The internet has decided that 2026 is the new 2016. People are bringing back the dog-ear filter, the Mannequin Challenge and the bottle flip. For younger people, this is a fun retro aesthetic. For me, it’s a historical re-enactment of a year I was present for, considerably springier in, and somehow already nostalgic about, which tells you how the next ten will go.
I lived in 2016 for one full weekend. Here is the report, and the physio’s invoice.
1. The Dog Filter
In 2016, the dog ears made everyone look cute and mischievous. In 2026, on my face, they made me look like a retired police dog asked to give a talk at a library about a case nobody remembers. The tongue comes out when you open your mouth. I opened my mouth to say “oh no”. The tongue came out on “no”. The app then suggested a “smoothing” filter. It didn’t ask. It just knew.
2. The Mannequin Challenge
Here I had an advantage. The Mannequin Challenge requires standing completely still for a long time. I’ve been training for years, unintentionally, in queues, in meetings and in front of the open fridge trying to remember why I opened it. My stillness was flawless. The problem was starting again. There was a click. Everyone heard the click. A teenager asked if I was “okay to get up”. In 2016, nobody asked me that. By 2036, everybody will.
My stillness was flawless. The problem was starting again. There was a click.
3. The Bottle Flip
Forty-one attempts. One success. The success happened when nobody was filming, which in 2016 would have been a tragedy and in 2026 is how all my achievements happen: unwitnessed, then forgotten. I bent down to pick up the bottle and made the noise. You know the noise. Everyone over 35 has the noise. It is the sound of your body starting the paperwork.
4. Pokemon Go
In 2016, I walked ten kilometres a day catching imaginary creatures. In 2026, I walked to the end of the road, where I caught a small bird-shaped one and a hamstring strain now in its third week. In 2016 I wandered parks at midnight staring at my phone and nobody worried. This time, a neighbour offered me a lift home. I was forty metres from my house. She is 70. She was worried about me.
5. Vine References
I quoted a Vine at a dinner party. Nobody under 25 knew it. Nobody over 25 wanted to admit they knew it. One man in his forties silently mouthed the next line, and we made eye contact across the table like two veterans of a war nobody else remembers and nobody will ever give a medal for.
6. The 2016 Playlist
I made one. It was excellent. It was also the first time I’d heard the soundtrack of my late twenties described by a colleague as “vintage”. Vintage is a word for furniture. Vintage is a word for wine. It is not a word for the songs I sang in a hatchback on the way to an interview for a job I didn’t get, at a company that no longer exists, in a car that is now a fridge.
7. Posting Without Overthinking
This was the real 2016 trend. We posted blurry photos of our lunch with four filters and no caption. I tried it. I posted a sandwich. It took forty minutes, three retakes and a small crisis about whether the bread looked “too 2016”. It did. I deleted it anyway. It got two likes in the meantime, both from people I saw every weekend in 2016. Now we like each other’s sandwiches. That’s the friendship. That’s all of it.
Conclusion
Recreating 2016 taught me the year wasn’t special because of the filters or the flips. It was special because we had knees that worked and no idea what was coming. I can get the filter back. I can’t get the knees back. I can’t get the not-knowing back either.
I’m told 2027 will be the new 2017. I’ve already started stretching. The physio says that’s sweet. The physio says, at my age, stretching is mostly a way of feeling involved.