On How It’s Gotten So Shitty That People Are Actually Romanticizing 2016

Because there is no rhyme or reason to anything anymore, the same goes for what trends might “reanimate” at any given moment. Except the “2016 trend” isn’t really a trend so much as a lust to return to a point in time that was now a decade ago, ergo supposedly “better.” Or at least “simpler.” While nostalgia is nothing new, particularly amid the ever-increasing hauntology of the twenty-first century (which has taken shape in new and unsettling ways thanks to TikTok), this fixation on a particular year is a bit different than what “the culture” has known before. In the past, it was merely a certain decade (e.g., the 80s and 90s) that captured the imaginations of the entertainment world (especially fashion and music)/a subsequent generation for their repurposing machinations. Not a specific and, honestly, rather “esoteric” year. Because, in truth, out of all the years of “the 10s,” 2012 is probably the most “logical” one to romanticize considering it at least adheres to the theory that the world actually did end and we’ve been in a (very fucked-up) simulation ever since.

But no, because 2026 has marked the “ten-year anniversary” of 2016, that’s the “place” social media users have chosen to focus their nostalgia obsession on. And, as usual, the ones to capitalize on such a trend the most are the Kardashian-Jenners, who were arguably at the peak of their powers in ‘16 (complete with the obscene sales of Kylie’s disgusting lip kits and Kim managing to make Taylor Swift cower and retreat in response to the “receipts” [now recognized as conveniently edited] she leaked regarding Kanye talking to Swift about mentioning her in the lyrics to “Famous”). It was, quelle surprise, Kim who was most eager to remind the masses of her “place” in 2016’s culture by captioning a slew of throwback photos on Instagram with, “I promise whatever happened to you in 2016 mine was crazier.” This referring primarily to her being held at gunpoint (Cher Horowitz-style) for her jewelry at the Hôtel de Pourtalès during Paris Fashion Week in October. A turn of events that was spurred by Kardashian foolishly posting photos of herself in real time wearing various pieces of jewelry (most notably, a large diamond ring given to her by Kanye [slightly less unhinged that year] for their engagement) that gave the robbers useful information about how and when to target her. This being just one of many examples of how 2016 wasn’t really a “rosy” or “simpler” time at all. Indeed, it was the culmination of everything getting much, much scarier and more complicated due to the internet in ways that the collective is all too familiar with in the present.

October 2016 was also around the time it became clear to those without any illusions about the extent of American stupidity that Donald “Grab ‘Em by the Pussy” Trump had a very good chance of winning the U.S. presidential election. Particularly since he was running against Hillary Clinton, a woman (oh no!) with a lot of emails—those emails being the inane flashpoint during the election used to discredit her as a politician of “competence” and trustworthiness. Never mind that the Orange Creature had no political experience whatsoever, was even then a known shyster/sexual assaulter and emitted nothing but a lot of word salad during most of his debates and appearances (an “oration style” that has only worsened during his latest term as president). But he was a man (and one who could yell the loudest), and that was what mattered. For even a white woman couldn’t convince the electoral college and Americans at large that a woman was “up for the job.” Besides, they reasoned, Didn’t we just have a Black president? Isn’t that enough on the “diversity quota” for a while (read: forever)?

Nonetheless, rather than looking at 2016 as a climax of all that was wrong politically in America (and the world), people with a misguided sense of nostalgia for that “era” are billing it as “the last good year” before everything truly went to shit. And no, it’s hardly a coincidence that the “end of goodness” aligned with 1) the Orange Creature taking over the presidency (though he didn’t win the popular vote that time) and 2) a slew of celebrity deaths that marked the end of artistry as we once knew it. Especially in the music industry. This signified most palpably by the deaths of David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen and George Michael. And, in many ways, Bowie’s unexpected (to the public) death at the start of the year (on January 10th, two days after his sixty-ninth birthday) served as a harbinger of things to come.

As for Prince, it seemed all too timely that the same year as his death from an opioid overdose, then-president Barack Obama called the collective addiction to such substances as fentanyl (which is what Prince accidentally OD’d on [thanks to his “good” doctor]) “as great a threat as terrorism.” Ah yes, and talking of terrorism, there was no shortage of that in 2016 either. Whether it was the attacks near Jakarta’s Sarinah shopping mall, the mass shooting/hostage-taking in Burkina Faso, the bombings at Brussels Airport in March, the truck attack in Nice on Bastille Day or the truck attack at a Christmas market in Berlin on December 19, it seemed there was no dearth of Islamic extremist rage. You know, the kind that was supposed to be quelled after 9/11 but has only ramped up in new and insidious ways ever since.

And that included some rage in the United States, too, with the person responsible for the Pulse nightclub shooting during Pride Month pledging his allegiance to the then leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Amid this stewing cauldron of ever-widening ideological divides and contempt for American intervention in, well, most everything related to foreign affairs, yes, there were Snapchat filters (the flower crown and dog ears forever associated with this blip in time). And chokers, bomber jackets (how fitting for a pronounced year of terrorism), ankle boots, slip dresses. And the last time Rihanna and Britney Spears released studio albums that equal the phrase “Anti Glory” when put together (a phrase, incidentally, that so perfectly sums up 2016).

To this point, there are (as with any year) some things to romanticize and look back fondly on, pop culturally speaking. Even Beyoncé’s Lemonade (before Lily Allen showed up to one-up it with West End Girl). Or the fact that Kendrick Lamar still hadn’t handed Drake’s ass to him and the latter was experiencing his musical renaissance with the release of Views. Film-wise, though, there was a lot of schlock—like Suicide Squad, The Angry Birds Movie (yes, Angry Birds is a bizarre moment in pop culture that everyone seems to be conveniently omitting), Mother’s Day, Now You See Me 2, Bridget Jones’ Baby (sensing a sequel pattern yet?) and Why Him? Even the Oscar bait was annoying to most—including La Land, Moonlight and The Revenant (with the former two films’ awards show competition resulting in one of the most awkward scenes in recent Academy Awards history).

As for newer mediums in pop culture—a.k.a. platforms that signaled the rise and rise of the “influencer”—it seemed yet another bad omen that Christina Grimmie, the internet personality that ended up on The Voice was shot by a deranged fan in Orlando (for there’s a reason Florida is constantly accused of being the place in America where all the most sinister shit goes down). Just another portent of the how sick the parasocial relationships between “fan” and “celebrity” (a.k.a. a person on the internet more known than another person on the internet) were becoming. This included that abovementioned Kardashian jewel heist, which, although not motivated by “fandom,” did signal a new, less innocent time on the internet. One in which la-di-da celebrities started to understand that the “eat the rich” mantra wasn’t just a graffito (hence, Karl Lagerfeld commenting on the matter, “[Kim is] too public—we have to see in what time we live… You cannot display your wealth then be surprised that some people want to share it”). And where once parading wealth and instilling “FOMO” in others was a primary “goal” of posting online, a pivot toward becoming more private (that is, by Kardashian-Jenner standards) began to emerge. Perhaps one that has resulted in the current number of think pieces that keep talking about how more and more people are “logging off” (to use a more analog term) or “leaving the internet” (which means going on social media apps less).

In this regard, the “yearning” for 2016 appears to be less about what was actually going on that year, and more about wanting to wind back the clock just far enough to experience a “cruder” version, so to speak, of the internet. But those who felt it was “nicer” on the internet then also seem to be forgetting about the Russian hacking debacle that helped foment discord and disinformation online during the lead-up to the election, particularly via Facebook. Setting into motion the very events that would lead to presently normalized terms like “post-truth” and “fake news” (this latter term often wielded by the Orange Creature in 2016 to discount legitimate news reports). It’s also only too telling that 2016 was the year that TikTok was founded, establishing an app that would bastardize all previous forms of social media and wreak further havoc on attention spans worldwide.

So sure, romanticizing the past is normal, sometimes even “healthy” (though only in very rare cases—like, say, when one wants to revive a stale relationship by remembering what made them fall in love with somebody in the first place). But homing in on a year like 2016 to attempt to feel like one has returned to a “better” or “simpler” a time is not only yet another sign of mass delusion, but, ultimately, just how shitty the present is. Still, probably not shitty enough to want to go back to 2016. That is, unless you never got to live through a time period that was even more pre-“AI slop” than that, and therefore can’t help but view 2016 as somehow “quaint.”