Why people in 2026 are hung up on 2016

By Scottie Andrew, CNN

(CNN) — Measles was eradicated in the Americas, Beyoncé made “Lemonade” and liberal hopes were high for the first woman president. Voters were encouraged to Pokémon Go to the polls. Remember 2016?

A decade on, celebrities and laypeople are sharing fond memories from 2016, the era of face “baking” and #ImWithHer, when some of the biggest national dramas pitted Kim Kardashian against Taylor Swift.

It was also an infamously terrible year. The Pulse nightclub massacre became the deadliest mass shooting in US history (until the following year). Prince and David Bowie died, among other lost treasures. Political schisms deepened and common ground collapsed. The ground was laid for an already dystopian 2026. How grim, then, is the present?

Celebrities loved 2016

Many women who were very famous in 2016 have been sharing photos online from their past, reminding followers all how much more famous they’ve since become. Kylie Jenner, who in 2016 was queen of Tumblr and the overdrawn pout, memorialized the launch of the lip kit that helped make her a billionaire. Supermodel Karlie Kloss remembered wearing chokers and using the Snapchat puppy filter, a true mid-2010s relic. Lena Dunham, Kloss’ fellow Taylor Swift “squad” member, reminisced about shooting “Girls.” And between behind-the-scenes “Big Little Lies” snaps, Reese Witherspoon also snuck in a 2016 photo of herself with Swift.

Then, the gushing. Celebrities and non-famous folks remembered 2016 as a time that was more carefree, even happier. Jeans were tighter, brows were blockier. It’s inspired some to return to or try on those 2016 aesthetics like a costume in the present.

“I loved this time and all my memories from then, so had to post!” Mindy Kaling captioned an Instagram carousel of herself in vibrant outfits from her “The Mindy Project” era. Longtime tech YouTuber iJustine commented on another creator’s post: “2016 was so great!!!!”

“I don’t think we ever left 2016,” added the Instagram account for the boho brand Free People (and based on its consistently Coachella-themed offerings, it’s possibly true).

While the trend is fairly innocent, there’s also some “revisionist history going on,” said Jessica Maddox, an associate professor who teaches media and cultural studies at the University of Georgia.

Maddox shared photos from 2016 to remind old friends and newer followers that she spent the year in a hand cast after almost splitting her thumb in half. It was fun, she said, to introduce a brief but pivotal chapter in her life story to people who didn’t meet her until after the hand trauma. But she doesn’t miss it.

“Nostalgia is always complicated, because we think that by doing or consuming something, we can have the same feeling we had back then, which can never be the case,” she said.

Maybe 2016 was simpler

Photos from 2016 do hearken back to “simpler” times, when social media felt more like an actual network or community, Maddox said. People were more likely to follow the same stories, partake in or make fun of the same trends (mannequin challenge or millennial pink, anyone?), and discuss the same appointment TV. Makeup was heavier, camera lenses were grainier, style skewed maximalist (though at least two of those trends might be circling back into favor). In 2016, Maddox said, “we were less online but simultaneously more together in the spaces we were online.”

“Our media diets were very different, too — not being constantly bombarded with bad news, either from politics or from constantly being plugged into media,” she said. “I think that is part of the reason why we look back and think it was easier or better, probably just because we weren’t plugged in as much and we weren’t as online, doing as much doomscrolling. We weren’t really engaged in the way we are now.”

“When we talk about missing 2016, I think that’s what we miss a lot of: It definitely felt like we had more of a monoculture back then in terms of where we congregated on the internet,” Maddox said.

It was that precious and fleeting blend of having a good time on the internet and putting one’s phone down long enough to enjoy life IRL that’s inspired some to declare 2016 the “last good year.”

“When people refer to it as the ‘last good year,’ I feel like maybe what we’re really saying is — it was the last time before there was a seismic shift in American politics,” Maddox said.

Recontextualizing the year as the last time things were good “finds comfort in the culture of 2016 as a kind of last moment of joy before the politics of our time overwhelmed the culture,” said Dustin Kidd, a sociology professor and pop culture expert at Temple University.

The US presidential election wasn’t the only significant political event of the year. The Brexit vote pulled the United Kingdom out of the European Union, destabilizing the continent’s political order and polarizing Brits. The societal shifts felt in 2016 “may hinge on the election of Donald Trump, but it is about the transformation of the entire political field and the way that politics became the culture,” Kidd said.

The most telling thing about time-traveling back to 2016 online, Maddox said, is the polarized response to the trend itself. The internet has gotten even messier, meaner and angrier in the years since, where something as innocuous as a 2016 photo can inspire bad-faith commentary.

“Nothing can happen on the internet now without it becoming a both-sides issue. Nothing can happen on the internet now that can just ‘be,’” she said. “I think the amount of critique I’ve seen on the trend, to me, is why the trend is happening in the first place.”

The-CNN-Wire
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