my new story "Lightning Jim" in Mistcreek Tales! The paperback version is out now, and even includes some spiffy art! Check it out here!