The New Normal and Nostalgia for the Unknown

As of late, my social media feed has been inundated with a curious type of reel, consisting either of once popular food products from the 90’s that have now been shelved for good, or a barrage of services/features from the same decade that have gone extinct. In at least a few cases, the video is essentially a slide show of items highlighting a bygone era. Over the videos, a kind of eerie, bittersweet music plays, one that adds quite an emotional impact. There are dozens upon dozens of these videos, and they are quite moving. 

They may contain old images of shoppers at a Blockbuster rental store, or at the now extinct salad bar at Wendy’s. Perhaps children heading home on their bikes with the streetlamps on overhead. Or an extinct candy, like Butterfinger BB’s. One even included a shot of a 90’s style school lunch tray, complete with a square pizza and that little soft milk carton that for reason resembled an envelope.

The Discman, Beanie Babies, Pepsi Clear, Dunkaroos, and a whole host of other items are featured in these “highlight reels of the past”. Not everyone will remember all of these products, but everyone will remember something. 

But these highlight reels feel a bit different than just a jumbling of dead products. Perhaps it is the music, or the uncanny, inexplicably accurate curation of images that makes them popular. In the comments section, a good deal of folks leave expressions of a kind of grief, a forlornness when watching these images fly by. More than a few folks admitted, they were literally holding back tears. These reels are painting a picture but also serving up just enough nostalgia that they become the viewers' own personal runway––the memory takes flight, and you can journey back there for a bit, but only to realize that the world you are revisiting is long, long gone––and none of it is coming back.

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Obviously, times change and products evolve to better serve a newer world or a different economy. And of course, some things just run their course. Clearly, from a technological standpoint, certain things will simply go–– we have moved way past the floppy disc or AOL instant messenger. But it is not that anyone is really missing Zima or Doritos 3D chips. In fact, it is abundantly clear why many of these products or fashions no longer make up our world (I am instantly reminded of one perplexing image, a brownish translucent ashtray with the McDonald’s logo on it). But clearly, these 90’s videos have an impact, and I would suggest that it is no coincidence that the 90’s is the decade of choice. Clearly, it is not the products we miss. 

Instead, many are simply being reminded of what the world looked and felt like, in the grand scheme of things, not so long ago. The 90’s is a decade of implausible significance. Not because the world was perfect, or there isn’t just some simple good ol’ fashion romanticization of the past going on, but because, essentially, what happened after the 90’s makes many nostalgic for a pre-internet period. A period where kids still played outside unsupervised, where there was less existential dread about the world, politics were not as vitriolic, and most of all, the internet was new, and had not touched every facet of our everyday lives. 

And no one can say the 90’s was perfect. There were troubling headlines every year, from the OJ Simpson trial to the beating of Rodney King, from the sex scandal in the White House to perhaps America’s darkest 90’s moment, the massacre at Columbine High School.

Now, to discuss this in the year 2024 seems a bit odd. In a strange mathematical phenomenon, many people admit to momentarily thinking of 1990 as “ten years ago”. Of course, it was almost 35 years ago, over a third of a century. But culturally, it is easy to see why the 90’s feels like the “last decade”. With all the technological progress, the aid of the internet-at-every-turn, countless apps, driverless cars, etc., the world still feels culturally paralyzed. 

Music, entertainment, politics, and film all come and go at the speed of sound, most of which feels corporatized, and therefore disposable. We have long become a nation of Starbucks, Marvel movies, vapid music, and a national politic whose toxicity is only matched by the pornographification of nearly everything. And while the sun still shines, and babies still laugh, we cannot help but feel a collective sense of doom about our existential plight––a type of dread that leads to phrases like doom scrolling or trauma bonding. 

And I think trauma is the active idea that I am getting at. As if the first quarter of the 21^st century wasn’t eventful enough (despite a type of cultural somnambulism), it was certainly COVID19 that came into the fray like a bomb, giving an already toxic, enraged world another subject to argue, fight and worry over. 

And though COVID19 and the lockdowns, the debate over masks, the politicization of a virus was several years ago, we have not recovered. We are still shaken from the fallout. And what I am least interested in is any graph of the economy or Wall Street shares that indicate any financial bounce back. I am more concerned with the general psyche of a population that is collectively traumatized by a world that no longer resembles anything recognizable. That is to say a world that is shaping and reshaping itself so often, people feel they can hardly keep up. 

There is efficiency and progress at every turn. Everyday a new app, a new piece of technology promises to make our lives easier, better, and more efficient. It seems, collectively, we wish to chase these promises right down to the ground, without any examination of what we are losing in the process––that is, our humanity. And with this shared notion of doom, we are finding many are opting out of this new world, albeit in ways that emphasize that very notion. Many are culling themselves off from the world as they disappear into screens filled with pornography or the graphics of a video game. Similarly, the normalization of pornography allows any girl the opportunity to sell herself online, without even leaving her home. 

And it is not my job or my point to judge these folks, it does no good. These phenomena, ironically, are actually the very logical conclusions of those facing a world they are not all that excited to be a part of. A world where very few want to work anymore. With all the technological progress and e-moneys flying around, working for a living may sound like a rotten deal to many. Why work, when we can influence?

But we need active participants in this world. We need a collective that can voice out these mass delusions, that can articulate the worries of a generation, that can perhaps, stand up to all the progress and say enough. That what the world needs is a collective sigh, a mass collective repair, a moratorium on needless, senseless technology. We are losing ourselves in the never-ending pursuit of progress at all costs, a type of immaculate efficiency. 

And as the hours turn to days and the days to years, those simpler times are getting further away. At some point, nobody will remember a pre-internet era. Nobody will recall the simple joys, whatever they may be. We will have pictures, recordings, and databases filled with reminiscences, but we may have lost ourselves. And that is the greatest fear of all––to lose our humanity and become nostalgic for things that are unknown. 

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.