The present has a message about the past. In case you hadn\u2019t heard, we had it so much better in the not-all-that-olden days of mixtapes and Jordache denim vests.<\/p>\n
The nostalgia is spreading far and wide on social media, delivered in a tidy package generated by artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
In one of the videos, set around the summer of 2000 and shared on TikTok by a user who goes by Nostalgia Cat, a young man with spiked hair tells us there were, \u201cNo chats, no DMs, just stories around the fire \u2019til morning.\u201d He, like everything and everyone else in the clip, is an AI creation.<\/p>\n
Nostalgia Cat is not alone. Video creators throughout social media are using tools including Midjourney and DaVinci Resolve to make increasingly impressive movies. And to thousands of people who aren\u2019t looking closely, and don\u2019t know better because they had yet to be born in the 1990s, these nostalgia posts might as well be the genuine article.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a real curiosity about a time before phones dominating social life,\u201d said trend forecaster Sean Monahan. \u201cAI, weirdly, is a backward-looking technology,\u201d he added. \u201cAll these large language models are ultimately composites of information from the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though AI \u201challucinations\u201d sneak into the shots (a small-town Indiana scene, for example, shows a two-way Main Street, only the cars are parked in the same direction on both sides of the street and a car is driving on the wrong side of the road) the videos can still pass as somewhat convincing.<\/p>\n
Most of the comments on Nostalgia Cat\u2019s video seemed to point to a huge reserve of longing for the days of flip phones and \u2019NSync.<\/p>\n
It turns out, the 1980s were also great. An AI-generated post from the Instagram account Purest Nostalgia, which has more than 775,000 followers, shows a \u201cpeaceful Tuesday morning,\u201d as a man with a briefcase walks down a suburban street showered with golden light.<\/p>\n
Rapper Vanilla Ice was one of several hundred people to leave a comment on an \u201980s-themed AI-generated video that invited contemporary viewers to \u201ccome hang.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cComputers have ruined the world,\u201d Vanilla Ice \u2013 real name: Robert Van Winkle \u2013 wrote in the comments section. When contacted about the comment, Van Winkle, 57, doubled down, arguing in an interview that the internet eroded the shared joys of American pop culture. \u201cIt\u2019s gone nowhere but downhill,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Many of these videos feature unnervingly realistic teens who briefly pause whatever wholesome activity they are doing to inform the viewer that the internet killed spontaneity and joy. How would they know about the internet, if they come from a pre-internet era? The videos do not reconcile these logical breaks, and their failure to do so is one of the things that makes them uncanny.<\/p>\n
Some observers dismiss nostalgia content and express anxiety about its proliferation.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI is a tremendous tool to depict a reality that never was,\u201d Richard Hoeg, an attorney in his mid-40s who runs the Virtual Legality channel on YouTube, wrote in an email. Hoeg said that although he had never before \u201cglamorized\u201d the 1980s, he nevertheless felt the \u201cAI unreality\u201d of content depicting an idealized version of that decade working on him. He wondered about the broader implications of such emotionally effective messaging.<\/p>\n
Josh Crowe, a 29-year-old from England who runs Purest Nostalgia while living in Bali, said he isn\u2019t fazed by criticism that he and others are polluting the internet with ahistoric content. \u201cI\u2019m just trying to focus on bringing positive vibes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Crowe creates his content by using a mix of \u201creal reference images, restored and recreated by AI\u201d and \u201cpurely accurate\u201d prompt engineering. He then uses Photoshop for \u201ccleaning up deformations, like extra fingers.\u201d<\/p>\n
He makes no claim of accuracy.<\/p>\n
The whole point of nostalgia is to remember only the good stuff. And these days, social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram are brimming with positive vibes about renting videos from Blockbuster and hanging out at the mall. \u201cYou\u2019re out there stressing about likes and followers? Here, we just live it,\u201d says a visitor from the \u201990s.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen people feel anxious and uncertain about the future, they naturally turn to the past for comfort and guidance,\u201d said Clay Routledge, director of the Human Flourishing Lab at Archbridge Institute. Routledge, who wrote about nostalgia in a recent New York Times guest essay, said his research has found that young people are becoming increasingly nostalgic. \u201cWe should expect more of it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The marriage of real-world nostalgia and digital tinkering was probably inevitable. Scott Anderson, a Minneapolis web developer, noticed the trend in May. His habits on YouTube reflected his \u201cmoderate\u201d nostalgia. Suddenly, he found himself watching a video about \u201c15 forgotten sandwiches,\u201d which he eventually realized was likely generated by AI. Anderson wondered, \u201cHow much worse is this all going to get?\u201d<\/p>\n
Four months later, we have an answer. Crowe said he has been gaining followers so rapidly \u2013 about 115,000 per month \u2013 that what started as a hobby is becoming an opportunity. He is launching a store and working on a book.<\/p>\n
Tavaius Dawson, 26, has seen similar growth on Maximal Nostalgia, which has more than 800,000 followers on Instagram and more than 250,000 on TikTok. Several times this summer, Dawson saw his accounts gain 30,000 new followers in a day. A version of his clip about the \u201980s has been viewed 27 million times on X, though the poster did not properly credit Dawson, a father of two who lives in Florida and now devotes himself full-time to nostalgic content creation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want it to be an escape, a safe space,\u201d Dawson said of his page, which has city-themed nostalgia videos (Los Angeles, 1989; Chicago, 1982). An aspiring filmmaker with a fondness for John Hughes movies, Dawson writes scripts and creates storyboards for each of his clips, which take about an hour to create.<\/p>\n
Dawson said he has received messages from people in Ukraine and Israel that praise his content for offering a respite from grim wartime realities. \u201cIt brought me to tears,\u201d Dawson said. He said he is now working with a Hollywood producer on a \u201990s film.<\/p>\n
Gunnar Zyl, 37, who lives in Berlin, started the account Nostalgia Voyages in the fall of 2024, as a way to express his fondness for American culture. Along with Midjourney, he uses editing tools including CapCut to create slideshows and videos with titles such as \u201cCity Life, 1980s\u201d and \u201cFeels Like Home.\u201d The account has 62,000 followers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI often look at old photographs, films, or advertising as inspiration,\u201d Zyl said in an email. \u201cMy process is intuitive. I focus on re-creating the imperfections of analog media, the look of Polaroids, VHS, or 35mm film, because those textures carry emotional weight and make the scenes feel more authentic.\u201d<\/p>\n
The images themselves, though, are difficult to distinguish from those of Maximal Nostalgia, Nostalgia Cat or the many other accounts crowding the nostalgia-generation space.<\/p>\n
In a twist, the same tools that have been accused of distorting reality are helping recall times when facts seemed more stable.<\/p>\n
\u201cLiving as we do in a time of fractured attention, fractured politics, and fractured norms, is it any wonder people would rather spend time being mildly scolded by AI-generated \u201980s kids who seem to know what the world is about than to try to make sense of our own chaotic times?\u201d wondered Christine Rosen, a culture critic at Commentary magazine and, at 52, a \u201cproud Gen X-er.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the longing for a better world, she said in an interview, \u201cwill remain unsatisfied \u2013 and perhaps be made worse \u2013 by wallowing in AI slop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some users simply don\u2019t buy the nostalgia trend in the first place, pointing out issues like the fact that people had cellphones in the summer of 2000.<\/p>\n
Van Winkle says he tells his own daughters to engage in some of the same activities children of earlier generations did: \u201cGo outside,\u201d he said. \u201cGo climb a tree.\u201d<\/p>\n
The middle-aged onetime star has a similar message for anyone willing, per his 1990 song, to stop, collaborate and listen: \u201cGet out of the cyber world immediately,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n