Then, out of the blue this year, “5 Years Time” made a comeback as the soundtrack to a climactic moment in the new “Superman.” The seventeen-year-old mandolin-and-violin tune that millennials played with anticipatory nostalgia during college is now accompanying social-media video clips about the DC Universe, its cringe wholly recuperated as commodi... See more

Millennial commenters express a desire to rewind to that era of their lives; younger posters wish that they could have lived through it in the first place. Like “Home,” these other relics hark back to an unencumbered life outside of our performative digital panopticon. As a bit of internet-vernacular wisdom puts it, “I am cringe but I am free.”