Cat Boyd: With nostalgia all the rage, have we given up hope for a better future?

Released earlier this month, Pokemon Go now allegedly has more active users than Twitter, Facebook or Snapchat. In a media-saturated world of instant fads, it therefore immediately qualifies as a matter of high political and public health importance. Tutting pundits warn Pokemon users, oblivious to the world around them, are causing car crashes, wandering into strangers’ gardens, even exposing themselves to violence.

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, sought to cash in on its popularity, breaking America’s cringe bones when she remarked, “I don’t know who created Pokemon Go, but I’m trying to figure out how we get them to Pokemon Go … to the polls.” Boom boom! Donald Trump responded (I’m not making this up) with an app called “Crooked Hillary No”, in which white males who fear change have to catch the Clinton monster. How low will politics Pokemon Go? Pretty damn Pokemon Low, it seems...

Behind the absurdities of electoral politics, there is a serious political issue here. It’s surely noteworthy that 25-34 year olds, “responsible adults”, preferably with a university education, are the target market for cutesy monster hunting. “Millennial nostalgia” is becoming a major commodity, the marketing fuel behind the world’s most successful products. You can’t watch a “tasteful” advert (usually with a saccharine, acoustic cover of an 80s punk song) or have dinner at a slinky “hipster” restaurant without having it shoved in your face.

Today, nostalgia sets in almost immediately upon reaching adulthood. Take another example, Facebook’s “look back” videos launched to celebrate its tenth anniversary, where an algorithm builds an automated nostalgic video generated from your photos, set to a sun-kissed, bittersweet jaunt down the road towards gentler times. Your experiences, barely a few years old, instantly retro, are sold back to you as mementos of your brand engagement. Instagram goes a step further, building an empire on photo filters designed to make you look instantly “classic”.

Nostalgia, then, is actively encouraged by people in authority, and subsequently actively embraced by us, the millennial consumers. Marketers celebrate nostalgia’s capacity to instantly bypass “reason” and appeal directly to emotion. Even academic psychologists have promoted the fad. Many serious researchers celebrate nostalgia as an effective defence mechanism against a troubled world. In today’s dark times; it’s easy to see nostalgia’s appeal.

And here’s the root problem. This all-round enthusiasm for nostalgia is an entirely new phenomenon. Previously, professionals, rightly or wrongly, treated this sentimental longing for a world of rose-tinted memories as a “disorder”. In the 50s nostalgia was diagnosed in shell-shocked soldiers, in the 60s in medicated housewives and in the

70s and 80s in wage slaves attached to menial assembly-line jobs. It presents itself among people who have been forced to abandon hope for the future.

The politics of nostalgia then seemed pretty clear cut. Conservatives built their mass appeal with reference to the “good old days” and a lost “golden age”. They deliberately manipulated sentimental icons – the Royal family, the flag, the Empire – for cynical purposes. Leftists rejected nostalgic illusions, sought to shock and provoke, and looked to claim the future.

True, things weren’t always that clear cut. There have always been cold-hearted, punky and unsentimental conservatives, just as there have been leftists who dreamed of a sepia-tinged days of industry – or even a pre-industrial past. But here’s the important point: until recently, we could recognise nostalgia’s inherent small-c conservative politics. Nostalgia was about manipulation, a drug used by people who wanted to hide uncomfortable truths, a comfort blanket under which world-weary people hide from oppressive reality.

Tom Nairn has criticised leftists for failing to embrace the emotional, irrational side of politics. And yes, longing for the past is a complex emotion that doesn’t necessarily lead to right-wing politics.

But isn’t there a problem with the millennial culture of instant nostalgia? The age group I’m a member of, traditionally, has been the bastions of radical thinking.

But are we now becoming a generation that embraces nostalgia without critical comment? Perhaps we’re a generation that hasn’t yet discovered its own politics of freedom. To me, all of this suggests a political retreat. Nostalgia may help individuals who have been forced to lose hope, it can maybe even aid progressive political causes, but, without doubt, it’s the polar opposite of radicalism.

Previously, nostalgic generations laboured under the influence of a massive trauma. Now, let’s be clear, Iraq and Afghanistan, for all their horrors, are not the Somme. Our economic crisis, for all its agonising severity, is not a patch on the hungry thirties when it comes to sheer human suffering.

Nonetheless, there’s a hopelessness and resignation today that’s visible everywhere in politics. Just maintaining what you’ve got is a struggle. Progress, for many people, is a bitter joke; “reform” generally means working harder for lower pay; “revolutionary” is an adjective applied to gadgets rather than politics.

So it’s no wonder we’re a captive market for nostalgic marketing. We don’t know what a better future looks like.

Let’s start with an admission: we’re being manipulated, and to some extent we’re enjoying it. The mass popularity of Pokemon Go among my age group shows that we’re not the least ashamed at falling for a corporate gimmick that appeals directly to our “inner child”.

Here’s a radical thought: maybe a little shame isn’t always a bad thing. The conservative "good old days", contrary to the politics of Trump or Farage, aren’t something to look back fondly upon.

Let’s rub our dreary eyes, and see through the Instagram filter. A terrifying future lies ahead: only by looking directly at it can we develop the radical ideas needed to change it.