If your Instagram and TikTok feeds have recently been flooded with grainy screenshots, overexposed selfies and suspiciously well-curated “2016” carousels, you’re not imagining it. From old festival snaps and mirror selfies taken on iPhone 6s, to screenshots of Notes-app captions and Tumblr-era outfits, everyone seems to be posting their life from exactly a decade ago.Yes, that's right — 2016 has reappeared across our feeds. A decade on, the year is being recast as the last moment before life, politics and social media became permanently intense.Whether the captions say “take me back” or are in denial that this was now an entire decade ago, there is a definite romanticism surrounding 2016.But this isn’t just your average throwback. It’s something more specific. Call it pre-chaos nostalgia: a longing for the moment just before everything accelerated, intensified and became permanently exhausting.