Do you think 2013 is a lot different from 2003 or about the same?
2003 still has a lot of a leftover kind of 90s feel to it but other than that, the cars were similar, the slang was similar, the Internet and cell phones already owned our lives. Sure they weren’t as advanced but 2003 still had that “tech is advancing so fast, gotta get the latest gadget” vibe to it so the zeitgeist was essentially the same.
Fashion in the early 2000s was less colourful because the grunge movement still had an influence, but still broadly the same – pea coats and ugg boots might not have been in vogue yet, but nobody would berate you for wearing clothing from 2003.
It seems like the major differences are technology-related. Smartphones as we know them didn’t exist in 2003, we have PDAs and dumb phones but they weren’t combined together yet. Most Internet access was still by dial up, online gaming was only just starting to emerge from nerddom to the mainstream.
In 2003, you’d listen to Linkin Park on wor CD player, today you listen to Linkin Park on wor iPod nano. In 2003 you’d watch South Park on Comedy Central and TIVO it if you missed it, today in 2013 you pirate the latest South Park episodes with a torrent.
The technology is different but the culture seems stagnant. I mean sure, people aren’t still listening to Ja Rule and Ashanti but there’s almost nothing that’s truly dated about 2003 in general aside from old 80s and 90s things that were still somewhat around then but are totally gone now.
Or maybe you’re growing up with the culture and if you spent time with people significantly younger or older than you, you’d suddenly realize how different they are culturally.
The technology changes created a lot of the so-called “stagnation” in culture. When you can buy whatever you want song by song and/or get it from other channels, you aren’t forced to get your culture from the mass market any more (you could before but it was much more work), and are able to delve into whatever era, genre, and popularity of culture you want. So nothing really fades away, and relatively little becomes megapopular anymore since the pop culture is so fragmented.
This, however, is in itself a change in culture.
In addition, the 2010’s are only 2-3 years old. There were still hair band hits in 1992! So of course there will still be pop punk, indie, and garage music still around in 2012.
There was a huge and immediate shift on 9/1//2001. The effects of that are still being felt today. That alone delineates a clear break that separates the first year and 3/4ths in that range from the rest.
Dub-step? (Only half joking–yes, I know that was late 90s, technically, but it seems not to have hit the mainstream until the 10s).
For me, the whole social media and general immediacy of pop culture is the biggest difference between 2013 and 2003. Add to that digital photography, which now you only need a phone to do, and culture is a lot more immediate, and the creation and dissemination of “culture” is a lot more accessible to everyone, if that makes sense.
Yeh, I think you could drop most people back in 2003 and they would feel right at home for about 20 minutes until they decide to use their iPhone to see what their friends are up to on Facebook.
I tend to count things more in terms of when they became popular vs. when they were actually invented. So I would count dubstep as a difference but then again it’s just an extension of the EDM/rave culture that’s been around since circa 1988.
But you can keep peeling back, culturally, if you want to. What about arguing that EDM is an extension of electro or house or disco? They all build on one another.
ETA: And I see Ludovic has long since beaten me to the point.
What are the big cultural milestones musically for you in the last thirty years or so? For me there’s only really a couple: rap/hip-hop and electronica, both closely related.
If we were energetic and organized, we’d do one of these “how is this year different from 10 years ago?” threads every year. It might be kind of interesting to see the slow crawl of progress from the perspective of this message board.
Yeah, for me 2013-2003 is probably more different than 2003-1993. It depends on what I’m concentrating on, but day-to-day life is more different in the most recent decade than the decade before that.
Yep, and that’s the only context I’ve ever heard “the Noughties,” on UK TV. It’s possible we use it in the US, just my circle of friends doesn’t use it.
What about some of my t-shirts from the late 90’s, are those still ok?..because I haven’t stopped wearing them.
To get back to the question. I know we’ve had this debate many times, but I in the camp that things have slowed down a bit. Would someone from 1965 wear the same clothes that they wore as a teenager in 1955? I don’t know, but I get he vibe that it wouldn’t be as acceptable.
I don’t even know how to define the 90s. Apart from a few significant cultural shifts, such as the dawn of the Internet (or the WWW at least, nitpickers) and the rise of cellphones, I can’t think of anything that makes it immediately recognisable. No hairstyles*, no clothing choices, no colour combinations, really makes it distinctive. Even music; For all the talk of “grunge” music, I cannot for the life of me figure out what that is. It just sounds like “hard rock” to me, which had been around for at least a decade earlier, and is still hanging around now.
So the 2000s just feel like a continuation of that, and we’re just inside a further continuation still. There are no distinctive iconic things that define the decades for me.
*Except maybe men with goatees and ponytails. Like I did.