The Modern Obsession With Nostalgia Tech In The Vertical Age

I remember this line from the Woody Allen film starring Owen Wilson called Midnight in Paris:  “Nostalgia is denial, a denial of the painful present, centered around a fallacy called 'Golden Age Thinking.'"

“The erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one one's living in; it's a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present," according to Paul Bates, who is an old friend of Owen Wilson’s character in the movie and is ironically presented as a pretentious pseudo-intellectual.

Another one of my favorite sayings on nostalgia is from a show that I’ve seen from front to back more times than I’m proud to say. “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them,” Andy Bernard tearfully laments in the last season of The Office.

Younger people getting into pursuits involving tech from a now bygone era (yes the 90s and the 2000s were a long time ago) are a dime a dozen these days. Gen Zs and younger millennials carry disposable film cameras, wear retro-style wired headphones like the Porta Pro (which are most likely attached to a Sony Walkman or Discman), and digging around for vintage and even newly pressed vinyl records.

The Fujifilm x100 Features A Film Simulation Mode

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When it’s time to get group photos with your pals, there’s a high likelihood that one of your friends is going to hand over a green Fujifilm QuickSnap disposable film camera to be part of the queue of the uniform thin, black, rectangle slabs of glass broadcasting memories.

Recently, I stumbled upon a niche and specialized camera manufactured this year with an intriguing feature that floored me: a modern film camera that limits the amount of shots you can take. The Fujifilm X-Half features a film mode that simulates taking pictures using only a single roll of "film" and an app where you can watch the images "develop." This is a testament to our obsession with retro tech and how things were much slower (meaning you had to wait for things) back in the day.

Now we live in a vertical age where we can scroll our problems and boredom away with what the kids call "brainrot" (and don’t get me started on the absurdity of Gen Alpha brainrot).

While we can see the appeal of the Fujifilm retro machine, I can only imagine users getting over the novelty and just shooting photos via its conventional features to skip over the Lo-Fi fun.

Even in fashion and pop culture nowadays, we see the resurgence in 90s style trends like voluminous and baggy clothing, chain wallets, and vintage tees driven by nostalgia and the yearning to stay youthful.

It seems like every major movie studio is also trying to remake classic movies from our childhood that more often than not need to stay untouched or risk getting ruined by out-of-touch modern reboots. It’s no wonder people still question originality when creative industries are still hell-bent on appealing to everyone’s nostalgia bone.

Revisiting Performativity and How We Obsess Over Analog

“I went through a phase where I refused to listen to music on my phone and listened to music on a fucking Walkman because I thought I was edgy,” Filipino-British Indie Music darling beabadoobee said in an interview with the YouTube channel i-D.

Now if that doesn’t encapsulate why we are so drawn to older media like vinyl records, cds, and cassette tapes, then I don’t know what does.

Interestingly, her music is heavily influenced by '90s alternative rock and 2000s rock, unapologetically putting out nostalgic sounding cuts from her records. She has also released her albums on vinyl and on cassette tapes.

In the past decade, there’s been an undeniable obsession, at least from conscious music listeners, to collect albums and even singles in these formats due to an appeal that is tactile and sonically captivating. The run-of-the-mill argument for the vinyl collecting hobby is collectors swearing by analog records sounding better than the overly sanitized streaming and digital modes of listening to music. You hear that “popcorn” sound coming from old records for the first time and you’re hooked. You end up clearing out your shelves to make space for your latest vinyl dig finds.

Collectors then get meticulous about their audio setup and what type of bookshelf speakers to prop up, which 30-year-old Japanese turntable to use or which amp to plug in.

The methods in which we consume media now seem too pristine and artificial, which is why holding on to nostalgic and even obsolete technology is just holding on to simpler and ‘happier’ memories.

This is also why older Gen Zs and millennials draw so much emotion when they look back on old Tumblr pages and see how Dr. Martens, fishnet, neon lighting, and vinyl were instrumental in their formative years.

A few months ago, we dissected what was once the burgeoning ethos of the ‘performative man,’ which has now seemingly become a full-blown epidemic. Analog media and trinkets such as vinyl records and wired headphones play part and parcel into the now derivative aesthetic of guys trying to look more emotionally available to women.

We must not forget that books are technically analog and are a niche activity, considering that most if not all "modern reading" involves doomscrolling online from sources of varying credibility and value. So if you see a guy with a paperback in his jeans back pocket, just hope he actually reads.

And, going back, it's still crazy to think that wired earphones are now retro and have gone back into fashion thanks to everyone buying Apple’s Airpods in the past few years. This glorification of old tech and even old style trends is tapping into the '90s and 2000s counterculture, and we can’t say we’re not all for it, unless it’s done disingenuously.

So don’t be a poser (and performative, which I know sounds like nails on a chalkboard at this point) and think that owning an original press Rumours by Fleetwood Mac vinyl automatically gives you street cred.