Olivia Rodrigo and Friends Launch Secret Card Club—Inside Hollywood’s Analog Craze

Mia Reynolds, 12/29/2025Explore the resurgence of analog joys as Olivia Rodrigo and friends launch a secret card club amidst a nostalgia-fueled movement. Discover how handwritten notes, vinyl records, and manual transmissions offer a tactile connection to the past that digital experiences often lack.

There’s something to be said for those places where time doesn’t quite behave. It slows, stretches—sometimes seems to stall altogether. Places where a kid can flip through battered vinyl sleeves or an old-timer quietly unwraps a bundle of greeting cards, each envelope marked with an unmistakable scrawl. The digital world, no matter how sleek, rarely offers moments that feel this tactile, or frankly, this real.

Maybe it’s just comfort. Or perhaps, as Martin Bispels—a record shop entrepreneur with a knack for nostalgia—suggests, the draw of the past is that it feels trustworthy. "The past gives comfort. The past is knowable," he says. Nostalgia’s sepia filter glosses over the rough patches, sure, but it also stitches families together over decades. Carson Bispels, 24, inherited more than just vinyl from his dad; each listen to Bob Marley’s *Talkin’ Blues*—pops, cracks, and all—is a direct line to childhood memory. The record’s wear isn’t a flaw; it’s a signature, a heartbeat.

Cards have their own magic. Megan Evans, not yet old enough to rent a car, managed to spark a full-blown movement out of a minor rebellion: sending physical birthday cards instead of those two-second digital wishes. Her Facebook group (cheekily called “Random Acts of Cardness”) now counts more than 15,000 members. For Evans, a real card says something precious—intentional, tactile, lasting. It’s not just ink and cardstock; it’s a piece of time, handled by one set of hands and received by another. And for Billy-Jo Dieter, who’s made it something of a mission to post a hundred cards each month, that little ritual is less about fighting the tide and more about sending ripples of delight out into the world.

Now, let’s switch gears—literally. The Sohi brothers of Silicon Valley, surrounded by Teslas and autonomous everything, find satisfaction not in efficiency but in friction. Their beloved ‘94 Jeep Wrangler balks and bucks with every gear change. It can’t drive itself, not even close. And that’s the point. In the world of digital ease, wrestling a manual gearbox back into first feels, oddly enough, liberating. “You understand the car, and if you don’t handle it correctly, that car isn’t going to move,” Divjeev Sohi says, smiling through the embarrassment of a public stall.

Funny, isn’t it? The ones embracing these relics most vigorously aren’t always the expected crowd. Step inside a record shop and see Gen Z shoulders deep in crates, hunting original pressings as if they might hold the key to something lost. Pamela Paul, who penned *100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet*, nods to this “wistful longing” among digital natives. For a cohort raised on ephemeral snaps and cloud-based playlists, the tangible offers both novelty and relief.

Just last year (2024, for those keeping score), vinyl sales topped 40 million in the US alone. Not the sort of footnote one would expect in the age of streaming and relentless innovation. Manual transmissions, meanwhile, may have all but disappeared from new car lots, but for the tenacious few, that stick shift isn’t a concession to the past—it’s a handshake with the present.

There’s poetry in all these rituals. A birthday card doesn’t vanish—toss it in a shoebox, perch it on the mantle; it’ll be there, stubbornly, ten years from now. A record takes patience: drop the needle, flip sides, listen end to end without skipping. There’s a ceremony to it that Spotify just can’t replicate. As for stick shifts, every gear change is a communion with the machinery—each missed shift, a reminder that mastery is earned, not programmed.

Easy to dismiss as the hobbyhorse of sentimentalists, maybe. Yet this isn’t just some collective Luddite hiccup. The analog revival—call it a movement, if you must—seems less interested in abandoning the new than in anchoring us somewhere real as we hurtle forward. Perhaps it’s about refusing to let presence be automated out of existence.

The future, sprawling ahead in gigabytes and algorithms, isn’t going anywhere. But there’s a stubborn defiance in sending a postcard, thumbing through an old LP, or grinding gears down Main Street—and that’s what keeps the analog dream alive. The past, it turns out, isn’t just a comfort blanket. For some, it’s a road map, dog-eared and smudged, for finding something steady right now. With each crackle of Marley, every scrawled note, every successful clutch, the story rewrites itself. Not perfect, not polished—just real, in a way the cloud still struggles to imitate.

Come to think of it, maybe that’s the real miracle: not the resurgence of old technologies, but the rediscovery of slower joys they offer, tucked in the spaces technology can’t quite reach.

If you’ve ever paused on a Saturday—maybe outside a neighborhood record shop, the door cracked just enough for the echoes of Fleetwood Mac and lively conversation to slip out—you might have noticed something quietly wonderful. Through the pane, two friends pass handwritten notes and laughter, the swirl of coffee steam rising between them as the city’s digital racket hums in the background. Sure, there’s an app for almost everything these days, but in certain corners of town, analog remains king.There’s something to be said for those places where time doesn’t quite behave. It slows, stretches—sometimes seems to stall altogether. Places where a kid can flip through battered vinyl sleeves or an old-timer quietly unwraps a bundle of greeting cards, each envelope marked with an unmistakable scrawl. The digital world, no matter how sleek, rarely offers moments that feel this tactile, or frankly, this real.Maybe it’s just comfort. Or perhaps, as Martin Bispels—a record shop entrepreneur with a knack for nostalgia—suggests, the draw of the past is that it feels trustworthy. "The past gives comfort. The past is knowable," he says. Nostalgia’s sepia filter glosses over the rough patches, sure, but it also stitches families together over decades. Carson Bispels, 24, inherited more than just vinyl from his dad; each listen to Bob Marley’s *Talkin’ Blues*—pops, cracks, and all—is a direct line to childhood memory. The record’s wear isn’t a flaw; it’s a signature, a heartbeat.Cards have their own magic. Megan Evans, not yet old enough to rent a car, managed to spark a full-blown movement out of a minor rebellion: sending physical birthday cards instead of those two-second digital wishes. Her Facebook group (cheekily called “Random Acts of Cardness”) now counts more than 15,000 members. For Evans, a real card says something precious—intentional, tactile, lasting. It’s not just ink and cardstock; it’s a piece of time, handled by one set of hands and received by another. And for Billy-Jo Dieter, who’s made it something of a mission to post a hundred cards each month, that little ritual is less about fighting the tide and more about sending ripples of delight out into the world.Now, let’s switch gears—literally. The Sohi brothers of Silicon Valley, surrounded by Teslas and autonomous everything, find satisfaction not in efficiency but in friction. Their beloved ‘94 Jeep Wrangler balks and bucks with every gear change. It can’t drive itself, not even close. And that’s the point. In the world of digital ease, wrestling a manual gearbox back into first feels, oddly enough, liberating. “You understand the car, and if you don’t handle it correctly, that car isn’t going to move,” Divjeev Sohi says, smiling through the embarrassment of a public stall.Funny, isn’t it? The ones embracing these relics most vigorously aren’t always the expected crowd. Step inside a record shop and see Gen Z shoulders deep in crates, hunting original pressings as if they might hold the key to something lost. Pamela Paul, who penned *100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet*, nods to this “wistful longing” among digital natives. For a cohort raised on ephemeral snaps and cloud-based playlists, the tangible offers both novelty and relief.Just last year (2024, for those keeping score), vinyl sales topped 40 million in the US alone. Not the sort of footnote one would expect in the age of streaming and relentless innovation. Manual transmissions, meanwhile, may have all but disappeared from new car lots, but for the tenacious few, that stick shift isn’t a concession to the past—it’s a handshake with the present.There’s poetry in all these rituals. A birthday card doesn’t vanish—toss it in a shoebox, perch it on the mantle; it’ll be there, stubbornly, ten years from now. A record takes patience: drop the needle, flip sides, listen end to end without skipping. There’s a ceremony to it that Spotify just can’t replicate. As for stick shifts, every gear change is a communion with the machinery—each missed shift, a reminder that mastery is earned, not programmed.Easy to dismiss as the hobbyhorse of sentimentalists, maybe. Yet this isn’t just some collective Luddite hiccup. The analog revival—call it a movement, if you must—seems less interested in abandoning the new than in anchoring us somewhere real as we hurtle forward. Perhaps it’s about refusing to let presence be automated out of existence.The future, sprawling ahead in gigabytes and algorithms, isn’t going anywhere. But there’s a stubborn defiance in sending a postcard, thumbing through an old LP, or grinding gears down Main Street—and that’s what keeps the analog dream alive. The past, it turns out, isn’t just a comfort blanket. For some, it’s a road map, dog-eared and smudged, for finding something steady right now. With each crackle of Marley, every scrawled note, every successful clutch, the story rewrites itself. Not perfect, not polished—just real, in a way the cloud still struggles to imitate.Come to think of it, maybe that’s the real miracle: not the resurgence of old technologies, but the rediscovery of slower joys they offer, tucked in the spaces technology can’t quite reach.