convinced they made kids who played them dumber, and acted as if that was both common sense and the scientific consensus. He, however, didn't know Flash games were a thing and so I ended up playing a bunch of RPGs and platformers and escape-the-room games on sites like Nitrome and Newgrounds.
I grew up to be pretty interested in video games, but in many cases i've only experienced more recent games. the first console i ever owned was the nintendo switch and the first game i put hundreds of hours into was minecraft.
for example, even though i like the zelda franchise a lot, i sometimes feel like i shouldn't be allowed to have an opinion on it because i've only actually played breath of the wild and the link's awakening remake, and a bit of oracle of ages (or was it seasons) on a secret castoff gameboy from a cousin. (i got stuck on a puzzle where you had to raise and lower the water level in a temple and gave up).
anyway, i think it's interesting that i'm a person my age who plays games but doesn't really have the normal nostalgia for most of the popular games from when i was a kid. first person shooters were huge when i was in middle school--they felt like the one type of game you could be into without being considered a nerd--but the only time i played one was for a few minutes at a friend's birthday party.
i also wasn't allowed to watch tv besides pbs, but i at least absorbed some normal shows from the sundays i used to spend at my grandparents' house, where they had cable and let us watch whatever. (if you let them choose what to watch they'd watch a home jewelry/gem shopping channel where you could call in to order now.)
for some reason, though, besides mythbusters and how it's made, i didn't really like watching live action shows. maybe it was something about awkward adolescence and feeling vaguely uncomfortable in my body. maybe i'd rather see more abstracted images instead of being confronted with human bodies. not sure. but i really didn't watch any shows like icarly or hannah montana even though they were extremely popular with people my age.
i really liked the powerpuff girls and dexter's lab and avatar the last airbender and honestly? pretty good taste, child me. i think those honestly all hold up.
for a thousand and one different reasons this is so very relatable even though the specifics are very, very different.
