BIG MONTH IS FINALLY HERE!!! with Tuesdays being the election day, aka the day that will decide the the second half of the 2020s AND EVEN the decade's date, do you see a bunch of riots happening post election?

i'd argue to say that October was largely bleak and silent, which is very ominous tbh

If you were to create a criteria for categorizing years as Anni Mirabiles or Anni Horribiles, what would you choose?

And if so, what years would you put in for either category?

Please don't choose years because of personal reasons... like I'm choosing 20XX because I got married that year, etc etc.

I will mention mine after yours.

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First of people consider Y2K late 90s culture like referring to boy bands like NSYNC and The Backstreet Boys as 90s boy bands despite most of them being formed around 1998 & 1999 literally the last two years of the 90s despite being the kick off to Early 2000s mainstream pop music. Then the irony is they won’t keep the same logic when it comes to 08 & 09 and consider it Early 2010s culture like you rarely hear Lady Gaga Ke$ha Katy Perry Drake & Lil Wayne being associated with the 2000s decade instead they’re considered to be more apart of 2010s culture. There are a small minority of 2000s period films and the ones that do normally don’t go passed 03 at best Turning Red(2002) Senior Year(2002) Madame Web(2003) Ladybird(2003) see my point. Also this there is no dominating Aesthetic of the Early 2000s there’s hundreds Early 2000s aesthetics and I get so sick and tired of the argument of not everyone in the Early 2000s wore the same thing so it’s fine that it has no zeitgeist. Not everybody in the 90s dressed the same either yet People associate the 90s with Grunge & HipHop and if asked to dress up for a 90s party will where either one of the two or a mix of the two, not everybody in the 80s wore the big hair and triangular clothes in fact a lot of people couldn’t afford it, yet people still associate it that look with 80s fashion, but God forbid you dress in one of the 2000s aesthetics you’ll have a billion nerds on TikTok going Ummmm actually that’s Mcbling, no that’s Y2K that’s more 90s, actually that’s electropop, That’s Emo only the goth kids wore that SO THEN WHAT THE FUCK IS THE 2000s LOOK SUPPOSED TO BE……….It gets on my last nerves because all of the other decades have a nostalgic look that defines get to the 2000s and you have people overly specifying things just to make a point and the most frustrating thing about it is it isn’t Millennials saying this it’s Mostly Gen Z and most of them were shitting in diapers back then how the hell do they know.

This sounds like a strange question, but I'm asking it because of the "Are the 90s the new 50s" question that was posted earlier today. Long story short, with nostalgia for the 2000s and even the 2010s dominating I'm wondering if I missed the boat with a personal project of mine. For a number of years now I've been working on a novel that's, for lack of a better description, firmly rooted in 90s nostalgia. I've been working on this story on and off for almost eight years, and it's often gone on the back burner--partly because the amount of research to get the era right is daunting and partly because a bunch of other projects have moved in front of it.

But have we already passed the point where the 1990s setting would be a selling point?

For the love of god, stop grouping all of 2004 with all of 2006 or even 2007-2008. Early 2004 and late 2006 were extremely different. Most of 2004, or at least the first half of 2004 belongs in the 2K1 era.

Dial-up was still popular in the first half of the year

Before July 2004, over half of the U.S. population still used dial-up! Nothing else to add.

Frutiger Aero wasn't a thing yet

This is a weird ass point that I see people bring up. "2004 IS PART OF THE MODERN 2000S BECAUSE FRUTIGER AERO BECAME POPULAR!!!". Uhhh, not really.

The earliest true instances of Frutiger Aero were Windows Media Player 10 and the PSP's UI. It's the first time that the Windows Vista/7 logo was unveiled.

https://preview.redd.it/k8emfbx165yd1.png?width=645&format=png&auto=webp&s=552051065e71e16dcbe623482df805e6be945dae

https://preview.redd.it/a4kuddo665yd1.png?width=480&format=png&auto=webp&s=62d88ff1a46ce8604656e037e6d8719071e23c3a

Windows Media Player 10's release date varies on the source, but it was released sometime around late August or early September, at the beginning of the 2004-2005 school year or season. The PSP was released on December 12, 2004, in Japan only. Nobody else had it until 2005. It's safe to say that this aesthetic wasn't relevant in early-mid 2004.

Many TV channels still had their old logos and shows

I know this point is old, but it's so fucking true. Cartoon Network still used the Powerhouse bumpers until June 2004, and they still had the Cartoon Cartoons throughout the summer. Johnny Bravo and The Powerpuff Girls aired their final episodes in August (The Powerpuff Girls from 2005 premiered in 2003 internationally, so they aren't the true final episodes). The Boomerang block, which aired cartoons from the '60s to '80s, also lasted until October 2004. They even aired some '70s and '80s specials that Christmas.

https://preview.redd.it/egn2ge4ia5yd1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=4a1c9557c3fab7d7475f8ff96eaa8b70d53f3b10

Nickelodeon continued airing late '90s programming throughout the year as well. This even carried over into early 2005.

https://preview.redd.it/a7vvrx51a5yd1.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=b63a3b856cb42a3b2a8b128baa5bb35ff1f0b08b

Toon Disney still had the Zoog-like logo until September 2004. Jetix launched in February, but it was just a Fox Kids block that ran for a few hours. Jetix didn't begin to expand into the monster it became until later on.

https://preview.redd.it/yvleeb73a5yd1.png?width=647&format=png&auto=webp&s=789c5e079a69db48ce296e83be9ff9c693c911a8

​The state of these networks was so fucking different than in 2006-2007.

The Motorola Razr V3 wasn't out yet

The phone people associate the most with 2004…was released in November. Nobody had it in 2004. It was popular in 2005, 2006, and 2007, not 2004. I think you're going to start to see a pattern.

The Nintendo DS and PSP weren't out; seventh-generation consoles weren't a thing at all yet

Yet another device from November 2004 that people associate with the entire year! This is common sense. How was the Game Boy Advance dead for all of 2004 if the Nintendo DS wasn't even out yet? Nintendo didn't even want to admit it was the Game Boy Advance's successor because they feared it could be a massive flop.

I already mentioned the PSP earlier, so I won't go over it. No one had one until 2005.

2004 is probably the most sixth-gen year. Anyone claiming it's a seventh-generation console year is delusional. The seventh-generation consoles weren't even announced in 2004. The PS3 and Wii (which wasn't even named the Wii yet) were announced at E3 2005.

Social media wasn't popular yet

This is the biggest thing that irks me. People look at the release dates of things and automatically assume they were ubiquitous on day one. MySpace wasn't popular when it launched in August 2003 and took a while to catch on. Thankfully, statistics prove that it wasn't popular for most of 2004.

Image source: Cornell University

https://www.spudart.org/blog/myspace-may-2004/amp/

People didn't use Facebook the millisecond it was released either. Things don't become ubiquitous overnight. It was exclusive to college campuses until September 2006.

Facebook Growth 2004-2010 -millions of users (data from Facebook, 2011)

One more thing, YOUTUBE DID NOT EXIST!!!

I've even criticized including 2005-2006 in the social media era, but at least I can understand it. Including 2004 is just too far.

Bonus: 2004 was the final Web 1.0 year!

Conclusion

There's more to say, but I don't want to make the post too long. The first half of 2004 safely predates the shift. Even the summer of 2004 is pretty unscathed. The final third or quarter of 2004 is a preview of 2005 and beyond, it is not representative of the year as a whole and I'm sick of people acting like it is. It is the inverse of 2001.

If late 2001 can be 2K1 despite having Y2K influence, why can't late 2003 to mid-2004 be included despite having McBling influence? Late 2001 to mid-2004 is the perfect range for 2K1 or the early 2000s. Late 2001 to mid-2003 or late 2003 cuts it short a bit. Again, grouping early to mid-2004 with years like 2006 or 2007 just feels wrong.

The "McBling" era or whatever you want to call it didn't begin until fall 2004 or winter 2004-2005.

Whenever I’m asked to picture the decade with the ugliest aesthetic, I immediately picture the 50s. Every male model from the 50s I’ve seen looks like an asshole that secretly beats his wife and children after coming home to no dinner, every female model I’ve seen looks like they’ve been lobotomized and forced to wear those ‘cutesy’ curly hairstyles to hide the scars, and the overall look of the decade makes my eyes hurt with all those unnecessarily bright colors. The music was nice… That’s about it.

And yet, every single person I ask seems to be IN LOVE with the 50s. The fifties aesthetic is big on tik tok (Not even mentioning the tradwife trend. Being a stay-at-home mom is one thing, but buying vintage clothes and appliances to embody that time period is just… Well it’s just not my thing).

All the power to people who love the 50s, and I hope you can take the time to explain why. What allures you about the decade?

Please tell me I’m not alone in thinking the 50’s aesthetic is fugly….

People see 2004 as the emo, MySpace, broadband Nintendo DS, and Motorola Razr year. However, these things didn’t affect January-June 2004 at all. Even the summer months weren’t as effected.

Cartoon Network still had the late ‘90s bumpers until June. The programming remained the same for another few months or so.

Broadband wasn’t dominant until July. January-June 2004 was still dial-up. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1092779390739940

MySpace didn’t blow up until the fourth quarter of 2004. The first three quarters or two thirds of the year were pre-MySpace. https://www.spudart.org/blog/myspace-may-2004/amp/

The Nintendo DS and Motorola Razr V3 didn’t come out until November 2004. The Game Boy Advance SP was still the go-to handheld.

I could go on and on. Even the summer months are relatively unscathed. The only big events that happened in the first half of 2004 were Nipplegate and the EU expansion, and the latter only affected Europe. Otherwise, it was borderline filler before the fall. The huge shift wasn’t until the fall/winter.

I don't know how to explain it, but the late 70s still felt a bit like the late 60s, apart from things like video games, disco music etc, this kind of dragged on into the early 80s too, brown was still a dominant colour up to around 1984, cars also look very similar between the 60s and 80s, but in the early 90s it felt more advanced, maybe because I think about the stereotypes of the 80s like neon too much, I just find it really odd, I look at things from the late 70s and early 80s and can easily imagine them in the late 60s-early 70s, and the 90s really pushed forward, it feels like there was some stagnation between 1965 and 1995 roughly, sorry if I went on and on with no real point

Edit: I feel like I need to add as well that I somewhat see this from the perspective of animatronic restaurants in the 80s, obviously the height of Arcades and animatronic resturants was in the 80s, showbiz pizza place for example had a prototype version of their animatronics from 1980, I could imagine seeing that as early as the early 70s, I'm kind of embarrassed to post a picture in the comments though

Late Silents & Earliest Boomers defined the 1960s

Core Boomers defined the 1970s

Late Boomers & Early Gen X define the 1980s

Gen X as a whole define the 1990s

Early Millennials define the 2000s

Late Millennials define the 2010s

Early/Core Zoomers define the 2020s

Late Zoomers/Alpha will define the 2030s

Wide collar shirts, flares, bell bottoms, and all the pretty fashion ladies wore too.

Does anyone else wish it’d make a comeback?

It’s definitely not everyone. But there’s more fallacy thinking, selective memory, and false nostalgia here than I would have thought.

Feels like just a week ago it was okay to be nostalgic for them.

Now they’re as dark as period as the 1950s, or worse….

1991-1995 - grunge

1996-1997 - alternative

1998-2002 - NuMetal

2003-2008 or 2009 - Emo (they say Emo ended in October with the Great Recession and 2010s clothing starting to be sold in stores) so was it October, 2008 or 2009 that Emo went away though?

Ironically, we're in for a possibly relatively prosperous era in American history in the next 5-15 years, due to the very stressful developments that have been going on in the 1st half of the 2020s for many average Americans. History has shown that times of scarcity and hardship usually pave way for relative abundance and good vibes. Just like many things in our daily lives, nations tend to operate in cycles. We both go through highs and lows in our lives. In fact, the Strauss Howe cycle of America indicates that we will leave our "Time of Crisis", which started from the 2008 Financial Crisis, sometime between the late 2020s-early 2030s.

The next few presidents will be dealt with a very fortunate political hand in the next 4-20 years. And, it would be best if no future administrations past Harris' terms will screw up the relative peace and prosperity that is to come in the next 10-25 years. This is only if she becomes president or if the opposition party wrests control from MAGA republicans in 2028 if she does lose.

Things might seem very bleak and stressful now in 2024 with the sticker shock from the post pandemic inflation and with increasing tensions between Russia & Ukraine and Israel & Palestine, but we are seeing signs that the economic and political stress points are reaching their breaking points.

On the ECONOMIC Front:

Inflation rates have returned to pre pandemic levels very recently, yet the higher wage growth remains even stickier due to the stronger labor bargaining power fought and earned by many employees across the nation in the early 2020s. Notice how we've been seeing labor strikes across the country and an administration that's been more supportive of workers' rights and unions than any other president since FDR. The problem is with all these higher wages,people don't feel it YET because of the sticker shock. It will take time for people to start feeling the improvements.

As for the current housing crisis, it's known that any economic data involving rents and leases move at a snail's pace due to the lag time between when old and new rent contracts are discarded and ratified, respectively. It's largely expected by real estate experts that housing construction will start to really pick up as the Federal Reserve really hits the gas on cutting interest rates,which provides a more suitable environment for developers to build more affordable units. With the YIMBY movement gaining steam in recent years, we will expect to see more states and locales change zoning laws to allow for more of those "missing middle homes" in the next 5-15 years. In fact, a Harris or later admin down the line could even accelerate and embolden the YIMBY movement by getting through one of their housing policies in their platform that really acts as a "carrot and stick" which pressures states/locales to change laws to allow for more construction of homes. It's only a matter of time when housing becomes relatively affordable again as supply goes up and as wages go even higher because of a more favorable political environment for organized labor.

With all this said, it will take some time for Americans to recover from the post pandemic inflation. But, I expect the real recovery for the vast number of Americans to pick up in the next 5-10 years.Thus, this will start our long road towards relative prosperity.

In additon to higher wages and recovery from the early 2020s sticker shock, a lot of Biden's infrastructure projects from his 2 landmark bills passed in the last few years are set to greenlight in the second half of 2020s. So, make of that as you will. Americans will likely actually start to see an upgrade to US infrastructure and energy sources with their own eyes this time around, instead of just in a select few industrial areas where new plants are being built due to the CHIPS ACT.

On the GEOPOLITICAL Front:

It seems as though Putin, Hamas, Iran and yes, Netanyahu are exhausting all their political leverage to try to influence US elections for a Trump victory, and ultimately, to acheive their foreign policy objectives. They're in their final acts now less than 2 weeks before the 2024 election, and that's why we're seeing some batshit crazy things coming out of their decision desks. Using North Korean troops as cannon fodder in Ukraine, using Hamas fighters as pawns to further their goals to undermine Israel and the ideals of Western democracy via information warfare, and trying to drag the US into a war in the Middle East against Iran. You name it.

They may all seem to have very different objectives, and they do as they represent the interests of different countries. However, what they all have in common is that they would all benefit from a Trump victory.

What's going to happen if Trump loses is that Putin will be left with a Ukraine army that gets even more funding and firepower, thereby threatening his power when he decisively loses the war. Iran will be left with a defeated Hamas and a Harris admin that will try to make peace deal between Israel and Palestine after Netanyahu gets kicked out of power in the 2026 Israeli elections, which would undermine their objective of manipulating the world to go against Israel. Netanyahu will be left to face a sitting US president that won't have to deal with elections before HIS election comes up in 2026, an election which he will most likely lose.

All the stars seem to align to a lot more stability in the next decade or two, provided that no leader decides to screw it up.

Now, the real wild card is what China will do, how we will adapt to mass online misinformation/disinformation, and a volatile job market due to AI.

However, I do think China will be preoccupied with its own domestic crises for the time being before making any move on Taiwan. And, hopefully, the developed world will successfully adapt to an ever changing job market caused by the advent of AI. History has shown that we have eventually gotten over the turbulence in the job market after each Industrial Revolution. Even though AI won't make jobs obsolete, it will making most fields forever changing and volatile which could stress many folks out. Constantly having to retrain and update in the same field after getting laid off is sure to be big pain in the ass for many, especially in white collar and creative professions. But, I am sure most countries will overcome this dilemma and find ways to add more stability to the job market while incorporating AI into the society in a less disruptive way.

Anyways, I don't really let the current cynicism & disenfranchisement of politics get the best of my hope for the future, especially when it comes to having faith with those around me in my community.

And, for those of you who righteously feel hopeless and cynical for the future of America and other democracies, I just want to say that voting goes back even further than that going back to Athens Greece, albeit for a very limited group of people. Sure, there has been ineffective and corrupt leaders in the past. But, tell that to the American electorate during the Progressive/WW2 or Civil Rights Era. Generation by generation, reforms have been made and society has improved over time incrementally. The disenfranchisement felt by society at large and by you personally in the past few decades will end in due time, and a new era of politics will emerge sooner than you may expect.

People and politicians alike on both sides of the spectrum really need to come together to fix our complex problems incrementally and take this country to greater heights so that democracy eventually wins in the ideological battle against autocrats and the mostly right wing ultra rich around the world. The problem is that many people in democracies around the world just don't know what or who to believe, and can't agree on shared facts anymore. This is due largely to people being bombarded with too many information on the internet nowadays, especially with foreign and/or corporate bots manipulating the algorithm to inflame political divisions.

To be completely honest, the issue of mass online misinformation/disinformation is one of the biggest WILD CARDS of our time.

But, I do have hope that society will develop guardrails so that citizens and public servants alike in every democracy be engaged in the process by having productive conversations rooted in shared reality.

Or am I simply wrong and overthinking it?

the late 2000s and early 2010s were interesting to say the least. Let's use 2007 to 2012 as a comparison.

In 2007, CRT TVs (and analog technology in general) were still common, smartphones were just emerging (they were not widespread yet), platforms like Myspace were still popular, and people overall were not overly reliant on modern technology like today (people were mostly only online in front of a computer), and face to face interactions seemed

Fast forward only 5 years to 2012, it seems like that changed a lot. Smartphones were now very widespread (causing a major culture shift on its own) and people could be online anywhere their phone worked, almost everything that was still analog in 2007 (that wasn't just a leftover from that time) had gone digital, and social media platforms like Instagram were exploding in popularity (not even thought of in 2007) and Myspace was almost completely dead in 2012.

Fast forward 12 years to 2024. Unlike the 5 years from 2007 to 2012, the traits I mentioned still hold up. Instagram is still popular as ever, as are smartphones, with people are still addicted to them (surprise!), and the same digital principles are still in use today that were not entirely universal in 2007 but seemed to be largely so in 2012. From what I've gathered, the "fun" and social aspects that made the 2000s special were largely not there anymore.

Yes, the early 2020s no doubt have their share of major differences from the early 2010s, but I can't help but be amazed at just how much things (culturally and technologically) as mentioned above progressed just between the late 2000s and early 2010s.

I must admit I am a 2005 baby and was not old enough to fully grasp the shifts of the time, but I have had a fascinating time observing documentation from the era, researching what happened during my childhood, and comparing the eras (including in this subreddit), and I hope to integrate it into my college studies. I very well may be completely wrong in my statements; these are just going off personal observations. Feel free to critique me!

Although Bruce Springsteen's "The River" album came out in 1980 and normally it would retain a 70s sound, it doesn't really feel 70s to me. Songs like Jackson Cage, the ties that bind, hungry heart, all sound 80s in my opinion. What's your opinion? Interested to hear what others think

At what age do people "grow out" of popular culture? And at what age do people "live under a rock"?

I ask because it seems to me that adult-oriented popular culture has always been consumed by people around the ages of 8-14(if you check Elvis's concert photos from when he first broke through, it seemed like the crowd was mostly of boys and girls of this age), where a human "fades in" at around 8 where they actively seek the media they want such as Top 40 music, horror movies, games rated for 17 and over(games like GTA; I swear the majority of people have played this as a child), etc... and then it seems that people "fade out" by the time they graduate highschool(because they are no longer forced to interact with a cohort of people in their age range) at around 17 or so,start to feel like they no longer can relate to the new styles of music that are being released. I also read somewhere that the greatest consumption of Top 40 music comes from 14 year olds(regardless of the year they were born in).

It seems that by ages 17-22, many people stop keeping up with who’s famous, often saying things like "Superstars don’t exist anymore" or "Monoculture is dead." This mindset feels like an early sign of being out of touch, as people have been making these claims for generations. Seriously, there are many Reddit threads where someone asks "what is a sign you are getting older" and then it seems like the last song someone remembers that was popular was from when they were in their early 20's.

Do you guys agree? 8-14(give or take a few years) is the core consumption of popular media, and then there is a "fade out" period from 17-22(give or take a few years) where people feel disillusioned with the current state of media(music, movies, internet culture, etc...), and soon no longer care about what is popular in popular media?

When do you expect trap, aka the most popular music genre for youth atm and for the past nearly 8 years, to be considered dad music, old people music, or oldies?

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