Physical Media Renaissance™

Nicstalgia Gift Guide, thrifting 90s-00s CDs, fist fighting over Furbys 🤶🏼

I’m super excited to release the PMR episode into the universe!!!!!! I had a blast researching and deeply thinking and articulating and sharing about topics that I think are really fun. This week’s episode format is like a YouTube deep dive meets a TikTok PowerPoint night. Interviews aren’t going away, but I am looking forward to presenting projects that I’m working on and things I can’t stop thinking about.

In this issue:
💿 More on the Physical Media Renaissance™ episode
🎁 A very unhinged and beautiful Nicstalgia Gift Guide
📳 All the retro tech links/stories about using flip phones again
🤬 Looking back to simpler times: brutally fighting over kids’ Christmas toys
🎄 The Longest Christmas Playlist Ever
🎶 Caroline Polachek’s Christmas song

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🍒 This Week on Nicstalgia

In this episode, I share the experience of my Physical Media Renaissance™ project that I’ve been working on for about a year. I dive into the physical media (CDs), 00s entertainment technology (icy blue Memorex CD boombox), and memorabilia (the iconic Geri poster) that I’ve acquired and six key considerations: consumption, media ephemerality, perceived value, circular economy, friction, and taste.

I talk about what this project means to me on a personal and generational level, why 90s-00s nostalgia has become a thing, the nostalgic and nowstalgic resurgence of flip phones and digital cameras by Luddite teens and Millennial lifestyle editors avoiding doom scrolling, why Urban Outfitters can sell a first-gen iPod for $350, and why I’m buying $1 CDs when Boomers told us to stop eating avocado toast and drinking Starbucks to buy a house for $725k. Haters will have their questions answered: Is this project wasteful? Is it materialistic? I dig into themes of ownership, transience, and – of course – the Diffusion of Innovations model as it relates to physical media.

We constantly switch from screen to screen with utmost ease and endless distractions, so is the friction of using physical media really worse than the feigned conversancy of Spotify Wrapped? If an algorithm wasn’t reinforcing confirmation bias and shaping your choices, would you be able to make them on your own? Wouldn’t it be fun to genuinely discover something?

You’ll learn my Nicstalgia Consumption Rubric framework of how to know what to buy and what not to buy, the similarities and differences between modes of consumption – thrifting, resale, and fast fashion – and how to curate and refine your own taste by using my ‘Live Laugh Love Loathe’ Nicstalgia Curation Rubric. I share my favorite finds and takeaways from the project around mindfulness, non-attachment, value, memories, and sense of self.

Watch/listen: YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts

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🧑🏼‍🎄 Nicstalgia Gift Guide

Note: This is a gift guide written by someone whose love language is not gifts!!!!!! Mine is words of affirmation; I would much rather write you a card professing my love or appreciation for you and our friendship. Every gift (especially when I’m on a budget) feels deeply inadequate compared to the adoration that I have for the people I want to celebrate.

As a creator, the only gift I want is for people to enjoy the show!!!!!! If you are feeling adventurous while also not wanting to leave your couch, I suggest exploring the Nicstalgia archive and reading about our guests! Their socials are all linked in the show notes, and some creators’ YouTube channels are also linked on the Nicstalgia YouTube channel. Follows, likes, ratings, reviews, subscribes, and turning notifications on are small yet meaningful tokens of appreciation as well.

Brought to you by Nicstalgia friends & guests:
• The I Am The Cute One virtual holiday party/live show will be held the evening of Friday, December 8. Tickets will be available for anyone subscribed to the Patreon (at any price point). Donny & Chels play games, talk about made for TV Christmas movies, and - as always - bring the chaos.
• Janine is performing at A Y2K Holiday show, a 90 minute showcase of full of classic hits with a retro twist, in NYC on Tuesday, December 12.
• Pop culture-themed candles from Bijou Candles
• Chris Payne’s Where Are Your Boys Tonight? book
• Ruby Thelot’s A Cyberarchaeology of Checkpoints book
• Andy Frye’s Ninety Days In The 90s book
• Merel’s 90s-00s Depop shop Ex-Girlfriend Shop
• Tiffany’s 90s nostalgic makeup brand Nosta Beauty
• Jessica Conrad x Elder Emo’s apparel collab

What I secretly want but was too afraid to ask:
• Physically I am here, but Mentally I am at The Doll Palace sticker
• DollzMania tube top by CyberAngelz
• Genovia Orchards sweatshirt (Forever will your banner wave!)
• Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen velvet skirt and Windows 95 top from OMIGHTY
• Seven Fishes Charm Bracelet by Hello Adrianne
• Olive You Locket by Susan Alexandra
• Tom from MySpace mug
• “This dress is dry clean only, Melanie” pin
• Paris & Nicole Tank from Rogue
• Britney Spears’s Fantasy perfume painting

What I already have and love:
• Chillhouse’s Chill Tips obviously, and you can use NICOLE10 for 10% off
• SouthStreetArtMart’s light switch plates. I see my Fiona Apple one every day and my life is substantially better because of it!!!!
• Custom AIM screen name, Arthur rejoicing with iced coffee, and Spice World globe stickers
• Pink brick phone earrings by Alien Bratz

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📲 I’m Just a Simple Girl in a High-Tech Digital World

My fav things from the internet rn:
Roundup of some headlines from my It’s Time, I’m Afraid slide in the Physical Media Renaissance™ Nicstalgia episode:
• ‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes
• Flipping Out by

Liana Satenstein

• I Ditched My iPhone for a Flip Phone (

Feed Me

gets a shoutout here as THE source you truly need to have a finger on the cultural pulse!)
• The Hottest Gen Z Gadget Is a 20-Year-Old Digital Camera
• Why are so many Gen Zers drawn to old-school digital cameras?
• How Gen Z uses technology — flip phones, digital cameras, voice memos
• Maison Margiela just dropped a hot haute couture flip phone

H/t

Marty Bell

for bringing the Mobile Phone Museum to my attention. Important! Of course they have the Motorola Razr V3 in pink and the iconic Nokia 3310 brick phone. If only I hadn’t spilled lemonade-flavored Vitamin Water all over my green and white boucle fake (!!!) Prada bag in high school, then I’d still have my beloved green LG EnV phone (that I now use as the cursor on my website in memoriam). RIP 🥲

Millennial ‘beige Christmas’ is over — Gen Z wants gaudy holiday nostalgia. I don’t have or particularly love rainbow Christmas lights, but if you know me, you know I’ve never been aesthetically minimalistic. My Christmas tree has a flip phone ornament and Mariah Carey’s Christmas CD as the topper…so it goes without saying that I love to see people getting excited about just being kitschy.

80s and 90s toy IP (i.e. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Care Bears, My Little Pony, etc.) will never stop making money, therefore are sparking ‘fist fights’ over licensing rights. But back in my day, parents got into REAL fist fights and actual riots buying toys!!! There’s actually a very funny old news segment that digs into the Cabbage Patch Doll, Tickle Me Elmo, and Furby crazes of the 80s-90s that sent “otherwise dignified, calm, mannerly parents” into absolutely chaotic hysteria. What a time to be alive.

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💿 Hey Mr. DJ, Put a [Playlist] On

Playlist of the week:
The Longest Christmas Playlist Ever is just that. I usually curate my playlists (imho) pretty well, but this one is kind of a hot mess. Like there’s just way too many songs for it to ever be organized properly. But like….isn’t that apropos for the season? Realizing there’s only a few weeks left in the year, wondering if you’re forgetting someone’s gift, looking at your credit card balance increase every day, setting goals for Next Year You to achieve, sitting in pitch blackness at 4pm, and taking out your Lenny Kravitz scarf the second it gets below 32 degrees????? Make sure to filter or search by artist/song title, otherwise skip over what you don’t like and add your faves to the queue.

Speaking of faves, Caroline Polachek’s “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings” has been on my Spotify Wrapped as one of my top songs every year since 2019. Did you know there is a Christmas version, “So Hot Cold You’re Hurting My Feelings”? “It’s been 25” takes on a whole new meaning. Genius. Plus we get a key change! You know I live for the tinsel, but damn I miss you tonight ❤️❄️

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