The Year Was 2012

Not 2016.

The YouTube astrologer said chaos will continue into February 2026. There will be eclipses (apparently not good, I dunno). Planets aligning like in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell. Something with oil. There will be an oil spill or a shipwreck. This is fate.

There’s a trend on TikTok or X or wherever about 2016 being an “epic” year, which boggles my old-ass mind because to me, that’s the year when things started to get weird. In one way or another, if you’re over forty, you’ll probably agree that 2015 into 2016 was the beginning of the Twilight Zone IRL. For some it was because Trump was elected. For others, it was the start of extreme political correctness. Whatever algorithm you subscribe to, I really don’t care, but I’m gonna guess you haven’t thought the last ten years have been the greatest.

Yet, young people have been touting 2016 as like, so fire. Why?

I tried to rack my brain for what I remembered about 2016 other than Trump getting elected and people being mad about it. It’s a bit of a blank year in my memory. It was post my divorce and two-year Burning Man-esque festival stint. I was living with my ex-boyfriend by the beach. I was 36 and still trying to figure out my life and career—if I was going to have a family with my then boyfriend and if we would stay in San Diego, which was getting very expensive. I was taking a break from writing Synth Noir because it was too emotionally exhausting and I had written the beginning of Van Life. Things weren’t bad, they were just whatever.

Now that I’m in my mid-forties, it’s perplexing to see younger people reminiscing about such a blah year. They explain on TikTok that 2016 was special for a certain group of Millennials because it was post-grad or something like that. And you know what, I get it. When you’re in your twenties, even if things suck, they’re still pretty good. I mean, looking back at the aughts I was having a ton of fun despite 9/11, despite the war in Iraq, and the threat of anthrax by mail and terrorism. I was partying. I was obsessed with southern rap. I was absolutely boy crazy. And I was shopping at Forever 21 a lot.

So I guess when young people reminisce about the mid to late 2010s, very odd years to me, that’s what they’re talking about: drinking, partying, dancing, and hooking up without caring about the ways of the world. This is how it should be for young people.

But I gotta say, if we’re gonna go back in time to a semi-recent era, I’d rather go back to 2011 or 2012. Maybe 2013. Far enough past the 2008 financial crisis and still in the Obama years—when the general public was more ambivalent about politics and you wouldn’t get an earful about it in social settings (my God, I wish we could go back to that). Music, if you were into indie, electronic, and dance, was popping off some bangers. Creativity was cool. Tech was booming, and dare I say, kinda fun. Instagram? You posted cups of coffee. Influencers? There were none! Blogs were still a thing. I think there were ads on Facebook, but honestly, I can’t remember. I don’t think we, as a society, even knew what an algorithm was.

I believe most of us had smartphones by then, but we weren’t recording at all times so you could still do stupid shit. And you could still say stupid shit without fear of being canceled. Think of the thrill. The freedom.

Even though my personal life was falling apart through these years (the inspiration for the fictional world of Synth Noir), there was something sunny and bright about 2011-2013. Maybe it was the Millennial optimism that Gen Z thinks is cringe now. And even though I’m not a Millennial, I dunno, there was something in the air at that time. An excitement. An irreverence. Humor. Hope.

In a way it reminds me of pre-9/11. The innocence we had. The naivety of what would be coming in the next decade and how our lives would change. That’s how I look at the early 2010s before whatever this mind fuck is that we’re in now.

I remember my first glimpse of what would become of this very odd time we’re living through. For some reason I had a subscription to The Atlantic in 2015—don’t ask me why. Someone had written an alarming article about “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” at universities. I was flabbergasted. Truly. Why in the hell would an eighteen-year-old need a safe space or a trigger warning? Something that sounded like it was for five-year-olds in kindergarten. The article made me feel uneasy. Maybe it was my intuition forecasting the future of unrelenting awareness and political correctness that I find extremely stifling.

Around the same time I think Bret Easton Ellis started referring to Millennials as snowflakes. Whether that was an accurate description or not, there seemed to be a trend towards hysteria and outrage and safety spreading throughout the generations.

What was this new era we were in? Why couldn’t people just chill out like we used to? Why were young adults acting like scared little children? Shit, why were adults acting like scared little children?

Anyway, God, I miss 2012.

I miss talking about music, movies, TV, and comedy roasts, and not getting a social science lecture over a glass of wine. I miss context, nuance, humor—a certain casualness to the absurdities in life.

Sigh. Maybe someday.

Meanwhile, the YouTube astrologer is also predicting major floods, regime changes, and proof of aliens in 2026. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. You’ve been warned. Don’t freak out. Take a deep breath. It’s fine. We’re gonna be fine. Chances are you’ll still be scrolling on Instagram and X and buying shit on Amazon despite any of this—even the aliens.

This is fate. We must go through it. We must go through the shit.

At least we have memes.

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Music Rec

The year was 2012… although not every song is from 2012. Some are ‘80s throwbacks, some are from 2011 or the aughts—the point is, it was a vibe. It was fun!

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