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Where had been you in 2016?
I’ll go first. I’d simply began uni and I had thick curtain bangs à la twee queen Zooey Deschanel. Beyoncé’s Lemonade was getting some critical air time on my automotive radio, and Instagram nonetheless confirmed posts so as of once they had been posted. I didn’t know what a Labubu was and Rihanna was nonetheless making music. It was, put merely, a fairly good 12 months.
Yes, a part of that is simply the buoyancy of youth, the sensation of getting “the world at my feet”, to cite my 12 months 12 yearbook. But I’m not alone in idealising 2016.
The newest social media development invitations customers to share photographs of themselves from a decade in the past, with celebrities like Kylie Jenner, Selena Gomez and Hailey Bieber participating.
On TikTok, searches for “2016” surged by 452 per cent within the second week of the brand new 12 months, whereas compilation movies of “peak Millennial culture” – suppose moustache tattoos, typewriters and flower crowns, all pictured in sepia tones and set to the tune of indie-folk group The Middle East’s Blood – are trending.
So, why 2016?
Obviously, 2026 marks a decade on.
But it was additionally a watershed 12 months in some ways. Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton within the US election, the Brexit vote occurred and the Paris Agreement got here into pressure (the final of which, a decade later, we’re on track to surpass).
It was a time earlier than AI slop dominated our social media feeds, earlier than a world pandemic turned the world inwards and earlier than Twitter grew to become a conceit undertaking for Elon Musk.
Gen Z – the youngest of whom had been simply 4 years previous in 2016 – are embracing the tradition of their Millennial elders, romanticising their youth as an easier, extra optimistic time.
It is smart. Millennials got here of age in an period of overwhelming hope. Start-up tradition was in full swing and it was nonetheless potential to outlive on a barista wage in a metropolis like Sydney. Fuelled by Obama-era optimism, many felt like actual progress was being made when it got here to social points like LGBTQ and reproductive rights, racial justice and physique positivity.
Many Gen Z at the moment are understandably pessimistic about the future, confronted with a near-impenetrable housing market, rising political polarisation and a dying planet. Many, notably younger ladies, have given up on love solely.
Obviously, 2016 was removed from good. The very nature of nostalgia means we see the previous by means of rose-tinted glasses. Clearly, the forces that led to the place we’re at the moment had been brewing for a while.
But in intervals of deep financial and political uncertainty, it’s comprehensible we discover consolation within the heat glow of our reminiscences. I, for one, might be using out the tip of the world by reviving the Mannequin Challenge, watching Glee and strumming my ukulele.
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