In my mind, 2016 was not a year to feel nostalgic about. Trump was elected, and in the land of the Beckhams, Charli XCX, and Emily Blunt, Brexit happened. And speaking of celebrities, that year we said goodbye to cultural icons like David Bowie, Prince, and Carrie Fisher. In fact, by the time George Michael passed away on Christmas Day, the general consensus was that 2016 was a “spectacularly shitty year.”
But this week while scrolling on social media, I was surprised to see people reflecting on 2016 with a nostalgic fondness. In these pictures, what I’m most struck by—apart from the questionable hair and fashion choices—is that people look like they’re having the time of their lives. Then I realized that, actually, letting Trump define an entire year in life and culture was shortsighted; is it possible that 2016 before the election was the last good year?
As a millennial, I feel lucky to have been alive and vaguely cognizant for the decade leading up to 2016, when it truly felt like the winds of change were in the air. Marriage equality had recently been legalized, and it seemed to be only a matter of time before there was a woman president. It felt like the progress of the previous decade was destined to continue. And while it sounds painfully naive in hindsight, I’m glad I got to briefly exist in that Obama-era bubble where divides and challenges didn’t feel insurmountable. It was the year that Michelle Obama famously said, “When they go low, we go high”—and we were innocent enough to believe that it would work.
It may be particularly hard to understand now, but the internet actually used to be fun. In 2016, media platforms like Vice were combining vital, in-depth reporting with a sense of silliness, sending their writers on all kinds of bizarre missions in the name of viral content. BuzzFeed catered to millennial optimism and, yes, cringe. (You could even take quizzes like Which Harry Potter House Are You? without thinking about the radicalized views of That Author.) Twitter was still called Twitter, and it wasn’t the hellscape that it is today. On the “bird app,” it was actually possible to debate political issues, or whatever Lena Dunham was apologizing for that week, without being confronted with neo-Nazi propaganda, bots, and AI slop.
There was also an earnestness to how people behaved online. Today, it feels like we’re in an irony epidemic, where Instagram carousels are perfectly curated to appear nonchalant (right down to the sarcastic caption) and everything is a shit-post, because we’re scared to be sincere. But in 2016, people still used hashtags like #ThrowbackThursday and #HappyMonday. You’d post a photo of your lunch on the grid and not care when it got only 12 likes.
We also can’t forget about the incredible cultural moments in 2016: Beyoncé stunned the world with Lemonade, cementing her legacy as one of the all-time great musicians; Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight went on to upset La La Land at the Oscars in spectacular fashion; Fleabag became our TV obsession and made Phoebe Waller-Bridge a generational star; and Stranger Things was the first watercooler show of the streaming era. To allow someone like Trump to overshadow these moments of cultural collectivity and joy ascribes him far too much power.
Before nostalgic pictures took over my feed, I had internalized the idea that 2016 was the worst year ever—the moment everything went wrong. And I assumed people were posting about 2016 purely as an excuse to show off their pre-FaceTune wrinkle-free faces. (What’s the opposite of “twink death”? Twink resurrection?) While vanity is definitely part of it, I think it’s more about longing for a time that feels familiar but just out of reach—an era where we had many of the things we do today, like iPhones and the Kardashians, but hadn’t yet lived through a pandemic and a constant feed of violence, and where there were still basic norms of civility. Some might argue it’s a good thing that we’ve had that illusion shattered, but you can hardly blame people for finding a sense of momentary comfort in it.
At the end of 2016, Kylie Jenner proclaimed that it was the year of “realizing things.” And at risk of sounding like that corny type of “live, laugh, love” home decor, this sudden reappraisal of 2016 has made me realize that it’s important to appreciate the positives in the moment—even when that’s hard. You never know when you’ll look back and think, “Wow, I can’t believe how good we had it.”
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