Digital Haunts: Quarantine Nostalgia
Thoughts | Roxana Moise
If you’ve ever taken a Zoom class, you’re likely familiar with this scenario: you’re sitting in front of your computer, one face out of many on the screen. You were up until the early hours of the morning last night to finish an assignment, and it took more effort than it should have to change from your pyjama sweatshirt to your daytime sweatshirt and drag yourself from your bed to your desk. You told yourself that this would be your week, that you would turn up to all of your classes and take detailed notes and maybe even endeavour to ask a question in your synchronous lecture, but as the minutes of this Zoom meeting tick by, that scenario is looking increasingly unlikely… and the red Leave button floats in the corner of your screen, ever-present, its siren song irresistible.
So do it. Press the button. Leave the meeting. Open your web browser, type in the URL, hauntingly familiar from years ago, and wrack the depths of your memory for a username and password created by a much younger incarnation of yourself. Forget about your lecture. Log into Webkinz. You deserve it.
I have nothing but anecdotal evidence to support my claims, but in conversations with friends my age who grew up alongside the Internet, we all agree that 2020 has seen a resurgence of interest in our favourite childhood games. Our comfort games of choice are different, ranging from Club Penguin to Webkinz to the Sims, but their effect is the same: the moment we’re presented with the familiar interface, it’s like years of our lives have flown away. It’s 2009 again, and we are sitting in the cracked leather chair in front of the family computer, having fought hard for an hour of screen time after school. The news sites our parents have bookmarked are completely irrelevant. The blinking monitor in front of us has one thing to offer, and it’s access to our games of choice: colourful, engaging, and familiar.
It’s easy to see why returning to these games has been so appealing this year. As if we could ever forget, ads and headlines are fond of reminding us that we are living through “unprecedented times,” and although the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have varied widely in severity between regions, uncertainty is a constant. Right now, a year into the pandemic, even with time to adjust and a vaccine on its way, the future seems murky. Back in March, even the events of the week to come were completely unpredictable. When every Instagram story or Youtube ad was shaped by pandemic-related content, social media became less of a digital escape and more of a reminder of the uncertainty surrounding us, and many turned to more neutral ways to spend their free time. Everybody knows somebody who took up knitting, or cooking, or embroidery. For some though, neutral haven took the form of nostalgic characters and landscapes on a screen.
The games might never be quite as enthralling as they were when we were younger, but there remains something comforting about returning to the digital childhood haunts that entertained us for hours as children. Like walking the halls of your elementary school, and forgetting the floor plan but trusting your feet to carry you to your old classroom anyways. These websites have remained familiar despite the changes they’ve undergone throughout the years, and at the risk of sounding like an advertising cliche, in these unpredictable times, sometimes a little bit of familiarity is all we need. The real world has its problems, and the unanswered job applications and missed lectures and healthcare worries will have to be faced, but a touch of comfort is needed now and then. Maybe that comfort can be found, even for a moment, from powering up an old game and remembering what may have been a more simple time.
If you need me, don’t bother texting. Log onto Webkinz. You’ll find me there.