Time, my very favorite newsweekly, is finally giving some mainstream press to an issue that I've found interesting for a long time: namely, the relative quickness with which my generation has become nostalgic for a childhood with which we are not yet entirely done living in the first place. Time's article is mostly focused on those VH1I Love The.... programs, but the issue extends to beyond which disposable TV shows we like to watch, it also encapsulates nearly everything we consider our culture, from the Internet sites we love to visit to our favourite t-shirts and stores at which we shop. Even our most daring young authors are pontificitating about a not-so long-lost youth. Hell, today I read that a GI Joe live action movie is being made -- something that didn't even happen when GI Joe was popular.

Time pays a little face time to the phenomenon, but I think they get the diagnosis wrong. Instead of attributing the fact that Xers are more quickly nostalgic than Boomers to some murky malarky about having experienced "more media cycles", I think the true answer lies in the fact that Xers are damaged by being marketed to at a very early age. From a very early age, our generation was subjected to constant consumerisim. Ours was the first generation to be marketed to as a consumer demographic, and, as a result, the first generation to have it hardwired into our heads that happiness is a bowl of Crunch Berries, an Optimus Prime action figure, or a New Kids on the Block poster. Is it any wonder than once we realized that the world was shitty and no matter how many products we buy, that Golden Land of Consumer Happiness promised by the "messages" between the Saturday Morning cartoons (and, of course, in cases like GI Joe and Transformers the cartoons themselves) is just a myth, it is no wonder we want to surround ourselves with artifacts of a simpler time, reminders of an age when what you wanted was something you could have.