Overview
- High-profile participants include Kylie Jenner, Hailey Bieber, Karlie Kloss, Reese Witherspoon, Kendall Jenner and Ariana Grande sharing 2016 throwbacks.
- Posts highlight early social-media aesthetics such as Snapchat puppy filters, heavy saturation and chokers that defined feeds a decade ago.
- Commentators link the surge to current geopolitical anxieties in the U.S. and elsewhere, with users gravitating toward a time perceived as simpler.
- Scholars Jessica Maddox and Dustin Kidd caution that the sentiment romanticizes a year that also saw the Pulse nightclub massacre, the deaths of Prince and David Bowie, Brexit and a polarizing U.S. election.
- Coverage notes emerging AI fatigue, as users express nostalgia for feeds where images were less suspected of being AI-generated, and observes that even lighthearted throwbacks quickly become politicized.