chat

Apparently the washed-out brown thing in games of that era was a way for developers to get around the graphics limitations of the hardware with “grittiness”.

Definitely agree that the War on Terror both destroyed political discourse for a decade and just fucked culture. Outside of a handful of anti-war protest songs (and some of that veered into lib territory), there was this general sense of avoiding anything spicy due to the War on Terror and “remembering 9/11.” Politically, we’re still dealing with the fallout of that as this belief of Dems that running candidates that are former military and/or CIA will win over swing voters is them learning all the wrong lessons from the Bush-Kerry race.

However, I don’t think free-range parenting was that pervasive, that seemed like more of a minority backlash to the more common helicopter parenting. What I would say happened then was the start of the “mommy wars” and the weaponizing of the “right” way to rear kids as a cultural/political football; that’s when the whining over “participation trophies” became a talking point. Which was toxic and hinted at how future online culture war slop would play out.