Its Not Nostalgia

This is a pretty simple premise, and I don't have much to type because it is pretty simple.

A lot, if not all of, the things we think are a result of "nostalgia" are not that.

What we lost when we lost Y2K aesthetics was not just a style, a fashion trend,
what we lost was a sense of joy, a celebration of diversity, a hope for a bright future.

What we lost when we lost transparent-plastic housed electronics is not just a "look" or design,
we lost the ability to see the electronics that make our gadgets work,
the sense that our gadgets were designed and made by other human beings.

What we lost when we lost skeumorphic interfaces and colorful, cartoonish icon sets,
was a feeling of having fun when we use tech, replaced with ubiquitous low-contrast flat design
that fades into the background of an utterly boring, utilitarian life of work and drudgery.

What we lost when we lost CD's, VHS, DVDs, cassettes, weren't just inefficient, suboptimal
formats that were inevitably going to be replaced by digital and streaming media.
We lost the tangible sense of ownership of media that we paid for, and a feeling of
deliberate intention of our purchase, rather than passively receiving it from an algorithm.

What we lost when we lost grunge, post-grunge, numetal and "pop" punk weren't just genres,
we lost forms of mass media which spoke to people on a deep emotional level,
media that, authentically or not, at least tried to reflect the lives of everyday people,
as opposed to being all about the egos of unimaginably wealthy celebrity pop stars.

What we lost when we lost Forums and message boards, pushed out by social media and infinite feeds,
starved out by the Network Effect, wasn't an "outdated" form of communication that nobody likes:
we lost a slow, deliberate, thoughtful form of online expression,
one which we simply don't have the time for or incentives to use anymore.