My vote goes to avocado toast, EDM dance parties, the wellness craze, and the Kardashians.
What’s a “wellness craze?”
and…reported for forum change.
Trump & the rise of the alt-right.
To say, “avocado toast” is really just to say, “Instagram” – and if you don’t understand that, then you haven’t been paying enough attention. It could have been any food. The medium was the message.
[Moderating]
Since this is all opinion, rather than fact, let’s move it over to IMHO, our forum for opinions.
And what’s avocado toast and EDM dance parties [unfortunately I have heard of the Kardashians–but memory of them certainly won’t last.]
I agree about Trump and the alt-right.
Climate change is the really big issue which really seriously got noticed by a large chunk of the population only in this decade. And unfortunately this is also in retrospect going to be the decade where the world had a chance to start making serious changes to deal with this catastrophe–but refused to do so.
Social media. Sure it was around before the 2010s but there’s no doubt it exploded this decade. MySpace was a thing when Obama was elected for his first term.
Well, by talking about things in this artificial framework of decades, we distort our perspective. There’s no reason why cultural phenomenon have to start and end during years with 00. Still, it’s happening throughout the media now.
Larger trends had already started in 2010, and others haven’t finished. There are still others which probably have been going on which we won’t even realize for a few more years.
:dubious: You say this like it’s something recent. Framing cultural events by decade has been a thing since at least as far back as the 1940s, and probably even further.
When I say, “It’s happening throughout the media now,” I’m referring to this week, (rather than “nowadays”). Of course it’s a practice that goes way back–but this week all the TV shows are doing the “look back at the decade” thing.
The return of the extreme right, unfortunately.
Smartphones. Everything else will be forgotten (Popular culture? Politics? Who cares?), but what will be remembered is that this decade humans all melded with networked computers, putting us on the first step of our inevitable transformation to a cyborg hive mind.
:rolleyes: The decade isn’t even over yet, and I’ve already forgotten about these.
Political whiplash: Obama to Trump; Trump to Obama would also have been whiplash, just in the opposite direction.
Seconded and will add
Amazon going from a serious player to possibly THE player in online retail.
The Tide Pod Challenge.
Nothing.
Trump and the riff-raff surrounded by his presidency is a symptom of the 2010s and not a cause…it just happened to happen right now. Nothing significant enough happened this decade to really differentiate it from the last.
What were the 2000s known for? September 11 and the subsequent events related thereto, cell phones and high speed internet become ubiquitous, first African-American POTUS, digital music. What else?
2010s should include television streaming in addition to a lot that’s been mentioned above along with the renewed cold war with Russia.
The Me Too movement is the most salient and important development in the last 10 years.
With any luck, little of the 2010s will be remembered. Most will be quickly forgotten. When the global environment collapses, few will recall why.