The monitor is -one weekly column devoted to everything that happens in THE CABLE the world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter.
Time travel has been on many minds lately. Or at least on my. Not necessarily the kind that sends you gallantly through the past or leaps into the future, but rather the kind that makes you feel as if you are stuck in another time and another place. This is the feeling one gets when access to abortion in the United States is set back to what it was before 1973, when the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to combat climate change is rolled back to another time when Top Gun is again the greatest movie in the world and yours favorite video games contains Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And also the feeling you get when RadioShack for some reason dominates the conversation.
OK, so the last one is not quite as consistent as the first one, but it may be the one that speaks most to the current moment. Back in 2020, an outfit called Retail Ecommerce Ventures – known for relaunching brands like Pier 1 and Dressbarn – bought a lot of RadioShack’s assets. When people no longer needed to drive to a retail store for obscure A / V cables in the Amazon era, the idea was to turn RadioShack into a “pioneering e-commerce business. “To turn the REV store chain into a blockchain device, launching a cryptocurrency platform called RadioShack Swap and its own token, $ RADIO (it currently has close to no value). In an apparent attempt to trumpet these efforts, the RadioShack Twitter feed was fully bridged this week.
“Hey @MileyCyrus you up?” read a Monday tweet. “Taking the second half of an edible, after feeling something from the first half, is always a bad idea. This chocolate bar made me out here fight for my life.” observed another. There were also promises that “any interaction with this tweet will be considered for a chance to win by capturing these mf radio hands. “For the most part, it was that kind of childish, NSFW humor that makes you think the account had been hacked. Instead, it was a prayer for attention – and it worked. Many of the tweets went viral, some were deleted, and from Thursday remained account said“I was put on Twitter probation to talk about marrying injectors. @Elonmusk when we make moves fam?”
Oh boy. Is everything that kind of stupid? Yes. But is it also a sign of the times? Yes. It feels like the US clock is rewinding and seeing a solid business from the 80s and 90s transformed into a crypto brand only puts it more sharply in focus. Everything old is new again – but it has not improved.
Nostalgia cycles come and go all the time – flashbacks to the 90s have flourished for a while – but they often come with an atmosphere of celebration or longing. In the last two years, this has been less frequently the case. Gen Z had fun brings emo backbut bringing 50-year-old policies back feels like stepping into the wrong wormhole.
On Wednesday, after the firing of several popular DJs, a modern pop / rock station in Vancouver played an edited version of Rage Against the Machines’ “Killing in the Name” on repeat for more than 10 hours. When people called in to request other songs, they were allegedly ignored. As the rumor of the KiSS Radio stunt spread, it looked like the Rage Marathon was a revolt against layoffs. But Thursday morning, the Vancouver Sun. reported that maybe it was just that an advertising stunt– an iconic protest song used to drum listeners. Or in another dimension, a beloved electronics store that sends wild tweets.