black cat enthusiast

false memory is a show made specifically For Me; guan chao is the Mostest of wet-eyed miserable social rejects who want to No Longer Exist; i love that brief segment where he confesses that what he wants most is to escape his reality, rather than turn back time, and i think that's the central Quality (?) of the nostalgia depicted in this show — when the shop girl talks about the 2012 false apocalypse, about yearning for summer to end (wanting to leave the moment, wanting the panic of the End of the World vs. the Malaise of the Present); when guan chao confesses that he likes an out-of-production soda that tastes like burning straw (from 1998?! that's like drinking paint cleaner... omg...) because it reminds him of a memory he can't recall, perhaps even a false memory; when unnamed radio station callers describe what the early '00s internet era felt like, with the hope/possibility/earnest excitement of connection amid the endless sprawl of chatrooms... what we want more than actually returning to the past is a way to change the misery of our immediate circumstances; but met with the vast indifference of the world, the immovable structures, the relentless drive toward producing Big Numbers (the employee lanyard that strangles guan chao, that (combined with the wires of his work station) turns into a hydralike ball of demands, obligations, requirements for survival) we retreat into the past as simultaneously object of comfort and source of regret (if this hadn't happened, if that; if i, if you, if we, etc)... 3 eps in and i am in love with this show, and this moment

*sighs dejectedly* okayyy you got me, I care *smashes head into nearest wall with such force my skull is crushed like a beer can*