On Nostalgia

Whenever we’re talking about the past, romanticizing it by saying that things were better then, we’re experiencing what’s known as nostalgia. Google’s dictionary feature defines “nostalgia” as a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. Etymologically, it comes from a Latin word related to “acute homesickness.”

All over the world, there’s a common sense that things were better in the “good old days”. Not everyone holds this view, of course - there are people who continue believing the future’s bright. My mother keeps telling me mine’s so bright I need to wear shades, but I’m far from certain that’s the truth.

The fact is, the people who claim that things were better in the past have a leg to stand on. I wish I could say that they didn’t, but I’d be lying to myself, and you’d be fully justified in clicking out of this article right now.

Very often, the term nostalgia is used in the context of older media, particularly video games and TV shows. Let’s take the example of video games first. Now, I’m not much of a gamer these days, even if my current habits aren’t that much healthier than gaming might be. But I still think this is a worthwhile analogy.

If you want to read a book from decades or even centuries past, you can probably find a PDF online if you’re willing to pay enough money. Hell, you could even locate a physical copy on Amazon, not that it’s ideal to give Jeff Bezos any more money than necessary. Most music you’ve heard of is probably available on Apple Music or YouTube, with the latter covering your bases for what’s not found on the former platform.

Movies? Again, they’re mostly on YouTube (or any other streaming platform you can think of) for a small price. It’s no wonder that lots of movie theaters are struggling to stay afloat, and not just because of the general public’s reduced attention span as a result of short-form content. (More on that later).

Video games are different. As I write this article, the Nintendo Switch 2 was recently announced, even if we will not be able to pre-order it from the United States for the time being thanks to the tariffs. And I miss the days when we didn’t have to worry about the unhinged President of the United States levying tariffs and starting a trade war with our former allies, but that’s the world we live in now. See, that’s an example of nostalgia!

The Nintendo Switch 2 might be backwards compatible with the original Nintendo Switch. I’m not sure if that’s been confirmed or not - like I said, I don’t play video games that much. But if any Wii U, Wii, GameCube, or N64 games are available for digital download or not at all, you can be sure it’ll only be a limited selection of said games. 

In fact, unlike the other mediums I listed above, older video games are far less readily available. A 2023 study found that 87 percent of pre-2010 video games released in the United States “have failed to be preserved in any real capacity.” And that’s a problem. 

From my perspective, the general consensus seems to have become that video games are getting worse as time goes on, not better. I wrote a previous article about this, but that relates to Cory Doctorow’s writings about “enshittification”. Eventually, game developers run out of new ideas. Or, if you’re a socialist who believes everything’s the fault of capitalism, you might argue that it’s become profitable to release the games people will buy rather than being innovative, so that’s what the companies chase after. Indeed, the last part is hardly a conspiracy theory at all.

Microtransactions have infiltrated just about every game released today. For all that people are complaining about Mario Kart World costing $90 or whatever, keep in mind that most AAA games these days cost that much (or more) when you consider all the downloadable content that one can purchase. This stands in stark contrast to the “good old days”, when as soon as you bought a game, you were done spending money on it.

 It really is no wonder that indie gaming has gotten more popular in recent years; titles like Undertale are often considered among the best video games ever made. Is it any wonder that a title using a minimalist, EarthBound-esque design caught peoples’ eyes? It’s not made by a greedy game studio that pursues profit over all else.

So yes…games made before the current age of enshittification are popular, and those who can’t play them still pine for them. But there’s more.

Current politics is another area where people yearn for the “good old days”. Perhaps this is mostly unique to the United States, but I’ve had conversations with family members who have told me that prior to Trump, we weren’t nearly as polarized as we are now. Maybe people were still strongly Democratic or strongly Republican, but you could actually be friends with people on the “other side”. Even if you disagreed with someone on, say, what an ideal tax rate was for the highest-income groups, you didn’t necessarily hate their guts.

I want to clarify, of course, that the current situation is far more the fault of the Republicans than the Democrats. The GOP chose to nominate Trump three times in a row, and they choose to keep supporting him and enabling all his disastrous actions. This is a choice they have made and are continuing to make every single day.

Look, I’m only 24 years old. I was not alive when, for instance, the Columbine High School massacre happened in Colorado. But my mother was, and when I talked to her about how it was covered, she said it was utterly shocking. People probably wondered how depraved one had to be to bring a gun to school and slaughter random people. 

Nowadays, school shootings are just as depraved and horrific as they were then, but they’re not as shocking. I remember finishing a writing session in September 2024 as news broke of another shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I’d grown used to hearing about such events. And “only” four people had died; this was not Sandy Hook, Parkland, or Uvalde, which goes to show how depraved my country has become when we’re desensitized to these horrific tragedies. 

Other countries aren’t, of course. In fact, numerous nations (including those who were once our strong allies) have put in place travel warnings for the USA about gun violence. Of course, they’ve now put in place other warnings about how you might be detained and deported to El Salvador; if I were not from here, I’d rather travel to Russia at this point. But that’s beside the point, isn’t it?

Besides the example of gun violence, there are plenty of non-political instances of nostalgia being justified. Take the platform YouTube, which has become the monolithic platform for posting any sort of video. Unless, of course, you’re breaking the terms of service for the platform, in which case you’re better off on Rumble. 

I’m not going to say there wasn’t plenty of brain rot on YouTube when I was a kid. Annoying Orange was (and if I remember correctly, still is) quite popular. But kids these days have it worse - just look at the series known as Skibidi Toilet. 

It’s often said that Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast and currently the most-subscribed user on the platform, ruined YouTube. Prior to his meteoric rise starting in 2017, you didn’t need so much production value to be successful. YouTube wasn’t totally innocent, of course, but if you don’t have tens of thousands of dollars and a giant production team behind you, you won’t take off. Very rarely does content go viral organically these days, and that’s a shame.

The Internet itself is becoming consolidated. We no longer have so many kid-friendly places for those under 13 who cannot yet use apps like Discord. When I was a kid, Webkinz was a huge deal, but now it’s pretty much obsolete. Instead, Cocomelon and other forms of total brain rot have taken its place. 

I’d imagine that in cities and countries where the infrastructure is less car-dependent, this isn’t as much of a factor. Kids don’t need to hang out online as much when they’ve got good places to hang out in person. But I’m in the US, where the vast majority of our built environment was bulldozed for the car. I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was 19, though technically I could have at 16 if I’d wanted to. I can’t imagine how lonely American kids are nowadays.

Overall, I would say that nostalgia itself can be unhealthy. It’s important not to look at the past with rose-tinted glasses when it isn’t warranted. Sometimes your preferences change over time and you just haven’t realized it yet. I know that’s true in my case; I keep feeling a compulsion to write fanfiction, but I simply can’t force myself to when I know I’ll be a lot busier again soon.

There’s also the fact that life sometimes loses its novelty as you get older. Supposedly the older you become, the faster time seems to pass. If I am fortunate enough to reach an advanced age, I might find that out for myself. But you shouldn’t spend your life just wishing.