Nostalgia’s having its moment. Think about Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia, the cyclical nature of fashion bringing back those ’90s and ’00s vibes, and the surprising resurgence of vinyl and cassette sales to levels we haven’t seen since the ’70s. For me, this all ties into a personal reflection on aging out of relevance, or at least the feeling of it, and looking back on what seem like simpler times.
Maybe this wave of nostalgia is hitting me because I’m feeling that inevitable slide into millennial obsolescence – no longer the prime target demographic for the latest and greatest. With technology advancing at such a breathtaking pace, I honestly wonder if I even want to keep up. Suddenly, I have a newfound empathy for older generations who aren’t tech-savvy; perhaps it’s less about inability and more about a conscious choice. The more I see cyberspace evolve, the more I feel like we had something special in those early days of the web with the IndieWeb – a sense of authentic self and a drive for quality over sheer quantity.
I picture it like a bell curve. It starts with the introduction of the web, a period of exploration and genuine delight. Then it peaks somewhere around where we are now – explosive advancements but often lacking in consumer ethics and regulation. To me, we’ve crested that peak and are now on the downswing, like that moment on a rollercoaster when you just start to descend. Ideally, we’d loop back to that initial excitement but with the wisdom and safeguards to protect users. We’re seeing hints of this with the analog resurgence – a craving for quality, tangible goods. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out as tech continues its rapid advance, outpacing our ability to manage the repercussions, especially with capitalism pushing for relentless “innovation.”
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate technology and recognize its immense value. I love what it’s enabled me to do – create, communicate, and share. My only concern is that we’ve lost sight of the bigger picture in our increasingly consumer-driven society. I recently read something about how we’re adapting our real-world lives to better suit our digital ones, when it really should be the digital realm accommodating our realities. This disconnect is pretty stark when you see Mark Zuckerberg talking up the metaverse while, say, tending to cows on his farm in Hawaii. Either he knows something we don’t, or he knows something we do but feel powerless to change. To push back against this myself, I’m gradually incorporating some nosurf practices to protect my most precious resources: time and attention. As we all know, you either spend time or pay attention, and neither can be recovered.
COVID definitely amplified this feeling of “where did the time go?” As a self-proclaimed chronically online user (lol), I’ve seen the internet collectively agree that we blinked and went from 2020 to 2024, while our hearts still seem to be stuck in 2016. Now at 29, on the verge of what’s supposedly the best decade of my life, I find myself firmly in my “I wish I knew I was in the good ol’ days when I was living them” phase. Not that everything was perfect back then, but those little pockets of memories bring such a sense of comfort.
Playing Pokémon on my Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DS, building iconic animanga websites with my sister in middle school, customizing my Neopets pages while blasting Avril Lavigne during summer breaks, playing hide-and-seek in the dark, reading books in comfortable silence with my cousins until 4 am and then waking up at 10 to dive back in. That feeling of being able to follow my passions deep into the night, before adulthood crept in with its “can-I”s and “should-I”s, and I started obstructing my own path.
A seemingly infinite set of possibilities stretched out before kid-me. It’s also a surprisingly poignant time to reflect on.
Part of this nostalgia is definitely tied to that – a yearning to go back and experience that childhood happiness with the knowledge I have now. But I also realize this isn’t unique to me; humans have been philosophizing about time travel and altering the course of history for ages. It’s a fundamental part of the human experience. Maybe other species are happier precisely because they don’t engage in these “what-if” scenarios.
So, if I can’t actually go back in time to relive or re-navigate, then I want to channel this wistfulness into gratitude and a more active presence in the here and now. Because surely, ten years from now, I’ll look back at this exact moment in my life and think, “Those were the good old days,” and I don’t want there to be any excuse for not having fully embraced them.
Carpe diem. Seize the day. YOLO. You know the drill.