Why are people yearning for 2016?

If Instagram feels like a time-machine right now, you should know that it’s not just your feed.

Celebrities, influencers and a whole lot of other users have been waxing nostalgic lately for the lives they were living a decade ago. So, why are we now so obsessed with the year 2016? 

Today on Commotion, culture critics Vinson Cunningham and Madison Malone Kircher talk about the trend, and what it tells us about our current cultural moment.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: There is something about 2016, that particular year returning, that you’d go, “Oh, probably millennials started this,” but not so, Madison. These posts started [with] Gen Z people looking back on 2016…. Why are they so nostalgic for 2016? How did we get here?

Madison: First, we must go back in time to the invention of the concept of “millennial cringe.” ... I am a millennial, I'll take the heat. We've been roasted within an inch of our lives for years—

Elamin: Side note, every millennial says it a little apologetically. Like, “I'm a millennial, I'm sorry about it. I don't feel good about when I was born, but it's fine. Don't worry about it. ” Sorry, continue, yes.

Madison: So, you know, millennial cringe is that millennials are far too earnest. Our comedy is deeply cringey. It doesn't hold up. Even the clothing we wear is accused of being cringey. But somehow, that, over the last year, morphed into millennial optimism — that this was the generation that got to experience the before times. And that leads to 2016, which, you know, we just hit a decade since 2016 when the clock ticked 2026. And so now we've got this younger generation looking back at 2016 and saying, “Hey, you know, seems like a great year.” Which… eh. 

Elamin: 2016 marked a certain transition. Some folks remember 2016 for, I don't know, for example Lin-Manuel Miranda on SNL during the lead-up to the 2016 election, walking past a photo — I will never forget this — walking past a photograph of Donald Trump on the SNL wall and singing from Hamilton, “never going to be president now.” And, well, sure enough a couple weeks later, that's exactly what ended up happening….

I think some of the cultural references to 2016, Vinson, feel kind of uncomplicated in a certain way, you know? I'll be going, “Oh, it's kind of nice to, like, dip ourselves into that moment.” How do you understand nostalgia for that time?

Vinson: I've never looked up the lyrics to The Chainsmokers song [Closer], but I'm pretty sure one of the lyrics is, “We ain't ever getting older.” Like, it's about this sort of agelessness…. Drake also had a song that was called Summer Sixteen, and it was about celebrating himself. And it took on a thing, like people were really into that summer. 

I remember it was the end of the Obama era. There was some unrest. You know, Trayvon Martin had happened, Ferguson had happened. So there was ideological ferment happening, but still a sense of maybe the last vestiges of this sort of liberal hope that we're still incrementally getting better and better. And then also, just to quickly jump in on your thing about Gen Z, this is pre-pandemic. My daughter, a Gen Z-er, is 20 years old, and the pandemic happened when she was in high school. So for them, I think their youths were very split in half. So it might mean something different to them, but there was a primary colour to that time that has now gotten hopelessly muddled.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jess Low.