We Miss the Past Because the Present Doesn’t Give Us Stories

an investigation into why nothing feels iconic anymore, brought to you by nostalgia, mild existential dread, and my unresolved attachment to 2011.

Author’s Note Re: My Absence and Comeback (Sparknotes version)

formerly: romantic over-sharer.

currently: academic with a Google Doc addiction.

If you’ve been here since the era of chaotic diary entries—first of all, I love you, and second, I understand if this pivot into research-driven essays isn’t your thing. I’ve retired the public therapy (for now) and returned to my first love: writing with footnotes. Think of it as the same voice, just with fewer tears and more citations. I hope you’ll stick around.

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The summer before I turned thirteen, the days stretched long and indistinct in that peculiar way they only do when you're too old for kids' menus but too young to do anything interesting on your own. While other kids were out in parks or aimlessly roaming town centres, I was indoors, hunched over our bulky family laptop—the kind that got hot enough to leave actual burn marks on your thighs—trying to change the course of my life.

Pottermore was preparing to launch, and if I could answer a series of daily trivia challenges fast enough, I’d earn early access as a beta tester. This wasn’t just some fan quiz. This was a rite of passage. I needed—needed—to know which Hogwarts house I’d be sorted into from the definitive source.

It was a simpler time. J.K. Rowling had not yet publicly...Rowlinged. The internet still felt full of promise. And I was fully prepared to pledge lifelong allegiance to Slytherin —or, if it came to it, make peace with the complicated self-knowledge that came with being a Ravenclaw.

Now? I can finish an entire TV show that quietly rearranges my internal world, mention it to a friend, and be met with a blank look and a half-hearted, “Yeah, I think I saw that on the homepage.”

In the 2010s, the emerging world of the internet and social media was a convergence spot for minds that felt outcast but weren’t alone. We weren’t passive consumers but active participants in a shared cultural shift. Platforms like Pottermore or AO3 or Tumblr, weren’t just websites but a space for collectives to harvest dialogue as the product of our mutual investment into a fictional world. The stories were more than just entertainment; they were identity indicators that represented the dichotomy of our personal and universal selves.

Today, the tectonic plates of our cultural landscape have shifted. The internet is no longer reserved for those unifying cultural touchstones. Instead, we are floundering in the ocean of niche content, where every noun is affixed by “- core.” Personalised recommendations hinder our exploration and micro trends impede on our individuality. Without these shared stories to tether us together, it’s not surprising that, despite the vastness of our online worlds, the present often feels more fragmented. Although we boast that there are spaces for everyone, and I admit at times I am dazzled by a notion that all of my niche interests can be satisfied, it all feels a little less meaningful - and frankly, less memorable.

Cultural Evidence of Fragmentation

1. The Rise of Streaming Services
   
   The proliferation of streaming services has significantly impacted the way in which we consume media. There was a time when cultural phenomena such as Game of Thrones could dominate global conversation transcending break-room small talk with your colleagues to a unifying cultural experience. The current landscape however, is crowded with competing streaming giants, monopolising content and simultaneously providing overwhelming selection. This fragmentation has led to a decrease in shared cultural experiences, as fewer people consume the same media at the same time (Fiveable, 2023).
   
   

2. The Impact of Social Media Algorithms
   
   I’m subjected to a minor jumpscare everytime my TikTok algorithm correctly distinguishes that I’m a Virgo. It’s as if I’m struck by some divine power instead of the more logical reasoning that it is my own self-interest that has curated an accurate and highly personalised FYP. I would be the first to admit that the function enhances user experience, but it would be remiss not to note the similarity it bears to shouting that I am an INFJ into an echo chamber. As individuals are increasingly exposed to content that already aligns to their beliefs and interest in perpetual feedback loops, we are limiting our exposure to diverse perspectives, opportunities for understanding, and thus diminishing our potential for shared cultural experiences (CARI Journals, 2021).
   
   

3. The Decentralisation of Audience Attention
   
   The digital age has beckoned in a new era of audience decentralisation, with overwhelming (and often overstimulating) options. The challenge of cultivating communal engagement therefore stems from the dispersion of attention that we were able to achieve in the past. Thus, we have been removed from our unifying cultural experiences and have instead been introduced to a more nomadic media landscape (Fiveable, 2023).
   
   

The Psychological Power of Shared Stories

For many, stories have always been more than entertainment. Stories have informed language, preserved tradition and informed our understanding of what it means to belong.

Psychologically speaking, the root of how we process experiences can be traced back to narrative. As cognitive scientist Jerome Bruner argued, we understand our lives not through logical structures, but through stories (Bruner, 1991). Not only are stories a vessel by which we can assign meaning, but they articulate to us a sense of time and fundamentally, how we connect to others. When stories have the capacity to be shared vastly - they evolve into cultural cornerstones - and form the basis of collective memory. For a certain generation, it was once so easy to reference a Hogwarts house or The Hunger Games districts and spark instant recognition and bonding.

As our media environment becomes increasingly bespoke toward individual preferences, we are no longer simply consuming different things - we are remembering different things. And as our stories become more disparate, the more distorted our social fabric feels. As psychologist Dan McAdams notes, identity is built through internalised and evolving narratives (McAdams, 2001). So if we’re not telling the same stories - or even hearing the echoes of one another’s - it becomes increasingly more difficult to locate ourselves within a shared cultural space.

A shift of this kind not only impacts how we are consuming culture; it affects how we experience emotion and memory. Emotionally charged media events that once elicited public outrage, despair or joy now often go unmentioned, their significance now circumscribed to algorithmic pockets. Without shared emotional touchpoints, we put ourselves at risk of a quiet sort of loneliness; everyone is immersed in a story, yet curiously isolated in their experience of it.

The Role of Nostalgia in Collective Memory

In the dearth of our collective experience today, many of us look retrospectively. This longing for the past is not simply sentimental. Nostalgia is a powerful emotional and cognitive tool that helps us regulate identity, forge meaning, and foster social connectedness (Wildschut et al., 2006).

When we reminisce about the plotlines of our youth that is not all we are doing. We are following a trail marked by storied landmarks that represent our shared rituals. As Svetlana Boym notes in her seminal work on nostalgia, the past we long for often says more about the fractured present than it does about history itself (Boym, 2001).

When everything is available, nothing feels essential. I think that’s why this perception of “restorative nostalgia” is especially prevalent. With such a rapid pace of content production, it often feels as if there’s not enough time for the formation of a cultural sediment. Instead, we are increasingly finding ourselves drawn to the comfort of familiar books, shows and characters that not only feel intimate, but unifying.

I would like to stress, nostalgia is not a sign of regression. Contrarily, psychological studies would suggest that nostalgic reflection can increase optimism, self-continuity, and social bonds (Routledge et al., 2011). In the abyss of individualised content, the past acts as a proxy for kinship - a time and place when cultural relevance resonated.

Reclaiming Meaning as a Severed Society

In an era where mass cultural phenomena are in decline, we must understand that does not mean that essence, spirit or nuance are lost. Furthermore, it perhaps offers an opening for Gen-Z’s favourite buzzword, intention.

As philosopher Byung-Chul Han suggests, the modern subject is “exhausted from the compulsion of positivity and speed,” and what we lack is not stimulation, but the capacity for contemplation (Han, 2015). As bingeing and skimming become the norm, choosing to linger in a “dated” fandom or media form – rereading, rewatching, reflecting – is a quiet act of rebellion. Rather than mourning the fading of collective cultural experience, we might decide to choose depth over breadth, resonance over reach.

Moreover, while our cultural touchstones may become few and far between, they can still be communal. A rising increase in the creation of book clubs, Discord channels, the resurgence of Tumblr and the popularity of podcasts are indicators of a desire to replicate intentional cultural intimacy.

Finally, it is paramount that we continue to create. We can learn to make culture rather than depending solely on the consumption of it. As the digital world continues to fragment itself, the barrier to creation lowers in response, the desire for thoughtful and articulate storytelling is at an all time high. So write, curate, share something that moved you. Participating in culture and in life is an act of sewing meaning back into our experiences.

We may no longer be sitting around the same campfire, Kumbaya-ing until the sun comes up, but we can at the very least ignite our own passion and fires – and invite others to join us.

References

Boym, S., 2001. The future of nostalgia. New York: Basic Books.

Bruner, J., 1991. The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry, 18(1), pp.1–21.

CARI Journals, 2021. Social media algorithms and their impact on cultural fragmentation. Journal of Media Studies. Available at: https://carijournals.org/journals/index.php/JMS/article/download/1799/2173/5514?srsltid=AfmBOoo0podRFR6d6CK79zFSuTKmLJu1qmDDHf-Rt9YuEn8cho5luwLZ [Accessed 5 May 2025].

Fiveable, 2023. Audience fragmentation in the digital age. Available at: https://library.fiveable.me/television-studies/unit-4/audience-fragmentation/study-guide/uE34ZtdMjuedHt2b [Accessed 5 May 2025].

Han, B.-C., 2015. The burnout society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

McAdams, D.P., 2001. The psychology of life stories. Review of General Psychology, 5(2), pp.100–122.

Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., Arndt, J. and Routledge, C., 2006. Nostalgia: Content, triggers, functions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(5), pp.975–993.