Abstract
This article discusses the emergence and prevalence of a prospective nostalgic narrative of present events articulated through the practices of selfies and GoPro-ing as instances of anticipatory future yearning, colloquially identified as nowstalgia. The compound term collapses past, present, and future into a deeply complex temporal construct, as the object of such a yearning is but a possibility that is waiting to happen or, at best, one that is taking place in the present.
Using a critical cultural approach, the article proposes nowstalgia as an analytical tool for the exploration of selfies and GoPro-ing as moments of active construction of a presumably valorized past-in-the-making. The conditions of production of nowstalgic narratives hinge, the author argues, on the abstraction or removal of the subject from the present actions and situations in which they are immersed, in favor of documenting them, which becomes justified by their possible yearning in the future.