2026 Decided to Feel Alive Again

Somewhere between the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026 we collectively decided to do it again. A shared understanding spreading across timelines. We are choosing joy again. We are bringing back 2016 again. The internet does not usually agree on anything. We do not know each other. We live in different cities, different time zones and have different lifes. Yet the same sentences keep appearing. I miss 2016. What a time to be alive. It feels less like a collective memory unfolding frame by frame. Not about recreating a year but about reopening a feeling. This is about mood. About energy. About remembering the version of ourselves that lived a little lighter.

In 2016 most of us were teenagers or just stepping into adulthood. Old enough to feel everything deeply and young enough to believe nothing was permanent. Our biggest worries were school, group chats, silent crushes liking our photos or not. We did not wake up thinking about inflation, global crises, burnout or productivity. We woke up thinking about music, makeup tutorials, outfits and what might happen that weekend. Life felt open ended.

The internet felt open ended too.

Timelines were messy. Posts were blurry. Captions were unserious. Nobody was building a personal brand with strategy decks and performance metrics. We posted because we felt like it. We overshared. We deleted things five minutes later. We commented dumb jokes on strangers posts and somehow it felt normal. Those strangers became internet friends without effort or explanation. There was freedom in that chaos.

Culturally 2016 was loud, glossy playful. The era when Kylie Jenner ruled Snapchat with mirror selfies and bored rich girl energy. Peak YouTube beauty culture with full glam and heavy drama. Music was everywhere and we actually still got music videos to binge watch. You listened to the same downloaded tracks on repeat, staring out of a bus window and that was enough. 

2016 floats like a magical video in our head but somehow we grew up. The world got heavier. The internet got faster, sharper, more optimized. Algorithms decide now what we see. We stopped seeing friends and started seeing strangers. Content needed purpose. Posts needed performance. Everything became strategic. Even joy started to feel like something you had to plan and produce. Then came the years that exhausted everyone. Lockdowns, uncertainty, responsibility, growing up all at once. Life became serious almost overnight. Being unserious started to feel irresponsible. Sometimes even politically incorrect.

No wonder we are tired.

This 2016 nostalgia is not about pretending the last ten years did not happen. It is about reclaiming a feeling we lost along the way. Doing things for no reason other than because it feels good. Sitting on the floor with friends for hours. Dressing up without an agenda. Posting without thinking about reach or judgement. We are older now. We know more. We carry more. But that younger energy did not disappear. It just went in the background, ready to come back now in 2026

by Lareen Roth