PANAJI
Leather jackets, wide collars, voluminous hair, vintage cars and the unmistakable swagger of a bygone era -- the 1980s are back. At least on Goa’s political social media feeds.
What began as a playful AI trend has quickly turned into a full-blown nostalgia wave, with Instagram and X flooded with photographs of people transformed into their 1980s avatars. And Goa’s political class has hardly been immune to the retro fever.
The trend began with users feeding their photographs into ChatGPT and other AI tools, asking them to recreate the look and feel of photographs shot on film cameras in the 1980s. Unlike a conventional filter that merely changes colours, AI goes several steps further, altering hairstyles, clothes, backgrounds, facial details and even expressions to make the subject look as though they have stepped straight out of an old photograph.
Chief Minister Pramod Sawant was among the first Goan political figures to embrace the trend. Sharing his AI makeover, Sawant posted: “Back to the 80s, where style had attitude.”
And the makeover certainly delivered on the promise.
The Chief Minister appears in the quintessential 1980s Bollywood-hero mould- a dark leather jacket worn over a cream, wide-collared shirt, high-waisted trousers and a broad belt. Side-parted, voluminous hair, a vintage car and warm, faded film tones complete the picture, giving the image the feel of a still from an old Bollywood blockbuster.
Soon, others followed. Ministers Digambar Kamat and Ramesh Tawadkar, MLAs Vijai Sardesai, Jit Arolkar and Viresh Borkar, and Union Minister of State Shripad Naik joined the retro parade. BJP Goa president Damodar Naik and Congress president Girish Chodankar were among the other political figures to embrace their AI-era avatars.
But, as with most things on social media, the fun did not remain entirely innocent.
The Congress and AAP turned the nostalgia trend into political ammunition, posting AI-generated 1980s-style photographs of Chief Minister Sawant, Health Minister Vishwajit Rane, Power Minister Sudin Dhavalikar, Revenue Minister Babush Monserrate and PWD Minister Digambar Kamat -- this time portraying them as some of the famous villains of 1980s cinema.
The post predictably triggered a wave of reactions, with one recurring quip capturing the mood: “Goa’s villains are more effective than Bollywood dons.”
The AAP Goa unit turned the ruling party’s retro imagery on its head, dubbing it “80s trend went wrong” and portraying Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and other BJP leaders in a stylised “80s Gundaraj” poster.
The retro fever has not been restricted to Goa either. At the national level, Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal joined the trend with an AI-generated 1980s portrait, captioning it “Vibing to the 80s trend.” Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Union Minister Chirag Paswan have also shared their own throwback-inspired AI images.
For a generation that remembers the 80s - and another that knows it largely through old films, music and fashion reels - the trend offers a curious digital time machine.
