Before Wikipedia and YouTube, it seemed especially difficult for those of us with spotty memories to remember some things from our childhood. Now, though, just a quick flash of a moment can help us fully remember and relive these old memories.
Something I’ve noticed lately is a small but artful trend of creating fake historical documents in order to suggest something’s older than it really is. Usually, this ends up being a video as video tends to be the most compelling way to do it. Here are a couple of examples.
First, as listeners to the Judge John Hodgman podcast know there was once a reference to the non-existent video game, George Plimpton’s Video Falconry. Eventually, though, fans not only created a video for it, supposedly dating from the 80s, but went ahead and created the game itself! Again, this didn’t exist in the 80s.
A more accessible example is the commercial for Lots-O-Huggin’ Bear, one of the characters from Toy Story 3. The ad indeed looks straight out of 1983, and there was even a Japanese version made.
I applaud these efforts, even if they muck with my memory. I can’t help but wonder if amateur historians will be fooled by these supposedly real artifacts.
Posted in Childhood Memories, Pop Culture, Technology