The 2016 trend is everywhere on social media, but the discussion surrounding the year has a major oversight.
The online trend cycle has spoken: 2026 is the new 2016. A decade removed from the initial trends, social media has become flooded with Snapchat puppy filters plastered on saturated pink-and-blue hued selfies while dubstep remixes of The Chainsmokers play with the hollow resonance of an empty EOS container.
Now, I am not immune to nostalgia. I remember in 2016 trying to land bottle flips, listening to Adele, and badly wanting a fidget spinner. Looking back, my complaints then were quaint, and my life was far simpler. I was also eight years old and didn’t have work or studying for exams on my mind.
Among my memories of 2016, I remember turning on the news back when the TV in my living room wasn’t a paperweight and seeing Donald Trump’s election campaign. I remember his promises to build a wall, the fanaticism from his supporters at rallies, and his win despite not getting the popular vote. The moment millennial optimism got extinguished. Trump undeniably looms over 2016, his cult of personality rewarded by online virality among a culture of ‘anti SJW’ and ‘feminist cringe compilation’ right-wing content. If 2016 was ‘the last normal year,’ then where did the fallout still being felt today come from?
Is it even possible to find a ‘good’ year to romanticise? Inevitably, prolonged stretches of time unveil worldwide turmoil: political, natural, and even personal events that may stain any future mention. The 2016 trend is pernicious not because of people posting photos of themselves from ten years ago—this happens every year. Neither is it the appreciation of 2016 aesthetics—even if they are rather garish. The problem is that the year itself and what it entailed is left unacknowledged by the trend’s proponents, who are instead romanticizing the aesthetic. Millennials and older Gen Z attribute their excitement of the 2016 revival as an escape to a simpler internet. As BBC’s Radio 1 host, Lauren Redfern, comments, “Instagram was all about photos, we didn’t have to worry about Reels, we didn’t have to worry about updating our stories all the time. It was just a simple, chilled life.” She places 2016 as the end of an era instead of part of the progression towards our current year and its problems. Musical.ly is remembered as a harmless predecessor rather than the testing ground for what would become TikTok, which would result from the app’s merging with ByteDance.
Concerningly, unlike nostalgia for aesthetics of the 1800s, ’60s, or even the (disputed) indie sleaze of the 2000s, the creation of this narrative is promoted by those who experienced those years firsthand. While airbrushing history isn’t harmless in either circumstance, it seems to go without saying that in older time periods there are discrepancies between what is appreciated and reality. They are also easier to counteract when the nostalgic lack relevant personal experience. When enough time passes, older events enter the scope of history, becoming easier to approach their realities. Someone nostalgic for the medieval period can quickly face the realities of serfdom—a statistical reality of one’s life for the majority in that period. 2016, however, falls within the memory of recent history. Its historical implications are still being determined, making its current trend an aestheticised determination of willful ignorance. People with relevant experience, who should be able to remember beyond online trends, nevertheless insist on this airbrushed reality.
Uncritical nostalgia traps us into becoming the ouroboros, stuck in an endless cycle of consuming our pasts. Entire years get digested into romanticised aesthetics, stripped of their contextual nuance. A pessimism underlies this trend: the best is behind us, and we have reached a point of no return. Nothing is re-imagined or re-examined, just remembered, over and ovqer, until the snake starves.