Cadbury's used to have pretty nice chocolate. It wasn't amazing, but for bog standard cheap chocolate it was decent. It became less nice about 20 years ago, and then went to absolute shit a decade ago, shortly after being acquired by Mondelez. It not only tastes really bad, but it feels disgusting in your mouth. It doesn't melt like chocolate, instead it kind of disintegrates into a strange waxy residue that coats your mouth. It's actively unpleasant.
It's not the only one to go that way either, Lindt, Milka, Toblerone, all became awful around that time. Some chocolates held up. Mars Celebrations were decently edible up until around two years ago and now they are foul. The best place to get decent chocolate at non-artisan prices is Lidl and Aldi. Most, but not all, of their chocolate still tastes like chocolate is supposed to.
I've noticed the same thing with like, cheap sugar cookies with frosting on them. Just completely horrific in the mouth. The sugary stuff will melt down and leave a film on your tounge/teeth/roof of your mouth that takes a while to go away.
it makes sense when you think about modern culture, culture, especially the last quarter century has revolved around the 1980s, which makes sense when you think about who the leaders in the democratic party is and how much of a monster they turned reagan into and why pop culture nostalgia has been stuck in the 1980s for so long. If they try to move on then you get to bill clinton and his fuckery and have to admit democrats can be awful and shit isn't so black and white.
Like look at who was president, Obama, a man who went to high school during the reagan years, just like Kamala, and Gavin Newsom, and most of our celebrity icons of the 2000s.
Its easier for democrats to keep us in this era because thats when democrats being good underdogs vs an evil GOP made sense. plus Bush was such a liberal GOP guy that he would resemble a modern democrat (hence why kamala and hilary both got Dick Chaney's endorsement)
moving on from that would force them to admin some key truths they held were all wrong, and they'd rather die than do that.
It's not only that. The corporations have "solved" 1980s pop culture. They know how to create content for it, they know how to market and sell it, and no status quo breaking new things will appear risking disruption of their industries.
Look at Napster. A disruption that basically killed the music industry. They don't want that to happen again.
That's why everything has been remakes of 1980s content. Because they don't want to risk anything new, they want to remake Transformers. They know how to sell Transformers. It's far more risky to sell new stuff. It's not just pop culture. It's music, fashion, movies, culture in general. It's politics, as you commented. It's all frozen in 1980-2000. You could go back in time to 2001 or even 1980 wearing 2025 fashion playing 2025s music and no one would really notice. If you went back to 1950 or even 1960-70 wearing 2025s fashion people would look at you like you were a space alien.
This is before you have the nostalgia factor. GenX and Millennials are just as bad as Boomers in a way, as we have the "correct" views on youth culture and pop culture and the like and are openly disdainful towards Zoomers and Alphas. Skibbity Toilet, anyone? How stupidly random. Not like Badger Badger Badger, oooh, it's a snake, it's a snaaaaake. That's classic comedy!
At some point, and it's coming rapidly, no one is going to give a flying fuck about the 80s anymore. Culture will become unmoored from the anchor point it's been in for the past 40 years. And you'll see GenX and Millenialls lose their goddamned MINDS over the idea that no one gives a shit at what some 40 year old has to think about what's cool to a 16 year old. And worse, it's going to be completely incomprehensible to anyone not growing up in it, due to the vast technological changes -- 1980s -> 2025 saw the rise of the Internet AND mobile phones become ubiquitous -- involved.
You're already starting to see this. Zoomers and that stupid fucking broccoli hair style. It's dumb, and I hate it, but zoomers don't give a shit what GenX and Millennials have to say. They've lost control over the culture.
