A common saying has it that the past is another country. It’s taken as a figure of speech, but pay a visit to almost any mid-American shopping mall these days, and the prevailing vibe resembles an archaeological site. What was the hub of American commerce in the previous era is now where commercial operations wait to die.
The mall might be suffering a slow death, but it outlasted video gaming as an in-person social activity. Video arcades and LAN parties preceded malls into the abyss; now all that’s left is online shopping and gaming or soft exile to the single-player cloister.
Many would dismiss these parallel declines as nostalgic trivialities of the Mall and Nintendo Generations. But everywhere you look, the omens point to a radical shift from the old order to whatever is next.
What’s more, the change in well underway. Millionaires get their utilities shut off because the company’s server maintenance delays payment processing till after the deadline. Police balk at arresting feral street hooligans while arresting productive taxpayers for sharing unapproved memes. Republican lawmakers do the bidding of fast-talking heads who demand the financial enslavement of usury victims and the elderly. Anarcho-tyranny is a shopworn term, but we have yet to come up with a better name for what’s going on all around us.
In light of the bumpy ride we’re all taking in the unknown, whether we want to or not, it’s a pleasant diversion to pass the time reminiscing about America’s not-so-long-ago last days. They were times when getting together with friends meant showing up at the local hangout to see who was there. They were the days when video games were made by actual video game companies, and those companies were willing to experiment with novel play styles and peripherals.
Last night I joined author and musician David V. Stewart to chat about the distant country that is the past. We started off talking about the mall, then one tangent led to another. But as always, it was a fun and fascinating time.
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