What’s it called when you’re nostalgic for a time you didn’t live through, like teenagers feeling nostalgic and “looking back” on i.e. the 80s or 90s?
I was born in the 2000s, but somehow I feel a sort of longing to live during the 80s. I have watched a bunch of movies produced during that time, and I realise they may not be a totally realistic depiction of the time period, but for some reason I “miss” the 80s. I don’t mean the struggles of marginalised groups or the politics, but rather the feeling of “old school” and people socialising, the shows playing on TV during that time, the diners, the discotheques, the clubs, the music and fashion and hairstyles… there’s just something cozy about the 80s, how technology wasn’t super developed, how people were still discovering things. Don’t misunderstand me though, I’m glad about the technological advancements we have achieved today, and I realise my image of the 80s may be skewed since I literally didn’t exist during that time, lol.
What’s this feeling called? Has anybody else felt the same way about a time period that isn’t the 2020s?
I have always wished I were around for the Cretaceous period… :(
Seriously though, it’s understandable to want to experience something you can’t. Like, the more we know we can’t do a thing sometimes, the more we want to.
Personally, having lived through the 80s and 90s, there was absolutely something unique about both. I think if you set aside the trivial stuff, fashion, etc., it comes down to what I describe as a more human pace. Life just moved slower. You had to interact directly with people more, yeah. Also, people were kind of more on the same page. For example, TV shows were aired at a specific time, movies showed at a specific time. (I’m referring a bit more to the 80s here, pre VCR.) So, you kind of always felt like you were a part of something bigger. It was kind of a cozy feeling.
On the other hand, if you didn’t fit into mainstream culture (straight, mostly white, probably Christian), things could be really rough for you. It was much harder to find groups outside of that mainstream. You could feel very lonely and isolated. Connecting with people was hard. Being a nerd was definitely not cool, it was just being a nerd. Bullying was really bad.
It was really hard to learn about things. Like, you had to go to the library or school. No internet searches. Maybe in some ways that was a good thing.
That’s more the 80s. I would describe the 90s as sort of complacently boring for the most part. Also, in the same way that people romanticize the 80s and 90s now, many in the 90s were romanticizing and imitating the 60s and 70s. It didn’t feel like there was as much of a distinctive culture to me. The 90s were when corporations really figured out how to commercialize everything too. Think… Pepsi sponsoring Woodstock 99… Things felt less organic, more engineered from above.
But, those are generalizations. People always find a way to express humanity, to be creative, to be unique, to express something new. We’ll look back on these times and see special things too. Personally I really miss when everyone was walking around with their fidget spinners dabbing…