Based on fashion, music, television, internet, movies, technology, culture in general, etc., would you say the late '00s, being 2007-2009 or so, belong more with the early '10s (2010-2013) or early '00s (2000-2003)? I would personally say that the late '00s belong more with the early '10s because of the music of the time, explosion of the social networking, TV shows like Breaking Bad and 7th generation gaming --but then, then of course Smartphone was a huge deal, and many of the stuff from the early '00s carried over to the late '00s…anyway I’d definitely want to hear other opinions, so what do you say?
My opinion is that change in general has been slowing during the course of my life. Access has gotten much faster but actual differences in things like fashion and culture become something more of a blurring than a line. Most of the real change, real things new, are more in repeating the past such as the plethora of remakes being offered by Hollywood. This is a long way of saying that 2001, 2009 or 2016 it all pretty much looks the same to me; I can just get a broad look at it easier and faster.
Cultural decades and calendar decades don’t align very well, and there usually isn’t a sharp cultural change from one decade to the next measured either way. The 60s had a rapid change starting in 1963 with the assassination of JFK, followed by the arrival or the Beatles. The culture of the 60s ran into the 70s. The 1980s were a case where calendar and culture aligned, the election of Reagan followed the turmoil at the end of the 70s at the same time as the emergence of new technology like videotape and cable TV. I’d say that social networking did jump up in the late 00s, but it wasn’t an enormous change from the capability that had been growing since the 90s.
The late 00s are marked by two things in my mind: the start of the Great Recession and the election of President Obama.
The early 00s are marked by 9/11 and Dubya.
With those parameters alone, it’s clear to me that the late 00s were much more like then '10s than the are the early 00s. But it’s also evident technology-wise. In the early 00s, people were all abuzz about iMacs and iPods. “Social media” wasn’t even a thing. If you wanted a funny video clip, you’d go to a place like ebaum. Not Youtube. And smartphones weren’t even a thing. Hell, even camera phones were a novelty. Movers and shakers had Blackberries, but no one was really texting people.
But by the late 2000s, just about everyone around me had a social media presence and was into texting.
Consider Hurricane Katrina–which happened in the summer of 2005. If it had happened just a year later–when Twitter was created–it would seem like a more recent event. But instead, I have it in the same mental box as 9/11.
I’d say closer to early 10s. It’s hard to imagine a time before smartphones, facebook, twitter, etc, but that was the early 00s. There’s a cultural split around 2005-6.
Good point. I’d say though that the end of the cultural '80’s wasn’t until a little later in the 1990’s when home internet access became a major thing around 1996 and 1997. The 1980’s cultural era was “wired” but not really “online” as we would define it today. It was the era of floppy disk sharing, occasionally dialing into a BBS for a special occasion, video game consoles, and of course coin-operated video arcades at the mall (the go-to nerd destination for much of the era). Online multiplayer gaming shot up in popularity in the late 1990’s.
There were a lot of musicians whose career spanned the late 1980’s and early 1990’s that really typified the era, such as Michael Jackson, MC Hammer, Prince, and Madonna.
There are two photographs about of President Obama’s two inaugurations, taken from the perspective of the audience (I had a quick look via Google but can’t find them). In the earlier one, in 2009, only a few people are recording the event with smartphones. In the second photograph, in 2013, pretty much everyone in the audience ahead of the photographer is recording the event using a smartphone. One indicator, perhaps that 2009 is closer to the early 2000s than the 2010s. I think everyone thinks smartphone were endemic in the late 2000s when really only almost universal adoption came in the 2010s.
definitely more like the early 2010s. the early 2000s still looked like the 90s for an untrained eye.
not to mention, this is common sense, because 2008 is closer to 2012 than it is to 2002.
if your question was “are the late 2000s more like the mid 2010s or the early 2000s”, it would be more legit and compelling one.