I just re-watched Juno on a plane a few days ago, and I was surprised that it actually feels a bit dated to me now. That movie came out in what, 2005 or 2006 thereabouts? Of course there was the technology, like everyone using landline phones. Juno would never have her novelty hamburger phone today. And looking at ads in a print copy of the Penny Saver. I suppose Craigslist is kind of the new Penny Saver in a way. But also there was just the style of the movie. That purposely low quality animation in the opening sequence seems more like a 2000s and late-1990s thing. And there’s the way Juno speaks. I know she was supposed to be someone who marches to her own drummer, but still the slang she uses felt more 2000s than 2010s.
Yep, exactly. The styles are very different. Look at a movie like Mean Girls or the aforementioned Juno and compare it to young people are wearing today. Speaking of Juno, the 2000s were a decade where Michael Cera could be a relatively famed actor.
I think there a strange this is what dork-cool looks like sort of vibe with Cera. Which is just really humorous right now.
It was also the era of the manic pixie dream girl, which hasn’t completely disappeared, but is far far less of a thing (thankfully).
Rather than come up with a sound bite description, I’m going to divide it into broad categories.
Politically, the noughts were when political parties continued to become more polarized. There was less cooperation, and more “dark money”. Terrorism became a major concern, and rightly so, but people were naive about privacy and security.
Economically, it was an era of misplaced optimism. The real estate and stock markets kept going up, until they didn’t.
Culturally, it was a hodgepodge of earlier trends, as computing became mainstream and nostalgia became digitally accessible.
Socially, people were starting to use more technology, but were not yet in isolated bubbles or slaves to their telephones and social media.
It seemed like a more optimistic time than the glum 90s.
What comes after “postmodern?” I say 2000 was the first year of the cyberzoic period – it sounds profound and it’s got “cyber” in it. It implies but is not definitely committed to the coming singularity.
I think this is a really good point. Add to that the “I love the 80s/70s/90s” shows and “Worlds dumbest” shows…those all scream 2000s.
I personally found the 90s the most optimistic decade of my lifetime, speaking as an American. Cold War just ended, economy was booming, web browsers were invented and the internet just got introduced to the average person. It seemed a time with endless possibilities–the thread of the Cold War over, money to be made, and the world’s information at our fingertips. Then, a lot of that optimism came to a crashing halt with the bursting of the dot com bubble, the events of 9/11, the housing market crash, the deep recession.
It’s hard for me to find more optimism in the 00s than the 90s.
I was a teenager in the 2000s. I agree with what a lot of people said, but to throw in a few more pop culture references, I think of the 2000s as the age of hip hop music, self-tanning, and AOL Instant Messenger.
Yeah, that was a bizarre statement. The '90s were glum? The '00s were *more *optimistic? The fuck? The 2000s had barely started when we had 9/11. I don’t know how someone could possibly say the 2000s was an optimistic decade. The 1990s is the *last *optimistic decade before it all turned to terrorism, war & pessimism in the 2000s.
nm
I spent most of the 90s in higher education and had a wonderful time, personally.
But the music of the 1990s was largely grunge. Only a few people listened to EDM and Britpop. Hip hop and rap became popular a little later in the decade.
But, yeah, politically every decade since the 70s has been getting a little more unfriendly. Terrorism, however, did not define the 00s. And the terrorists did not win much.
How did it not? Terrorism (the fear of it, the fight against it, etc.) was a Big Deal in the 2000s.
All of those “I Love the 2000s” type shows had as their main focus 9/11, Bush, Iraq, Al Qaeda, etc.
Agreed. It was one of the defining moments, like it or not (and I understand now wanting to give the terrorists the credit) of the 2000s. I mean, one of the names for Gen Z is the Homeland Generation – it was that defining a moment. We went from having no existential threat after the end of the Cold War in the 90s, to having the War on Terrorism replace the Cold War in the 00s. The 90s were a time where we felt (or at least I and all my peers did) that the world was back on track, nothing but sunshine and roses ahead, and then 9/11 hit (along with all the other events in my post.) Now it’s back to War on Terror, Russia being an enemy, China being an existential threat, North Korea playing games, etc. These sorts of worries were largely absent from the 90s.
It’s hard to reduce a whole decade to a few points. Of course, 9/11 was an unprecedented event with a lot of influence on politics, government policy, law and foreign policy. It was one of the defining events of the decade.
But what were the terrorists trying to accomplish? To sow disorder, to turn Americans against their Moslem neighbours, to attract imitators and overturn the world order in the name of misguided dogma. The lesson is that these things didn’t happen. That they were remarkably few other terrorist events in America and none in my country of Canada. That thousands of professionals did their jobs to maintain the peace. That terrorism proved ineffective, despite constant anxiety and fearmongering from the media and politicians.
Sowing disorder had to wait a few years for a new president.