Deep inside our brains is an ocean of memories, emotions, and feelings that can be unlocked by the correct application of sights, smells, and sounds. Without warning, the theme song of a childhood cartoon or the smell of that one aisle in the corner store by your house can teleport you to another time. It might feel like magic, but nostalgia is a very real phenomenon.
The “Nostalgia” Instagram account is pretty self-explanatory, showcasing content that should be like a healthy blast from the past, both funny and relatable. So prepare for a little trip in time, upvote the images that unlocked some memories, and share your thoughts in the comment section below.
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Because nostalgia focuses so much on memories of how things used to be, both real and imagined, it’s important to keep track of what is a cherished memory and what is a specific, focused-tested set of concepts put together to evoke a specific memory. As cynical as it might seem, politicians, movements and advertisers are all wise to the idea of nostalgia as a method to manipulate people.
The “return to the good, old days” is a common promise for many politicians, and many products will try to associate themselves with potential consumers’ childhoods. Little reminders of childhood do often come with a comforting wave of emotions, just make sure that you don’t let people hijack it to sell you anything.
That being said, it is a real and verifiable fact that nostalgia can provide a good amount of comfort through times of sadness and uncertainty. Psychologists believe that in certain “doses,” it’s actually pretty important to our mental health. Think of it this way, when current circumstances don’t provide joy, your brain has this nifty little ability to just reach into the past and scoop up things that made you happy before. There might be diminishing returns, but hey, it’s a start.
To maintain the metaphor of nostalgia-as-medication, it is possible to “take” too much. After all, if you feel the past was too good, you might end up longing just to return instead of focusing on the present. The Germans, as always, have a term for this, called “Sehnsucht,” which you can now use as a complicated and pretentious way to talk about longing, desire, yearning, and craving.
I'm convinced that if you didn't, you didn't have a childhood. Change my mind.
The origin of “Sehnsucht” (capitalized because the Germans capitalize every noun) is “suffering,” which is ultimately what someone would probably feel if they have trapped themselves in the thought that things will never be as good as they used to be. However, some psychologists believe that over time, this emotion can help a person start to develop and plan out the steps to actually improve things.
We weren't really poor but these were standard 1980's "staying home sick" supplies. But with ginger ale instead of Sprite. :)
Same. And when your tummy was really bad, it was the orange jello and chicken bouillon add on pack!
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Haha I still use vicks all the time, especially for headaches. My father swore by it, he’d of made a good spokesman for the company
it is the best for headaches... better than popping pills
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Somewhere out there is an old Polaroid of me on a couch like that (with the orange flowers and log cabin) with chicken pox
Vicks yes... otherwise chicken broth... Also, my mom made Maharashtrian style dal and rice... it's called Varan Bhat.. just a bit of lemon squeezed and have it with pickle... this was my get well soon food
The nostalgia is strong in this one. Sick at grandma's house watching game shows and soap operas on the same couch all day long. Bring me back.
You forgot the Monkey’s Blood (tincture of iodine) and the gauze.
OMG!!! I had that sofa for the first few years of my marriage! We inherited it from my inlaws
Same in every country, maybe different name/brands but that was the formula if you where sick <3
This was totally the childhood of me and my friends, everything right down to the couch...it should definitely be higher
Poached eggs with torn-up pieces of toast. I HATE eggs to this day.
Nah because we had the NHS. So it was more banna flavoured antibiotics and cherry flavoured cough mixture. We did also have lucazade and being allowed your duvet on the sofa so you could watch TV. If I want to make myself feel pampered now I drag my duvet to the sofa, even though there are sofa blankets and I have devices to watch TV in my bedroom.
Not just poor, but because our Parents didn't rush us to a doctor for every sniffle or sneeze! 🤗
what does being poor have to do with it? Rich people get colds, too!
In the UK, mine was Heinz tomato soup, lucozade and when I was still very young, Crown Court on TV. Oh! And school's programme, How We Used to Live. I loved that!
I have most of these in my cupboard. (Except Bob Barker. He's in the basement)
PREMIUM Nabisco? May as well go get a doctors note and have an EXCUSED absence from school fancy britches!
For us it was 7 up. And it wasn't a poor thing. It's just what we did. And it usually worked.
We weren't poor: I always caught the flu going home for the Christmas holidays. And we had Canada Dry Ginger Ale. I read instead of watching television. Daytime TV was a mystery until I was in my 30s. (I was 32 when my child was born. I had six weeks to do ... something while he slept.)
Not Sprite, mom always gave us ginger ale. To this day I only drink it when I'm sick!
VapoRub - yup; premium crackers to go with the soup; the rest nope.
Nah it’s either ginger ale for a stomach ache and coke for travel sickness
Sprite and not ginger ale? My mother ruined me from ginger ale because I associate it with being sick
I had two major abdominal surgeries when I was 16 or 17. When I had resulting stomach and intestinal issues, my doctor literally told me to drink some flat Spite. LMAO. I still do to this day to help settle issues and pains.
South park did it well...anyone ever see that episode? Where they cured the town's sickness with Sprite and Campbell's chicken noodle soup?
These are crucial components of my medicine cabinet. I mean, I've added functional things like ice packs, antibiotic cream, and bandages, but none of those really serve these functions. And when you don't feel well, the last thing you want is to have to go to the store and get them.
Everyone uses some form of those things for a cold or flu. The only problem is if your parents tried that stuff when you broke your leg or "accidentally" cut off your brother's finger. 🤣
nah, didnt have sprite in my household... you got sick, handful of saltines, some peanut m&ms, a damp cool washcloth, small trash bucket by the bed while watching old school disney, and a room temp ginger ale with a straw... ginger ale was cure all in my family, still is!
And the Christmas movies! When we were sick we were allowed to get the box out of the attic
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I had Shasta, vhs recording of TV shows, and fever dreams of all the mounted taxidermy in my uncle's living room blaming me for their plight.
Sprite cures what? (We so poor we didn't even had em). Campbell's is still my favorite, though.
I learned to hate Vicks when I was a kid. When you had a head cold, your nose was already raw from blowing, my mother would put the Vicks on my nostrils. Burned like h**l. My mom was good when we were sick, but she had no idea the pain she caused giving us stuff. LOL. We didn't have Sprite in the 50s. We had 7-up I think. And B&W TV.
I remember when Vaporub used to work. I could bathe in the stuff now and not be healed
Your missing the robitussin. That was always the cure. We also breathed in steam from boiling water!
Remember? I still do this. Passed a lot on to my son already. Not so much about being poor either. Just relax and let your body do what it was designed to do. Go to the doctor only if it gets worse.
Lol i liked having the flu as a kid. Back then we didnt have tv in our bedrooms so when we where sick,mom broight the tv in.
Where's the big bottle of Vitamin C? Also when I was a kid we had this purple stuff meant to disinfect farm animals.
ah, the traditional cure for SARS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyuJc-1eUv4
Did anyone else drink blue Gatorade exclusively when they were sick?
Looks right to me, except we had storebrand ginger ale because Ginger settles your tummy
We weren't poor, but all of this still applied, plus a cap full of Rock 'n' Rye.
To this day, even just the thought of drinking sprite/7-up/whatever generic version they grabbed is enough to set my stomach to churning. The only time I got those particular drinks was when I had a stomach bug growing up and now, I can't even think about drinking it.
Ah yes, the shin shredders. If your foot slipped off of one of those puppies, it was immediate blood and pain and bandaids and getting your leg doused in hydrogen peroxide and triple bac.
Once you realize the potential of tapping into the past to draft people’s emotions, you might start to see how it’s used everywhere. You might notice that the Instagram logo is, in fact, a drawing of a Polaroid, despite the fact that 99% of the userbase are probably using a smartphone. But somehow, an old camera seems more special and emotional than the many, smaller and often more powerful cameras we carry in our pockets every day.
And speaking of social media, you have probably seen how, for example, Meta products like Facebook and the aforementioned Instagram have “memory” functions that will randomly show you images from the past, normally on their one-year anniversary. This could of course be a bit misguided, as many people have documented randomly getting images from an illness or a breakup a year ago.
I still do this when I forget to bring along my cellphone to the toilet 😬
Other companies do their best to tap into this feeling as well. The Nokia 3310 phone was legendary for a variety of reasons, but it seems its reputation for being indestructible goes beyond the physical, as the company relaunched it in 2017. The phone seems like stone-age technology compared to any random smartphone from the last few years, but people do want to relive that two-tone snake game and the feeling of pressing some buttons.
Not a 90s kid, but I still had to learn this. I barely know my times tabels but I do know how to play 'hot cross buns' on the recorder 😁
The metal one at my elementary school had a 2 foot drop at the end. It was very dangerous, but so much fun! (Very few burns because of catholic school dress code)
Those plastic jugs of brightly colored sugar water! I never saw them in anyone's home - they only showed up at school or parties.
“Stranger Things” is another case-in-point, where much of the appeal is an idealized image of the 80s, alongside many of the tropes and cliches of 80s children's movies, such as the iconic “ET.” The show was a brilliant move by Netflix, as it managed to both attract gen x viewers who wanted to relive a past era while simultaneously creating nostalgia among younger viewers, a sort of self-perpetuating false memory of the past.
Some specialists have started to develop a concept of “forestalgia,” which is a sort of hopeful belief that in some imagined future, many things will be better. While an idealized future has existed for centuries, the advent of science fiction has created multiple generations who actively think about what the next few decades will bring.
In the UK we just call it writing as we have an education system.
I was ALWAYS taking pictures in high school with camera like this! Such good times! 🥺
I loved how the series got better with every episode. Not like most shows today
Sugar, spice, and everything nice These were the ingredients chosen To create the perfect little girl But Professor Utonium accidentally Added an extra ingredient to the concoction-- Chemical X Thus, The Powerpuff Girls were born Using their ultra-super powers Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup Have dedicated their lives to fighting crime And the forces of evil!
Note: this post originally had 137 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.
I'm going to buy BGT Malakai Bayho's new CD tomorrow; still love CD's and records. Tapes are to much faff.
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I'm not a 90s kid,but I was still able to relate to a few of these
Gen X from UK here could relate to a lot of that stuff; the rest reminded me of my kids childhood. Ps 1980 was 25 years ago OKAY
I haven't had this much fun reading BP in a long time. Laughed my butt off at the comments. This nostalgia is great stuff! After a while, I get sick of all the retaliation, boo-hoo and in-law stories.
Fanta or Jaffa (orange soda) for Finns. ✌️
Load More Replies... I knew most of these (South Africa). We had (have) a lot of american cultural influence.
I'm a late ish gen z kid and I understand a majority of this stuff, half of it because I went to a poorish, small, private Catholic school for 2-5, now 6-12 I'm in a richer public school, which was a culture shock on its own from the shared Chromebooks and the computer lab to having our own frickin frackin MacBooks.
I am not a 90s kid, I was born in 2001 but I still related to a bunch of these
At the end of the thread, you’ll find a very tiny “Note: this post originally had 137 images blah blah blah.” Click on the 137 and that’s it. It’s in every shortened post. Hope this gets upvoted so that many people can see it.
Load More Replies... This was one of the best meme feeds I have seen in a very long time. This made me very very happy although making me feel quite old. I will be sharing most of these photos
There’s an Alec Benjamin song, called 1994 (when he was born), that describes some of these things! (Also the early 2000s)
So 90s is now what 80s was when I was growing up; the cool period of time children wished they'd been born in. lmao
HA! I recall ACTUALLY threading the 16 mm Birns and Sawyer projectors in grade school. Absolutely LOVED it. (No, I wasn't a teacher's pet otherwise.) But am ever indebted and grateful for being able to do this.
They should make a „57 glorious 30’s memes that you might be too young for” list.
I'm going to buy BGT Malakai Bayho's new CD tomorrow; still love CD's and records. Tapes are to much faff.
Load More Replies... I'm not a 90s kid,but I was still able to relate to a few of these
Gen X from UK here could relate to a lot of that stuff; the rest reminded me of my kids childhood. Ps 1980 was 25 years ago OKAY
I haven't had this much fun reading BP in a long time. Laughed my butt off at the comments. This nostalgia is great stuff! After a while, I get sick of all the retaliation, boo-hoo and in-law stories.
Fanta or Jaffa (orange soda) for Finns. ✌️
Load More Replies... I knew most of these (South Africa). We had (have) a lot of american cultural influence.
I'm a late ish gen z kid and I understand a majority of this stuff, half of it because I went to a poorish, small, private Catholic school for 2-5, now 6-12 I'm in a richer public school, which was a culture shock on its own from the shared Chromebooks and the computer lab to having our own frickin frackin MacBooks.
I am not a 90s kid, I was born in 2001 but I still related to a bunch of these
At the end of the thread, you’ll find a very tiny “Note: this post originally had 137 images blah blah blah.” Click on the 137 and that’s it. It’s in every shortened post. Hope this gets upvoted so that many people can see it.
Load More Replies... This was one of the best meme feeds I have seen in a very long time. This made me very very happy although making me feel quite old. I will be sharing most of these photos
There’s an Alec Benjamin song, called 1994 (when he was born), that describes some of these things! (Also the early 2000s)
So 90s is now what 80s was when I was growing up; the cool period of time children wished they'd been born in. lmao
HA! I recall ACTUALLY threading the 16 mm Birns and Sawyer projectors in grade school. Absolutely LOVED it. (No, I wasn't a teacher's pet otherwise.) But am ever indebted and grateful for being able to do this.
They should make a „57 glorious 30’s memes that you might be too young for” list.
