With every passing year, there tends to be a sense of nostalgia for the prior decade. It only makes sense if just to acknowledge the passage of time as something real. What was once part of contemporary culture is starting to fade into the annals of history. That is why it’s interesting to see debate emerging towards the idea of people being nostalgic for 2016: a period that can be easily romanticized as “the before times” if just because, by American diplomatic standards, there wasn’t a constant need to worry about what was going on in politics. For the target nostalgists, Gen-Z, it’s mostly been a time of innocence when pop culture was upbeat, less concerned with the ever-changing landscape. For Millennials, it was the bubble bursting after a large half of the 2010s being fueled by good times and optimism, that we were going to shape the world into something better.
There was a joke on The Daily Show last year where correspondent Desi Lydic suggested that Hillary Clinton was the reason that most people had a traumatic response to hearing Rachel Platten’s “This Is My Fight Song.” It’s one of those lines that stings because there’s not only truth to how omnipresent that was in the presidential campaign, but because of how interwoven pop culture had been for the two aging candidates. Despite those 12 months producing a bevvy of fond memories, it feels at odds with the central discourse of a president who picked fights on Twitter, often resorting to barely veiled threats of misogyny, racism, and encouraging his supporters to incite animosity.
For someone like me, the idea of being nostalgic for 2016 is difficult because that is the frame I’m often falling back on. As someone who grew up in a household of people who worked elections, there was some excitement in making this the first year I would be so aware of everything that I had stories to share. I watched the local news religiously, spent too much time watching the political satire videos on YouTube, and studied the history of this great American process. I even listened to this great podcast called Presidential every week to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. Despite having a world outside of politics, there was something about that time when I felt the need to tune in and have an opinion on everything.
I’m not going to carry you through those months. All I can really do is say that I am happy to have participated in the process and fulfilled a personal goal. However, this November may as well mark 10 years of irrational shame that I’ve carried since witnessing reality in real time, of seeing my colleague around 8 P.M. PST turn to her phone after an hour of minimal turnout and give a look of disappointment. She never said what caused her to feel that way, but it was a moment when you begin to question everything and accept that maybe hard work and honesty weren’t going to be enough. I still remember listening to The Cracked Podcast the following night and getting a detailed rundown of “how could this have happened?” and coming to terms with the idea that I had, in fact, been living in a west coast bubble and hadn’t fully appreciated the strategy that maybe Clinton was a dirty word in the Midwest. I had just assumed that the rushed-to-theaters and pretty useless Michael Moore documentary was a minor reflection of greater validation.
As I’ve suggested, there was a deeper naivety that needed greater evaluation throughout the year. I read stories about how two Republican presidential candidates took to Twitter to determine whose wife was a bigger whore. There were jokes about hands equating to small dicks. Despite having a Twitter account, I missed a lot of talking points that wouldn’t only become more toxic and mainstream in the years to follow. By the time of the infamous Access Hollywood tape scandal, I knew things were over when the “locker room talk” defense met my Saturday breakfast with older family members as more jovial than the slightest bit of criticism. Again, maybe Clinton was a dirty word even in the far west. Then again, this party included a relative who once emailed me about this “interesting documentary” called 2016: Obama’s America (2012), so even the sitting president who built up hope in my generation wasn’t well-received by a prominent voting body.
If there were any takeaways from that time, it was an effort to put aside the sarcasm and try to be more compassionate. The boiling tension was evident. Even still, my belief system is built on karmic values that good will be rewarded… and it just wasn’t. A man who once attacked his opponent in a debate by saying, “You’re the puppet,” was now a serious politician. On the bright side, my relative trying to send me Dinesh Desouza propaganda was bright enough to recognize that things weren’t looking hot for either candidate. Still, I saw in that newly elected man a person I didn’t want to be, whose hollow showmanship had an addictive quality at the time, but it was also novelty. He was appealing because he was touching on the new, something profane and taboo that had yet to be deconstructed. A decade later, it’s easy to watch Trevor Noah poke fun at him at The Grammys and predict the response because it hasn’t changed in that time. It’s only become more naked in its cruelty. What started as an act I had assumed was parody has turned into a tragic, slow-motion view of what exclusionist rhetoric does to you. At hundreds of points, you believe things could be different, but they weren’t. There was a need to double down and, because you could double into infinity, he could push the depravity higher and higher until he’s lost the plot.
Again, it’s hard to fixate on the idea of being nostalgic for 2016 without bringing in so much of the political discourse. There was some regret that I didn’t do more to appreciate my youth or have more self-awareness of the world around me. At the start of the year, I was a college dropout who was trying to figure out a large career. 27 is also the age when you start to become existential and question what life after 30 will be like. I was also nervous about making it to 28 because actor Anton Yelchin, who was only months older than me, had died in a very bizarre circumstance. That may be why I shifted from writing short stories to my first novel, “Apples & Chainsaws,” during that time. I felt self-aware of time passing and needing to start making something relevant. My sister was about to have her first children. There had to be something to show for this turning point.
Spoilers. I am still here. Maybe I’m not where I would like to be, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t continued to push myself to follow my dreams and try to engage with a world outside social media. If anything, I am nostalgic for 2016 in the way that some Gen-Z have suggested, which is that it was one of the last periods for physical trends, where Pokémon Go encouraged you to go outside and wander around, where flash mobs danced, Movie Pass was a thing, and the internet wasn’t as monetized. There was less self-consciousness at that time, even if I was still seeing my friends attend parties they never invited me to. For better or worse, my view of the world was much more innocent before that November, and it may just be because I had connections to the comfortable world I established in my early 20s, before everyone “grew up” and “moved away” in a proverbial sense.
Try as I might to find a greater reference point for 2016, the thing I come away thinking about was released the year prior. Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight (2015) was a film that explored the Catholic church sex scandal from over a decade prior. In short, I think it’s a phenomenal piece of filmmaking that fully embodies the old adage “Trust the process.” There was respect for putting in effort to get answers without rushing stories in order to fact-check smaller details. At the time, I was barely a former journalism student who realized they couldn’t cut it while admiring those who rolled up their sleeves and put in the hard work, the long hours to make everything come together. Spotlight is a film that touches me in the way that I’m sure many from past generations felt about All the President’s Men (1976). It’s inspiring, hopeful, and makes you believe in the power of change when you have Freedom of the Press in your arsenal.
Early in 2016, the film won Best Picture at The Academy Awards. As a statement movie, it should’ve been a much bigger deal than it was. Here was a story of people standing up to tyranny and shining a light on justice. That is a great story, but it was sidetracked by the additional story of any dissenting opinion, often in the case of one individual, as being “fake news.” Any gaff that he disagreed with? Fake news. It’s like the Shaggy song “It Wasn’t Me,” but with increasingly severe circumstances in spite of growing documented evidence. Still, it was the start of distrust in the media, where defunding led to many organizations going under and great writers having to find more independent means of production. Whatever papers were left had a strong chance of being bought by biased parties to die in darkness. Cut to 2026, and while reporting still exists, the basic function has been so fractured that it’s impossible to maintain a consistent understanding.
Am I nostalgic for 2016? Probably in the same way as I am any other year. No time in history hasn’t produced some sort of fond memories, often in the realm of art. Something exists from that time that gives you hope in human creativity. While I think 2016 ultimately voted for something antithetical to that, I choose to imagine a world where Spotlight winning ushered in an age of significant pushback, where Mark Ruffalo saying that nobody could get away with crimes and abuse meant something. I dream of a world that feels less codependent on the internet and where a president could be, ahem, boring. I know that Barack Obama is technically not “boring,” but he’s also not that front and center. He is methodical with public speaking now, and I kind of miss that strategy in an age that’s been reduced to a decade-long mudslinging competition. I would love to live in a world where we had more carefree, inconsequential love stories like La La Land (2016) be a source of escapism. Instead, a weekend cannot pass without fear that someone got shot by I.C.E. or another federal building has been compromised.
I miss the innocence of a time when I could turn on the Republican National Convention and see them endorsing this volatile figure as a hopeless case. I miss being stupid enough to believe that backing a man who lacked any professional décor was going to hurt their long-term chances. Instead, it reflected the cynical reality that power is addictive, and those who have tasted it will do anything to hold on. I look at The RNC and ultimately see the death of a party with any morals, which bought into a Faustian bargain, believing they would prosper. Who’s to say they haven’t, but it also came at the expense of their party’s larger reputation. Watching their candidate insult dead war veterans and evade questions about Russian alliance should’ve been enough to provide some hesitation, but that power is like cocaine. It’ll get you high, but it’ll mess you up before leaving your system.
I’m sorry if this failed to work as a piece about nostalgia for 2016, but it’s frankly difficult. It was a turning point for me, and one that led to greater things. If anything suggests that public and private views of a year can differ, it’s the fact that I found greater purpose in my life and have a better understanding of what I want out of life. I’m less miserable and aimless, and I also have a B.A. from my dream school. I’d even argue that I’m in better health than I was in my Mid-20s despite having suffered Covid-19 three known times.
Do I miss 2016? Only in the sense that I miss my youth. There’s the obvious idea that I wish I could’ve done a lot differently to better myself and sustain certain relationships, but that’s part of growing up. I learned a lot through failure of my own, as well as my repugnance to presidential candidates profiting off their own selfishness. I’ve worked to be a better person. Even still, I wish I could redo a lot of it. Would it mean having different variables? Of course. I might not have met the people who were formative to that time of life. I wouldn’t necessarily change that.
But still, imagine a world that was more naïve and optimistic. I struggle to think how Gen-Z or, more specifically, Gen Alpha are going to grow up with any sense of patriotism. They haven’t known an America that wasn’t at odds with itself. Where is their period of innocence going to be? Maybe it’ll be a curse wrapped in a gift, where they’re not forlorn like we are. Maybe 2028 will mark their own Obama-type moment, and someone will begin to rebuild hope after so long in the doldrums. It’s hard to say, but I have to have faith that things will get better.
Will they, though? Part of nostalgia is realizing it’s been a decade of this, where even to watch the hit shows of the day like Broad City highlight a world of the unfulfilled joy everyone had that things could get better. It’s a subjective prompt, but please understand I wince about this new nostalgic trend, not because I’m not also fond of certain moments from that time, but because it means so little has been done to break that cycle since.
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