let it go, it’s already happened

turns out there is such a thing as too much nostalgia

Hi there, folks!

This is my first venture into The Common Thred, an honour that is bestowed upon only a select few. I embrace this newfound responsibility with absolute seriousness and I intend to come out swinging.

Before I get too deep into the weeds, it’s worth mentioning that I used to be a regular employee at Thred. I was a writer and editor at the company for over five years and I now contribute remotely from Bristol. Scroll back far enough and you’ll find videos of me talking about recyclable coffins, articles on IPCC reports, and many other topics that have been lost to time, all in the name of relentless, unyielding social change.

In fact, it’s this melancholy for the past that has been on my mind lately. It seems like a yearning for eras already written is everywhere, whether it be film releases, music genres, or our politics. We all want to turn the clocks back and relive the glory days of the twentieth century, where technology was exponentially advancing, economies were actually growing, capitalism was thriving and social media wasn’t plaguing our every waking move.

At least, that seems to be the case. Box office numbers tells us that Hollywood is better off churning out sequel after sequel of popular franchises that peaked decades ago, the kids are all dressing in nineties outfits and embracing Y2K aesthetics, and Donald Trump has found more traction from the phrase ‘Make America Great Again’ than anyone could have thought possible in 2016. I’m still not sure what those four words mean, even now.

As a neurotic 29-year-old whose spent his best years chronically online, this indulgence in nostalgia is overwhelming, especially as my digital footprint grows and tech companies steadily accumulate decades-worth of personal information to regurgitate back at me via ‘fun’ gimmicks.

Want to know what I was listening to this exact month eight years ago? No worries, Spotify has it covered. My iPhone conveniently curates an assortment of snaps from eons ago into a neat presentation which it thoughtfully titles ‘Sunny Summer Days Out,’ even if I don’t want it to. I can click through Thred’s records and find every single thing I’ve ever published over six years.

Traces of my life are everywhere, scattered about the web like forgotten shards of glass.

I didn’t even mention Facebook, which essentially archived my adolescence into tidy photo albums and status updates, each embarrassing teenage musing enough to make me crease over with cringe. It’s all still there and rife for public consumption.

Constantly living at arm’s reach from the things that have already happened to us is quite a modern and recent dilemma. Nearly everything we’ve ever done in the past ten years or so is accessible with a few taps, always on the other end of a phone screen. This close proximity to our past selves and memories can make it harder to enjoy the now, the present day, where things are yet to unfold and our lives are disconcertingly unpredictable.

The inescapable ties to the places we’ve already been and our previous eras has hit me harder than ever this past year. I won’t bore you too much with the details, but let’s just say I’ve been through a lot of change. I lost my mum to cancer, I moved cities, I changed jobs (and then came back again) and I shaved my head. And started running. I think that’s everything?

What I’m getting at is that things have been pretty tough. A lot of my life’s disruption came unexpectedly, with little warning, and much of it has served as a stark reminder that I am no longer a child or even a ‘young’ adult. I’m nearly thirty with rent to pay and a career to carve. My hair will get thinner, I’ll need to exercise regularly to keep a semblance of my teenage shape and I’ll have to navigate the rest of my life without the parental structure I’ve always known. It can feel like a lot to sit with.

Anxiety around ageing and life’s steady march forward can tempt us into the trappings of nostalgia, especially with our phones constantly reminding us of what we used to be. I truly believe that a huge motivator for the current surge in far-right political gains is rooted in this fear. People seem enthralled by the idea of ‘returning’ to something, of reverting back to an idea of a time that never existed.

As I mentioned earlier, what does ‘MAGA’ even mean? Like, actually? I’ve not once heard any specifics as to when America was supposedly so great. I constantly see the same echoes of empty romanticism in the UK, whether it be the Reform party gaining traction, the rise in ‘anti-woke’ sentiments and the feeling that things used to be so much better.

I’d argue that we need a bigger push to sweep away our infatuation with the past.

I’ve been doing my best to embrace true adulthood and accept that I’m getting a little older, even though I miss what my life used to be only two years ago. My phone is routinely coughing up photos of my past. All the text messages I used to send to my mum are still sitting in my WhatsApp archive. Wrestling with our life’s history in this way is a daily endeavour and a uniquely Gen Z and Millennial phenomenon.

Perhaps with more time we’ll understand how best to navigate it healthily.

By that same token, we need to stop letting older folks lecture us about how much better everything was thirty, forty years ago. Fixating on a world that has already passed us by is a fruitless pursuit, where there’s nothing much new to say. I wish our cultural enthusiasm for nostalgia would wane so that we could concentrate more on the future.

For now, I’ll keep my fingers crossed - and try to keep off my iPhone’s photos app, just for good measure.