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2016 Nostalgia Slop Is Taking Over

+ Contentmaxxing, soft eugenics, Heated Rivarly lookalikes, a Reddit mod meltdown, AI relationship dealbreakers, IG's force friendship, Pentagon Pokémon, & how dumb phone owners have lost their minds

Taylor Lorenz
Jan 21, 2026
∙ Paid

Was 2016 really “the last good year”? Everyone on the internet can’t stop posting throwback content, but I wanted to dig into why this particular year looms so large in our cultural memory, when it honestly wasn’t that great of a year!

My friends Matt Bernstein and Kat Tenbarge joined me on my latest podcast episode to unpack what our collective fixatio…

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