why are people so nostalgic for the late 2000s/early 2010s?
One fateful summer day in 2014, my mom bought me the first three seasons of Pretty Little Liars on DVD and my life consequently changed.
I watched them play detective in their statement necklaces and 6-inch heals, and execute it flawlessly. The show showcased true female friendship with unconditional love, support and empowerment (most of the time) and every Liar had a different personality that was highlighted & embraced beautifully. Spencer was the brains, serving J.Crew chic and witty remarks every episode, Hanna was the humorous fashion icon with impulse issues and a heart of gold, Aria was the sensitive, artsy one with eclectic outfits and an uncanny ability to keep a secret, and Emily was the sporty, fair-minded one with an unyielding moral compass and a sweet naivety. The trauma of being stalked & obsessed over affected all of their psyches and personalities over the seasons in different, interesting ways. Should I have been watching such a plot that young? Um, debatable — but the intrigue, freedom, friendship and fashion had me wishing I could fast forward to sixteen. Little did I know, with the direction the 2010’s (and technology) were heading in, a life like one of the Liars was not awaiting me — or any of us.
This summer, I started rewatching the series 9 years later, picking up on social nuances and witty play-on-words I didn’t before, but beyond this, I felt a strange sense of bittersweet nostalgia gnawing at me I didn’t expect. I think we all have shows like this, ones we watched when we were younger and more carefree, ones with the warm filter of the 2010’s and cozy, wholesome storylines and genuine friendships, and shockingly, every time I’ve asked a friend or a family member “when was the last time you were truly happy?”, 100% of the time, the answer is always when they were still a kid.
Well, as sad as it is, it’s also as clear as day why. With the emergence of social media and influencers, the ability to mold ourselves into the closest, most replicative version of our idols is at our fingertips. We know exactly what formula our favorite celebrities use to get their signature hair color, and with Like to Know, we can buy exact copies of everything our favorite social media “it” girls sport on their Instagrams. In the days of Seventeen magazine, style trends still existed, of course, but there was more room for creativity, to take inspiration from those in the spotlight rather than completely copying and pasting their brand of jeans or hoop earrings. The point of using Pretty Little Liars for reference is that I noticed how curiously different their styles are, and yes, I know it was a television show with a costume department tasked with differentiating the characters aesthetically for the sake of the plot, but still, it’s night and day to what we see now. Not only that, but that contrast in style expression translated off-screen too in everyday life, at least in my experience.
Of course there’s still originality in the world, but it seems to stand out more in the sea of conformity that has overtaken the world these days.
I don’t know what your For You page looks like on TikTok, or if you even have one, but amidst the endless scroll of fashion hauls, beauty tips, and overall showcases of how amazing people’s lives are, I’ll see a video centered all around the feeling of nostalgia. Specifically, the nostalgia of kids or teens who lived in the early to late 2000’s and early 2010’s — pre-social media apocalypse. They’re slideshows with some Justin Bieber or Norah Jones song playing over them, featuring sprinklers and popsicles, old Instagram filters, old looks of celebrities like Ariana Grande, bright classrooms during Christmas parties before break, eclectic bedrooms, and neon, sparkly outfits that would give “clean girl aesthetic” influencers (as much as I love them and save all of their posts religiously on Pinterest) a brain aneurism.
I’m a nostalgic person myself, even for decades stretched out way before I came into this world, so I find myself wondering a lot about the reason behind this. It seems like, the older you get, the more sobering life gets and the more your wholesome, childlike view of the world vanishes. So it makes sense that we are all in a perpetual stage of grief over our childhoods, forever frozen behind glass with only fading glimpses of memories to romanticize.
But then, it hit me — the common theme of all of these “nostalgic” things is that it was before social media became so… exploitative, and before social media made wholesome interactions & earnest self-expression “cringe” if it wasn’t trendy, nonchalant, and witty.
For example, the most beloved era of YouTube was 2011-2015, when filters were saturated & bright, the wholesome element of DIY décor lived on, and videos weren’t peppered with ads. Of course, it’s great that YouTubers are being paid for their craft more now and are able to live comfortable lifestyles in exchange for their talent & relatability, but it’s on a much larger scale now. I remember Zoella being one of the top YouTubers of the early ‘10s, only to look back at her most popular videos getting 10 million videos at the maximum. That number seems so insignificant now, compared to the multi-millions of views modern-day YouTubers are getting with viral videos.
An article I read recently opened my eyes to this phenomenon in a new way, especially when she quoted Esther Perel’s eloquent explanation: “One question I keep asking that I had no idea was going to be so pertinent: When you grew up, did you play freely on the street? … And the majority of the people learned to play freely on the street. They learned social negotiation. They learned unscripted, un-choreographed, unmonitored interaction with people. They fought, they made rules, they made peace, they made friends, they broke up, they made friends again. They developed social muscles. And the majority of these very same people’s children do not play freely on the street. And I think that an adult needs to play freely on the street as well.”
As said by The Swaddle as well, “The history of cringe is rooted in social submission.” Of course, there are lots of things we can deem embarrassing retrospectively — something awkward we said in a conversation way back when, the way we handled a relationship, something we wore — but it’s gone too far. I see so many comments on posts highlighting old trends, with people saying “Ugh! Can we please bring back skinny jeans?” or “Can we please bring back this style? I loved it!” How sad that social submission has become so tyrannical through online shaming and “cringe culture” that people don’t even feel comfortable wearing what they want or acting/expressing themselves the way they want.
Pretty Little Liars sparked the inspiration for this post because that show, along with shows like One Tree Hill or The Vampire Diaries or Gilmore Girls, feature wholesome interactions, that are less socially calculated and less indifferent to the ones we’ve become accustomed to, thanks to social media. But because of this, they’re labelled as awkward or weird or cringeworthy, because there’s true authenticity in unabashed, organic conversation & interactions. That’s what people are so nostalgic for. Relationships & the art of connections struggle so much nowadays because conformity is not just presented to you through magazines or television shows or the cool girls in school. It’s everywhere — every scroll, every social media platform — whether you recognize it or not. Sometimes it’s so subliminal that you don’t even realize how your brain is perceiving it, but it’s no conspiracy theory that companies feed off of our insecurities like vultures, putting more things for us to question about ourselves in front of us. While peer pressure and beauty standards have been around for ages, social media has caused this to skyrocket exponentially, with an mental health epidemic right in tow.
I wonder if we’ll ever get to a place where the empire of social media will crumble, and we’ll go back to the holistic way of interacting & connecting with others. Where we feel comfortable wearing clothes that deviate from trends (hello fast fashion & consumerism, but that’s another post) and instead highlight our personalities. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but my biggest fear is continuing in a world that preys on our insecurities by terrorizing us everyday through our media consumption, and having to constantly try to cope with a society & technological atmosphere our minds and souls were not built to have to survive in. What’s perhaps most interesting is as much as we all participate in this conformity, whether it be through the way we interact or dress or live our lives, we also resent it and hate it, but it’s so seldom talked about that we just go on with it with no end in sight. That’s why older adults, and even some millennials, are so much happier than Gen Z — because a lot of them don’t have the social media screen time that we do, and they’re rooted in their identities (for the most part) and retained their values from their years of living & growing up without social media. I wonder if we’ll ever get to a place where we can rewind time and live again with peace and connection and culture that isn’t driven by consumerism, shame and cultish conformity.
