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I found this song on YT music and was absolutely confused. The song has this vocal of an American talk rapping on a 90s acoustic hip hop beat and I have no idea what the hell he is saying? Maybe it's because I am a foreigner but I can't understand this shit. It has no plays, no likes and I can't easily find it on any other music steaming platform. There is no other songs that this artist has made and this song was literally posted like hours ago in the middle of the night. But I just want to know why someone would make this?? Is it a joke? Is it serious?

Song: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=pwRr_UU9s0w&feature=shared

I noticed many people (mostly young Millennials and Gen Z) love to talk about how much better the Disney and Nickelodeon shows were when they were younger. Noticeability this is about anything after the 2000s. However, I think when you remove nostalgia, you can see they are actually formulaic, extremely awkward in writing, poorly acted and definitely came off of a conveyor belt to make a profit, The demographic, they are targeting: "tweens" is a specific age market that is too immature for more subtle adult-oriented humor and also parents don't want them watching stuff that is too "mature." So a balance was struck to appease both. Before the 2000s, there didn't seem to really be a "tween market", it was either targeted to "youth" (families, kids and teens) or "adults" (which often included older teens). The tween audience was an in-between didn't want to watch "family" stuff but not allowed to watch adult stuff (and wouldn't really "get it" at that).

As a result, many tween-oriented sitcoms lack nuance and use an exaggerated cast of caricatures, absent-minded adults who always act as antagonists, very loud line deliveries, mean-spirited humor and gross-out humor (since tweens are still not that mature and their sense of humor tends to be crude) and general disconnect from any reality. But that's the point. They are meant to reflect the mind of an older elementary schooler and middle schooler (as much flack Dan Schneider gets, he is enough of a man-child to understand what tweens find funny and made bank off of it, his formula worked). I'm not knocking it because it was profitable and it worked well for the networks. And given some of us were tweens when these shows were in their peak and aired, we naturally identified with the characters (since they were played by slightly older teenage actors we wanted to be like). If you grew up watching them, naturally you will have an attachment to them. So it's all based on personal experience of what generation of Disney and Nick you watched. But any adult or older teen would quickly turn the channel (I noticed this when I entered high school in the later 2000s and I lost interest in Disney and Nickelodeon and found it very "corny").

Now my second point is how before the 2000s, this genre of TV shows geared to "tweens" didn't seem to exist in the way it grew to in the 2000s.

A lot of the 80s and 90s youth-oriented comedies and dramas were broadly "family shows" with writing and humor targeted to a wide audience including adults. I mean shows like The Wonder Years, Home Improvement, Boy Meets World, Moesha, Sister, Sister, Full House, Eerie, Indiana, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Family Matters, Saved by the Bell, etc. They were designed to be watched by everyone. Malcolm in the Middle was a 2000s example of a show that appealed to kids, teens and adults as well (though it was not a "kids show", the use of child/teen actors naturally drew an audience of kids). Even featuring child and teen characters, the adult characters always remained in focus or played a large role in most episodes. They also addresses serious topics like depression, anxiety, poverty, drugs, peer pressure, eating disorders, sex, bullying, racism, homophobia, domestic violence, etc. so they remained attached to the real world. As I aged, I enjoyed many of the TGIF, and WB sitcoms that reran on ABC Family and also Married with Children and Roseanne became my personal favorites due to relating to them being working class families.

The early Nickelodeon and Disney Channel shows (and Fox Family) definitely were in this group. This is why I believe The Adventures of Pete & Pete, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, You Can't Do That on Television, Hey Dude, Clarissa Explains It All, Kenan and Kel, The Amanda Show, So Weird, All That, The Famous Jett Jackson, Big Wolf on Campus, The Secret World of Alex Mack, Flash Forward, Taina, Lizzie McGuire, Even Stevens and That's So Raven (the last of that era) are fondly remembered. There was effort in the writing to maintain the attention of parents or older siblings who were watching these shows. Pete & Pete, All That and So Weird in particular attracted a college-aged demographic. By the late 2000s, these types of shows seemed to have vanished from American TV in favor of aggressively marketed shows catered to narrow demographics. This is why I feel many "tween shows" don't age well if they are geared towards a very narrow age group and experience and nobody outside of that. They exist in a hokey and surreal universe where real issues don't exist, no conflict is ever resolved and there's no character development or connection to real life (they are like live-action cartoons but the difference is the kid/teen actors are kinda annoying to watch and it's hard to suspend disbelief, so it becomes cringeworthy). Again, this is brilliant marketing to a young adolescent mindset but it narrows its appeal extremely which is why I don't understand how people can debate which generation of post-2000 Nick and Disney is "better."

On a side note, I noticed Canada still made "family shows" well in the 2000s like Life with Derek, Naturally Sadie, Braceface, Degrassi: The Next Generation, 6teen, Instant Star and Radio Free Roscoe where the tone is clearly "youth" rather than adults or little kids. They addressed actual issues too. As I age, I think these styles of shows are becoming more admired because they aren't reliant on gross-out and over-the-top characterizations and they have some care into the writing and families can watch and discuss things together.

TL;DR: Most 2000s and 2010s tween shows without nostalgia don't hold up. And no "era" is superior to the other.

In case y'all are wondering which Cry Me A River am I talking about, it's the one by Justin Timberlake