"Since the new year, Instagram has been taken over by a 2016-themed "add yours" sticker, which prompts users to post throwback photos from 2016. Users have posted more than 5.2 million responses, creating enough buzz to spill over onto other platforms. On Spotify, user-generated "2016" playlists have increased 790% since the new year, and the company now boasts in its Instagram bio that it's "romanticizing 2016 again.""
"I forgot how much everyone hated 2016 at the time. It was the year of Brexit, the culmination of the Syrian Civil War, the Zika virus, and the Pulse Nightclub shooting, to name a just a few sources of dread. It wasn't just the election of Donald Trump - months before that catastrophic night, a Slate columnist sincerely posed the question of how bad 2016 was when compared with notoriously awful years like 1348, when the Black Death took hold, or 1943, the height of the Holocaust."
Social platforms have triggered a wave of 2016 nostalgia, with an Instagram "add yours" sticker prompting over 5.2 million responses and a 790% spike in user-created "2016" playlists on Spotify, which now claims it is "romanticizing 2016 again." Many recall 2016 as simpler, before a Trump presidency, widespread mask terminology, or later pandemic realities, and amid cultural moments like Pokémon Go. Nostalgia often overlooks the year’s existing crises, including Brexit, the escalation of the Syrian Civil War, the Zika virus, and the Pulse Nightclub shooting. Some posts and comparisons captured a sense that 2016 already felt intensely negative and catastrophic.
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