Getty Image / Roy Rochlin / WireImage
A surreal video has been going viral that shows how much the Times Square Ball Drop on New Year’s Eve has changed since 2002.
The popular X (formerly Twitter) account ‘Historic Vids’ shared a clip showing footage from the 2002 Times Square Ball Drop, which was less than 4 months after the 9/11 attacks in lower Manhattan, and when American patriotism was at an all-time high as the country needed something, anything to rally behind.
After that, the second half of the video is a clip from this year’s ball drop in Times Square. The crowd appears as if they’ve all been ingesting CBD for hours and are as calm and subdued as possible. There’s no sense of celebration. There’s no ‘party’ in the air. It’s pretty surreal to see how all of the ‘fun’ has been sucked out of the room in the past 22 years.
The contrast in enthusiasm between the New Year’s celebrations of 2002 and 2024 in New York City’s Times Square is truly striking pic.twitter.com/CavpiomaIE
— Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) January 7, 2024
There are countless reasons the energy has shifted. Truly. The list is endless. And it would be foolish to deny that the past 8ish years have been a LOT. The same can also be said for for the 14 years prior to that.
But before we start pointing fingers, it’s worth considering that this enormous shift in Times Square Ball Drop enthusiasm could be attributed to something as simple as weather. Or it could be tricky camerawork.
To think that there weren’t people out there celebrating NYE loudly and proudly is pretty absurd. One million people descend upon Times Square every New Year’s Eve for the ball drop. Maybe the people on camera who had been trapped there for 12+ hours were simply exhausted from having to smile for the cameras. Perhaps they were regretting their decisions to schlep it to Times Square for half a day all to watch a ball drop when they could’ve seen the same show on TV somewhere.
What we’re seeing on the TV broadcast is, after all, whatever the program’s producer wants us to see. So ponder that for a bit before going all in on ‘everything sucks, everyone’s miserable’ because most people I know actually had a pretty fantastic NYE this year.
Meanwhile, this looks straight up awful:
Fast forward to today….We’ve forgotten how to live in the moment. pic.twitter.com/oIyqlWQybN
— Wolf of X (@tradingMaxiSL) January 7, 2024
Put your phones away. Live in the moment. You don’t have to do everything in life for the ‘gram.