Resolved: 2001-2020 will not be distinctly remembered for style and pop culture

In My Humble Opinion
21

I think you’re right. The elimination of distinctions is a big deal. But it’s still the elimination of distinctions.

You mean you think the difference between 2018 and 1958 really isn’t that big?

I think there is a key fact that will result in our time period receiving an very outsized place in human history: we have lived through the dawn of audiovisual pop culture. The Beatles are going to be just as foundational 300 years from now as they are today. The linear view is that some band will come along in, say, 2062 and be the new Beatles! And people will then forget the old Beatles as obsolete.

But that’s not what history shows us happening. Rather, there tend to be foundational artists in a medium, and they are recognized as the major ones forever, until the canon is more or less closed and new participants are ignored. Example, which is a bigger deal to people now, in 2018: 19th century art (painting, sculpture, etc.) or 21st century art? Personally, I love “contemporary” art, but to most people, “real” art is 16th-20th century work, with the sweet spot being 1850-1950. People haven’t moved on, and current stuff just doesn’t register in their world.

22

This is a good point in and of itself. While it might be hard to pin down recent fashion and music to specific decades … the use of certain aspects of communication technology has fallen into an interestingly tidy temporal line:

Early 1990s – For all intents and purposes, no Internet – BBSs and such were niche hobbies akin to ham radio. Plenty of beepers but barely any cell phones (for pretty much everyone)

Mid 1990s – The dawn of the ‘popular’ Internet. Usenet is popular among the rising number of people who do go online. Cell phones starting to get used in business applications. Beepers declining slowly.

Late 1990s – AOL, Microsoft, Apple, et al, get the Internet into Average Joe & Jane’s household. Most people get their first e-mail accounts. Chat rooms become a big thing. Yahoo and others familiarize people with the search engine. The rise and fall of Napster. Cell phones explode. Beepers essentially disappear.

Early 2000s – The Internet is fully entrenched into American culture. Google gains relevance as a search engine par excellence. Netflix begins online movie rental. Cell phone texting becomes a thing. Devices like the Palm Pilot and Blackberry are developed.

Mid-2000s – Social media takes root with the emergence of MySpace and YouTube. Wikipedia gains critical mass. Texting is pretty well entrenched. Flip phones become the norm, with sufficient screen size for games, e-mail, and limited web browsing.

Late 2000s – Facebook and Twitter are born, while MySpace nosedives. YouTube celebrities begin to come out of the woodwork. The iPhone and other smartphones are released, gaining cultural traction and market share at a breakneck pace. Blackberries gain their max market share, then begin declining.

2010s – Facebook goes atomic, poised to be the decade’s cultural touchstone as shorthand for “social media pervasiveness”. Instagram and Snapchat blow up. YouTube becomes a legitimate path to ‘mainstream’ fame – either through the online medium itself or after jumping to TV or movies. The touchscreen smartphone revolution is completed – Apple, Samsung, and Google are winners; Blackberry-type devices are losers. Netflix offers streaming content, followed shortly after by original content outside of the broadcast and cable network system. Cable television subscribers “cut the cord” in significant numbers, opting for the (for now) less expensive and more customizable streaming television services.

…

And that’s skipping over a lot of other bits of technology that are culturally significant both on their own and through synergy with several items mentioned above. HD TVs, then Smart TVs (introducing many households to streaming TV), and now 4K TVs. Video game systems such as the Nintendo Wii and the Microsoft X-Box that facilitate streaming video. The interior experience of 2010s automobiles is radically different than it was in 1990s cars for sure – back-up cameras, various anti-collision sensors, automatic braking, automatic parking, satellite radio, etc.

In sum: it may just be that what class of things count as significant cultural touchstones differ from decade to decade. So while the 2000s, say, doesn’t have it’s glaringly obvious fashions or music … the decade does instead have its ubiquitous-then-gone technological artifacts to serve as a socio-cultural binding.

23

Sure, in 2018. And perhaps for a while, when my children’s entertainment consumption is influenced by nostalgia for stuff that was around in 2018 when they were a kid. But I think the difference will largely be of academic interest at the end of the century and beyond, with the popular view of both 1958 and 2018 getting more and more intermingled into a confused mass of “old timey” things.

Maybe. You say that we’ve lived through the dawn of audiovisual pop culture, but who is “we”? :wink:

I was born in 1979, so I might argue that this “dawn” was before my time. But couldn’t someone listening to the Beatles as a kid argue the same? Radio and recorded music was popular before then, and most of that stuff is lost to the popular consciousness. The Beatles still live because many people remember them fondly and I think the evolutionary path between what they did and what more modern musicians are doing is still relatively short and easy to casually digest. But when it’s 20 “steps” of influence back … I’m not so sure. It is plausible to me that it would be so different to its future day evolution that it won’t have popular resonance outside of academic study.

There are exceptions of course. We still put on Shakespeare plays and admire paintings from previous centuries. People still seek out classical music. But it seems pretty niche compared to “pop culture”. And I’d really be surprised if any significant number of people 300 years from now are listening to or watching anything recorded in the 20th or 21st century.

24

I’m not sure that any specific brand of phone or game system is going to define the era from a pop culture perspective. Useful for deducing the year the show was made if you have an aversion to reading copyright dates? Sure. Defining the era to later generations? No.

Similarly, the specifics of yearly fashion trends are going to get washed together into a big generality. And will that generality be as distinct and iconic as that of, say, the sixties, seventies, or eighties? I’d say no. T-shirts and jeans, or no particularly extreme style, have been common fashion for at least two decades, with no indication that they’re going away soon. Details come and go but they don’t define the decade.

And I think there’s a very good reason things have become homogenous - more than ever before we’re able to look to the past for our entertainment and cultural influences. People watch, not just what’s on TV now, but what was on TV ten, twenty, thirty, and forty years ago - and those eras all are influencing our modern culture. The modern pop culture icons that everyone recognizes are Star Wars, Superheroes, Transformers, My Little Pony - all stuff from the seventies, eighties, or earlier. Back to the Future, James Bond, Jumanji - as far as hollywood is concerned this is the nostalgia era. The defining property of the 2010s is that it’s the 1980s.

I admit I follow the TV and music scenes a lot less closely, but I get the impression that while there is new stuff being made, the old stuff isn’t going away. All this has the effect of making modern style a patchwork of prior styles - or the average of them. Which isn’t going to do much for putting a distinct face on the era.

25

As an aside, this is always something that disrupted my suspension of disbelief in Star Trek, The Next Generation episodes. They seemed implausibly obsessed with 20th century and earlier culture, as if people had just stopped making art after the show’s air date. Like seriously, a 24th century crew is gonna socialize in a 300 year old simulation of 1940s noir? So lame!

I get why the show did that (cynically, I might think that their scripts were based on whatever surplus costumes were available in the studio closet), and often trying to make up what future culture looks like is cringe worthy, but I really wish they would have dropped this.

26

You gave a really good summary, but I think, at the end of the day, it will all be digested down to, “People started getting cell phones in the late 90s, and the iPhone arrived in 2007,” and, “People started getting home computers in the late 70s, they really took off in the 90s,” and, “People started going online in the 80s but it really took off in the mid-90s, and it was a core part of life from 2000 onward.”

I’m not sure that any element of style in all that will stand out much, which to me is regrettable but understandable. Even now, the details seem fuzzy (I think) to most people, whereas something like a '57 Chevy Bel Air is still a stylistic standout.

27

It’s possible that the non-distinct style and pop culture of the past few decades will continue for a while, because I think a lot of it is driven by the fragmentation of media.

Dominant style and pop culture is driven by a dominant culture. But social media means that there isn’t really an obvious dominant culture, there are lots of little subcultures. What remains of the mainstream subculture is coasting on inertia, but there’s lots of variation at the extremes.

The difference is that while more extreme sub-cultures were subsumed into the dominant culture in the past, now they often just stay sub-cultures.

Nostalgia reins because it’s an echo of a time there actually was a cohesive central culture. Everybody saw Star Wars.

These days, I don’t even watch the same TV shows as my close friends. I have to go online to find someone to talk to about them.

I think that the iPhone-led smartphone will stand out as the dominant cultural influence. It was an inflection point where the dominant computing device became a truly personal device with a human-touch interface. That’s going to stick with us for a while, and the social repercussions have been massive and will be even more massive in the future.

28

nonsense. you just think there’s nothing notable or “distinct” about things now because it’s what you’re immersed in. it’s the norm. just like some Americans will whine about how we have “no culture.” we absolutely do, you’ve just grown up in it. anything different seems exotic and “cultured.”

29

I remember life in the 1970s and 1980s, and there definitely was a great sense then of a unique “now” in terms of pop culture, a great sense of things changing and that being important.

30

If you see a tool in a scarf and no heavy winter coat you’ll date them the the 20teens. They probably don’t even know what a Namek is.

Then there is the faux-hawk and man-bob that I will not be able to explain to future generations.
Beards have come back and I think it’s a horrible example of our trend to primitivism, like piercings and tattoos. It stands in contrast to our expectations where we thought of the year 2000 as the epitome of the future and expected modernism.
With beards I admit to taking advantage of this when having to be out in really cold weather, followed by laziness, followed by “hell, is that what I look like? grow it back!” followed by laziness.

The biggest tell is our cell phones. That is a legitimate fashion trend. It went from phones that kept getting smaller only to be replaced by smart phones that keep getting bigger. It’s gotten to the point where cell phone cases should have shoulder straps. But now we have smart watches and will have to wait and see if they are really replacements or just phone accessories.

And then there is popular music, which has lost almost all musicality. I hope this will be looked at as a dark age and not an age of classics.

31

Not to mention, the further you get from an era, the harder it becomes to discern details. I think I’ve posted about this before, but here goes…

– In 1986, give or take, I saw a group photo of the girls’ choir at my high school, from 1972. “They’re all wearing the same dress!” I said, “No, they’re not,” said Mrs. M., who was in the photo. “See, mine has a floral pattern, hers is solid-colored, hers is paisley, hers is striped…” And there were differences in sleeve length and collar. But to me, they were all the same dress because the cut was the same*. The hemlines matched up, almost to the millimeter.

– About ten years ago, I found a photo of my MIL’s grandmother, taken when she was eighteen, in the 1880s. “She looks like Laura Ingalls Wilder!” I said. High-necked dress with lace around the collar, hair pinned up and bangs curled. To me, they looked the same, but I’d wager that if Laura and Sydney had met around the time the photo was taken, neither would have thought they looked like the other.

– A year or so ago, I was going through photos I took when I was in college. At the time, I thought we all looked different. Now, all I see is us girls with cardigans over cotton dresses, and the guys with jeans and flannels over t-shirts. And the guys’ hair is so floppy, I wonder how they could see.

Point is, all those eras had their own style, but it doesn’t take much time for a signature look to become a uniform.

*That’s one style that I think works in every era. It came back once, in the mid-nineties, but went away again. I just wish I knew what it was called. But I think you know what I mean? Loosely defined waistline, skirt above the knee. It wasn’t baggy, but it was loose enough so that someone who was small on top didn’t have too much attention called to that fact, someone who was big on top didn’t get squashed, and everyone’s midriff was given a lot of leeway. Unless your legs were truly horrible, it presented everyone in the best light.

32

A few that still exist, but also were part of big fads that we may later strongly identify with one era:

Kids wearing something with angry birds, minions or emojis on it.

T-shirts with (only) an attempted funny statement across the front.

Ringtones.
The whole thing of searching for some clip that perfectly encapsulates “you” and letting it play for a few seconds so everyone around you can hear it…has basically died IME (thankfully).
It’s more of a “that’ll do” situation now.

Fidget spinners.
I mean obviously now is a great time to invest in fidget spinners, as their popularity will only increase :wink:

33

Yes. About 10 years ago everybody had unique ringtones. These days you select one out of a list in your smartphone. Or just stick with the standard. Its actually musing when a phone rings in a public place, to see half a dozen people check as if its their phone.

:dubious:
Kidding me? Lets see

  1. Want to listen to a song? Buy it on a physical medium. Can’t play it on YouTube for free.
  2. Order takeout? Call from a landline phone to a fixed address. Pay cash to the guy when he shows up.
  3. Send a message to someone? Call them on the phone. Or send a letter. Send documents? Have to post them. Maybe fax. Can’t just send him a softcopy and be done with it.
  4. Want to watch your favourite show? Watch it when it airs. See it on repeat. No streaming. And if you want to watch foreign shows, fuggut about it.
  5. For a teenager, watching porn? I dunno, did they even have pornography in those days? :smiley:
  6. Photos need to be developed, you can’t see how they came out. And sharing, means an album. A physical album.
  7. Ask people for directions or use a map.
  8. Have to trudge to a physical library to do research, can’t look it up on Google.
  9. Cannot buy stuff from all four corners of the globe, hope your local store or mall carries it, or do something, something with a catalouge, no one has been able to explain to me how that works.

1985 had electricty, otherwise, I think it was basically the dark ages.

34

Maybe not to the exact year, but to within 5 years of 1817 you have the start of Beethoven’s late period works, signalling the full flowering of the Romantic era in classical music, and around 1917 you had the beginnings of both jazz and blues, with Louis Armstrong and W.C. Handy writing and recording.

As well, the 1910s had the first full-length feature films, and avant-garde music like the Rite Of Spring.

Probably the main difference between those things and cultural changes from the 50s onwards is that the latter have more relation to current culture.

35

I dealt with this in a thread specifically about this a few years ago, but I think the point is being missed about Back to the Future and 1985/1955 vs. 2018/1985.

The technology differences between now and 1985 are indeed bigger than between 1985 and 1955. But BttF wasn’t about that; it was about cultural differences.

I saw that movie in the theater when I was 14 and my parents were in their early 40s. Their generation absolutely felt that level of nostalgia about the 1950s and felt it was a world away, and that’s how it seemed to us kids as well. It was a very different, more innocent, more fun, more livable, and more hopeful time (cue someone saying, “But there was racism!”). People in the 1980s thought that.

I’m now in my 40s, and I have zero nostalgia for the 80s other than to note that there was some good music. I think very few people in my generation want to go back. It wasn’t a horrible time, but neither was it particularly great, and despite the technological advantages of today that AK84 duly noted, it doesn’t feel that different. Or rather, it feels like today with just shittier technology and a lot of really bad hair.

In the 80s, I actually idolized the 70s, which were different from the 50s but still had more of that spirit of fun. And, looking back, I don’t fault myself for feeling that way at all, as the 80s were culturally different from the 70s but really had no technological advantages that the average person could experience. (Admittedly, we got our first PC in 1985, but it was, big whoop.)

As a person who lived through both the 70s and 80s, the 70s were really different than today, the 80s were not. And the 90s basically still feel like today before 9/11, economic collapse, and Trump ruined everything.

36

But note that this is a different proposition than the OP.

The people who are saying the 2000s and 2010s don’t have a clear cultural identity, are the *first *to say that the 80s and 90s did have iconic fashions, music, art etc.

If you’re saying everything post-70s is just a mush, then that’s a different claim, and starts to suggest to me how big the psychology component is here.

37

This is more tied to technology, but I wonder if the personal device craze will come to an end or if it bell become more ingrained. Not that we won’t still do the things we do with them, but that there may be a better delivery mechanism than a handheld LED screen. Maybe future generations will look back and marvel about that aspect of the 2010s.
But as far as fashion and style, yeah not much as changed in 20 years. The only way you’d know **Friends ** or **Seinfeld **was an old show is that it’s not in high definition. I was just watching a 2nd seas episode of The Office last night and thinking, “man this was like 12 years ago.” Hair styles, clothes, even car styles are practically the same over a decade later.

38

It certainly will depend on the individual’s desire to know. Classical music can seem like a big mush, but even a little knowledge starts to sort things rather neatly into periods. And then classical music essentially ends in the 1950s, so there is a limited amount of major stuff to know anyway. For the 20th century, the whole pre-War/post-War thing is a rather handy mnemonic. Etc.

Everyone currently alive. The world’s oldest person was born in 1900, so that gets us back to, sheesh, the McKinley administration! Hard to believe. But a decent number of people alive today were alive when “talkies” started appearing in 1927. Decent audio recordings were barely a decade old at that point (stuff from the 1920s can sound clear as a bell, but stuff before 1920 tends to suck, at least in terms of production). It’s all quite recent, really.

I think otherwise, and here’s why. Look at the arc of classical music. I am a big Schoenberg fan, but serialism basically killed classical music. It became something too recondite for the masses. So it actually ended. There’s only so far you can go, since the human ear and brain are not going to change significantly over the near term. Are there any popular music genres yet to be invented–major ones that a significant portion of the population will recognize and get into? I don’t think so. We’ve pushed hardness, funkiness, noisiness, etc., to the limit. Analogy: Can anything in visual art seem as wild as Jackson Pollack’s splatters in the 1950? Has anything come along since then? Nope. Maybe some art has been thematically uglier, more shocking, but that was in essence the limit.

I am NOT saying that good, original art cannot be made any more. There are a zillion more catchy songs to write. The point is that we are out of trends in the arts. The result is canon closure. People will be reading Keats 200 years from now, but they won’t be reading any poet from 2018. We don’t have famous, influential poets any more.

Well, I think you are pointing out that there are some closed canons that we continue to value in the aggregate.

I gotta disagree. People will be listening and watching precisely because the content is foundational. Want rock? Then listen to 50s-70s rock for the “real deal.” Etc.

39

IMO your point of view is very “Boomer-centric.”

40

Explain?

And I am 46. Solid Gen X.