Recently I've been reading the 1983: Doomsday timeline over on the Alt History Wikia a lot, and theorizing whether or not I would've lived through it (likely not, considering Pittsburgh is on the nuking list although Mount Washington could theoretically have protected much of the south hills from the blast wave if not the radiation, so maybe if I didn't receive too large a dose or got treated fairly quickly I could've made it) and the way it goes, the immediate aftermath is pure hell for those who survived the destruction but by the early to mid 90s things have settled down to a world basically like the afterlife from Wristcutters: A Love Story (one that's "like ours, but worse").
As an artist, musician, and popular culture aficionado, I wonder about how pop culture would develop in that world. I grant you most most people would be too busy struggling to survive to worry about what's going on in Tinseltown (and since Tinseltown would be a pile of radioactive ash there wouldn't be anything going on to worry about, it'd be a moot point anyway), but if we got the electric grid started up again or set up generators to power small settlements, we could power any TVs or stereo that didn't get EMP-fried.
Now, since there'd be no broadcasts, even you could turn on a television it'd show nothing but static on one channel and "PLEASE STAND BY" on another. But in 1983, we had movies on VHS (and Beta) tape. We had records and cassette tape players for music. And while the video game industry itself crashed in 1983, the games and consoles still existed.
So basically the question I'm asking the board is one of how pop culture would turn out if the channels through which we receive new media were shut off but the media itself was still (more or less) accessible. Would people's tastes become as eclectic as they kind of are now because of the ease of access the internet gives us? Or would people pick one past era to lock themselves in and create echo chambers with like-minded individuals? Personally, I can see someone like myself accidentally creating goth metal from being equally inspired by Metallica's Kill 'Em All and the early work of the Cure.
Actually, the most important question is how this "frozen pop culture" would be affected when the media machine starts up again?
As an artist, musician, and popular culture aficionado, I wonder about how pop culture would develop in that world. I grant you most most people would be too busy struggling to survive to worry about what's going on in Tinseltown (and since Tinseltown would be a pile of radioactive ash there wouldn't be anything going on to worry about, it'd be a moot point anyway), but if we got the electric grid started up again or set up generators to power small settlements, we could power any TVs or stereo that didn't get EMP-fried.
Now, since there'd be no broadcasts, even you could turn on a television it'd show nothing but static on one channel and "PLEASE STAND BY" on another. But in 1983, we had movies on VHS (and Beta) tape. We had records and cassette tape players for music. And while the video game industry itself crashed in 1983, the games and consoles still existed.
So basically the question I'm asking the board is one of how pop culture would turn out if the channels through which we receive new media were shut off but the media itself was still (more or less) accessible. Would people's tastes become as eclectic as they kind of are now because of the ease of access the internet gives us? Or would people pick one past era to lock themselves in and create echo chambers with like-minded individuals? Personally, I can see someone like myself accidentally creating goth metal from being equally inspired by Metallica's Kill 'Em All and the early work of the Cure.
Actually, the most important question is how this "frozen pop culture" would be affected when the media machine starts up again?
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