Does anyone else genuinely miss the 2000s?

[UselessIdiot]

Yeah, I thought the 2000s were pretty awesome overall -- except 9/11, the war, and the Great Recession. I definitely liked music, movies, TV, and video games more from the decade. The 2010s were pretty awful in comparison in regards to pop culture and political climate. The Internet became much more mainstream then, and led to simps easily spreading socjus babble and postmodernism, and caused them to have a lot of political influence, even though most people think they're insane -- because they're magnified by a loud minority on social media, those ideologies have come to influence policy.

 

[Notgoodwithusernames]

I’m g

As crazy optimistic as this may sound, I have this hunch that the 2020's might end up being like an inverse echo of the 2010's in that it starts awful but then gets pretty good and becomes a feel-good decade and that depending on how the rest of the year plays out, 2020 might end up being seen as merely the grim finale of the 2010's pop culture (cue the rainbow sticker bombardment)

Bad news is it took till 2016/2017 for things to really start going from a slow decline to a slip and slide and if the new twenties are an echo progress away from the cult of Socjus will be a gradual but slow progress until 2026/2027. I’m hoping that much like how 2014 was a sort of Pearl Harbor/Invasion of Poland of the culture Wars 2024 will be the liberation of Paris/Crossing of the Rhine with 2026 being the battle of Berlin/Dual nuking of Japan

 

[General Tug Boat]

Considering that the 2000's I was a wee lad, I would have to say for sure. The 2000's where awesome because the internet was just starting out, smart phones just kind of became a thing, video games where actually fun, it was still okay to have a sense of humor, along side everything just seemed simpler back then. The 2010's had it's moments, but really sucked in comparison, and seeing the way the 2020's have kicked off I have less and less optimism by the day...

 

[ToroidalBoat]

How do you think the rest of the 2010s would have been had Clinton won? How would the Woke Left react to that election? Would Clown World have "gone into maximum overdrive" in 2020? Would we still have this mask-wearing, social distancing circus?

(paging @Syaoran Li)

 

[Syaoran Li]

How do you think the rest of the 2010s would have been had Clinton won? How would the Woke Left react to that election? Would Clown World have "gone into maximum overdrive" in 2020? Would we still have this mask-wearing, social distancing circus?

(paging @Syaoran Li)

I think the Woke Left would be even more smug and pretentious than now but they also would not be going into panic mode.

BLM would probably remained how it was in 2014-2016 and Antifa would be fringe outside the punk subculture in specific West Coast cities. Media would still be woke as fuck, and would likely get even woker as time went on but there'd be less likely to see woke flops since Trump's win intensified the Woke Left and turned off more people more quickly, culminating in the long summer of 2020.

Unite the Right would've probably still happened but it would've been less of a clusterfuck and might not have ended in bloodshed since you didn't have the Antifa riots in the months that preceded it.

The George Floyd riots and BLM/Antifa coup wouldn't have happened since you wouldn't have the panic of the neoliberal bigwigs that motivated them to back this at the start of things, and at most you'd see riots in the Twin Cities but they'd be less intense.


The COVID-19 shit would still happen and would be just as bad as it is now, if not worse. Mask laws and the federal lockdowns would be more stringent, most likely.

I think the Woke Left going into maximum overdrive in the second half of the 2010's might end up being a good thing in the long run if the Dems lose 2020. The Woke Left will have burnt itself out while the neoliberal corporate elites will have no use for them at all and dump any and all support, and the trade war with China will continue and accelerate under Trump, and that will make "Get Woke, Go Broke" much harsher on the corporate media's finances since the Chinese market won't be able to cover the losses.

 

[CrazyRandomZyn]

Yes.
I miss my childhood.
Um, is it a bad sign that I still have CD's and a CD player?

 

[Syaoran Li]

Yes.
I miss my childhood.
Um, is it a bad sign that I still have CD's and a CD player?

CD's and a CD player is good, and I think it's superior to vinyl in every way (despite what hipsters say) but I also prefer DVD and Blu-Ray to streaming media as well.

Seriously, DVD is still being produced now (even more than CD's) as is Blu-Ray and thanks to the byzantine nature of streaming rights and because more niche or obscure titles will have enough demand for discs but not so much streaming, I can see physical media for film and TV surviving well into the 2030's at least.

CD's died out mainly because music has a much different dynamic than movies/TV or games, so it made more sense for people to switch entirely to digital. The only reason why CD's didn't die out entirely like VHS or cassette tapes is because a lot of cars still have CD players (even newer models in many cases) and the ones that are still in print are perennial favorites (Led Zeppelin IV, Licensed To Ill, Bat Out of Hell Part I, or any Beatles album) or compilation albums.

I've honestly considered collecting CD's as well as DVD's and VHS tapes. Most gaming consoles or Blu-Ray players are backwards compatible with DVD (and DVD remains a popular format for TV releases and older titles) and you can still get a lot of CD's from Amazon and Ebay for a decent price.

 

[Sopressata]

I miss every single decade before now. I feel like I am trapped inside an old twilight zone episode about the year 2020 and I want to go back to the rational world.

 

[Notgoodwithusernames]

Yes.
I miss my childhood.
Um, is it a bad sign that I still have CD's and a CD player?

I still have my GameCube and it still works like it came off the assembly line

 

[CrazyRandomZyn]

I still have my GameCube and it still works like it came off the assembly line

One of my cousins had a GameCube and we used to play "Super Smash Bros Melee" for hours whenever I visited his place. Or, I would watch him play "Luigi's Mansion" and beat the later bosses.
I know that GameCube is a dead console, but honestly I think Nintendo should revive it...not like it will happen though.

 

[Meriasek]

Yes.
I miss my childhood.
Um, is it a bad sign that I still have CD's and a CD player?

If possible, I buy tapes instead of CDs at concerts. Dunno, I just like the good old cassette. And vinyl.
Now I don't like pop music, but you gotta appreciate tasty mid 2000s music videos:

 

[Empty]

Yeah, I do, especially the early-to-mid 2000s (excluding 9/11). The technology was generally decent by today standards and there was less political bullshit in comparison with the 2010s/2020.

 

[M0JY0]

I definitely miss the 2000's, particularly the late 00's. I was a teenager then and everything was more laid back. The internet was more fun too, I get nostalgic for the all-nighters where I would browse /b/ and talk to friends on AIM.

Even the 2010's were okay up until about 2014, when the current wave of political correctness washed in and blew up. Now I just find people exhausting. I am on PC Cultures Crazy Wild Ride and cannot get off.

 

[Battlecruiser3000ad]

While 00s were better than 10s and whatever the fuck we have now, it was the decade when censorship and faggotry started to gain traction again in my country, resulting in the 10s and onwards.
I miss the 90s the most. Sure, the fall of gommunism made us poor as fuck, massive corruption and large scale theft was raging everywhere, but we could at least say what we thought. So many things said even in the parliament that today would be big media-fueled scandals and cancel culture rampages, films, music and tv programmes created and freely broadcast that today would get the creators canceled or outright jailed.

 

[The Last Stand]

One of my cousins had a GameCube and we used to play "Super Smash Bros Melee" for hours whenever I visited his place. Or, I would watch him play "Luigi's Mansion" and beat the later bosses.
I know that GameCube is a dead console, but honestly I think Nintendo should revive it...not like it will happen though.

They kinda are with GameCube controllers with Smash. A couple GameCube titles may get the remaster treatment.

Nintendo or somebody should make a GameCube themed lunchbox.

 

[Neanderthal Guru]

It's interesting how many people talk about their nostalgia through the lens of the media that they were consuming at the time. I was complaining to my mother a few weeks ago about how everything has gone downhill since 2007 or so when smartphones and social media started to become popular and later omnipresent. I talked about how in the 90s, as a kid, I would still actually have to go outside to hang out with friends and shit; basically how The Internet Ruined Everything. She countered by complaining about how, in her eyes, me and my siblings were always playing console video games instead of going outside like she and her siblings did before video games existed. And she was right in many ways; on reflection I spent countless hours playing NES/SNES/PS video games instead of doing real life shit, and I kind of feel like I would have been much happier had I spent that time doing more real life shit instead of playing vidya.

I think it's worth examining how so many of us couch things in terms of how great the tv shows, the video games, the old internet, etc were. How blind are we because this stuff is the air we breathed? Seems like people were much happier before media in general became such a dominant part of how we describe our lives. Many people nowadays never even knew a world without video games, social media, and smart phones.

I'm reminded of the scene in Back to the Future 2 (1989) where they show how short the attention span of kids has become in 2015 by having them complain about a microwave dinner taking too long. If only they knew how bad it would really get.

 

[Dom Cruise]

I definitely miss the 2000's, particularly the late 00's. I was a teenager then and everything was more laid back. The internet was more fun too, I get nostalgic for the all-nighters where I would browse /b/ and talk to friends on AIM.

Even the 2010's were okay up until about 2014, when the current wave of political correctness washed in and blew up. Now I just find people exhausting. I am on PC Cultures Crazy Wild Ride and cannot get off.

My peak nostalgic period is the mid 2000s, 2005-2007 to be exact, things were already starting to get a bit lame by 2009 (think Twilight, Jersey Shore) but the late 2000s were still decent, as was the early 2010s up to 2013.

It was when the shitstorm that was 2014 happened did things start to go south and it's never been the same since.

I'm reminded of the scene in Back to the Future 2 (1989) where they show how short the attention span of kids has become in 2015 by having them complain about a microwave dinner taking too long. If only they knew how bad it would really get.

They're also sitting around the dinner table wearing VR glasses, which is similar to modern teens using smartphones at the dinner table, Back to the Future 2 also predicted 80s nostalgia would be a thing in 2015 with the Cafe 80s.

 

[Syaoran Li]

My peak nostalgic period is the mid 2000s, 2005-2007 to be exact, things were already starting to get a bit lame by 2009 (think Twilight, Jersey Shore) but the late 2000s were still decent, as was the early 2010s up to 2013.

It was when the shitstorm that was 2014 happened did things start to go south and it's never been the same since.

Amen. Early to mid 2000's were great. Especially 2004-2007

I still think 2005 was the happiest year of my life the more I look back on it.

I hated the late 2000's and in retrospect, I still wouldn't want to go back to 2008 or especially 2009.

When 2010 rolled around, I was actually kind of hopeful for the future and that the 2010's would turn out to be a good decade, especially since I was nearing the end of high school and a brand new decade made me feel things were due for a fresh start. Boy, I was wrong on that one.

2010-2013 was a decent time that was better than 2008-2009 and especially everything from 2015 onward. While 2014 was more or less the start of "Current Year" in the wider mainstream, I enjoyed 2014 on a personal level and kinda dismissed BLM as a flash in the pan movement like Occupy at the time and didn't follow GamerGate at all.

The weirdest part was that around 2010-2013, there was a wider sense of cautious optimism and I think it was especially strong in 2012. Like, 2007 had this palpable atmosphere of great change and this is a sentiment I've seen expressed by many people in many places.

2012 had that aura of change to a lesser extent, but there was also a palpable aura of cautious optimism and hope. But that might have been just me

Fuck, Toonami came back despite all the odds back in 2012. As trivial and unimportant as that was in the grand scheme of things, it was one of those events that made me and a lot of others cautiously hopeful for the future. The worst of the Great Recession was over and everyone knew things were bad and wanted to make things better.

The big nostalgia boom at that time was actually enjoyable and not just a heavily beaten and long dead horse. It wasn't until 2013 that there started to be a sense that something was wrong. 2007 had the feeling of great change in both good and bad ways, while 2012 had this weird hopeful naivety to it, like the calm just before the storm...

I do think the Sandy Hook massacre at the very end of 2012 played a role in that cultural shift, as did the Zimmerman trial the following year.

 

[The Bovinian Derivative]

Getting excited about new vidya releases was a pretty cool. Everyone was losing his shit around the time HL2 came out, nowadays everything is so saturated that there's no time to enjoy something fully before the next "big thing" comes out. Alyx, Bannderlord and Doom Eternal all came out around the same time (in a one week period to be exact, thanks Google) and it all just congeals together, not to mention because of said saturation these things have no time to make the impact on vidya culture they should. Deus Ex also came out around the turn of the millennium, and it's regarded as the best thing since Pong. When Deux Ex: Yellow Filter Revolution rolled around it was filled to, what we thought at that time, the brim with micro transaction and if you payed a bit extra you could get to play the game a few early. oh wow.

Cartoons mostly follow the same CalArts art style that looks unnaturally clean and polished not to mention all the ideological bullshit crammed into it. Most of the big shows on cartoon network back in the day all looked and felt distinct: Cow and Chicken, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Ed Edd n Eddy, Johnny Bravo.

The only thing really struck with me after all this time was unironically 9/11. We were flipping though channels and saw the twin towers burning and thought "huh an action movie" then our newscaster started talking and we shat bricks. Life was generally boring and calm back then and seeing something like that was unprecedented.

 

[Obi Wan Kenobi]

I grew up in the late 2000s, I dont have many fond memories of early 2000s (2001-2005), but if there is anything I definitely miss from 2006-2010 it is definitely my childhood, I’d say Turkey was at its best in my life so far back then, economy was fine, Erdogan didn’t act like such a dictator (yet) & we had good ice creams, which are discontinued now. The 2011-2020 times hasn’t been its kindest to me personally, even if I did have good times, the bad times such as spending 3+ weeks in the hospital avoiding near death outweights them.