One step forward, two steps backwards — From the Desk of van Schneider — Edition №255

⏱️ Average reading time: 4 minutes
🎵 Soundtrack of this essay: Listen here while reading

It's a curious paradox: Scroll through your Instagram feed or peek at your own profile and you'll likely find pixel perfect, high-resolution photos deliberately aged and weathered with analog filters and effects.

We're essentially taking these crystal-clear images captured by the latest camera technology and intentionally degrading them. It's as if we're yearning for the charming imperfections and limitations of vintage cameras that possessed just a fraction of our modern, gazillion megapixel equivalents.

Although our cameras improved in pretty much all aspects over the past years, professional photographers still go through the hassle of adding a little bit of artificial grain, lens flares or vignettes to their photos. Is it a stylistic choice, or perhaps a quiet and small act of rebellion?

Even as we push forward with technology and better tools available everyday, we step in and purposefully "degrade" the outcome. None of this is by accident, it's a deliberate aesthetic choice, a movement back to what feels more authentic, more tangible and perhaps more "real" to us.

And all this extends far beyond just photography.

Vinyl record sales have surged year after year. In 2023, vinyl outsold CDs for the first time in decades (of course still a far cry from streaming, but it's growing). People are returning to a format that requires undivided attention and a physical engagement with music. From a practical standpoint, it makes no sense in a world of instant music streaming, yet people are spending their hard-earned money to listen to music in a way that's quite frankly cumbersome, if it wouldn't be so beautifully romantic.

Let's look at the fashion industry and resurgence of "grandpacore" and vintage-inspired clothing. In particular young people, they aren't just buying second-hand — they're specifically seeking out styles that imitate earlier decades, from high-waisted jeans to chunky sweaters and classic silhouettes. Instead of looking into the future with modern high-tech clothing and materials, they're looking backwards to a time they weren't even a part of.

The architecture and interior design world is slowly moving away from the sleek minimalism of the 2010s toward a warmer and more lived-in aesthetic. Just look at the rise of "cottagecore" (whats up with all these terms) and the return of wallpapers and colored glass. We're all about that coziness now. Textures, colors, personality. We want the authenticity of a "real home" even without ever having created it ourselves. We long for something we never had.

The rise of single-purpose devices is another telling sign of this yearning for long-gone simplicity. "Dumb Phones" promise freedom from the endless scroll of social media feeds and ultra-connectivity.

E-ink readers are gaining popularity specifically because they do less, not more. We take one step forward, and two steps backwards.

But the examples don't end here. There's a big resurgence of analog photography especially amongst younger people. Traditional crafts and skills such as hand embroidery, cross-stitch, knitting and crocheting are making a big comeback.

You might have noticed it all over Instagram and TikTok. Traditional bread baking (the sourdough craze started during COVID) is now a thing and still going strong. And remember, none of this is out of necessity, we live in a world where everything is perfectly available at the store, but people choose to go through the hassle of baking their own bread or making their own fermented food.

Wallpapers are back. Art Deco is back. Work-wear is back. It keeps on coming — We're in love with the past.

Now you could argue that this is just a nostalgic retreat of an older generation, back to a time we knew so well. But it's quite the opposite. We're talking about young people who never experienced the limitations of an old film camera or a record player. Generation Z and young millennials are at the forefront of these movements, deliberately choosing the inconvenient, the imperfect and the analog. Not despite their flaws, but because of them.

Perhaps in our rush towards progress we left something behind. Something that gave us and our life meaning. The intentionality of analog processes feels more human to us, because they're imperfect, just like us.

I'm not sure where we're going with all this, but there's something wonderfully absurd about using new, modern technology to deliberately degrade their outcomes.

There's a striking parallel to the movie "Her" by Spike Jonze, where hyper-modern AI technology exists in a world draped in romantic vintage aesthetics. Tomorrow's technology wrapped in yesterday's visual language.

As if perfection itself has become too sterile for our taste.

We've come full circle: The technological flaws our previous generations worked hard to eliminate are exactly what we're now carefully reconstructing.

Perhaps this all reveals a deeper truth that we're all just hopelessly lost souls in our current hyper-optimized world we built (:

Thank you for reading & keep creating,

Yours truly,
Tobias