Nostalgia used to be an expensive emotion, but it doesn't seem that way anymore.
Not only have smartphones become cheaper, but the photos, memories, and notes that get stored in our iCloud, Google Photos (or Picasso if you were old fashioned like me), and Dropbox have collectively brought down the price we put on memories as a generation.
Long before smartphones and cameras were ubiquitous, photographs were reserved for special occasions and stored in well-designed photo albums. These albums would occupy a special place in our homes - typically in a loft (maaliyu being the colloquial word), where everything else was stored. This is where they stayed unless there was a special life event, and more often than not, it wasn't a happy event. It may be a child moving away from home for college or work, or a family member passing away.
There was value - intrinsic and extrinsic in these memories that we sought. Nostalgia made us feel like the past was better than we remembered, and made us hopeful for the future.
Au contraire, everything we do now has a digital footprint. Even if you weren't as active on social media, you still have moments that are captured and shared by others. We're rarely alone anymore, with our devices being our constant companions - in sickness and health alike. Our self-aggrandized demand for privacy conflicts with our need to overshare on free social media for validation.
Ironically, while social media has made it harder to appreciate the moment, the advent of technology has made distances shrink dramatically. Sharing a moment with someone separated by distance has become cheap and convenient but the stock price of nostalgia has taken a nosedive as a result.
We hardly stop to smell the roses, but we take pictures of those roses for them to be put up a year later with a #throwback as a reaction to a latent, distant feeling about an unrelated event.
That feeling, the distant emotion, the thought of having misplaced something or being displaced, is nostalgia. It is felt in terms of time and space, and it used to be expensive because it was a lot less frequent. However, as the supply of these free "memories" increased, the demand expanded to meet the need, and that emotion is now trading at an all-time low.
But if you ask me, it is still a value stock. Like the good old record player making its way onto our millennial hearts as a turntable, it'll make its way back.
Not only have smartphones become cheaper, but the photos, memories, and notes that get stored in our iCloud, Google Photos (or Picasso if you were old fashioned like me), and Dropbox have collectively brought down the price we put on memories as a generation.
Long before smartphones and cameras were ubiquitous, photographs were reserved for special occasions and stored in well-designed photo albums. These albums would occupy a special place in our homes - typically in a loft (maaliyu being the colloquial word), where everything else was stored. This is where they stayed unless there was a special life event, and more often than not, it wasn't a happy event. It may be a child moving away from home for college or work, or a family member passing away.
There was value - intrinsic and extrinsic in these memories that we sought. Nostalgia made us feel like the past was better than we remembered, and made us hopeful for the future.
Au contraire, everything we do now has a digital footprint. Even if you weren't as active on social media, you still have moments that are captured and shared by others. We're rarely alone anymore, with our devices being our constant companions - in sickness and health alike. Our self-aggrandized demand for privacy conflicts with our need to overshare on free social media for validation.
Ironically, while social media has made it harder to appreciate the moment, the advent of technology has made distances shrink dramatically. Sharing a moment with someone separated by distance has become cheap and convenient but the stock price of nostalgia has taken a nosedive as a result.
We hardly stop to smell the roses, but we take pictures of those roses for them to be put up a year later with a #throwback as a reaction to a latent, distant feeling about an unrelated event.
That feeling, the distant emotion, the thought of having misplaced something or being displaced, is nostalgia. It is felt in terms of time and space, and it used to be expensive because it was a lot less frequent. However, as the supply of these free "memories" increased, the demand expanded to meet the need, and that emotion is now trading at an all-time low.
But if you ask me, it is still a value stock. Like the good old record player making its way onto our millennial hearts as a turntable, it'll make its way back.
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