POV: The Worst Day in 2016

If you’ve spent any time on TikTok lately, you’ve definitely seen those "chill" 2016 playlists or the memes treating that year like some kind of lost Golden Age.

It’s easy to dismiss it as just another nostalgia cycle, but there’s something deeper going on. For a lot of us, back in 2016, the world was just background noise. Geopolitical crises, terrorism, economic shifts—those were just headlines on the TV while our parents ate dinner. We were young enough that the weight of the world hadn't settled on our shoulders yet.

The difference between then and now isn’t necessarily that the world was "better," but that our relationship with it was simpler. You could be happy without feeling guilty about it. There wasn't this crushing moral obligation to have a take on everything or the constant pressure to "choose a side." Ignorance wasn't a flaw back then; it was a natural shield.

Then there’s the digital side of things, which honestly feels like science fiction compared to today:

• Social media wasn't a trap: We weren't yet prisoners of these hyper-aggressive algorithms that try to map out our every emotion.
• The feed was slow: You followed people, not an endless stream of content optimized to keep you scrolling until 3 AM.
• The "Cringe" factor: Posting a photo didn't feel like a permanent statement of your identity. You could be messy, you could be "cringe," and by the next day, everyone had moved on.

And then, of course, there was Pokémon GO. It was probably the last time technology actually pushed us out into the real world together. It created this weirdly magical, collective experience that feels impossible in our current era of digital isolation.

Even the number itself—2016—just feels right. It’s balanced, it’s even, and it sits perfectly in our memories. Our brains love that kind of simplicity (psychologists call it "processing fluency"), making it the perfect container for our best memories. Our minds have filtered out the boring parts and left us with nothing but summer sun and the music in our headphones.

Ultimately, the 2016 nostalgia is just a collective longing to feel less observed, less judged, and less crushed by a future that feels like a dead end. We just want to find that version of ourselves that didn’t know how complicated everything was about to get.