I couldn’t agree more. I wrote about that exact feeling of having lost the joy of seeking these things out. I focused mostly on how this relates to music, but the feeling is the same.
A well-articulated description of most of my childhood encounters with media!
Honestly, even something super-popular like Calvin and Hobbes could create a lesser version of the experience you had with Tintin. I loved Calvin and Hobbes in the early-to-mid 90s, as did everyone else, and while every bookstore carried *some* of the books, no store in our area stocked *all* of them, especially the older ones. So filling out my collection ended up taking maybe 2 years of checking that section every time we went to a bookstore.
As for gaming, for several years my parents paid for a subscription to Electronic Gaming Monthly, which I dutifully read cover-to-cover, sometimes multiple times. Because it covered all the consoles (including obscure ones that quickly failed), and it sometimes talked about Japan-only titles, it really offered that feeling of "alien worlds". Reading about a Japan-only game for the CD add-on for the TurboGrafx 16 (which no one I knew had ever played in the first place) was three steps removed from anything I had experienced. It was basically like learning about a civilization on Alpha Centauri. I would just study EGM's photos and brief descriptions of such games and let my imagination run wild.
This *so* resonates with me! Was just having this conversation with my kids and felt like the oldest of old men. There's an excellent episode of 'The Adventures of Pete & Pete' where little Pete hears a song and it becomes his absolute favorite song. Then he can't find the band or anything about the band. He goes on this quest to recreate the song. It so perfectly captures that feeling of what art can do and how it can spark the desire to create art of our own in dialogue with it. My hunt for those kinds of songs and stories continues and always will!
I couldn’t agree more. I wrote about that exact feeling of having lost the joy of seeking these things out. I focused mostly on how this relates to music, but the feeling is the same.
https://open.substack.com/pub/theobsoleteman/p/silver-platter-streaming?r=ohdic&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Have we lost the hunt or has the hunt just shifted?
A well-articulated description of most of my childhood encounters with media!
Honestly, even something super-popular like Calvin and Hobbes could create a lesser version of the experience you had with Tintin. I loved Calvin and Hobbes in the early-to-mid 90s, as did everyone else, and while every bookstore carried *some* of the books, no store in our area stocked *all* of them, especially the older ones. So filling out my collection ended up taking maybe 2 years of checking that section every time we went to a bookstore.
As for gaming, for several years my parents paid for a subscription to Electronic Gaming Monthly, which I dutifully read cover-to-cover, sometimes multiple times. Because it covered all the consoles (including obscure ones that quickly failed), and it sometimes talked about Japan-only titles, it really offered that feeling of "alien worlds". Reading about a Japan-only game for the CD add-on for the TurboGrafx 16 (which no one I knew had ever played in the first place) was three steps removed from anything I had experienced. It was basically like learning about a civilization on Alpha Centauri. I would just study EGM's photos and brief descriptions of such games and let my imagination run wild.
This *so* resonates with me! Was just having this conversation with my kids and felt like the oldest of old men. There's an excellent episode of 'The Adventures of Pete & Pete' where little Pete hears a song and it becomes his absolute favorite song. Then he can't find the band or anything about the band. He goes on this quest to recreate the song. It so perfectly captures that feeling of what art can do and how it can spark the desire to create art of our own in dialogue with it. My hunt for those kinds of songs and stories continues and always will!