In 2018, teens made memes about being nostalgic for 2015, in part because anything before President Trump felt like some long-forgotten past. In 2017, millennials flocked to emo-themed concerts to relive the melancholy soundtracks of their youth. Like junk food, video games, and at-home hair dye, nostalgia is a popular pastime even in normal circumstances, but particularly so in an era where the present feels inescapable. “There was no news about it, no piece of art that was going viral.” When Kerans took a deep dive into what else was trending, she noticed a pattern: Everyone who remembers the internet in the early 2010s was rediscovering their fantasy favorites, like Twilight and Divergent. She noticed something strange was going on when Megamind, an animated movie from 2010, was the most popular film on the platform the week of March 16.
“We’re seeing posts literally float to the surface from 10 years ago,” says Cortney Kerans, the head of communications at Tumblr. “If you were on Tumblr in 2013-2014 you should qualify for a senior discount,” reads one self-deprecating video from the genre, as though the era were several generations ago and not less than a decade. Others are digging back into their angst-ridden social media posts from their adolescent and teen years. Girls are recreating outfits inspired by hyper-stylized image macros of flower crowns and band T-shirts they loved in middle school. “Bop or flop?” posits a TikTok trend asking users to rate “coming-of-age indie pop bangers” from those years. Reliving a very specific subculture from the period that roughly spans from 2009 to 2014 - the era of indie pop, ironically oversize eyeglasses, and late-wave finger mustaches - is what countless millennials and Gen Z kids are doing right now, online and in their bedrooms. But wouldn’t it be fun to pretend it was? This is, statistically, probably not what you were doing in 2013.
Bing! Your friend just texted you a hilarious Harlem Shake Vine.
You’re listening to a Purity Ring song on your iPhone 4S, wearing an American Apparel tennis skirt while reblogging a Tumblr post shipping Santana and Brittany from Glee.
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