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?
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.
Lived through both, the 90s were more fun.
Up until 85 and Gorbachev it was a pretty frightening time. Reagan sensed a new weakness in the USSR post Afghanistan, and pushed very hard, frightening pretty much everybody. In 1983 the order was actually given in the USSR to launch a first strike, and one air defense officer in the chain of command refused. Everybody was stressed as hell, on coke, money obsessed.
The 90s was when the tech boom really got going, the Internet hadn’t been ruined yet, the Cold War was over and we were riding the gravy train from here on out! We turned a surplus in the national budget! Chemical Brothers and Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana and Alice in Chains and KMFDM. SNL was actually good, not what passes for good these days. Sensi and hanging/chilling/grooving.