Anastasia Brown

The second-floor meeting room on Pennsylvania Avenue is unassuming, but it’s filling up fast when I walk in on Sunday morning. Young mothers in long floral dresses are assembling well-scrubbed toddlers on the rows of seats, men (in suit and tie) chat near the doorway, coffee cups in hand. I am seated next to a couple of other reporters, who take notes throughout the service.  It involves the sequence of a traditional Presbyterian liturgy: the Lord’s Prayer, hymns accompanied by piano and a scripture reading.

One of my friends has never made her own playlist. “I just get on Spotify and use what the algorithm has made for me,” she says. “If I’m in a good mood, I ask for a ‘happy playlist’.”  Then again, I also have friends who are going out of their way to make life less easy. Three of them recently purchased flip phones with no internet connection. Others have bought digital cameras to lug along to every event. CDs are popping up in the center consoles of some of their cars.  Even ‘purchasing’ a movie or TV show on a streaming platform doesn’t guarantee your ownership Is this just an extreme extension of the Y2K aesthetic that has overtaken Instagram feeds?