Is nostalgia trustworthy: were earlier times, or earlier generations, really better?
John has said since 2010 that nostalgia yearns for a past that never existed, applying it to golden ages of religion, America and the internet; in 2020 he named now as his golden age. Hank says the good old days were no better (2009) and the coal push reflects fondness for a world that probably never existed (2017), though in 2019 he grants tradition gets a bad rap.
Axis: the past really was better ... nostalgia misremembers; the past was not better
Positions by date: 17 records in 17 videos. The position did not change in these records.
John
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-08-06 (said on 2010-08-04, implied) | first on record | John says nostalgia is inevitably a yearning for a past that never existed. | Looking for Alaska at My High School 00:03:25 |
| 2011-06-24 | restate | John says religious traditions look back to a golden age, but there never was one and it cannot be recaptured by going back. | On Religion (Redux) 00:02:13 |
| 2011-12-05 | restate | John concludes that people have been declaring the decline of good proofreading for five centuries. | 5 Worst Typos of History 00:02:40 |
| 2016-04-19 | restate | John says the US has always had big problems, and asks, of talk about making America great again or reigniting the American dream, when exactly this golden age was. | Literally Hitler 00:01:38 |
| 2017-09-19 | restate | John says we shouldn't romanticize pre-agricultural communities, where infanticide was usually common and violent death far more frequent than now. | Why Cities? 00:02:27 |
| 2018-01-09 | restate | John says whatever golden age of internet discourse people look back to is inevitably misremembered. | Your Attention 00:01:16 |
| 2018-05-08 | restate | John doesn't think the internet used to be amazing (1994 AOL chat rooms make 2018 Twitter look civil and sophisticated); he thinks he has changed. | Old Man Yells at Cloud 00:02:13 |
| 2018-09-18 | restate | John says calling today's young people a participation trophy generation, expecting praise for small accomplishments and rewards for failure, is pseudo-cultural analysis that always oversimplifies. | On the Participation Trophy 00:00:00 |
| 2018-12-11 | restate | John doesn't want to wax nostalgic: that internet had all the problems of today's, on a smaller scale. | When the Internet Came Home 00:02:17 |
| 2020-10-07 (said on 2020-10-06, implied) | restate | John says different viewers would name different golden ages, but for him it's now; he has needed this space in 2020 more than ever. | The Golden Age of Vlogbrothers 00:03:24 |
| 2024-09-25 | restate | John doesn't want to be overly nostalgic: the old internet had all today's problems on a smaller scale, and today's rate of creative production is astounding. | You have no chance to survive make your time. 00:04:48 |
Hank
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2009-09-15 | first on record | Hank says the 'good old days' his elders talk about were old but no better than today. | Internetless in Maine 00:02:36 |
| 2016-01-29 | restate | Hank finds it strange that the older generation's chief complaint is that young people have it too easy, when it is increasingly clear they don't. | Why the Word "Millennial" Makes me Cringe 00:03:28 |
| 2017-06-02 | restate | In the description Hank says nostalgia drives the push to leave: the focus on coal, uneconomical and employing few Americans, reflects fondness for a world that probably never existed. | The Paris Accord: What is it? And What Does it All Mean? video description |
| 2019-08-03 | restate | Hank says tradition gets a bad rap because it comes from bad old times, and some traditions held unmodified can run counter to our values. | I Love John: Esther Day 2019 00:01:12 |
| 2021-10-22 | restate | The description says the bigger the solution, the more problems it causes, but that doesn't mean life was better before it. | A Tool with No Blood on It video description |
| 2026-10-30 | restate | Hank says people can feel their teenage year was the most normal while recognizing that everybody thinks their teenage years were the good and pure times before everything got complicated. | The Last Normal Year 00:00:29 |
Background
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-12-29 | background | John's nostalgia for youthful road trips is undercut: as a father he can again enjoy Happy Meals and the Play Place. (playful) | Baby on the Road: Thoughts from Places 00:00:59 |
Dates are upload dates, which set the order. Where the speaker gives a different recording date in the video, it is added as "said on YYYY-MM-DD, implied" (derived from the date said in the video).