Technostalgia

The other day I received a frantically worded text from my sister asking if I remembered the old Barbie mermaid game we used to play on the computer as kids. It was a DVD we’d load into the disk drive and take turns controlling the mouse while the other hovered over the keyboard, waiting for her turn to play. I scoured the internet for remnants of the game and soon, a deep, unsettling sadness registered as I came up with nothing more than low-quality photos of the DVD case on Google Images.

My sister’s urge to play our old Barbie video game, the way I love sifting through used vinyls at the second-hand store to listen to on my grandparents’ old record player, the reason why so many people take their film camera on vacation rather than use their iPhone’s impressive quality: they’re all symptoms of tech nostalgia, the longing to return to outdated technologies to emulate and relive past experiences, even ones we may not have been alive for.

In 2001, Polaroid filed for bankruptcy. Now, the brand’s renewed prominence has solidified the cameras as a classic example of the joy of physical photographs over phone pictures. Polaroid also sells a range of gadgets like inkless mobile printers and cameras that both print and digitally save photos, merging analog and digital photography. In 2021, vinyl sales skyrocketed according to MRC Data, having the first week in history to see sales over 2 million and outpacing CD sales for the first time since 1991. The hashtag #flipphone currently has over 700 million views on TikTok. There’s clearly a demand for retro tech—, one that goes deeper than just basic trend cycles that come and go.

To recall the simplicity of loading our Mp3 players to capacity with songs downloaded from iTunes, we’ve returned to wired earbuds and CD players. They are a departure from high-tech bluetooth and music algorithms as much as an aesthetic choice. Since Bella Hadid donned wired earbuds and Vogue called the choice “strangely luxurious” in a 2019 article, wired earbuds have been steadily trending as a fashion accessory. You too can become a “wired it girl,” as penned by @wireditgirls on Instagram, an aesthetic account with over 13k followers, and express a laid-back and effortlessly humble disregard for modern technology.

For those hoping to still fall deeper into time, vinyl record players have continued to maintain popularity, evoking the wistfulness of letting an album play all through the night, no skips, no changes. We long for the soothing relief of technologies of the past, the ways in which they demand so little from us in return.

Flip phones have also reemerged as a recent fashion trend, and while they certainly define a Y2K sense of style, their detachment from other cellular capabilities, like social media access, also makes them attractive. Research has shown genuine consequences from digital overstimulation, including exacerbating feelings of despair. Doom scrolling and social comparisons build an intense pressure, especially for impressionable teenagers logging onto their new phones for the first time. Yet, since so much of our lives revolve around our smartphones, it can be hard to avoid falling further into them in an attempt to resolve any feelings of anxiety. Flip phones offer a way to get away from all of that, and there is also the added benefit that they look cool with low-rise jeans and lace camis.

Beyond reminiscence of the past, tech nostalgia also reveals very deep-rooted anxieties about future development. As we continue accelerating toward some unknown point where artificial intelligence and the metaverse seem synonymous with genuine human connection, it makes perfect sense that fashion trends have opted away from sleek innovation in favor of the clunky and the monofunctional. AI technology and social media algorithms that can predict your next thought are developing at an astounding rate. At this point, ChatGPT can essentially do your job or college class for you, all with just a few clicks of the keyboard. While we may not be able to avoid mega-corporations consolidating data of our online presence, we can choose to resort to the older technologies that come without these fears, or at least allow us to forget about them for a brief time.

Ultimately, though, the fact that many tech nostalgia trends emerge and persist on social media is an irony emblematic of the inability to ever truly escape the influence of the internet. As with all nostalgia, we can’t return to how things used to be, and that discomfort is what propels such a desire for vintage technological styles. In that way, it may seem a little silly to create an Instagram account dedicated to posting the pictures developed from a digital camera, but polaroid and film photography prevails as a recognition of the charms of living a little more in the moment, even if just to curate an artistic feed.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to play my Barbie game again. Adobe Flash Player, the content that supported most older online games, no longer exists– another technology stuck in time and lost in the acceleration of computers and the internet. But at least I have my record player and wired earbuds, along with all the other reminders that we can use our fashion expression to take a step back and think about life a little more simply, even as the digital age makes it seem impossible.