Digital strategist Sara Wilson recently coined a brilliant term, perfectly describing the moment we currently find ourselves in: “a state of perma-nostalgia”.
She argues that our longing for the past has moved beyond simply being a fad, and now runs as a constant layer through our culture. Fashion, food, music, design all regularly borrow from earlier eras, often introducing younger generations to things they weren’t around to experience the first time. But what happens when that nostalgia moves beyond aesthetics and starts shaping how we actually behave?
Film cameras, junk journals, crosswords and crochet. Analogue behaviors have become a visible part of today’s youth culture. But these behavior shifts aren’t a flat-out rejection of online life, but a reaction to what it’s become. Immediate, public, and maybe worst of all, performative. Analogue offers us something noticeably different – tasks that ask us to wait, create without an audience in mind, and enjoy something without attaching a score to it.
