The trend began in January and has not stopped. On TikTok and Instagram, a generation of users is reviving the aesthetics of 2016 — oversaturated filters, dog-face selfies, white Vans, the particular shade of VSCO-adjacent self-presentation that defined the mid-2010s internet — under the banner "2026 is the new 2016." [1]

The nostalgia is not irrational. In 2016, the internet felt chaotic but bounded. The chaos was memes and political surprise, not open warfare in the Persian Gulf and gas at four dollars. The BBC's January explainer noted that the trend carries "the nostalgic power" of significant moments that feel distant even when they were terrible at the time. [2] In 2016, everyone agreed the year was catastrophic. Now it looks, from the distance of a decade and a war, like a time when the worst outcome was still essentially survivable on a Monday morning.

Forbes described the trend as an emotional signal and "possibly a coping mechanism." [3] Shout Out UK, covering the trend's darker implications, noted that nostalgia for 2016's aesthetics can carry nostalgia for 2016's politics — the original year of populist disruption, reframed by time as chaotic fun rather than harbinger. [4] The dog-face filter is innocent. What it sometimes carries is not.

What the trend actually measures is the specific texture of 2026: the sense that something calmer existed recently enough to remember, and that posting blurry photos is a reasonable response to not being able to do anything about oil prices or missile strikes.

-- MAYA CALLOWAY, New York