Open Thread: Were the Eighties the Last Good Decade?

John Ocasio-Rodham Nolte @NolteNC

What made the 80s special was that almost NO ONE -- except some teachers who still thought it was the 60s -- was uptight.

Everyone was cool. Everyone could take a joke. You never had to walk on eggshells. The girls were cool. Race relations were cool. We all had part-time jobs. We all had beater cars. We all drank beer, smoked cigs, went to the movies, watched MTV, and only wanted to have fun, not prove we were good people.

You had to be there.

The nineties were pretty chill, too. Except that that Boomer Pervert Clinton couldn't keep it in his pants and turned the country upside down with his lies. (Or, "lies" -- I don't think the lefties defending him ever believed him.)

Coddled Affluent Professional @feelsdesperate

I don't think I'm above being propagandized. In fact, I'd probably go along with anything as long as the propaganda was good enough.

Along these lines one of the great puzzles of Woke 1 was why so much cultural production was made dumb, off putting, and aesthetically repugnant. As a Good Person you were supposed to 'eat your vegetables' and act like you enjoyed it, and this worked for those engaged in specific types of reputational and social competition.

But on the whole, for society at scale, libs lost a great deal of soft power by making laughably bad, ideologically doctrinaire art that no one with any honesty would admit to liking or finding pleasurable. In fact, it was the opposite: the more unpleasant, inane, and cartoonish the art became the better a test it became of the ideologically committed and craven - you knew someone was completely committed when they would breathlessly report how something obviously terrible was wonderful. This signified that they were all in and had sacrificed all credibility in service of ideological commitment. The downside of course was that the postwar lib cultural apparatus that was at its peak from the early 1960s to late 2000s ran off the rails and completely lost its ability set defining cultural narratives.

Related:

Florida's only Pizza Hut Classic, featuring the nostalgic red plastic cups, vinyl booths, Tiffany-style lamps and checkerboard tablecloths reminiscent of the 1980s, has become so popular that employees from other locations have been brought in to help accommodate the influx of guests at the Homosassa Springs restaurant.

...

Pizza Hut started the Classic initiative around 2017, according to Sparks.

"They approached a few franchisees and said, 'Hey, we're thinking about doing this retro look. Do you guys want to participate in the test?' So I jumped at that opportunity," he said.

...

Customer feedback showed that the throwback styling "really resonated with everybody," Sparks said. Daland currently operates 39 Pizza Hut Classic locations.

Since the Homosassa Springs restaurant was converted, dine-in sales have more than doubled, FOX 13 Tampa Bay reported.

"Tons of people" travel from well over an hour away to visit the Pizza Hut Classic that Daland operates in Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania, which has attracted significant attention on social media, according to Sparks.

"There's only 1,700 people in that town, and they will almost double the national average of Pizza Hut this year in sales," he said.

...

He believes younger generations may feel a similar pull toward the Pizza Hut Classics.

"I think it does take them back to a little clip of time and an era where, in their minds, things weren't as hectic," Sparks said. "It was a little simpler time."

Sparks has also noticed another phenomenon when customers visit the Classic restaurants.

"People put their phones down," Sparks said.

"Once they're over the excitement, and they're taking pictures of the Pac-Man machine and the salad bar and the Tiffany lights ... they set it down, and they start having conversation," he said. "I can't explain it, but it's super cool to watch."

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 12:10 PM

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