Is there a reason why I feel so attracted to the early 1900s?And I'm not talking about le ebin nadsees of the 1930s, but rather the years between 1902 and 1919.Everything from the music, the photos, the way people were dressed, the out of control industrial progress, soothes me and gives me a sense of belonging.What the fuck? Am I fucking retarded or what?
>>18347424Early 20th century music was absolutely dreadful, Foxtrot is such a dreary and depressing genre of music, I think maybe the mid to late 20s is when you see recorded music get more lively, it was the beginning of the Jazz and Big Band Age
>>18347425Jazz existed already in 1900-1910, anon.
>>18347424If you give the same outsize attention to a different similarly sized period of modern history, you'll likely feel the same appreciation.
>>18347424it preceded the worst 30 years humanity has ever seen since the fall of the Roman Empirethe overwhelming majority of people in those photos are absolutely clueless of what is to come, and thats why it feels so fascinating and nostalgic
>>18347424You're just a deluded fool who romanticizes an era he never lived in.The turn of the century was a crappy time to live in, it's not called the Gilded Age for nothing.Public health was nonexistent and wealth inequality was astronomical.You might be retarded.
>>18347427Yes it did but it wasn't quite to the level that it was by the late 20s and early 30s. It was largely still in its Dixieland Jazz/Light Orchestral roots
>>18347430>NOOOO YOU HAD TO LIVE IN ANCIENT ROME TO FULLY APPRECIATE ITbait used to be believable.
>>18347435NTA but the early 1900s was a very shit time to be alive, even OPs photo looks like a massive slum. Most people were poor, and the rich were easily 10x worse than they are today
>>18347435Don't worry little bro, we're living through Gilded Age 2.0.
>>18347430The fact that it was a "crappy time to live in" is itself interesting. Imagining yourself living in a certain time elicits a different feeling than simply thinking about the time period. How can you learn about something without appreciating its significance to begin with?
>>18347424Western nations could still afford to build nice structures and produce nice clothing because they were relatively self sufficient as compared to now. This was before Germany lost Prussia and Britain lost its empire.Since the events of '14 - '45 the world entered into a period of economic domination of Wall Street, which in turn exported industry to China and Southeast Asia due to the declining racial quality of the United States>inb4 chudI am a left wing socialist
>>18347450Imagining living in a certain time is different from actually living in said time though. What you're doing is Romanticizing it because you have the benefit of retrospect that the people actually living through it simply didn't.
>>18347454>I am a left wing socialistYou're a chud, now dig the fucking hole retard.
>>18347455>muh romantesheeshashionGet the fuck outta here.He's right, you can appreciate something without being overly analytical of it.
>>18347424>Is there a reason why I feel so attracted to the early 1900s?Because it was a better time than nowWe are on the downslope
>>18347450Imagining yourself living in a certain time is one thing, you literally said "soothes me and gives me a sense of belonging."If you actually did your research you'd realize that the average person lived a crappy life back then.
>>18347424It's because America still modelled itself on European cultural ideals so it was more beautiful and better principled with a link to the past not yet severed
>>18347455No. You're misunderstanding. I am absolutely confident your take is wrong.How do you draw the connection between:>it sucked to actually live in a certain time>don't romanticize the time periodThe fact that it's interesting due its significance is the reason to romanticize it. You appreciate it from a bird's eye view, otherwise you wouldn't care enough to know about it.
>>18347466RetardYour problem with modern architecture literally comes from Americas insistence on modeling itself after Europe. Modernist and Post-modernist architecture comes from Europe. It's less that America stopped modeling itself on European culture and more that European culture stopped being desirable to model oneself after.
>>18347424There's nothing wrong with having this idealized, romantisized image of a period in your head. I had ones when I was a kid about 1920s prohibition/al capone era chicago. Had one about the wild west as well. Consumed endless movies and games about it too. But do realise that your idealized image of that era is probably really far from reality. Take your picture for example. New York boroughs in the early 1900's was a loud, stinky, shit-infested place where you'd get pickpocketed faster than poored water on if you were on fire. Horseshit and human feces in the middle of the street. Imagine India today, just in New York. Europe wasnt sending their finest over on the boats. You'd probably be stuck working some factory job 12 hours a day for pennies and live in a apartment with 11 other family members. I mean, people got sad and depressed and killed themselves back then as well. Most of the time they just drank themselves to death.
>>18347424>Is there a reason why I feel so attracted to the early 1900s?because you are looking at the OP image without imagining what it smelled like. Go to any marketplace in a third world city and you'll be able to look at this image and immediately have your nostrils filled with the combined aroma of rotting meat, animal droppings, and human body odor. I call it the third world smell.
>>18347503>New York City in 1905>The third worldJesus christ
>>18347527The sanitation standards of 1905 New York were absolutely on par with modern third world shitholes. You have no idea how filthy shit was back then.
>>18347424I always think that even though regular people feel like powerless cogs in a machine with monolithc godmen like Elon and Trump being the doers of civilization now, that feeling was probably more pronounced back then.These days, even middle class people have the highest-end electronics and nice cars even if they also had the crippling debt it took to get it. Back then, street urchins had no fucking chance at a comfortable life.
>>18347551Anyone can tell Elon to fuck off with a tweet, too. He's a social media addict, he'll probably read it. You may get no reaction, but it's funny and feels like fighting the power.
Edwardian era was peak humanity
Tfw no big booty Edwardian baby mama
>>18347450I used to love listening to my great grandfather's life on a ranch at the turn of the century. He didn't have to worry about wagecucking, traffic, pollution, etc. Then I remember that if you got sick you were probably fucked 50/50. Law enforcement was non-existent so you'd have to take matters into your own hands. No safety nets. Very basic medical care, if any at all. You had to learn to deal with the temperament and dangers of riding a horse. No jobs except wagie manual labor. Very little social mobility. Everything smelled like manure. No education.
>>18347425https://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/The University of California has a digitized archive of wax cylinder recordings of that era. I dig some of that stuff—brass bands, opera arias, ragtime piano, ethnic comedy, lots of late period minstrelry that you might not want to play at parties. Recorded music really got good when they started going south in the early 20s to wax jazzmen and hillbillies, but I love that crackly ghostly pre-WWI sound.
>>18347496I don't think it's fair to blame migrants for the natural result of heavy reliance on animal labour in a dense urban environment and a generalized lack of toilets (they used outhouses draining to vaults that were periodically flushed) in the tenements they lived in. (This latter one only became mandatory in 1901).Now I'm sure they weren't the best, but this specifically wasn't their fault.
>>18347429Me on the upper right.
>>18347650t. Descendant of Sicilian slum dwellers
