Nostalgia Isn’t What it Used to Be

Vivian McInerny
2 min readApr 22, 2022

Looking back in the future will be . . . confusing

Photo by Rock’n’Roll Monkey on Unsplash

Remember when remembering created a warm fuzzy feeling? Well, forget about it!

In the future, people will view the past, AKA now, as an encrypted memory card not worth decoding.

What I’m trying to say is, nostalgia is a thing of the past.

These current times are just not going to look good in scrapbooks.

Here’s evidence.

1. Writers cannot write poetic lines such as the opening to A Child’s Christmas in Wales, “I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve, or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six” because Google.

2. The right side of history will skew left. Social media archives will offer demonstrative proof that while some took amazing, important, world-changing action, you mostly sat around posting snarky Kim Kardashian comments.

That bad blond phase, though.

3. Few things bring back a specific moment in time like music.

Unfortunately, you will not be able to share the sound track of your youth with your future children. Why? Well, WAP for one. Do you really want your baby’s first words to rhyme with that thing hockey players smack…

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Vivian McInerny

Career journalist, essayist, fiction writer, and life-long spirit-quester.