The 2016 Trends Making an Actual Comeback
So which specific pieces of 2016 are getting resurrected? Not all of it — some things stay buried for good reason. But a handful of very specific artifacts are back in heavy rotation.
1. The Rio de Janeiro Instagram filter
This was Instagram’s signature look back when filters were still a novelty rather than an afterthought. The warm, slightly washed-out tone became instantly recognizable as “old Instagram.” People are now deliberately hunting for ways to recreate it, because newer apps don’t replicate the exact tone.
2. The songs nobody admitted to loving
Desiigner’s “Panda.” Rae Sremmurd’s “Black Beatles.” DJ Snake and Major Lazer’s “Lean On.” These weren’t critically acclaimed tracks — they were the songs playing at every party whether you chose them or not. A decade later, they hit differently. Less “guilty pleasure,” more “time machine.”
3. The bottle flip
Genuinely strange that this came back, but here we are. The bottle flip challenge — the one that took over school cafeterias and made parents very confused — is being recreated specifically because of how dumb and harmless it was. In a year that’s felt heavy for a lot of people, “dumb and harmless” is doing a lot of work.
4. The dab
Same logic. A move that meant nothing, was mildly embarrassing even at the time, and is now being performed with full irony and full sincerity simultaneously. That contradiction is basically the entire trend in miniature.
5. Mirror selfies with bad lighting, on purpose
This is the one that’s hardest to explain to anyone who didn’t live through it. 2016-era mirror selfies had a specific quality — slightly grainy, slightly too-bright flash, framed a little awkwardly. People are now recreating that exact aesthetic on purpose, using old phones or filters designed to fake the degradation.
It sounds absurd written out. It is absurd. That’s sort of the point.
What this says about where things are right now
If you zoom out, the pattern is pretty consistent: every item making a comeback is something that required zero effort and meant nothing. No careful curation. No personal branding. Just a flip phone camera and a song that was probably playing too loud.
That’s not nostalgia for an event. That’s nostalgia for not trying so hard.