It’s a trend a little anomalous. In recent days, they have begun to appear on social media photo from 2016. Better yet. Photos already published on Instagram in 2016 and reshared only now. There are no hashtags, there are no keywords, there are no stickers and luckily there aren’t any either accompanying advertising campaigns. Of course some anti-aging cream could be clever hop on the wave for some easy views.
It’s gigantic throwback. So big that the official Instagram account itself decided to participate posting a photo. The choice fell on a 2016 writing with the Rio filter. But why did the 2016 photos go so viral? Certain. They passed exactly 10 years from 2016. But this reasoning could also be made in recent years. Nevertheless we have never seen anything like it.
Three explanations for the 2016 trend
He has not been identified at the moment a clear reason which is why this trend started. However, we can see some factors. The first is the snowball effect. The more users do it, the more users know about it, the more users are inclined to do it. The second: users who are on Instagram today with a good probability they were on Instagram in 2016 too. On the contrary. Perhaps they were also posting more since Instagram has started an increasingly clear transition from social network to microcontent platform. Finding photos to publish to follow this trend is therefore not that difficult: just swipe on your profile and get one where we are presentable.
On Instagram the highlighted stories change again: what’s happening
The third: there’s a bit of nostalgia. But not nostalgia for what we were 10 years ago, or at least not only. Maybe there’s just a bit of nostalgia going on how we were on social media 10 years ago. The journalist Ben Smith in his Traffic (Altrecose, 2024) sets al February 26, 2015 what he calls “the last good day of the Internet”. It was the day of the case TheDressthe dress that some saw as black and blue and some saw as gold and yellow. Ultimately the dress was black and blue, a yellow and gold version was only produced after this case.
In 2016, Facebook Stars and YouTubers already existed but there was also the feeling that social media was a more spontaneous place, where it still made sense to share a holiday album on Facebook or open an Instagram profile without thinking of becoming an creator. They still existed collective challengeslike the Mannequin. Those were lighter times. Or maybe not. Maybe time has left a coat of white on everything, also on social media.
