What’s it called when you’re nostalgic for a time you didn’t live through, like teenagers feeling nostalgic and “looking back” on i.e. the 80s or 90s?
I was born in the 2000s, but somehow I feel a sort of longing to live during the 80s. I have watched a bunch of movies produced during that time, and I realise they may not be a totally realistic depiction of the time period, but for some reason I “miss” the 80s. I don’t mean the struggles of marginalised groups or the politics, but rather the feeling of “old school” and people socialising, the shows playing on TV during that time, the diners, the discotheques, the clubs, the music and fashion and hairstyles… there’s just something cozy about the 80s, how technology wasn’t super developed, how people were still discovering things. Don’t misunderstand me though, I’m glad about the technological advancements we have achieved today, and I realise my image of the 80s may be skewed since I literally didn’t exist during that time, lol.
What’s this feeling called? Has anybody else felt the same way about a time period that isn’t the 2020s?
I don’t know, but I have the opposite. I grew up in the 80s, but given that I’m a queer af trans person, I’m nostalgic for a childhood that wasn’t possible for me in that era
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I think it’s called Vicarious Nostalgia. Found a page on Wikipedia discussing the topic.
It’s like falling in love with somebody only from their social media post. The real person’s nothing like that. It’s only a curated view.
Romanticizing might be a fitting term. As in you’re romanticizing those times.
I know what you mean. The difference being that I lived through the eighties… I watch shows like Stranger Things and remember how awesome (parts of) the eighties were. Staying out late with my friends, basically running around unsupervised for hours at a time? Awesome. But most of that vision of eighties never really existed.
Oh, there was definitely a time when our cars were mechanical and we played our music at 78 RPM, but there was plenty wrong with the eighties.
Among other things, we were all pretty confident the world was going to end in a nuclear holocaust with Russia. The rhetoric was incendiary and nobody thought peace was realistic. It was only when Russia’s economy suddenly imploded and the whole thing collapsed that everyone took a collective breath of relief. It’s impossible to communicate how incredible the collapse of the Soviet Union was. They were the second most powerful nation in the world - and their vision for the future was diametrically opposed to the American counterpart. There were clashes and proxy wars. Only the threat of total annihilation kept open war from being declared.
…and then one day, they just…vanished. They were more unstable than anyone knew. And when one too many little things went wrong… The whole thing crumbled.
The reason there’s so many great comedies from the eighties? Everyone was desperate for some good escapism. In hard times, comedies sell well. (In good times, we want dramas.)
The eighties were stressful as hell.
But the TV/Movie version of the eighties looks fucking awesome. I wish I’d lived there too.
It’s called Sehnsucht in German and is also used as a psychological term in English.
I’m not really sure if the 80s were necessarily better or worse in reality. On one hand it all seemed relatively simple, but without the distractions of constant communication, flexible agreements, procastinating and whatever else we have in our modern stressful information overload, the 80s were quite brutally direct. If you could time travel there, you’d probably find people to be rude and focused on actions instead of thinking. For better or worse.
I don’t know the word, but your question makes me remember how nostalgic “Stranger Things” made me for the 80s. Although I lived through that as a child and it wasn’t all that cool, with the Cold War looming over everything.
That’s so funny because Stranger Things is also what came to mind when reading this post.
I was a 90s kid and I think the show just made me nostalgic of being a kid.
Shout out to the Dictionary Of Obscure Sorrows. Gives me a better way to describe what I’m feeling other than just ennui and depression.
