The Truth about Nostalgia

A common fixture among the young generation is nostalgia. While nostalgia has always existed in almost all cultures in some form, you don’t really see it as intense of a feeling as it is today. The form of nostalgia is more then just a simple longing for the past, or a reminder of better times. It is a form of retro-active nostalgia, that even goes to a time before the era you grew up in. It is more than a simple reminder of things, events or people from your past. The era that many appear to be nostalgic for is 90’s, 2000’s or early 2010’s. Cultural and societal life was more connected then. This feeling isn’t bad inherently, overly fixating on it is.

The root of it is a combination of two factors. The people who run all of the media companies are businessmen, not artists. They don’t care about originality or creating something new, only about money. It is most profitable to only repeat what has already been created. We have constant remakes and sequels in video games and movies that most of the time fail to live up to the original. In a company you prioritize profit over creativity or risk. Cheap nostalgia comes so easy. Building a new franchise or IP is less profitable than infinitely building off of an existing one. It’s impossible to have art that is creatively stagnant.

The second factor contributing to it is the way in which Generation Z grew up. It seems to me that the whole nostalgia craze began around 2020. As you know, during this time school and other services moved to digital learning. During this time I became pretty isolated, I was always a quiet person before then. After 2020 I, along with everyone else became even more isolated. Once you’ve been stuck in that life for a while it gets harder to place yourself outside of it. We became a totally atomized society at that time. We haven’t fully recovered yet, and we may never. The longing for the specific era of the 90’s-2000’s is for a more real, direct experience with others. The resulting isolation of life post-2020 has been intensified by the acceleration of AI and constant screen time. The lack of community makes the impulse to scroll infinitely even harder to avoid.

Moving on is the only further step, but perhaps the hardest one to take. Don’t live in the past, accept it for what it was. That is even harder to do today, especially given the surrounding culture I described. I’m guilty of it to an extent as well. Appreciate your past and allow it to be the fuel that keeps driving you to achieve and do more. Once understood that way then you’ll do well.