Incoming 2010s Nostalgia
forecasting for the next decade
A couple of days ago I saw a TikTok that I can't find again--doesn't it always work like that--where the OP posted screenshots of old BuzzFeed videos and lamented "this is the life I was promised". The video targeted nostalgic sentiment for the life early 2010's media glamorized. This user, likely, as I was, was a teen in the early 2010s and watched this and similar propaganda, dreaming it their future reality. And as the 2020s progressed and turned out to be nothing like the 2010s, their disappointment unfurled. The optimism and potential found in their teens lost to the reality of their 20s and looking back, a BuzzFeed video represented the premises of the life they thought they were destined to live.
This video stuck with me for two reasons. One because I saw in another TikTok a few days later referencing Quinta Brunson’s past career at BuzzFeed and again the top comment held the same declaration. “This is the adulthood I was promised when I was younger.” The video stuck with me, too, because it's a feeling I’d been feeling as well. Not that I thought I would be working at BuzzFeed when I was a teen--Buzzfeed was “normy” and “cringe”--but still, I have, admittedly, been stuck in my teenage nostalgia era lately. I've been watching old clips of How I Met Your Mother and The Office when they come up on my TikTok feed (couldn't be bothered to watch whole episodes) and have been thinking a lot about the life that teenage me thought he’d be guaranteed. I got the first email about my ten year high school reunion last week and my friends in old group chats have started making preliminary plans. I went to boarding school in New Hampshire and haven’t been anywhere close since graduation, so I’ve managed to avoid almost all but two of these people for the better part of the decade. We were supposed to have a reunion for five years that I hadn’t committed to any more than verbally, but March 2020 made any plans for May 2020 inept and I got out of that easily. Now we’re all debating if and how we’re gonna get there this May upcoming and ~the feels~ are all coming back. And they’re coming back hard.
I can’t believe some of the things I’ve been yearning for-- I even logged into Facebook! I deleted my Facebook account for the first time in 2016--an overly complicated process--but was convinced to create a burner account afterwards simply to log into Messenger. At the time you couldn’t just make a Messenger account. Maybe they’ve changed that.
In 2016, deleting my Facebook didn’t come as any major statement or protest, I just didn’t enjoy the site anymore. Pre-Cambridge Analytica Facebook had an appeal, it was fun to share statuses and upload hundreds of pictures of your friends. We had vague understanding of privacy concerns in the sense of “the internet lives forever” and not posting anything you wouldn’t be comfortable with a future employer seeing, but few, if any, cared to consider if our pictures were being used to train artificial intelligence or if our feeds were being tuned towards polarizing our political beliefs simply because a corporation wanted more profit. When I left Facebook I didn’t know any of this, but my real reason, in hindsight, could have been my canary in a coal mine: I left because of Donald Trump. My whole feed was Trump: think-pieces about Trump, protests over Trump, arguments over Trump, profile pictures sharing affinity for Hillary Clinton that, by proxy, sought to denounce Trump, it was all Trump. And Minion memes. The most unfunny Minion memes you’ve ever seen.
Still, I've been yearning for the age of pre-Cambridge Analytica Facebook. The age where Instagram was still fun and the only influencers were the Kardashians and their imitators selling flat tummy teas and overzealous hair gummies. When Silicon Valley still had its prestige and the "millennial lifestyles subsidy” hadn’t destroyed it. When my parents would take me to tour all of the colleges we didn’t know would deny me and when I liked when people brought up politics because they would always stop to remark that I looked like President Obama (I don't, but I’m black and had the same haircut). When my friends and I would spend nights dreaming of the big cities we would all move to together and I always told them I would go to New York, and we'd use that to debate about who got to be who if we were the cast of How I Met Your Mother. We’d say we all wanted to be Barney but really we were fine with being Marshall. Just nobody wanted to be Ted.
I'm not really one for making cultural predictions, but the 2010s is due for making its rounds on the nostalgia cycle. This is still a few years away though, so I’m a bit early. Cultural theory says that in the roughly 20 years that it takes for the teens populating in one decade to be the designers of culture in another, those now late-20s and early-30s go back to the idealism of their youth and develop it into their art, writings, music, films, and fashion. That's why the 2020s brought back Y2K (one interpretation, at least) and one explanation for why things keep seeming to circle back on each other. The senior brand managers and emerging runway executors making prominence today are allegedly pining for their youth in the early 2000s. If trends continue at the same pace, we're only a few years away from the teens of the 2010s’ decisive takeover.
Yes, it is very very very very very early to be making this claim, but if the trends continue at this rate then first signs of the earliest adopters will likely start to show by 2028 or 2029. I remember attending art school in Manhattan in 2019 and witnessing the styles that would come to signify this decade walk in and out of classrooms and flash against white photography backdrops and as unfinished props propped onto mannequins. At the time I thought I went to school with the insane and that those were the ugliest outfits I'd ever seen. No way I thought anyone would ever wear them. I guess I'm not a fashion guy. (I think I can see the artistry now, but I don't know if that's just hedonic adaptation or because they’ve gotten better. Probably neither. Maybe this is what it’s like to get old(er).)
So if you trust my judgment, hedge for the impending 2010s revival. I feel confident in this as I believe that if I'm having these feelings, others are too. One of us thinking this now will work on that idea and perfect it by 2028 and will lamentably have enough cultural capital to inflict our wounded inner childs upon the unfortunate victims within our vicinity (liberal metropolitan cities in the United States). "This is the life I was promised" we will scream, but the art will reflect whether or not it's the life we got.
I’m not one for making predictions, but here I will list a number of people and ideas I question how their prominence will affect the decade upcoming.
In other words, my predictions.
BuzzFeed might have "fallen off" but many of its former stars are the biggest rising names of today. Just a couple weeks ago former Buzzfeed star Quinta Brunson posted a picture to Instagram behind the scenes of the Emmy winning show Abbott Elementary where for their Halloween episode the cast “surprised” her with a student dressed up as Brunson from one of her early viral videos. With the success of this show, surely she's got more to come. Abbott could presumably be 10 seasons deep by the start of the decade so what comes next? Half of the Abbott cast and recurring characters comprises the youth of the 2010s in their first major "adult" roles, surely this shall parlay as harbingers of 2030s’ next big movie stars. Vine nostalgia? Yes to the first, please no to the second.
The Obamas are back, both in presence and in nostalgia for their presidential tenure. Both former President Barack and First Lady Michelle played integral roles in campaigning for Vice President Harris’ presidential campaign. With the unfortunate threat of a second Trump presidency looming, after the election my TikTok feed was full of videos looking back to the two terms of the Obama administration. As I surmise, these users considered the Obama administration the last bit of "normalcy" in presidential politics in recent memory (or in any memory I’m sure for some of these TikTok users). Seemingly President Biden hasn’t been granted this honor, as his still current administration riddled with controversies concerning a pandemic, a confused economy, and foreign relations policies passively permitting a genocide have yet to be given the benefit of hindsight, nostalgia, or a subsequent administration attempting to overdo all of its accomplishments. I'll link a couple of videos relishing "Prime Obama" and arguing in favor of Prime Obama in an imaginary candidacy race against any incarnation of Donald Trump (arguments made by, presumably, teenagers, not political pundits). The Prime Obama trend was followed by the grueling but not unimaginable theoretical that if an 82 year old Donald Trump successfully repealed the 22nd Amendment and ran for a third presidential term, third term Obama, now eligible as well, would “sweep” him in the electoral college. This is the world we live in.
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTY26tSsJ/
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTY2MJCLR/
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTY2M2m2v/
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTY2MY7mR/
[editors note: these were supposed to embed right onto the page but i guess that isn’t working]
In the music industry, Charli XCX and Tinashe both have huge hits this year, but younger audiences may not be familiar with their work from the previous decade both in solo performances and in songwriting. Both "2 On" and "I Love It" were mainstays of my high school experience, so seeing them both having mainstream popularity again feels like it’s about damn time. Charli XCX hosted SNL as I wrote the first draft of this essay and Brat Summer completely colonized the color green this year. “Nasty” took over my Spotify for a solid chunk of this summer and honestly, I hope both of them take over the next decade.
Many other artists first gaining popularity in the 2010s have had public recognition of the maturity of this year, or a questioning of a lack of it. Much of the Drake and Kendrick Lamar beef centered around Lamar's assertion and condemnation of Drake's apparent lack of maturity (aside from the... other stuff), and Tyler, the Creator cited Lamar's more mature Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers as an influence on this year's Chromokopia. What's next? Which 2016 XXL Freshman will be the first of the decade to make their own 4:44? Rocky is a dad now, maybe him?
On its own, none of this means the 2010s is "back" yet, but it could be signaling that it’s on its way. How long before someone brings back Indie Sleaze? I missed it the last time, so that's what I'm waiting for. Those American Apparel ads and early viral Instagram posts honestly were my “this is the life I was promised” fraught. I was waiting to live out my inner Ke$ha or LMFAO music video. I guess I’m still waiting on that, tbh.
Baggy jeans might be “king” now, but how long before we see skinny back on the runway? Don’t get me wrong, I do like my oversized denim that the cool kids at Zumiez convinced me I should buy, but in my earnest I’m a slim fit guy (skinny doesn’t look great on me, which I found out far too late). Skinny jeans, snapbacks, tiny backpacks that can’t fit anything in them, thick wayfarer glasses with no lenses? Business casual with your tie hanging from your undone top button and the bottom of your shirt untucked? Fedoras? No, nix the fedoras. Sagging in a suit completely undone with high top Nikes? Okay, now I’m remembering why this went out of style. Kanye’s leather shirt and Hennesey VMAs outfit? Kind of not looking forward to that part but that's what comes with it. If the 2020s bring back Y2K, the 2030s must bring back "swag" and nerdom? Are you seeing how this works? This disgruntled late 20s loser pines for the worst part of a forgotten decade and makes it everyone else’s problem. Hey, that’s a Buzzfeed headline! Click to find out more~~~
On a more serious note, there is one aspect of the 2010s that I am interested to see how it plays out in the next decade, particularly with this theoretical 2010s resurgence, and that has to be social media. The 2010s laid the foundation for the rise of social media and its integration and into every aspect of mainstream society. While Facebook was founded in the early 2000s, the 2010s saw the rise of mobile first apps like FourSquare, Vine, Instagram, Yelp, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Facebook’s gargantuan takeover. If 2010s nostalgia bait is prime to be set en vogue, how will the remaining social media companies of today respond, especially considering their lack of positive prominence and negative favorability in popular sentiment?
You really can't underestimate just how much social media influenced every part of 2010s culture. This was the time when every viral video got you a spot on Ellen and a viral series meant a pilot on network TV. The same time when Ellen’s Oscar selfie “broke the internet” (Ellen really ruled this era) and when it was genuinely a big deal that people wanted a picture of an egg to beat Kylie Jenner for the spot of the most liked Instagram post. When mainstream media and everyone else threw every penny they had at viral concepts and The Chainsmokers released a whole hit song with the refrain "Wait, let me take a selfie!”. Mobile first social media, assisted by newly perfected and less expensive smartphones, probably embodied the decade more than anything else, but in the years since that has all changed. Between the unfortunate decision of ad based financing and a number of political and sociological controversies, social media's favor has hit at least a popular culture decline, even if its user base is stable and revenues are still growing. Might a 25 or 30 year anniversary be apt time for a Facebook rebrand? Can Snapchat release a pair of glasses that actually function outside of Snapchat? I still have my Spectacles somewhere. I'm sure a software update is all they need, right? (Sidebar rant: Not at all. They've been discontinued and don't work for no reason other than that Snapchat decided to discontinue them. Just turned it off in the software and there’s nothing I can do. That's messed up isn't it? How do they just get to decide my glasses shouldn’t work anymore because they don't want them to? I hate that they could do that.)
I worry that social media lacks the capability to make its return to prominence and dominance, at least not in the democratized way the 2010s promised it would. Institutions are back, baby, and they're not giving up easily.
When the government decided the pandemic was “over” America suffered from a rushed push to return to "normalcy", although that normalcy means different things depending upon who you're talking to. For some, normalcy means an idealism of the time immediately before the pandemic. For others, it means an idealism of before both the pandemic and the administration that miss handled it, which could also mean two different things depending on which part of America you were talking to. Unfortunately, we also found out last week for a good portion of the country a return to normalcy means to return to the 1960s, but that's getting ahead of ourselves.
When the government decided the pandemic was “over” America suffered from a rushed push to return to "normalcy", although that normalcy means different things depending upon who you're talking to. For some, normalcy means an idealism of the time immediately before the pandemic. For others, it means an idealism of before both the pandemic and the administration that mishandled it, which refer to entirely different administrations depending on which part of America you talk to. Unfortunately, we also found out last week for a good portion of the country a return to normalcy means to return to the 1960s, but that's getting ahead of ourselves.
Institutions, both public and private, are taking advantage of America's blindspot for nostalgia and unhappiness with the present. Seeing the lack of a “great reset” as apt for any reset they meant to implement themselves, societal change has quickly gone from a locus of power in the many to one controlled by the few. This macro applied to the micro, mainstream media has a better chance at a comeback than social media democratized through their “creators”. Arguably, mainstream media already has coalesced its control.
Streaming reinvented cable, and the “channels” of today descend from mostly the channels of before. Any social media star big enough to get out knows there’s more money on TV than there is on the internet, thus Jake Paul fought Mike Tyson on Netflix, not YouTube, Addison Rae knows there’s a bigger career for her in music than on TikTok, and Charli D’Amelio went to Broadway. Social media has inconsistent pay structures, as ad revenue relies on advertiser interest and lacks the funding mainstream media seems intent on pulling back. Plus, the internet is fickle-- one bad move and the internet decides you’re canceled, and the possibility of coming back from that is uncertain. Mainstream media can be more forgiving. Did you know Kevin Spacey has a movie out?
Like Mark Fisher wrote about Kurt Cobain in Capitalist Realism, “nothing runs better on MTV than a protest against MTV”. Soon the viral talent room will be a blip we tell our kids about, old in our rocking chairs screaming “I remember when all it took to get a record deal was a fifteen second dance video” and our grandkids will pause their AI/AR contact lenses running games, video chats, a live stream, and a movie at the same time to look at us confused, the same way we feel when some old guy talks about buying a piece of candy for a penny. The fun parts of social media are over. Now it’s just scams, ads, and ads that are scams.