The Market for Nostalgia

The ’90s are trending. Commodore is releasing a vintage flip phone, and the kids who begged their parents for iPhones in 2012 are using their adult freedom to create analog summers. The Internet algorithm suggests that this nostalgia reaches back even further to before the World Wars, as young men yearn for manual labor. Nostalgia casts a strong spell. When Jay Gatsby’s life crumbles because his successful career wasn’t enough to regain his youthful love, Fitzgerald’s novel concludes: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” One hundred years later, my generation, similarly disillusioned with the present, feels the same tug. Gen Z has a deep sense of nostalgia. Businesses already capitalize on this as a marketing trend (How else could they convince anyone to buy ’80s balloon pants?), but this runs deeper than an advertisement to 40-year-olds wanting to relive childhood. Consumers are increasingly willing to pay more money for less efficient products. Some, like the socialist magazine Jacobin, are quick to associate this nostalgia with a critique of capitalism, arguing that it’s the reason why communities are weaker and individuals are lonelier.