r/nostalgia

I don't remember where everyone got the "S" from, but here's a cool article about it:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/that-s-thing-everyone-drew-in-school-what-is-it/

Me and my sister would battle each other all the time. I would 100% play this game today.

it only took me a year because this was DIFFICULT 🫣 but i’m still excited with how it turned out! the purple came out a little darker than i wished and in some lighting it’s hard to see.

also do not ask me about weaving in the ends 🥲

This was like a polly pocket and Tamagotchi mix. Another Amazing toy I think.

Forgot about this one for a minute.

So I was thinking about our high school computer lab this morning. Back in the early 2000s, every desk had those massive, seventeen-inch white box monitors that weighed about forty pounds and took up the entire table.

every single monitor had a little horseshoe magnet icon on the front menu panel. If the screen colors started bleeding into purple near the corners, you pressed that button.

The monitor would let out this deep, heavy magnetic `BWUUMPH` sound that made your entire desk vibrate for two seconds. The screen image would violently shake like a digital earthquake before snapping back into crisp focus.

It was an ABSOLUTELY top-tier sensory hit. Then you would hold your forearm two inches away from the curved glass screen just to feel the crackling static electricity pull your arm hair straight up. I should of appreciated that heavy analog hardware more before flat LCD screens made desk setups completely silent. Why did modern technology have to lose all of its tactile weight?

“You get caught in the…CROSS FIRE!”

We all know this song. It plays in our heads constantly. Some of us dream of it. Others of us make love to it. It is a song that changed a generation, no, the world, and one that has won numerous awards worldwide.

I’m talking of course about the legendary song in the commercial for the 90s toy cross fire. 

Of the five commercials that existed for toys in the 90s, this was by far the best. We are transported to a world that is Thunderdome-esque, where survival, courtship, property rights, and the worthiness of your very soul are determined by your ability to participate in this futuristic winner-take-all battle to the death.

YOU GET CAUGHT UP IN THE….CROSS FIRE! 

As a child, this was the apex. I never had felt so exhilarated or stimulated in my life to that point (and still have not to this day). I fondly remember the tingling I received throughout my body while watching those kids battle, practically throwing their bodies back and forth as they tried to shoot that thing in the middle, sending it spiraling at their opponent.

Had any of us ever seen something so epic? So powerful? So raw? 

I contend there has not been a better song written since. The 90s were encapsulated in this song and a generation was entranced. Unfortunately, brave reader, we all know what happened next…

This song, this glorious song that I still sing in public, that I use to inspire my children (and that they were conceived to), and that immediately helps you identify who is “the real” and who is in “the know”....

…was written about a terrible game/product.

I wish it were not so. I wish life was the Cross Fire portrayed to us in the commercials. But alas, this was our first exposure to the evils and deceptions of capitalism. The game looked so fast-paced, so intense, so fun but…

If you ever played it, you know. You kinda slowly shoot a metal ball at a plastic thing toward the other person’s goal. The plastic thing like barely fucking moves when you hit it. The game is slow paced and annoying. It is no futuristic epic battle. There is no amazing song playing.

There is no hope. There is no completion.

Only marketing practices designed to drain us of our money.

And therefore, in some ways, maybe Cross Fire did prepare us for the world. A whole marketing team thinking about what appeals to us, what we desire, what makes us stir, and commodifying that for their own gains. What makes us smile gleefully is what they use to exploit us and the beauty of Cross Fire truly can only exist in our minds.

Sigh. I’m getting old. But sometimes, when I lie in bed, trapped only with my thoughts, I hear something, faint and distant at first but slowing growing in resonance. A call from the void, no, a call from the past, an echo of the youthful hope I once had and still wish to cling onto…

…you get caught up in the…..CROSS FIRE!!!!!!

Note: for all you dickheads who keep calling my writing AI check out me writing this article: https://youtu.be/mTE4f4aI25c