Nostalgia Isn’t “Back”…It Never Left

In this episode, I explain how “nostalgia” is often used as a misnomer for “nowstalgia” when marketing an old cultural object to a new consumer demographic. Drawing inspiration from my article, “Nostalgia vs. Nowstalgia, and Why Both Matter in 2022”, and dig into six key considerations of how both affect connection, communication, and commerce: regenerative revenue, trend zeitgeists, context collapse, retro subversion, compensatory consumption, and projection bias.

Get ready for a deep dive on the commodification – more specifically, the Etsyfication, Coachellafication, yassification, and tattooification – of licensed band t-shirts that capitalize off of existing, nowstalgic IP. Why does every youth culture fixture generation think they invented every style when it's really a recycled version of what came before? We’ll explore the context collapse of flannel shirts, The Cerulean Principle (inspired by the infamous The Devil Wears Prada monologue), and my personal favorite nowstalgic aesthetic: Groovival, a revival of 60s culture from the vantage point of the 90s.

You will learn about how isolated cultural objects, like an olive green utilitarian jacket, gain context through composition and can therefore be dated like a time capsule. Millennials’ fear of being cheugy exemplifies their resistance to The Chasm™ – when you become old enough to witness the completion of a standard 20-year trend cycle and are no longer considered the fixture generation of youth culture.

I explain how tie dye has been an enduring cultural symbol with different meanings over time, why hipsters annoy everyone, why Millennials are outraged by Gen Z reselling their 00s pink and black zebra print homecoming dresses, why I love nowstalgic content creators (shoutout to Merel, Nicole aka. Misss 2005, Sammiee, and Sarah), and why everyone for some reason thinks they can predict the future about what will “come back”. Even if a headline says the biggest trend for 2024 is nostalgia, it isn’t. That’s because nostalgia never goes out of style.

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🦋 Special Thanks Doll Artwork by @hmdraws_ Theme Music by @egmusicnyc Intro Video by @valentinareyes9