Louis CK and the Millennial Disease of "This Used to Be Better"

Some things get worse, but not EVERYTHING gets worse

One niche downside of the post-literate society is the dearth of mainstream writing on offer to non-neurotic people. Certain art forms decline.

When Louis CK comes out with his “Ridiculous” Netflix special, I know that pretty much any written review will be worthless. The only people left to sit down and type edited words about comedy are vegans commissioned to assess steakhouses.

Now, the endeavor becomes about what the comedian means in the culture and less so about laughs. I sort of get their fixation. My job is to often gauge the cultural reflection of products that could be described as meaningless distractions. I’d just prefer a review of comedy by someone who loves comedy.

You might want to know whether CK’s hour is funny, but they will lead with his 2017 sexual misconduct scandal. For them, a comedy special is really about whether a cancelled man can escape the shadow of his bad deeds (always “no”), and not whether this is funny for someone unconcerned with the prospect of peers judging them for liking a Bad Man’s product. When the subject is deemed problematic, they smuggle that preoccupation into the grade, as they did when Dave Chappelle offended their ideological sensibilities. The former genius is no longer a genius. He’s bad now, and old. Bitter. He’s lost it. He’s stuck in the past.

It reminds me of how so much modern criticism conveys one, singular theme. I talked about it with Spike Eskin when we discussed how every Reddit fan page becomes devoted to the same dominant message: This used to be good.

I’m calling this response “millennial declinism.” It’s not always an incorrect assessment, to be fair. Many things decline, and I’m often happy to write about that sadness. But what differentiates millennial declinism from past generations is the rejection of our own stuff. We’re less inclined to tell a young person that their favorite new artist sucks. We’re more inclined to say that our favorite artist now sucks. Now why would we do that?