Why has there been a huge rebirth on people’s past passions during the pandemic?

By: I.Fischer

During quarantine, I have noticed a trend on the internet, that people are returning to their old interests and more intensely than before. I think this phenomenon comes down to one thing: nostalgia. Due to the current state of the world, it makes sense that people would return to their old interests as a way to seek comfort and escape from our current reality. It also makes sense that people would return to their past interests as a way to reconnect to their lives prior to quarantine, and to seek a sense of normalcy and simplicity, that we as a society are deprived of at the moment. 
 
Another factor that is really interesting about this phenomenon is how people are sharing their resurge in past interests: Tiktok. The app has become a huge platform for various interests and diverse niches. Amongst all this content, this trend of returning to past passions can be mostly found in book Tiktok and fandom Tiktok. 
 
Moreover, I believe that due to how big of a platform Tiktok has become, it’s bringing more people together based on those interests, and rekindling them for other people who might have not put much thought into them. This is another reason why I think this has become such a widespread phenomenon across the internet.
 
Overall, this collective return to past fixations induced by nostalgia, a craving for familiarity, comfort, and simpleness reminiscent of what people were used to before the pandemic. To put it simply, it’s an attempt to emulate what we considered mundane and took for granted because now people are seeing their old routines in a different light.