nostalgia

“Between the nostalgia and multigenerational appeal in terms of their respective core fan group, we were reaching as wide of an audience as possible,” Riegg said.

“This led to the creation of a number of apps based around nostalgia,” she explained.

Encouraging users to take a context-free trip down memory lane is an easy way for social platforms to monetize our nostalgia.

“It would almost be a waste for them not to do this, because not only does it engender us to their products, but it incentivizes us to keep posting. As we’ve been posting less, platforms have learned even more heavily into nostalgia, because they’re trying to spur us to share.”

“The internet has always allowed us to participate in mass nostalgia,” Lorenz said, because “social media encourages us to gloss over the bad.”