“idc bro we’re living 2026 like its 2016” is the title of a bad Spotify playlist with 16,861 saves and, also, a fitting summary of an internet phenomena that frustrates me beyond belief. Gen-Z netizens have –– once again –– directed their notoriously fickle attentions to the supposed golden age of the recent past, “the last good years,” in an attempt to revitalize trends any person not blinded by nostalgia would condemn as ridiculous and superfluous. 

The resurgence of Y2K, while misguided, was a matter of good taste. I respect and understand the instinct to seek aesthetic inspiration from late ‘90s-early 2000s America. I love Madonna’s trip-hop rebrand, Lisa Frank patterned tank tops are chic and the only good pop-rock music ever made came out in 1997. However, the repackaging of the Y2K aesthetic into fast fashion mini kits and vapid reflection on “how much better life used to be” was still wrong in principle because our attention turned backwards and stayed there, instead of returning to the present with lessons learned. Youth culture, and the zeitgeist of American culture more generally, has not taken advantage of the innovations or advancements possible through productive nostalgia. Currently, its only visible effect is stagnation.  

The corruptible power of nostalgia seems impossible to do away with and is arguably part of our nature as human beings. We are less creative and less enthused than ever. The 2020s have been defined by caricatures and vacant resuscitations of things we never even experienced. It’s depressing.  

We are now well in the midst of our next great Frankenstein experiment. People ran out of room reliving the good stuff and now, out of desperation, have run themselves aground on the iceberg of 2016, a year I thought we agreed was cringeworthy at best.  

Despite my personal dislike for the trends and art to come out of that year, my problem with 2016 revisionism lies not in its tackiness, but in its clearly misaligned desire to seek comfort and salvation in aesthetic presentation. Unlike Y2K, the infatuation with 2016 didn’t start with an interest in aesthetics that later developed into harebrained nostalgia. Instead, we actively pursued nostalgia itself, validating our desire for a place outside the present, and happened to discover the last frontier on which we could hide from our deeply ingrained and enduring fear of the pandemic, the election(s), the internet age, the phone –– the world and its consequences. 

I don’t think that people are actually dying to get back to 2016. Most of us were not even old enough to remember it as anything other than childhood. In reality, what we are craving is the return of hope and optimism. 2016 seems brighter because maybe it was. Maybe enough “Live, Laugh, Love” signs could have finally ended all conflicts in the world. But the truth is that the hapless distraction of the past will do no good in the present, nor the future. The instinctual reaction to ignore or deny the reality of our current situation, to live like it’s 2016, is a naive sentiment even if it is rife with good intent. Nostalgia has not saved us before. If anything, it has only made our current moment less fulfilling and more irrelevant. If you yearn for 2016 millennial good-naturedness, then implement that earnestness into your life without relying on the constraints of retrospection. Live in this year and make it a good one.