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

Jan 21, 2026

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 fixation on 2016 reveals about today’s internet, culture, and politics nearly a decade later.

We re-examine the defining moments of 2016, talk about the early days of YouTube, and discuss why boomers don’t seem get the nostalgia. Let me know what you think!

What I’m reading

They Wanted a University Without Cancel Culture. Then Dissenters Were Ousted.

Inside the civil war at the anti-woke university backed by Bari Weiss. - POLITICO

Dumbphone Owners Have Lost Their Minds

All my friends want to ditch their smartphones. It’s cool. They’re cool. But there’s more at stake than they think. - WIRED

Clavicular and contentmaxxing

When everything is content, everything is measurement first and meaning second. “Hitler” is primarily a keyword denoting reliable engagement, not a name denoting immense evil. Hitting yourself in the face with a hammer is rational because it makes more people watch your Kick stream. - How To Do Things With Memes

He Was Indicted for Cyberstalking. His Former Friends Tracked His ChatGPT Meltdown

Throughout multiple arrests and serious mental health diagnoses, 31-year-old relied on OpenAI’s chatbot to validate his behavior. - Rolling Stone

ICE vs. Everyone

Minneapolis learned a lot from the George Floyd protests and it shows. N+1 Magazine

COVID pandemic enters seventh year with no end in sight

We’re facing the 12th major wave of infections. Conservative estimates place cumulative COVID deaths in the U.S. at over 1.2 million, but excess-mortality analyses indicate a substantially higher toll. Transmission continues at high rates—presently at roughly 1 million infections per day, with more than 240 million infections recorded in 2025 alone. Reinfections are widespread, and Long COVID remains a mass disabling condition affecting millions with zero treatments. - Boing Boing

Dramas Keep Showing Us Hapless Men and Hypercompetent Women

Several of the past year’s films center on confused, bumbling protagonists — surrounded by women who are anything but. - NY Times

What Makes a Good Mother?

We keep revising the maternal ideal—and keep falling short of it. - New Yorker

Is a new gambling trend driving us toward armageddon?

Billion-dollar prediction markets like Polymarket enable users to bet on everything from celebrity news to global warfare – what could go wrong? - DAZED

Soft Eugenics in the Age of Self-Improvement

On looksmaxxing and the fear of being human. - Deer is Nice

Using ChatGPT at all is becoming a relationship dealbreaker.
At least 15% of Reddit content is corporate marketing.
Blue hair is having a revival.
YouTube’s CEO is doubling down on AI in his annual letter (bad news for YouTubers!)
Papa John’s is selling pizza with protein-infused crust.
A ‘Heated Rivarly’ lookalike contest is happening in NYC.
Impersonating owls is a big trend on TikTok right now.
Social media users are not just forming parasocial attachments to content creators, but to thier friend groups.
Just 34 people control 12% of income in the U.S.
There’s a lootbox with rare Pokémon cards sitting in the Pentagon food court.
America’s first Costco apartment complex is coming to L.A.
The Stardew Valley fandom is warring with the White House.
One year ago this week, TikTok was shut down in the United States for 14 hours.
LEGO announced a buildable Golden Retriever puppy for $139.99.
A Reddit moderator was removed from r/livestreamfail after a video surfaced of him claiming that “Reddit moderators should be treated like celebrities.”
The lawyer representing Elon Musk in OpenAI legal battle with Sam Altman is also a working clown.
Social media platforms are rolling out features designed to give the illusion of connection as the platforms themselves become less social. (For example, IG renamed the “Following” tab “Friends”).
American workers are now taking home the smallest share of the economic pie since the government started tracking the data in 1947.

Reuters institute released a big report outlining major trends and predictions in media and technology.
A dozen right-wing influencers posted nearly identical attacks on a semiconductor export bill within a 27-hour window, and about half of them have ties to a PR firm that pays for undisclosed sponsored content.
A growing number of “laptop boyfriends” are watching YouTube constantly, including in bed, and it’s driving their partners and friends crazy.
Palantir is working on a tool for ICE that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a ‘confidence score’ on the person’s current address.
Brooklyn Beckham is publicly warring with his family on Instagram.
The University of Austin markets itself as a free speech paradise, but turns out faculty have to sign a statement agreeing to the founder’s very specific beliefs.
A Twitter thread of rare and experimental films freely available on Vimeo, (many uploaded by the directors themselves!)

You can now pay $1M to reserve a hotel stay on the moon.
MrBeast Gaming is displaying completely different YouTube thumbnails and titles depending on the viewer’s country, localizing content at scale.
IShowSpeed became the first live streamer to broadcast from inside the Great Pyramids of Egypt.
Leaked documents revealed that the CDC was funding a hepatitis B experiment on babies, similar to the infamous Tuskegee study.
A Miami nightclub is getting backlash after they blasted Kanye West’s song “Heil Hitler” at the request of right influencers including Nick Fuentes, Sneako, Clavicular, and Andrew Tate.

A couple had a whole wedding ceremony on a Southwest flight.
Elon Musk’s DOGE made sure Musk and his associates couldn’t be audited by the government.
Two members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team at the Social Security Administration were secretly in contact with an advocacy group that sought to overturn election results.
Channel 5’s Andrew Callaghan released a 15-minute video proving right wing content creator Nick Shirley completely lied about his interview with the influencer being deceptively edited.
Israel is attempting to shut down 20 Doctors Without Borders clinics in Gaza, the same organization that treated half the territory’s population last year.