nostalgia is a dirty liar | THE BABYDOLL COLUMN

The rise of the Tumblr era, old trends and aesthetics making a comeback, and celebrities like Kylie Jenner reminiscing about their old Tumblr days. why is everyone suddenly nostalgic?

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If you are chronically online like me, you’ve probably noticed for the past four years the comeback of many eras. It started around 2021: Lana Del Rey’s music just started going viral on TikTok, and many so-called “girl bloggers” accounts on Instagram began blowing up with viral whisper posts, pictures of it girls like Lily-Rose Depp on top of them sad quotes posted by teenage girls. Musicians and bands like Halsey, Melanie Martinez, Sky Ferreira, The Neighbourhood, Marina and the Diamonds, and Arctic Monkeys started going viral again too, with some of their old hits.

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Around 2022, the rise of Y2K in fashion and social media began. Songs like I’ll Do It by Heidi Montag and Hit ’Em Up Style by Blu Cantrell started going viral. Musicians like Ayesha Erotica and Kim Petras whose whole aesthetics depend on the 2000s vibes were gaining popularity. Iconic paparazzi pictures of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan were being posted everywhere. It seemed like people really began missing the old celebrity days, how pop culture was so fun.

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Fast forward from 2023 to now: Tumblr girls and Lady Killers by G-Eazy started going viral on TikTok. Everyone started using the light pink 2014 filter. And most importantly, so many people were reposting old Kylie Jenner Instagram posts from her iconic “King Kylie era” the pink hair and full glam, showing off her luxurious lifestyle with other nepo babies, the infamous models Bella Hadid, Hailey Bieber, Gigi Hadid.

It feels like people are longing for something but what is it?

What exactly about old eras is making us feel nostalgic? It can’t just be the past.

To understand this, we have to know what these different eras share in common. They all had different fashion choices, but what’s the one thing they did have in common? You guessed it: fun. People are longing for fun, for freedom, for life, for hopefulness. In a time where everything is highly performative, highly perfected and highly manufactured looking back at low-quality photos at the beach, fried bleached hair, cringey poses, and all over the place fashion choices feels refreshing. It was an era where everything felt real, everything was about the moment.

I remember back in 2018, me and my parents went on a vacation to a different country, a coastal one. I remember everything from the beach, the club that was next to the hotel, to the woman in a random store who told me, “Promise me that you’re going to start drinking more water,” after I told her I barely drink it. I was alive and present in the moment. Though I didn’t feel very happy with my parents, I was actually living. Unlike now my whole life is in a smartphone. I used to have a big iPad that I only used to take pictures. I’m pretty sure the photos were bad, but I wish I still had them. I could post them on Instagram with a song from 2014 and it would give off Tumblr vibes.

I think this is how old aesthetics make a comeback. Just someone posting a random low-quality selfie of a celebrity from 10 years ago with a sound and OUUP—1 million likes on TikTok and a new microtrend is unlocked.

Nostalgia is a filter…. a grainy light yellow-pink one that gets added on top of our memories. That’s why we tend to miss certain times of our life when things weren’t necessarily great. We long for colors, for freedom and liberation, we long for happiness.

And that’s where nostalgia comes into play. It’s the closest feeling to happiness. It’s very bittersweet, though the bitterness doesn’t allow us to feel the joy and breathe it completely without getting a heartache at the end, when the breath reaches our chest. That’s why nostalgia is uncertain, unreliable—a liar, a drug that gets you lost in an illusion. An empty void sugar-coated with filtered souvenirs, beautified pain, and glittered tears. The past wasn’t bad for all of us, but for most, it was. The times when you were next to the window at 5 a.m. crying until you almost choked, nostalgia will have you only remembering how beautiful the tears looked dripping from your sparkling sad eyes instead of the reason why you were miserable.

And even if the past wasn’t bad, either way, we can’t stay stuck there. It doesn’t exist anymore. You are wasting the moment, dreaming your life away instead of actually living it. And how can we live life? It’s something we really don’t know how to do anymore, due to the amount of adversity we go through from financial struggles and shitty families & friends to mental illnesses.

The root of it all is caring. I posed a question in the beginning, and it was: What do we long for? Aside from happiness, it’s nonchalance. To reach happiness, you have to not give a fuck about how people are perceiving you, what they’re going to say, how things will work out, whether it’s your mother or partner or job—you have to be nonchalant enough to drop everything the minute it costs you your happiness. You may think I’m making it sound like the easiest thing ever—but hey, you are on the internet, literally reading a stranger’s column. If we can’t analyze things on our own freely on the internet, where are we gonna do it?

We are in an era where everything is easy and accessible. To have time to get lost in nostalgia is to have privilege. Utilize that privilege to escape the dirty liar that is nostalgia and start seeking happiness in the moment. Create memories that are worth feeling nostalgic for instead of reminiscing about times when you were mentally fucked.

Social media in the past was less about performing, and more about connecting. Somehow, we felt connected to famous people despite never talking to them. It seems like in the past, people weren’t so afraid of being themselves. We were carefree. Now, building new connections and finding your people is so hard. Loneliness is a true problem in the present time. We lack community and support. Without true, healthy connections, it’s very hard to make the present magical. And yes, you can do it yourself but don’t let anyone gaslight you into thinking that you don’t need anyone. We are social creatures. We need relationships and friendships. It’s human nature. Don’t wait for them to start living, but don’t deny them when you receive them.

Those reels and TikToks that pop up on your FYP at nighttime will have you thinking that everything was better before but don’t fall for that trap. i fall for it everytime and to be quite honest I'm 50% the reason of my suffering, i love to sit in misery and drown through all the gut wrenching emotions and reminisce about them, i find joy in it.

Coming of age, transitioning from teenhood to adulthood it’s a big emotional ride, and that makes us vulnerable. And when you’re vulnerable, you’re most likely to be exposed to a lot of manipulation and gaslighting. If not in real life, it’ll be on the internet. We miss things and people that might not have been good for us. We long for the past—the warmth and comfort in the known because stepping into the unknown feels like a dip in a cold pool. But the more you swim, the more the water starts to feel warm. That makes me wonder—do we feel nostalgic for the past, or for the comfort and familiarity we were provided with there, despite the adversities we were met with?

Speaking from personal experience, the thought of going back to the past and re-experiencing it all over again makes me feel suffocated. So the real question is: What do we feel nostalgic for?

I don’t know about everyone but for me, I realize I do feel nostalgic. Nostalgic for the future. Nostalgia in how things could be. How my life could look. Nostalgia for things I never lived but I know deep down I am made for them, if I’m just ready to let go.

i’ll come back to you next month with more from 𝑇𝐻𝐸 𝐵𝐴𝐵𝑌𝐷𝑂𝐿𝐿 𝐶𝑂𝐿𝑈𝑀𝑁 . 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠 𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑙𝑦, 𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑦𝑑𝑜𝑙𝑙.

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