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Nostalgia or Modernism?

01/10/2022

Thanks to makemefeelso for the topic!
I'm not very good at writing so I'd love any constructive criticism.

Let me preface this by saying that I was born in the 2000s. I didn't grow up using or browsing sites that would be considered nostalgic. Nevertheless, I've always been enamored by the style.

Modern websites, no matter how much color or how many pictures, seem cold, corporate, generic, and/or uninviting. Many are just recolors or round-cornered versions of numerous other sites. Behind the scenes, numerous cookies are tracking your every click and a profile of you is being generated.
The first UI style I think of as modern is material design. To me, a website or app using material design looks rushed and generic. Material design was created to make it easier to assemble UI, I think it has made it too easy. Sites and apps using material design lack any personality at all, most sites and apps using a free template will have more personality.

Almost all nostalgic websites have far more personality than even the most original modern website. The style itself gives far more room for personality and originality. A nostalgic site can range from one that is pastel with a custom cursor, trail, art, and falling items (reminiscent of early-mid 2000s dress-up sites) to one that uses only basic HTML and CSS and is filled with gifs from Geocities and blinking things (reminiscent of early 2000s late 90s personal sites). Because the vast, vast majority of nostalgic sites are run by individuals as a hobby few have advertisements or tracking cookies.

But I think that one of the biggest reasons people are drawn to nostalgic sites is that it's a reminder of a much simpler internet. A time where websites were unique and generally coded by hand instead of a generic template. For a lot of the people drawn to nostalgic sites, they are a reminder of their childhood, a time when they didn't have many responsibilities and were far less stressed.