I’ll try to keep this post as brief as possible.

I spend a lot of time on the internet. Twitter and TikTok mainly. And I’ve been extremely online since I gained unlimited access to it in the early 2010s. I would say that the biggest shifts in attitudes and styles on the internet occurred throughout the 2010s, with 2016 marking a clear-cut turning point.

We transitioned from the hipster aestheticisms and YOLO branding of 2010-2012 to the more “baddie” Instagram aesthetic popularized by celebrities like Kylie Jenner, Selena Gomez, and Ariana Grande.

Now, some people have confused that early 2010s aesthetic for what we actually saw during 2016. Which was a cleaner, less quirky idea of what “style” was. Music also showed this as we went from Party Rock Anthem by LMFAO being a chart topper to One Dance by Drake and Sorry by Justin Bieber being the club-friendly radio hits. Things were less ironic; in order to be cool, you had to be calm (if you listen to the 2016 songs, they don’t feel as aggressive as LMFAO’s songs).

I was 16 during most of 2016. Old enough to remember everything and young enough to still be “hip” with the culture (although I’ve always been kind of an old man mentally). Most of my internet use around this time was on Reddit. Specifically, the meme subreddits such as dank_memes and me_irl. The tone back then was super depressing. Saying you were gonna kill yourself was a common punchline. Everyone circle jerked about how sad they were. These are common on the internet now, but were relatively new for the mainstream back then. The running joke was that 2016 was the worst year in history. Many high-profile celebrities died during this year (Prince, David Bowie, George Michael, Carrie Fisher), which led to people saying “DAMN YOU 2016!” every single time. That saying “damn you [year]” became normal for every subsequent year.

Reflecting on this period, I will say, I do not recall much nostalgia for say 2006 back then on the internet. I saw more nostalgia for the 00s from Zillennials and older Zoomers throughout these past four years than I ever did back then.

So what is it? Why have we been seeing so many people longing for the days of 2016? I’ve seen videos like this for the past two years, and they’ve only accelerated now that we’re exactly 10 years removed. Videos, such as this, are making the rounds, glorifying the aesthetics of the time.

My first instinct has always been: these are people around my age who miss being a teenager. This is still the likeliest explanation. A time before you worried about bills or felt like you were behind in life. I also miss that time period for that reason, and I also wish I could wake up exactly that year and do everything over and better this time.

But, this general analysis of the human condition doesn’t explain why this specifically. Why 2016, why not 2010, why didn’t this happen ten years ago for 2006? In which case, I don’t really know.

I suppose 2016 felt less cringe. The aforementioned millennialisms of the early 2010s weren’t as prevalent, so the time period doesn’t feel as dated. Speaking of things feeling “dated,” many of the interfaces we use now are not so far off from what we were using in 2016. I remember watching the 2014 film Whiplash and being shocked at how old the cell phones looked there, but if you put on Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016) the technology doesn’t really stand out that much. Many of the social media apps we use are the same as they were in 2016. You could realistically have had the same Instagram and Twitter accounts for nearly 20 years now. With the exception of TikTok, the way in which we use the internet today is about the same as we used it then.

Which is why 2016 is this comforting year. Where everything is the same, except you’re younger. It was right before politics got really weird. It was before we lived through a global pandemic. Clubbing still felt like a thing that people did. Youth had a defined image that we currently lack. It felt like a party compared to the way we experience life now.

When I was a kid, I remember the soundtrack to the world being oldies. Stuff from the 1970s and earlier. Boomers were always being pandered to by nostalgia. Decades later that pandering shifted to the 1980s, something I'm sure the Gen Xers must have appreciated. A year or two ago I realized that the nostalgia train has been in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

It occurs to me that there has been nostalgic pandering going for a long time and I just hadn't realized it. I assume it's because a lot of the most notable ones have been pretty bad, particularly in the case of movies like the Space Jam sequel or the Jurassic World series. But music has had it's share too. I remember hearing a lot of references to 90s hip hop, and old bands like Backstreet Boys and My Chemical Romance have got back together. I've also been seeing a lot of references to old TV shows like Gilmore Girls and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (though, to be fair, people never really stopped talking about Buffy).

Personally speaking, I'm not a fan of this. Yeah, the movies have been bad, but that's basically just the state of hollywood right now. But more than anything, I'm kind of disappointing by it. I'm more interested in new art, generally speaking, and more importantly, seeing all of these throwbacks is starting to make me feel old.

I recently turned 36 and found a sense of nostalgia sending me down a rabbit hole, mostly around the "old internet" of my childhood. I know "old" is subjective, but for me, it was the time period of like 1998 to 2005 - my middle and high school years.

AOL had just really brought the internet to the masses. I remember the mad rush of trying to log in to the Nickelodeon chatrooms and messaging my friends on AIM. Up until AIM shutdown a few years ago, I would log on every once in a while to my old account and just look at the usernames - recognizing friends, and trying to place others.

I had a group called "Pokemon" on my account, which sent me searching to find anything on an old Pokemon Battler bot for AIM that was by a developer, "CoolKid". I got to the point where I was beginning to think it was something I made up, before finally turning up "SuperPokemon! by CoolKid" on archive.org. I wonder whatever happened to the developer, as nothing about them remains on the internet, but I wish I could thank them for all the fun times I had with my friends.

Which then led me down to thinking of some of the online friends from my past. In retrospect, I wasn't as careful as I should have been online, but I never had any bad experiences - everyone was super nice and helpful in the little communities I found myself in. I've only been here a few days, but tildes reminds me of that time in my life.

Curious to hear from others: What random hits of nostalgia do you have you had lately? Is there some random, highly specific thing from your past that you miss, like my AIM Pokemon battler?

I've seen discussions on here about nostalgia or nostalgic moments. It seems not only in this site, but others find themselves reminiscing about a time long passed. I've seen it popping up more and more. Some brush it aside as people being nostalgic about a time when they didn't have to work, but I find myself thinking that the increased rise of people reminiscing about the past is because the quality of life and/or the world itself feels so much worse than it did in the past. I've done this as well, too many times.

What're your thoughts on this?

Greeting everyone, first time actually posting on tildes so try and forgive me for any shortcomings as it's hard to tap out paragraphs on a mobile device.

So I wanted to ask you all, when you think nostalgia what specific idea or memory comes up for you?

When i give it some thought my specific memories of nostalgia are of the late 90s early 2000s. I picture a freshly constructed suburban neighborhood where there are no fences built yet, no trees planted or grown, and just grass everywhere - giving it a very liminal feeling. I reflect back on the hours spent outside until after dusk where the amber glow of the street lamps brought a feeling of warmth and coziness on a warm spring evening.

I also think about the technology, or lack thereof, at the time and how we used it. Beige computers transitioning to black ones as the 2000s crept up, using your big toe to turn them on, playing runescape or Sims Deluxe Edition mindlessly for an unhealthy amount of time etc. I think about the connectivity we had to each other, no smart phones, a wild west internet, and in my case a house phone with a kilometer long cord so that grandma can call europe with calling cards for hours on end while she tangles us all up with the cobweb of wires.

The list of memories can go on forever, but now I turn it over to you guys/gals.

Asking mainly because we generally view this period as a rock-bottom, but nostalgia seems to be as good as natural, so what do you think people in 5, 10, 15+ years will remember overly fondly about the present?

Inspired by the post on HN, was curious about your favorite memories or nostalgia you feel about internet in the 90's or even earlier.

I really didn't come fully online until the early 2000's. We didn't have the means to get internet at home so until I could get online unless it was at school. Even so my most pleasant memories were spending time playing games on yahoo (yahooligans), with a tetris like clone being my favorite. Also spent a huge amount of time playing macromedia shockwave based games on various sites that I don't remember anymore. I do remember playing a game where you had to build up your hobo soap box car to see how far you could jump it.

It was soon followed by the discovery of various chat groups, making up identities, lying about age, revealing too much personal information in the process. At one point I even convinced a woman to send me photos that she claimed were for her modeling career. Not sure if it was some creepy old guy trying to lure me in with promises of being a real woman or if I legitimately fooled some poor girl into sending me modeling pictures.

Also remember my first foray into fan theory sites with the show LOST, ended up getting chewed out for suggesting a theory that was apparently well known. Was too embarrassed and scared to post after that and ended up lurking for the duration of my time there.

Some folks say that the "old internet" is now gone with the likes of reddit and Youtube, but for me it seems like what really changed was us and the sense of wonder. For those who are still discovering the internet as they're growing up, that sense of wonder is still there just waiting to be turned into nostalgia as they get older.