"Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them." - George Santayana.

This rings true even more so in a consumerist society, where products, fashion, trends and music are literally force fed to the voracious public. Our hunger for trends and our pitiful thirst for being trendsetters ensure that the marketing gimps are never bored. It’s become so easy to bleat: “TREND! Coming through, watch out there pal. Yup, it’s the latest trend buddy. Check it out. TREND! Coming through.” And suddenly the lemmings are jumping on the band wagon.

How the marketing gollums get away with it is pretty simple. They just leverage off basic human emotions like greed, vanity, and nostalgia. This last one – nostalgia – is what drives the 2 decade cycle. Every 20 years there is a sudden upsurge in all that epitomized popular culture 2 decades beforehand. Right now we’re smack bang in the middle (although tapering off thank God) of an 80’s revival. It began at the turn of the millennium really. Suddenly Atari shirts were cool, Chuck Norris, the A-Team, the Hoff, Airwolf, and whichever other cultural icon you can think of has been ripped out of its grave, dusted off and suddenly made cool again.

Funnily enough, the coolness comes from the cheesiness. It’s as if we take the decade and all that was kak about it, sprinkle it with a heavy dose of irony, and hey presto it’s suddenly uber-chic.

The reason for all of this is quite simple. We’re getting old. Here we are approaching our 30’s and we’re a bit tired of all the responsibility and crap that comes with age. Jobs, houses, taxes, 8-5, traffic, insurance and all that shit our parents used to deal with. We suddenly get all misty-eyed as we remember our days popping wheelies and coming takkie on our BMX’s. We’re choking on responsibility and the asthma pump to our problem is a massive dose of retro-cheese. Of course all that stuff you were embarrassed to admit you liked in your teenage years is now all of a sudden very cool to admit. Hell, I know grown men that buy life-sized light sabers online for R1000 and then run around going “KSSSSH, KSSSSH, MWARM, MWEEERM, KSSSH, KSSHHH!” and we all think “Dang I want one too!” Er, did I just admit that?