Apparently I’m feeling introspective this week. Or retrospective. Or introretrospective. Is that a thing? I’m burned out on talking about writing, and y’all may or may not be burned out on hearing me talk about it, so let’s look at something else instead, shall we?

We watch an odd assortment of movies. I wouldn’t say we watch a lot – there are so many I’ve never seen that I probably should have – but we get into a groove at home where we’ll spend a couple of weeks just watching a combination of films we’ve enjoyed before and things we’ve always wanted to see.

We’re in one of those patterns right now. In the past couple of weeks, among other things we’ve watched Aliens, iRobot, The Avengers, and The Hulk (the newest version starring Edward Norton). And then last night we were watching Fight Club.

Starting with Aliens. As the movie opens, and the moves on, it becomes clear when it was made, because of the clothing and the hair styles. It doesn’t matter that it’s set in the future, I can tell about when the film was made by those details. It’s that way with a lot of films from the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s.

The other four though…films with a couple years each in between when they were made, those visual cues weren’t there. Edward Norton in Fight Club dressed almost exactly the same as Mark Ruffalo in The Avengers. Houses were decorated the same. Even the cars looked a lot a like from film to film. Fight Club is 13 years old. (I promise. I just looked it up and IMDB told me it came out in 1999).

But we could still tell how old every single one of the films was. The conversations sounded something like this:

“He’s using a payphone, and it only cost him $.25. That dates this film.” (Fight Club)

“Didn’t we buy that exact same CD player eight or nine years ago?” (iRobot)

“I have a USB drive that looks exactly like that. Those came out right when prices started dropping on portable storage.” (The Hulk)

“I sooo want his computer. No, not the one that makes everything 3-D. Well, that too. But his phone that’s little and transparent.” (The Avengers. I LOVE their tech. And Loki. And Tony Stark….sorry, tangent ;-))

Maybe this is something exclusive to the circles I run in, since I tend to hang around ‘computer people’. But it’s gotten me thinking. Over the last 15 years or so, clothing fashion hasn’t changed a lot. Not the way it did from 1950-1990. We’ve almost homogonized our sense of clothing style, including incorporating snippets from the previous 50-60 years.

So is technology the new fashion? Are we beginning to define people more by the logo on their computer or phone than on their jeans or shoes?

Or am I only seeing this because of the work I do and who I know?