Does anyone else genuinely miss the 2000s?

[ToddleDoddle]

I'm not a super nostalgic and don't dwell on the past too much, but with that said I do miss the way popular media was back then. Back when people were willing to push the bounderies and fight against censorship and it seemed like it was succeeding. Back then it felt like most of my peers felt the same way, but eventually a switch was flipped and those things became negatives and I've been called a Nazi for having those ideals. It depresses me that there is a bunch of momentum behind the idea of suppressing freedom of expression now.

 

[Dom Cruise]

The more I see smartphone zombies, face masks, and smartphone zombies wearing face masks, the more I really do miss the 2000s.

I hate to sound like a doomer, I try to dial it back on that, but the more time goes on the more I really do miss the 2000s.

I have this great fear that the best days are behind us, we'll all spend the rest of our lives longing for when things were better.

I take solace in the fact though that I'll always have my memories of better days and I remember them very well, I remember the emotions I felt, I remember the moments of pure joy I would feel and thinking back to it allows me to feel those positive feelings again, that keeps me going.

I also like to think and this is weird and maybe sounds crazy, that the past was the "real" reality and what we live in now isn't quite real, it's an illusion, something went screwy at some point, maybe it was CERN fucking around, who knows, but we've been thrust into something that is illusionary, Clown World is a just a bad dream.

Point is, the more reality sucks, the more I work on my skills of living in my head and creating my own, better reality, your mind is a powerful thing if you stop and think about it.

What is reality anyway? What does it even matter if reality sucks shit, why would you even care about what is "real"? Is there even such a thing as "reality" in the first place? Do you think SJWs give a shit about reality? They will burn shit down over a lie, reality doesn't even begin to enter these people's heads, so why should it ours?

Why would anyone miss the 00s? It literally was just as cucked as now. It's just that not as many people noticed it so they didn't care. Compare that with the 70s. 31 percent of white Southerners favored segregated schools in 1972, but by 1985, so few people shared that belief that the question was removed from surveys altogether. When whites were asked in 1972 if they would vote for a black president if he were qualified for the job and supported by their affiliated party, 25 percent nationally said they would not. In the South that year, 48 percent of whites said they would not. Compare that to 2010, when just 6 percent of white Southerners said they wouldn’t vote for a black president. From the 1980s onwards, America has been a liberal hellhole.

It really wasn't, white people were free to just live our lives in the 2000s, for most people the idea was that racism was a largely "solved" issue, a thing of the past, especially once Obama was elected, that was the "proof"

This idea that we have to "pay" and make atonement somehow for the past and our "white privilege" just wasn't really a thing, it was the polar opposite of today.

I’ve always wondered... were things really so different in the US before 9/11, or is my perception of that time clouded by childhood and the unreliability of memory? Any Gen Xers around to confirm or deny?

I have lolstalgia for the 2000’s but for some reason I feel a deeper, almost reverential, nostalgia for the time before that. Which is interesting considering I was barely even sentient before then.

It's... complicated.

The thing about the 1990s is many people believed the world was going to end when the clock struck 2000, a lot of people were also convinced that aliens were abducting people and government conspiracies were out to get us, in other words there was plenty of paranoia to go around even before 9/11.

Yes, a lot changed after 9/11 and the 1990s were very different than the 2000s, but even then, the 2000s were closer to the 1990s than the present is, that's an important perspective to keep in mind.

There really was an element to 1990s culture that was downright magical though, a belief that maybe, just maybe, humanity had gotten it's shit together or at least was close to doing so and the 21st century would be a Utopian time.

 

[Swiss46]

listening to butt rock, playing my xbox, and chugging a dew? Some days these memories will fade, but for now I can smile back on them fondly.

 

[Aqua Panda]

Depends. The early economic recession of 2000-2001 sucked and several big industries had nasty layoffs. Housing began its insane price jumps in the lead up to the 2008 crash. Also, 9/11 fundamentally changed the general outlook of the average American. The 90's optimism died.

US animation was winding down from a really great high that started in the 90's. Stuff like Teen Titans, Justice League Unlimited, and Avatar were not only great, but rivaled some of the best stuff in the actual comic industry. Comics were also pumping out some really memorable runs. (Batman got a number of amazing prestige books like Long Halloween and Bendis had his run on Ultimate Spider-Man.)

The internet was in its golden age. You could find anything and everything easier. Piracy was rampant but exposed people to a lot of stuff they wouldn't have known about otherwise. Even stuff that was blatantly illegal like drugs and CP was piss easy to find. Even gore would pop up on early pre YouTube sites.

Hardcore pornography exploded. It went from being only accessible if you dared go to the back of the video store to if you had an internet connection. Certain fetishes became more widespread. Stuff like creampies became normalized and ameatur videos were everywhere. It got to the point celebrities intentionally leaked sex tapes for the attention it would create. Note: Softcore was also still alive and got way more daring and explicit in attempts to keep up.

Dating/sex went through a big change. Causal sex and hookups were a lot more common. Plan B and oral contraceptives reached points where most young adults just did it raw and would blow inside. (Which, while pregnancy rates were low, lead to a massive increase in herpes but it was amazing if you were in a good area with low STD rates.) Girls were way more varied in appearance and personality. Shorter hairstyles were more common. The rise of Tinder and other dating apps in the late 00's very quickly lead to women only wanting the top tier looking men like it is today. Aka the sexual balance shifted hard to women and sex dried up for most average men. One of the main reasons why you see numbers like women having 50 different sexual partners by 23 vs 2-3 for men of the same age.

Films had their last big gasps of creativity around the time LOTR came out. CGI very quickly ruined practical effects after that. The Disney style 'create by committee' also sunk in and films became really tame and medicore. It wasn't like the China pandering of today, but it did lay the groundwork for Hollywood to eventually bend the knee.

 

[AnOminous]

Films had their last big gasps of creativity around the time LOTR came out. CGI very quickly ruined practical effects after that. The Disney style 'create by committee' also sunk in and films became really tame and medicore. It wasn't like the China pandering of today, but it did lay the groundwork for Hollywood to eventually bend the knee.

Nothing from big studios will ever even be good again, much less great, so long as everything has to pander to the most subhuman shit country in the world.

 

[-4ZURE-]

The 2000s had its greats, but I believe the first four years of the 2010s to really be a height moment. I feel like that was the perfect time, taking the good of the 2000s and improving. We had an animation redemption, the internet still felt creatively driven, no politics, there was no big world chaos like a pandemic or 9/11. It was just a good time. The internet expanded, but was not at the terrible levels of Twitter and YouTube insanity that it is now. There was also a plethora of websites to use compared to now, as Twitter and FaceBook, along with Google did not control everything, and politics did not kill of competitors like Tumblr or your average forums board.

I think the 2000s is sort of just the underrated decade. It feels like the time of many cult classics like Invader Zim or Chowder. The 2000s never really had much of a big franchise to call its own, but it is unique in that way. No MCU to clutter everything.

Otherwise, not really. The decade was fine, but I prefer to move on. Times are rough now, but I do not want to end up like the miserable nostalgia cravers of the internet, and instead look at the good things. Maybe we can get another perfect decade after this craziness.

 

[Ciscoipphone]

I miss not having responsibilities

 

[FuckedUp]

Dating/sex went through a big change. Causal sex and hookups were a lot more common. Plan B and oral contraceptives reached points where most young adults just did it raw and would blow inside. (Which, while pregnancy rates were low, lead to a massive increase in herpes but it was amazing if you were in a good area with low STD rates.) Girls were way more varied in appearance and personality. Shorter hairstyles were more common. The rise of Tinder and other dating apps in the late 00's very quickly lead to women only wanting the top tier looking men like it is today. Aka the sexual balance shifted hard to women and sex dried up for most average men. One of the main reasons why you see numbers like women having 50 different sexual partners by 23 vs 2-3 for men of the same age.

This post would've been fine without this paragraph.

 

[Aqua Panda]

This post would've been fine without this paragraph.

I know it sounds like a MRA rant (and god knows I'm the furthest thing from it), but sex and behavior did change. We have new studies that show it. We haven't seen such a shift since the era of Woodstock.

Tried to compress it with the other paragraphs.

Edit: To be clear, not commentating on the moral, ethical, or social aspect of it. Just that the numbers are there.

 

[Syaoran Li]

The 2000s had its greats, but I believe the first four years of the 2010s to really be a height moment. I feel like that was the perfect time, taking the good of the 2000s and improving. We had an animation redemption, the internet still felt creatively driven, no politics, there was no big world chaos like a pandemic or 9/11. It was just a good time. The internet expanded, but was not at the terrible levels of Twitter and YouTube insanity that it is now. There was also a plethora of websites to use compared to now, as Twitter and FaceBook, along with Google did not control everything, and politics did not kill of competitors like Tumblr or your average forums board.

I think the 2000s is sort of just the underrated decade. It feels like the time of many cult classics like Invader Zim or Chowder. The 2000s never really had much of a big franchise to call its own, but it is unique in that way. No MCU to clutter everything.

Otherwise, not really. The decade was fine, but I prefer to move on. Times are rough now, but I do not want to end up like the miserable nostalgia cravers of the internet, and instead look at the good things. Maybe we can get another perfect decade after this craziness.

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)

 

[ToroidalBoat]

[...]

Evil has too much power in this world.

 

[Aqua Panda]

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)

I hope so, it would be a refreshing change of pace compared to the latter half of the 2010's.

 

[-4ZURE-]

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)

I think it will be different in that it gets better quicker though. Instead of half a good decade, I think we will have more.

Most of 2015 culture is dead or dying at this point. Woke Culture will probably kill itself in a year or so, nostalgia trips are reeling into an ending now that Star Wars is failing, I think a Twitter/FaceBook purge will happen soon as the Trump crowd will probably get fed up, Tik Tok finally got banned, etc. I just wonder what the full landscape will look like? If there was any time to start an internet business, now seems perfect as I feel many will want to expand the internet once more. Hmm....

 

[Smug Chuckler]

Nigga I already miss the 2010s.

 

[Syaoran Li]

I hate to sound like a doomer, I try to dial it back on that, but the more time goes on the more I really do miss the 2000s.

I have this great fear that the best days are behind us, we'll all spend the rest of our lives longing for when things were better.

I take solace in the fact though that I'll always have my memories of better days and I remember them very well, I remember the emotions I felt, I remember the moments of pure joy I would feel and thinking back to it allows me to feel those positive feelings again, that keeps me going.

I also like to think and this is weird and maybe sounds crazy, that the past was the "real" reality and what we live in now isn't quite real, it's an illusion, something went screwy at some point, maybe it was CERN fucking around, who knows, but we've been thrust into something that is illusionary, Clown World is a just a bad dream.

Point is, the more reality sucks, the more I work on my skills of living in my head and creating my own, better reality, your mind is a powerful thing if you stop and think about it.

What is reality anyway? What does it even matter if reality sucks shit, why would you even care about what is "real"? Is there even such a thing as "reality" in the first place? Do you think SJWs give a shit about reality? They will burn shit down over a lie, reality doesn't even begin to enter these people's heads, so why should it ours?




It really wasn't, white people were free to just live our lives in the 2000s, for most people the idea was that racism was a largely "solved" issue, a thing of the past, especially once Obama was elected, that was the "proof"

This idea that we have to "pay" and make atonement somehow for the past and our "white privilege" just wasn't really a thing, it was the polar opposite of today.



It's... complicated.

The thing about the 1990s is many people believed the world was going to end when the clock struck 2000, a lot of people were also convinced that aliens were abducting people and government conspiracies were out to get us, in other words there was plenty of paranoia to go around even before 9/11.

Yes, a lot changed after 9/11 and the 1990s were very different than the 2000s, but even then, the 2000s were closer to the 1990s than the present is, that's an important perspective to keep in mind.

There really was an element to 1990s culture that was downright magical though, a belief that maybe, just maybe, humanity had gotten it's shit together or at least was close to doing so and the 21st century would be a Utopian time.

Agreed, the relatively peaceful end of the Cold War and the dizzying economic prosperity in the United States back in the 90's is part of why so many people earnestly believed in the "End of History" mindset.

Then 9/11 happened but at the same time, I think a lot of people were hoping that the mindset of the 1990's would return once Bush was out of office. The Great Recession put an end to any of those hopes and set the stage for Occupy Wall Street (and from there, the Woke Left)

I also think Obama being a corporatist warhawk clad in progressive veneer more or less ruined race relations and likely fueled the anti-American and anti-Western sentiment of the Woke Left as well. Everyone thought he'd be a great reformer, and the hype let them down

 

[Dom Cruise]

The 2000s had its greats, but I believe the first four years of the 2010s to really be a height moment. I feel like that was the perfect time, taking the good of the 2000s and improving. We had an animation redemption, the internet still felt creatively driven, no politics, there was no big world chaos like a pandemic or 9/11. It was just a good time. The internet expanded, but was not at the terrible levels of Twitter and YouTube insanity that it is now. There was also a plethora of websites to use compared to now, as Twitter and FaceBook, along with Google did not control everything, and politics did not kill of competitors like Tumblr or your average forums board.

I think the 2000s is sort of just the underrated decade. It feels like the time of many cult classics like Invader Zim or Chowder. The 2000s never really had much of a big franchise to call its own, but it is unique in that way. No MCU to clutter everything.

Otherwise, not really. The decade was fine, but I prefer to move on. Times are rough now, but I do not want to end up like the miserable nostalgia cravers of the internet, and instead look at the good things. Maybe we can get another perfect decade after this craziness.

The first four years? 2014 sucked shit and was the start of our current cultural miasma, so I can't agree with you there.

And even going back to 2011, 2012 and 2013 there was still a lot of early rumblings of what we have today and putting that aside the early 2010s was mostly mediocre compared to the 2000s pop culture wise, the 2000s featured way cooler stuff that the early 2010s ever gave us.

But that said, 2010-2013 were still preferable to now, I think what I miss the most from back then was the feeling of potential it had, you had every reason to be hopeful that the 2010s would turn out to be awesome.

Nigga I already miss the 2010s.

At least we didn't have to worry about the Coronavirus.

2017, 2018 and 2019 were pretty good years for me personally, I do already miss them despite the craziness of the politics.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Even if "woke" goes away, I'm still worried about tech trends. Brain computer interfaces. "Software as a service". The "Internet Of Things" (IOT). "Surveillance capitalism". Stuff going all electronic or digital that doesn't need to be. 5G. Coronapanic launching a work-from-home "drive-thru society". The modern world is getting way too tech-saturated, even when compared to 2000s.

 

[Syaoran Li]

Nigga I already miss the 2010s.

I can see why someone would miss the early 2010's. It wasn't as good as the 1990's or even most of the 2000's but it was better than pretty much everything from 2014 onward and 2010-2013 were also a lot better than the tail end of the 2000's. 2008 and 2009 were pretty rough years for me personally and were rough years for the country due to the recession at the time and the wider pop culture was beginning its big "jump the shark" moment that culminated into the shitshow of Current Year.

The first four years? 2014 sucked shit and was the start of our current cultural miasma, so I can't agree with you there.

And even going back to 2011, 2012 and 2013 there was still a lot of early rumblings of what we have today and putting that aside the early 2010s was mostly mediocre compared to the 2000s pop culture wise, the 2000s featured way cooler stuff that the early 2010s ever gave us.

But that said, 2010-2013 were still preferable to now, I think what I miss the most from back then was the feeling of potential it had, you had every reason to be hopeful that the 2010s would turn out to be awesome.



At least we didn't have to worry about the Coronavirus.

2017, 2018 and 2019 were pretty good years for me personally, I do already miss them despite the craziness of the politics.

Weird, because 2014 was a good year for me personally, even if it was when "Current Year" more or less began in earnest.

You definitely felt the potential for something better and there was a sense of faint but palpable optimism around 2010-2012.

Like we knew things sucked, but the worst of the recession was over and everyone was thinking we had a shot at fixing things. Then Occupy happened and the Woke Left truly began to become a major thing as all these different elements merged into the perfect storm.

2010 in particular was a year that felt unusually bright and optimistic, and it was definitely the calmest year of the decade. The one major national event was Deepwater Horizon and you also had some international stuff like the earthquake in Haiti.

I remember you mentioned the cultural vibe of how people wanted to fix things for the better, and cited the South Park episode "Raising the Bar" as an example of this early 2010's mentality, and I'm wondering how much of that wider cultural attitude in the early 2010's led or at least had a major influence on the smug pretentiousness, pseudo-intellectual postmodern BS, the "No Fun Allowed" approach to pop culture, where everything had to have an intellectual justification and the wider "muh praxis/everything is political" mindset of the Woke Left in the mid and late 2010's.

I think 2020 will be to the 2010's what 2000 and the first half of 2001 were to the 90's. The finale where the cultural zeitgeist reaches its absolute peak before crashing and burning.

We already have the black swan event in the form of COVID-19 and the BLM/Antifa insurrection, and the outcome of the 2020 election will likely be the "final nail in the coffin" event in all this depending on how things play out

 

[-4ZURE-]

The first four years? 2014 sucked shit and was the start of our current cultural miasma, so I can't agree with you there.

I thought 2014 was fine. I know Anita was 2013 and #Gamergate was 2014, but I did not see much of the effects to be honest. I think the culture war was still contained enough to not splurge into every facet of the internet, so I would say the year was good. Plus Super Smash Bros. was such a hype machine back then.

And even going back to 2011, 2012 and 2013 there was still a lot of early rumblings of what we have today and putting that aside the early 2010s was mostly mediocre compared to the 2000s pop culture wise, the 2000s featured way cooler stuff that the early 2010s ever gave us.

I have no knowledge of any, so what did you see? The closest thing to the rumblings were all those 90s kids whining about how Cartoon Network bad because they no longer show 90s cartoons. I can see how a mentality was fostered there.

But that said, 2010-2013 were still preferable to now, I think what I miss the most from back then was the feeling of potential it had, you had every reason to be hopeful that the 2010s would turn out to be awesome.

I really liked 2010-2015 (more so first half of 2015). Shows like Adventure Time, The Amazing World of Gumball, Regular Show, Young Justice, Green Lantern TAS, Teen Titans Go, and even early Steven Universe we’re great watches and a fantastic return for animation. The community for animation was also great as you had Pan-Chan take the wheel.

In 2014, we got the best Wii U year with Smash, Mario Kart, and the now cult classic Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze. Not to mention Mario 3D World beforehand. The PS4 was also a big deal with promises of Little Big Planet and The Last of Us for those into that. I think gaming was still pretty small online back then, especially Nintendo, so there was way less click-bait and streamer types.

YouTube was also great, though very outdated now. 2010s still had animations, the commentary community comprised of stock icons, lets plays, etc.. I sort of miss the weird rants and poor commentary. I also kind of miss skit comedy like Smosh, or videoes that had any form of effort.

2017

Great year for gaming, and I felt it was a dying down on politics of 2016.

Even if "woke" goes away, I'm still worried about tech trends. Brain computer interfaces. "Software as a service". The "Internet Of Things" (IOT). "Surveillance capitalism". Stuff going all electronic or digital that doesn't need to be. 5G. Coronapanic launching a work-from-home "drive-thru society". The modern world is getting way too tech-saturated, even when compared to 2000s.

Agreed.
I love technology, but I want to work in a building with others. I can rarely find people who are not busy or are willing to leave their homes anymore and I want and need to socialize. My parents say I should try online, but in cancel climate, I do not think giving away information is a great idea. I know that this is not the Gen Z thread, but I think something can be said on how technology may be replacing people.

 

[George Floyd Sneed]

This post would've been fine without this paragraph.

I disagree with that. The early and mid 2000s was pretty awesome. People were over the idea that you could get AIDS from a drinking fountain but it was before the Tinderization of dating. As long as you were in decent shape and dressed presentably, the dating world was your oyster.

To be fair, a lot of girls are ditching dating apps. Zoomers saw how it wrecked the dating landscape for millennials and are slowly but surely moving off of them. I even see fewer zoomers on their phones than millennials. It’s why I hold out hope that Generation Z will turn out better than the millennials, who are pretty much a write off at this point (speaking as a millennial).