20 Cringeworthy Moments Caused By Nostalgia

So many things in life can feel nostalgic, from old songs to a favored T-shirt. But there is one thing that seems to be a universal nostalgia trigger, and that is food. In an interview with Bored Panda, professor of literature and linguistics at Mars Hill University, Dr. Hal McDonald noted that food can be a potent source of nostalgic comfort, because our memories of smells and tastes are closely connected to the emotional centers of our brains.

“Eating something we associate with a happy time in our lives can trigger a vivid memory of that earlier time in our lives, and allow us to once again feel the same positive feelings we felt way back during that happy time,” he explained.

According to the expert, an added reward comes when we experience the taste or smell unexpectedly. “For example, when someone serves us a dish we had when we were a child but were so young that we have no clear memory of it. Unexpectedly tasting the food item after all these years triggers the memory of the earlier time and the emotions associated with it, but it also carries with it the element of surprise, which triggers yet another reward system in our brains, intensifying the pleasure.”

But being taken back in time by tastes and smells or feeling somewhat nostalgic about some other thing is not what the ‘Le Wrong Generation’ is all about. It is focused more on people who are blinded by nostalgia, and their beliefs that a certain time in the past was way better than the time we live in now.

In their description, the community with more than 303K members noted that they satirically mock the people who are “blinded by their own nostalgia, [and] believe certain things in the past to be unequivocally better than today,” and browsing this list, you will see why.

The community’s description also notes that it all started with music. “We place a special emphasis on music, because this subreddit was created after annoyance over ‘born in the wrong generation’ attitude often expressed by fans of 60s/70s rock,” they wrote, and indeed, many people in their posts focus on how music back in the day was way better.

And while that may be true—you might subjectively enjoy music from that time more than you do what’s on the radio today—following the community’s idea, that doesn’t make the ’60s or ’70s an overall better time to be alive.

On the contrary, several netizens in the comments have pointed out that present times win in the battle of “now vs. then,” as now you can listen to music from whatever period, which wasn’t as easy to do back in the day.

Talking to Bored Panda about the subreddit a couple of years ago, one of its moderators echoed its description, emphasizing the role music played regarding the ‘Le Wrong Generation’ community. “One of the core beginnings was based on music; such as people who becry musicians nowadays for creating their own sound and making it unique to themselves,” they said.

Delving deeper into why romanticizing the past is not too good of an idea, the moderator added that “Looking too much towards the past will only hurt your perspective towards the future.”

While over-romanticizing the past or turning a blind eye to its less positive aspects is what makes this community call people out, feeling nostalgic in and of itself is not necessarily bad. As long as you don’t have your mind set on the past being unequivocally better than the present, it can even be a pleasant experience, serving several important functions in people’s lives.

Talking about nostalgia on the Speaking Of Psychology podcast, licensed psychologist and professor of psychology at LeMoyne College, Krystine Batcho, PhD., noted that the thing that ties all those functions together is the fact that nostalgia is an emotional experience that unifies.

“One example of this is it helps to unite our sense of who we are, our self, our identity over time. Because over time, we change constantly, we change in incredible ways. We’re not anywhere near the same as we were when we were three years old, for example. Nostalgia, by motivating us to remember the past in our own life, helps to unite us to that authentic self and remind us of who we have been and then compare that to who we feel we are today,” the expert explained, adding that it gives us a sense of who we want to be down the road in the future.

“The other way that nostalgia serves an essential psychological function is that it is a highly social emotion. It connects us to other people,” Dr. Batcho continued. She noted that the feeling becomes a part of what bonds us to the most important people in our lives, starting with our parents and siblings or friends when we’re young and extending to a broader circle as we go through life.

“It’s a social connectedness phenomenon, and nostalgia is in that sense a very healthy pro-social emotion,” the expert pointed out.

“The other way that it’s unifying is that it helps us to unify what otherwise would be felt or experienced by us as conflicts,” the expert continued. As nostalgia is a bittersweet emotion—sweet because of the beautiful memories and bitter because we can never actually experience them again—it can help us deal with conflict more easily.

“The irreversibility of time means that we absolutely cannot go back in time, so it helps us to deal with the conflict of the bitter longing for what can never be again together with the sweetness of having experienced it and being able to revisit it and relive it again.”