Extreme Obsession With 1980s Media

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My primary special interest is anything and everything to do with the 1980s- the music (BOTH the newer stuff with 80s style like SYNTHWAVE and actual music from back then), movies (like actual 80s movies AND Stranger Things), TV shows (like MIAMI VICE), artwork (neon lights and palm trees my dude), clothing, ect. It permeates through many parts of my life.

I just love the maximalism and optimism of the culture back then. It's very fast paced and powerful and over the top. Like the music- it all has synthesizers that are used very dramatically to produce a certain effect, and oftentimes the same songs with the synthesizers have GUITAR SOLOS in them, which makes it even better. The singing is very powerful too, very catchy. And HAIR METAL, my god I love hair metal.... it is very fun and badass with long and awesome guitar solos. The themes were also more complicated in many 80s songs, and just so much VARIETY. It's like every genre had great songs back then.
And newer stuff like synthwave sounds really nice too, it's some of my favorite things to listen to.

I also like the style of the movies, more simplistic but that's how I like it. It's hard to catch the essence of childhood quite like "The Goonies" did, or capture terror like the first A Nightmare On Elm Street, or the creative fantasy of "The Neverending Story". I could give more examples but I could go on forever.

And Miami Vice, is one of the most awesome TV shows I have ever watched. The way they make every scene match the music so well and the suits and lighting and coloring- I love it. I actually got a suit that replicates the protagonist from it and many people compliment it. I have a whole 80s wardrobe, many people say I have great style and it is thanks to the 80s

Not to mention I just enjoy the general neon lights and palm trees aesthetic there, it really appeals to my eyes.

And these reasons are why the 80s are my special interest- just so much to be into here.

I like 80's music videos. I watch them pretty frequently. A lot of my favorite movies are from the late 70's and 80's. I never heard of Miami Vice though.

Hey, I also like a lot of good things from the 1980s too. It was the best decade for quite a few things: Sports, music, TV, movies, those things.

I don't like fetishing decades because every decade has examples of the best and worst of its culture. Plus I personally don't like the generalizations of "'80s movies" or "'80s music", forcefully pushing all styles and genres into one broad umbrella term...I'm getting to the age where kids are starting to do that for the '90s and it's driving me crazy: "Yeah, I love '90s music: Nirvana, Spice Girls, Marilyn Manson, No Doubt, Radiohead, Eminem...y'know, '90s music!"

But I'm not trying to be a sourpuss. The majority of my own pop culture intake comes from the '80s. I credit that entirely to the movies I watched growing up, namely genre flicks like horror, sci-fi, action, exploitation, sex comedies, etc. '80s genre flicks - studio and independent - were so much ballsier: they took more creative risks, more experimentation, had a much more vivid style. Movies weren't afraid to be too extreme or too over-the-top. I don't know if I'd use the word "optimistic", but there was definitely a sense of jubilant creative freedom and much less of the cynicism that the '90s brought. Though there were exceptions, '90s genre flicks were too drab, too restrained, too derivative and formulaic to a fault.

As far as music, guess it depends on what you listen to, but for me it was definitely a golden era for more socially-conscious genres like punk, ska and reggae, one of the few good side effects of the Reagan and Thatcher administrations. As far as the new wave and synthpop most closely associated with that era, there was also a lot of great stuff and a lot of great artists who continue to make fantastic music (Pet Shop Boys and Thomas Dolby are two of my favorites), but there was also a lot of stuff I could live without.

As for television, I can't say I ever watched too much from any decade, but the '80s did give us 'Manimal', the Simon MacCorkindale action-adventure about a shape-shifting doctor who could turn into any animal to solve and fight crime, and for that alone they win the century.

I'm the same way about the 60s.

The 80s had a really neat aesthetic, but I was born a few years too late to be able to experience it firsthand.