The latest bleak new AI slop niche are “nostalgia” videos about how good the 1980s and 1990s were. There are many accounts spamming these out, but the general format is all basically the same. A procession of young people with feathered hair wonder at how terrible 2025 is and tell the viewer they should come back to the 1980s, where things are better. This video is emblematic of the form:
@nostalgia_vsh let's go back 🥺 #lestgoback #nostalgia #nostalgic #childhood #80sbaby #2000s
♬ snowfall - Øneheart & reidenshi
In a typical ‘80s slop video, a teenager from the era tells the viewer that there’s no Instagram 40 years ago and everyone played outside until the street lights came on. “It’s all real here, no filters, no screens.” In another, two women eat pizza in a mall and talk about how terrible the future will be. “I bet your malls don’t feel alive in 2025,” one says.
These videos, like a lot of AI slop, do not try to hide that they are AI generated, and show that there is unfortunately a market for people endlessly scrolling social media looking to astral project themselves into a hallucinatory past that never existed. This is Mark Zuckerberg’s fucked up metaverse, living here and now on Mark Zuckerberg’s AI slop app.