Why We Keep Paying For The Past: Nostalgia as a Currency

The past has never been so expensive. Vinyl records climb out of the dust and onto players, streaming platforms experience a resurgence in shows from the nineties, and fashion brands stack Y2K clothing onto shelves as if time itself could be marketed. Nostalgia has proven not to be just a feeling,  but a business model. We are buying for the illusion that life is simple, soft, safe. In an era tainted with uncertainty - political, economic and even environmental – nostalgia sells because it reassures. 

But what exactly are we paying for? A vintage camera cannot take you back waiting rooms at photo labs. A rebooted series from the nineties cannot replicate the evenings when it was first aired, on a boxy twenty-inch television and a bag of popcorn. We may come close to that novelty, but the grasp of reality takes a hold when we turn on the news. 

What we don’t realise is that our vintage desires come with a cost of time. To be truly authentic, we would need to wait seven days for our fourteen prints to develop, unheard of nowadays. Binge-watching was non-existent, and the social media dopamine rushes you get every day were barely a thought in the early days of the internet. Is this chase for the “old” just another dopamine hit in itself?  

It’s no wonder we reach for the nostalgia of the past when today’s world gives us nothing but discomfort. Turning on the news channel comes with a price of despair, rage, and feeling like we are living in a dystopia. To an extent, we are. Political polarisation, the cost-of-living crisis, all under the constant reminder that our only earth’s environmental damage is beyond repair. Helplessness is rife and we yearn for a time where the only worry would be when the next Oasis CD is out.  

Perhaps nostalgia isn’t really about the past at all, it is about the present, our own way of stitching short-lived certainty into a fraying world. We believe that just one more rebooted sitcom, one more familiar tune, can turn back the clocks to a simpler time. It never does. 

 Amber Collett

IMAGE: https://unsplash.com/photos/assorted-radio-collection-on-rack-7Uk-DPd0fZY