Why Is Everybody So Nostalgic?

Y2K is back for a reason: We all revert to what's comfortable in times of stress.

Aug 07, 2022

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I teach a journalism class about the zeitgeist – and I spent most of last semester joking with my students about how their zeitgeist is actually my zeitgeist. Meaning, their love of Dr. Martens and Nirvana T-shirts and weird girl aesthetic and low-rise jeans and middle parts were actually the pop and fashion trends from my youth, though it did not prevent them from trying to explain them to me.

This is the way culture moves, of course – new generations adopt old things; they put their twist on them; older generations try to prove they did it first. Culture is cyclical, and it often moves in cycles of about 30 years. So it makes sense that the era of my teenage years – the 90s and early 2000s – would be having a resurgence, and not just because J Lo and Ben Affleck are back together or Winona Ryder is in a Marc Jacobs ad campaign two decades after stealing that $760 cashmere sweater.

I had this pager in maroon.

The examples of y2K millennial nostalgia are too numerous to name: Paris Hilton is back on reality TV (though now we call it a "docu-series"), while Pamela Anderson is having a moment. There is a TV remake of the Wonder Years; Sex and the City is back; Boys II Men is on tour; all while streaming services continue to battle over rights to shows like Seinfeld and Friends. Meanwhile, Malibu Barbie and Ken are slated to hit theaters sometime next year; there are documentaries about Alanis Morissette, Punky Brewster and Shania Twain; even Claire’s – where everyone I know got their ears pierced – is having a comeback.

In a recent essay, the critic Kyle Chayka argued that nostalgic content has reached such saturation that it might actually be depriving us – of the ability to consume (or create) things that are new. Sure, the “classics” provide us with stories “highly unlikely to let us down,” he writes. But isn’t that... boring? As he puts it: “No one wants to be doomed to the same TV show for eternity.”

I wouldn't mind being doomed to old eps of Fresh Prince tho

And yet there is real reason for our current collective nostalgia, which may help explain why it feels so much more pervasive than in the past: The present… well, it kind of sucks. Even longing for the “old” Instagram – circa, what, 2014? – seems to be our nostalgic attempt to remember a time before Ukranian counter-offensives were being documented on TikTok; before Truth Social (Trump’s social network) was a thing; when being an influencer was not a profession and the idea of a global pandemic was relegated to sci-fi novels and history class.

One of my students decided to dig into this nostalgia for her final project last semester, and she interviewed a psychologist named Tim Wildschut, a professor at the University of Southampton, who has studied the phenomenon. He confirmed to her what most of us probably didn’t need a psychologist to tell us: That in times of stress, humans tend to revert back to what's comfortable. (The word "nostalgia" itself, translated from Greek, means "a longing to return home.")

As if!

He also said that longing for the past is natural, even healthy. It's especially common during periods of transition or uncertainty — like, ahem, multiple pandemics, seemingly endless school shootings, unemployment, a climate crisis, the list goes on. Which might explain why, lately, I’ve been having daydreams of the Obama years (has everyone seen his summer playlist?).

Nostalgia is escapism, but not necessarily in a bad way. It reminds us of simpler times. And who wouldn’t want to return to a simpler time right now?

Photo by Reece T. Williams/WNYC

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From the Archives, 1968: 'Help Wanted – Female'

Fifty four years ago this week, in 1968, the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission ruled — after a lawsuit filed by the National Organization for Women — that it was illegal to segregate "Help Wanted" ads by gender.

But in case you were wondering what those ads looked like before that happened, here are two from the New York Times: A sales job, from 1940 (which demanded a “neat appearance” and “pleasing personality”) and an airline stewardess job for TWA, from 1968, which mandated applicants be single with an “unblemished complexion" and “proportionate weight” — though they did permit eyeglasses. (Phew). 🤓

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