It’s trending. See Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia, the cyclical nature of fashion bringing the ’90s and ’00s back, and the record-high sales of vinyls and cassettes since the 1970s. Here I present an examination of why I feel the way I feel, tied to aging out of relevance and reflecting on seemingly simpler times…
Perhaps I’m nostalgic because I feel the weight of my imminent obsolescence as a millennial, no longer the target population. At the current rate of technological advancement, impressive as it is, I don’t know if I can keep up and I question if I even want to. I can now empathize with older generations not being tech-savvy; it might just be a choice. The more I see cyberspace evolve, the more I feel we had it “right” in the early days of the web with the IndieWeb, our authentic selves, and pushing for quality over quantity.
I imagine a bell curve which begins with the introduction of the web and a culture of exploration and delight, peaks where we are now with continuously advancing tech but a lack of consumer ethics and regulations, and - ideally - it returns to the earlier excitement but with learnings and guardrails to protect users. We see hints of this with the resurgence in analog - a desire for quality, physical goods. I’m interested in seeing how this will progress as our tech advances at a rate faster than we can seemingly contain repercussions, especially with capitalism urging companies to innovate quickly.
This is not to say I don’t appreciate technology and see the value in it. I like what it has afforded me, in the ability to create, communicate, and share. I only feel we’ve lost sight of the larger picture, in our increasingly consumerist society. Recently I read about how we’re modifying our in-person lives to be better suited for our digital ones, when in reality it should be the digitization that accommodates for our realities. This dissonance can be seen when Mark Zuckerberg pushed the metaverse as the future but is choosing to feed cows on his farm in Hawaii. He either knows something we don’t, or something we do but are unable to act on. To combat this myself, I’m gradually employing nosurf practices to protect my time. As we all know, you either spend time or pay attention, currencies impossible to reclaim.
Certainly COVID also contributed to this feeling of “where did the time go?” As a chronically online user (lol), I’ve seen the internet collectively agree we went from 2020 to 2024 in the blink of an eye, while our hearts are in 2016. Now 29, on the cusp of entering what is actually supposed to be the best decade of my life, I’ve found myself in my “I wish I knew I was in the good ol’ days when I was living them” era. Not that everything was beautiful and shiny, but these pockets of memories provide me with such a comfort.
Playing Pokémon on my Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DS, building animanga websites with my sister in middle school, customizing my Neopets pages while listening to Avril Lavigne during summer breaks, playing hide and seek in the dark, reading books in silence with my cousins until 4am and waking up at 10 to continue reading. Being able to follow my passions deep into the night, before growing up and obstructing my own path with “can-I”s and “should-I”s.
A seemingly infinite set of possibilities in my future. Also a very sad time.
Part of my nostalgia is linked to this - the desire to go back and be happy as me with the information I have now. I realize this feeling isn’t specific to me; humans have philosophized about time travel and changing the course of history for much longer than I’ve been around. It’s a built-in part of the human experience; other species are likely happier than we because they don’t participate in “what-if”isms.
If I can’t go back in time to either relive or re-navigate, then I want to channel this wistfulness into a gratitude and active presence in the present. Because surely, ten years into the future, I’ll look back upon this exact time in my life and call them the “good old days,” and there won’t be an excuse for not having given my all.
Carpe diem. Sieze the day. YOLO.