Caught in a prolonged post-revolutionary crisis and bereft of a future to look up to, growing groups of middle-class Egyptians adopt Facebook to mobilize vintage images of what they frame as “al-zaman al-gamīl” or the “good old days”. This dissertation examines these nostalgic online communities that, under the extreme depoliticization of the Egyptian public sphere, decided to fashion themselves as “apolitical” spaces, refraining from defining their nostalgia with any historical periodisation or political regime. Instead, they define their nostalgia as directed towards a bygone moral and social order that once provided Egypt with stability and an authentic identity.

Elsherif argues that this nostalgic discourse is not only a means of resisting or escaping a harsh political reality and difficult economic conditions. By sharing images of the “good old days” online, users give form to a distinct social imaginary of the ideal citizen and the ideal nation. They also point towards the possibility of a different future by the way of a detour to the past. In this dissertation is demonstrated how this online nostalgic discourse is co-produced through the interplay of three main constituents: (1) the users with their ideologies, (2) the vintage images of the past that are redefined online, and (3) the platform with its neoliberal logic and complex affordances that shape how users and images interact. Elsherif offers an online ethnography exploring the digital lives and imaginaries of the members, and especially the initiators of these Facebook communities.

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