I often think of what the best way to sum up the culture of the 2000s.
The best might simply be "shallow but honest"
It wasn't exactly a smart culture, but it was at least a lot more honest and down to Earth, people liked to have a good time, they liked sexy men and women, they liked humor to actually be funny, they liked entertainment to actually be exciting, they liked fashion to actually look cool, everyone just minded their own business and pursued their own happiness, not everything was a zero sum game between the different demographics.
Sure it wasn't perfect, that shallowness and lack of intelligence could sometimes be, make no mistake, incredibly obnoxious and loathsome in it's own way, but everything is just so damn pretentious and full of shit now, I feel like there was an effort to make American culture a little smarter, but it failed and we wound up with something even more obnoxious and loathsome than where we started.