Lately, you’d easily believe we’ve travelled back into a sepia-toned, bygone era. Social media has been inundated with grainy images of purple sunsets, selfies adorned with flower crowns and outfits that largely consist of ripped jeans, plastic chokers and olive-green utility jackets.
Where the hell am I? And what year is it?
There’s no way to avoid it; 2016 nostalgia is in full force. Harper’s Bazaar described 2016 as “the last good year”, and everyone – ranging from Nobel prize laureate Malala Yousafzai to nearly every influencer within a five-mile radius – has posted their own decade-old throwback pictures, Snapchat filters and all. Arguably the poster girl of 2016’s spirit (for better or worse), Kylie Jenner, even hopped on to the trend and shared images that were the envy of almost all young girls at the time.
Millennial pink hair. Thigh-high boots styled with T-shirt dresses. Heavy, full-glam makeup that revitalised the entire cosmetic industry. Absolute chills.
“You just had to be there,” she captioned the post. But, in my best attempt to emulate the great Carrie Bradshaw, I couldn’t help but wonder if everyone who was romanticising this particular moment of time actually were there. Don’t they remember that 2016 was, well, kind of a shit one?
I recall a lot of people concluding that 2016 felt rather rotten by the year’s end. After all, this was the year that kicked off Brexit, saw Pauline Hanson’s return into Australian politics and, most notably, the transformation of Trump’s presidency as a punchline into a tangible, horrifying reality.
Was this not the year that kicked off the divisive hellscape we find ourselves in today? Dare we even mention the Harambe of it all?
Pop culture-wise, 2016 was also notable for its many beloved celebrity deaths. David Bowie. Alan Rickman. Carrie Fisher. Prince and George Michael, for god’s sake! It also saw the genesis of Jared Leto’s terrible portrayal of the Joker in Suicide Squad, while the #MeToo movement was still a year away from truly breaking ground.
The colourful fashion trends of the early 2010s that were built upon the foundation of experimentation also muted into something a lot more corporate and a lot less fun, spurred on by the girlboss-ification of culture.
It’s too easy to fall into a rose-coloured haze when reminiscing about the past, especially when a lot of these images are quite literally draped in a pink-hued filter. For those of us who came of age at the time, it’s natural to feel nostalgic for when adulthood still felt electrifying. So, it’s also not that hard to see why a lot of folks are now yearning for a time when avocado toast was thrilling and AI was confined to science fiction.
We were clubbing to Rihanna’s then-new album, Coachella was still the epitome of cool and Pokémon Go managed to achieve world peace for a limited time, forcing people to leave their hovels and go outside to touch grass en masse.
As someone who can’t help but become sentimental for practically every moment of my life, it’s hard to resist the siren song of the 2016 culture reappraisal. I was blasting Lemonade and Blonde, watching Stranger Things and Insecure for the first time, while noshing on sugary pink Starbucks concoctions only a young person could stomach and soaking up the final moments of optimism that was extinguished by 2017. A lot of us didn’t know the world could get so scary, so quickly.
Contrast this with our current year, which has only existed for a few weeks but is already chock-full of the chaos characteristic of the 2020s. We began amid the devastating fallout of the Bondi beach massacre, while a US president elected a decade prior made threats to forcibly take over nations.
But losing oneself in the rose-tinted echoes of the past does not a good coping mechanism make.
Despite the horrors, great art is still being made, and this bout of 2016 wistfulness might be the very cure for this new-year funk. Let’s learn from our mistakes! I would even argue that the sheer awfulness brought on 10 years ago has made the majority of us more resilient and aware of injustice; even if it feels like the opposite is true.
Besides, 2026 may yet become another beloved calendar darling in the pantheon of memorable years – we haven’t even had a full month of it yet!
