F Nostalgists is an amazing anti-Dear Nostalgists, taking every concept from that and just flipping it on its head, while still managing simplicity on its own terms.

Side note, Jayuff is so so so good at making levels. He made this in 2019 and it hasn't aged a single minute, he was just so ahead of his time. But where did he find this song lmao

Adding to the pile of things Jayuff is infuriatingly talented at, F Nostalgists straddles such a confounding tightrope between a really dumb spoof and arguably their most polished level to date. Jayuff levels never really reached a height where I would consider them 10-worthy without question, but they're all very good at making a point and in this case it's pretty much that everyone's been doing it all wrong. It's honestly pretty petty in its messaging and certainly overly heavy-handed, but with nearly 7 years it's funny that Jayuff was spot on this whole time. F Nostalgists isn't really the kind of level you could get away with now, and not only because the GD community has become a lot more self-policing, but I think its rhetoric regarding simplism remains prescient. Especially with how popular the 1.9 and 2.0 GDPS have gotten since Jayuff's prime, it's always worth reiterating that simpler levels and styles don't have to model or even look back on periods of the game's history when the stuff that was popular was itself simple, particularly pre-2.0 like how Jayuff seems to imply. In other words, it's unreasonable to attempt to be intentionally forward-thinking when creating, but looking back on the past emulating it as a goal needlessly misses an opportunity to stand out.

Just to finish with more thoughts about the level itself, F Nostalgists is pretty creative in its own right, even apart from the jabs it makes at Dear Nostalgists. The 5-second glitch transition that eventually leads into the wave part is immaculately well done and engaging, in the same way that walking down the stairs in the dark is for the lack of a better description. The wave itself is also fun, with a very smooth propagating effect on the slopes that probably became the template for that effect to be endlessly redone. There's not much else I feel like talking about but I do think F Nostalgists stands as one of Jayuff's best, even if you don't really care about what it has to say.

A complete affront to standards at the time, which is inherently a timeless message. "Fuck Nostalgists" is pretty heavy-handed messaging but in hindsight Jayuff's style being as influential as it is right now backfired on it quite a bit, though Jayuff definitely had the last laugh in a time where simplism was quite frowned upon. I guess some things will never change, huh