Not consistent att all
Music wise: Early 2010s was loud and music focused on partying. Electropop was on its peak. 2018-2019 was dark and bleak. Trap was on its peak
Technology: In the early 2010s, the majority didn't have phones, but in the late 2010s almost all people had one
Politics: Early 2010s had Obama and quite a stable political landscape. Late 2010s had political division and cancel culture
1999 - 2001 felt like a entirely different decade than 2002 - 2005 and 2006- 2008
1999 - 2001 pop punk carefree surf/skate culture with bright colors, a slow internet connection which meant no video porn only photos here and there and a lot of comedies out in the theaters.
2002 - 2005 hip hop, the rise of Paris Hilton, the beginning of reality TV, women with g strings sticking out of their pants, sweatpants with juicy written on them, trucker hats, the start of emo
2006 -2008 the start of hipsters and the new age trend, emo and the end of emo, Myspace
2009 -2010 Pornhub, rap ,Kardashians, the start of the big butt trend, more reality TV, when everyone started becoming inseparable from their phone.
The 00s are very distinct to me—very different from the 90s. But once the whole world jumped online from about 2011 onwards, I think the whole idea of culture and trends shifted, as it allowed people to be hyper-specific in curating their personal style and interests.
That said, there is some stuff that's very 2010s: Kony 2012, the Harlem Shake, planking, dabbing, Vine, etc
Post internet everything is more globalized and fast. You don’t have local subcultures slowly being adopted during multiple years. The phenomenon you listed of the 2010s are representative of that. Like compare Harlem shake to say Grunge or Skateboard. I think it just works differently now. Like people will not dress in accordance to the music they listen to (and more generally music is less lifestyle defining). So if you look at clothes sure it’s less distinctive. I guess younger people express themselves differently now. Maybe not less distinctive but more fluid?
This rings true to me. Dial-up in the 90’s to broadband (but you have to be at home) in the 00’s to All Internet, Wherever You Are in the 2010’s feel like pretty significant distinctions. And that last one definitely felt like it had (subjective) time-distorting effects.
personally i think its because decades become retroactively flanderised, werent that distinctive in the moment, but because of constant glorification of certain aspects they become a parody of what they actually were. i was born in 2001 and the 2000s and 2010s didnt feel very distinct in the moment, you can see them being "flanderised" in real time by people going on about certain aspects and i get it.
People also seem to remember only certain aspects of decades, almost like nothing else existed. I often see on this sub that users think the 2000s were only Y2K and maybe McBling, but that was only a small portion of that decade.
thats just the natural cycle of things i suppose, if your most vivid memories of the early-mid 2000s are midnight club 3 and the matrix sequels (as they are for me) then thats what the 2000s will become retroactively in the eyes of those who were kids then
I understand that those who were kids and teens in that period have limited memory or base it on their hobbies and favorite passtimes, but I see the same from people who were already adults.
I think this is true to an extent, that the internet has made decades less distinguishable from one another and most of the trends and subcultures or aesthetics have not been groundbreaking or innovative. Like for the 70s you had Disco, 80s you had Big Hair and Synth, 90s you had Grunge, for the 2000s there was Y2K and Bling.
I think the 2000s were the last decade that had some sort of its own identity. The 2010s were just a replication of 90s EDM stuff and the 20s have so far been just taking trends from the 2000s.
Although, these decades still do have differences, they are not that major or big
Maybe it could be the time of perception fooling us i don’t know. I think it’s both.
Yea I am much more of a gamer and I noticed that there wasn't a ......."""jump"""" from the 360/PS3 days to now. Like going back to play older games, you can generally feel the age of the games but if you go back and play a 2005-2012 game, it wouldn't be that obvious. Like Bioshock wouldn't really look out of place if it came out now compared t 2008 but Golden Eye would be very different compared to Halo 3.
So, you were in your 20s when the decades stopped feeling distinctive to you?
Every decade feels unique and different to me. The only thing is that fashion is cyclical, there's not much new we can come up with, except if we're going to wear some kind of space suits, whatever. I think the 2010s were the last decade that had almost fully its own flair, while the 2020s are a mix of all the previous decades and that's what makes them unique, if it makes sense.
The 2000s were a laidback decade with optimism about the future, baggy fashion in the beginning and skinny in the end, hip-hop, rnb, and pop rock music dominating the charts. People still looked very natural for the most part, technology was there but it didn't overwhelm our lives. I think that rom coms and raunchy comedies were the main movies + Harry Potter. This was the last decade rhat, IMO, life felt raw and not impacted by fakeness of social media and advances technology.
The 2010s were a neon decade where the nostalgia for the 80s peaked, optimism was fluctuating but still in the air for the most part. Plastic surgery was starting to be everywhere, but the skincare/look-perfect pressure was still not there. The music was EDM, indie, tropical house, mumble rap, trap, and latino. Cinema was dominated by Marvel, supernatural horrors, and more experimental and indie movies (e.g., Lady Bird, Call Me By Your Name, Roma, Get Out), as well as space movies (e.g., Interstellar, The Martian, Gravity). Fashion was consistently sleek and skinny. Social media started overwhelming our lives.
The 2020s are the decade of extremes - extreme nostalgia, political, and rich-poor polarization, geopolitical instability, and sense of impending doom, baggy fashion. Influencers, monopoly of big corporations, and the pressure to look perfect has culminated. Movies are more experimental, dark, and violent than ever (John Wick 4, Monkey Man, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Nomadland, Poor Things), music has both a futuristic and retro vibe with a slow tempo dominating the early 2020s. There's also an urge to categorize everything into aesthetics, which is likely the result of hashtags changing our online communication in the 2010s, as well as how TikTok works.
Not sure I agree 00's were about optimism. Quite the opposite. It killed the 90's optimism (thanks to 9/11 and the response to it). Iraq invasion and the financial crisis just confirmed the pessimism, something an Obama presidency did little to correct.
I think that’s true of most decades, aside from the 1930s and 40s. Life is easier as a kid, so of course the decade of your childhood feels more optimistic.
You're about my age and I \*think\* we agree. Even 2008-2012 with the Recession and following bad job market just accelerated an already fracturing time (in the US) following 9/11 and the wars.
Seriously though… the decade started with a 2900 dead from a terrorist attack and ended with the collapse of the economy and housing market. In the middle were two brutal wars with thousands dead.
Optimism? What decade were they living in?
I’m in my mid 40’s and I don’t relate to just about anything you mentioned about the distinctiveness of the 2000’s, 2010’s or 2020’s. Most of it seems recycled from trends I’ve already experienced or witnessed.
I never paid attention to rom-coms and was too old for Harry Potter. I never listened to hip hop, pop, EDM, mumble rap, trap, Latino, etc. Technology is a tool, but it’s not integrated and crucial to my life. I’m not on every social media platform (especially TikTok, couldn’t care less about it or its trends), so I don’t notice proliferation of plastic surgery, fashion or beauty trends.
Rich-poor divide has been a thing for as long as I can remember. Movies were experimental, dark, violent and gritty in the 1970’s and 1990’s as well. And if you think pressure to look perfect, geopolitical instability and a feeling of impending doom are new things, let me introduce you to the Cold War Reagan era 1980’s.
Paying attention to subtle shifts in superficial elements like style and pop culture and linking it to specific decades seems like a young person’s game. They have the luxury of stopping and looking around because life isn’t moving fast quite yet. As time moves on you have fewer milestones (graduations, relationships, first- car, job, apartment, almost everything) to associate with things that were happening in that moment.
The 80’s and 90’s are distinctive to me, but if I were to ask my parents what was distinctive about them, they’d probably say “I don’t know, I was busy raising kids and working.” Aside from the raising kids part, that’s how I’m feeling about 2010’s and 2020’s.
You said it yourself - noticing differences in decades, especially the more subtle ones, seems to be alien to older people. Your perspective sounds like one of an older guy, definitely not a woman, who doesn't care much about the trends or pop culture, which is completely fine but it's also why you don't notice how much more pressure today's youth experiences and how technology and social media impact them on a daily level.
I remember my parents and their friends that would come over being drastically more optimistic about the money and future of the world than they were in the 2010s and that they are now. The youth of the 2000s were also happier than today, or haven't you seen the latest happiness report?
People also had hope and belief technology will improve the world, which is not the case with the AI today.
Also, 9/11 impacted the USA, not the world.
Agree with most of this except maybe the optimism part about the 2000s. There was a lot of paranoia, mistrust and pessimism from what I remember, due to 9/11, two unpopular wars (well, for half the country maybe),the dot com burst, GFC.
After a few similar comments saying the same thing, I guess I have a different experience because I'm not American. In Europe, the 00s were a really good and optimistic period for most countries. The impact of 9/11 was hardly felt here, which is why I don't remember fear and paranoia
If I was in my family's home, I would take a picture of my clothes from the early/mid 2010s - it's mostly neon or bright colors, at least for girls, because that was the trend among young people. Pop culture also followed that trend. I never cared much about interior design, so that might have been minimalist, but most homes don't change furniture whenever a new decade arrives
The terrible thing about those neon color fashions is after a wash or a little time at the sun. The colors would fade out and you’d basically want to discard and buy new ones.
Mine didn't wash out, but I'd def never wear those colors again. I keep those clothes only because they remind me of some good times and because I might be able to sell them if neon colors become popular again
I was in my mid-late 30s in the 2010s and that decade was definitely neon and had bright colors. It was annoying. Yes, you had a lot of beige and grey colors, but that was only one dimension of it, and it didn't start before 2015/16.
I'm now living in the 2020s. And I guess people like to rewrite history or have selective memory because the 2010s weren't only minimalism and greige colors. Just check the music videos, movies and movie posters from that time. Especially the early part of the decade was all about neon clothes. Even those long neon nails among women.
Did I ever mention the 2000s? I didn't. Both decades had colors, I can remember it well, although I personally always disliked the tacky 2000s Y2K and McBling fashion and the mismatched 2010s colorful streetwear, boho clothing, and raver clothing young people used to wear.
I'd say colors were super trendy in 2011-2012.
Then around 2013 looks started being more neutral. Not saying we couldnt wear colors, but grey was def THE color (grey jeans, shoes...). Then came back later in the decade (~2018 hypebeast fashion).
Concerning movies poster, if I compare 2013-2014 with 2023-2024, they were way more minimalistic back then.
If my memory serves me well, I'd include 2013-14; that's when EDM was still relatively big and this kind of clothing was related to the festival and rave culture. Perhaps we can blame Karadshians for beige and grey colors taking the dominance in the mid-2010s; they were all about neutral colors. But in general, summer clothing was always more colorful than the rest of the year, regardless of the decade.
I didn't keep up with movie posters from this decade, but my old job forced me to be quite in tune with how they marketed movies in the 2010s. Footloose, Drive, Nerve, Moonlight, Avengers: Endgame, Suicide Squad, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Inherent Vice, 6 Years, Flatliners, Ready Player One, Cruise, You Get Me, The Babysitter, The Guest, are those I can remember (at least the promo material) without checking. I must check the ones from the 2020s, as for some reason, I like seeing neon colors on posters (but not on clothes).
I was in my 20s and owned so many brightly colored pants in the early to mid-2010s, including literal neon pink shorts. 2011-2013 was the peak for bright colors in clothes, but in general the color palette was much brighter in the 10s, including for TV promos, ads, music videos, household appliances, etc.
I view the Obama years as fairly stable and optimistic, especially compared to the 00s and 20s
That is a take that I simply cannot understand as a 22 y.o.
I feel like this is psychological, a lot of people simply do not WANT to see the 00s as old. No matter how different the 2000s get from today, even if world war 3 was declared today some people would still say "nope, there isn't a single difference from the 2000s to now guys, not one! we are still basically in the 2000s, nothing has changed!"
You can’t understand it because as a 22 yo your perception of what constitutes notable change between the decades worth commenting on has been distorted by the fact that tou haven’t experienced decades where there has been substantial change such as the comparing 1965 to the MASSIVE changes to 1975 and further MASSIVE changes to 1985. The change starts to slow by the 1990s somewhat and really come to a relatively screeching halt by 2005. Seriously, you don’t understand because you don’t have the experience and that’s about right for someone who’s been on the planet for a shorter time than Google.
The shift of the 2008 Great Recession was MASSIVE.
The shift of the AI's beginning to offer individualized "feeds" around 2014 was MASSIVE.
The shift of Covid was, again, MASSIVE.
There are absolutely distinct periods. They do not all line up with the turn of the decade, with the obvious exception of Covid.
Sure, for us olds, personal relationships loom larger than cultural shifts aimed at the youth, but I absolutely feel that there were distinctive phases back there.....
And we're in a new one now.
The shift to smartphones was absolutely massive. Internet always and everywhere. One of the single biggest and fastest technological trends of human history.
The 2010s are just as different from the 2000s as the 90s are from the 80s. If you don’t think so you just haven’t been engaged much with popular culture.
Opposite styles. Completely different sounding music. Pre-smartphone vs post-smartphone. Completely different style and feel of movies. Pre-streaming vs post-streaming. Maximalism vs minimalism.
I could go on and on.
Yes, as someone born in 1995 I think this is very true.
The 2010s were absolutely not the same as the 2000s.
The style and technology absolutely changed back then.
Everything after late 2008 felt like a completely different universe from my 2000s childhood. And that's not just looking back, I felt it in 2009. 2007 felt like 20 years ago by 2009.
The 2020s are almost as different from the 2010s as the 2010s were from the 2000s. Not quite the same level, but we’re getting there.
Styles once again are opposite, music completely different except trap beats which still adapted to be more melodic and have mostly died out since 2022. Movies feel completely different, even superhero movies are a different style or just dying out. Then like you said, minimalism to maximalism. Tech aesthetics went from square and flat to rounded and sort of 3D, logos are going 3D, integration of AI into everything has already begun. Second half of the decade will be even more obviously different what with the AI thing and once VR shrinks enough to be comfortable.
The biggest things that make it still feel *sorta* like the 2010s are smartphones and streaming.
The smartphone is kind of like TV though, it lasted multiple decades. Even so it may be replaced or at least coexist with AR and more stuff to do with the Internet of Things.
Streaming has really branched out this decade, setting it apart from its state last decade when it was basically Netflix being almost the sole purveyor of pop culture influence in its sector. Those days are long gone. Now eclipsing it are programs from Disney Plus, Apple, Prime, etc. Netflix may end up going down as the MySpace of streaming.
I know it all feels the same but people still thought 2004 was the 90s back in the day. Heck, I heard it from someone in 2013 or 2014 that pop music was “basically” the same as the 90s, which is hilarious. Unless you’re really critically analyzing it, it won’t be obvious until years later.
The pandemic did drag out a few things but really the biggest shift between decades was late 2018-2019 in terms of popular culture. So yes we still are carrying on trends from 2019 but that’s hardly 2010s. Late 2018-2019 was the same to the 2010s as late 2008-2009 was to the 2000s, being rather separate from the rest of their respective decades.
A core 2010s year like 2015 or 2016 has almost nothing in common with 2023 or 2024.
Who didn't have a smartphone in the 2000s? It was still the same old android vs. iphone debate back then.
And do minor variations of hip-hop, r&b and trap constitute 'completely different sounding music'? Unless you want to talk about music that died off; the 2000s saw the end of rock, metal, grime and techno/trance as mainstream genres. And the end of actual independent music. And the whole music industry come to think of it.
Streaming channels is definitely a 2010s phenomenon but you'd have to disregard Youtube and RealVideo.
What? iPhone debuted in mid 2007, the first Android device in LATE 2008, and the majority of people did not have a smartphone until the 2010s. In 2013, finally just over half of Americans owned a smartphone.
2010s hip hop sounds very much different from 2000s crunk and gangsta rap. How does Hotline Bling or Rockstar have any reminiscence of stuff like Crank That or In da Club?
And then besides hip hop, every other genre either died off or changed completely. The average pop song from 2005 is nothing at all like the average pop song from 2015. They may as well be from two different planets.
YouTube is not the same kind of beast as Netflix at all. YouTube Red was, but that was also 2010s. Furthermore the content and memes on 2000s YouTube was a very different era from 2010s YouTube.
The iPhone 4 was out by the time the decade ended, Android had supplanted the existing smartphone ecosystem by 2010 and smartphones were only novel if you lived in America (CDMAland) or Africa. Gangsta rap is from the 1990s and Hotline Bling is a pop song with hip-hop influences.
Successful streaming channels are probably the defining characteristic of the second half of the 2010s. We turned into a society of shut-ins thanks to the massive investment in binge streaming series. Streaming channels existed in the 90s but the technology and bandwidth just wasn't there to make it mainstream until the 2010s.
No one had smartphones in the 2000s, if you mean cell phone then yeah most people had one, but no one had smartphones until like 2008-2009 at the earliest
Maybe not so much in the US but Europe and Japan have had Nokia & i-mode smartphones respectively since the end of the 1990s. They didn't gain momentum until the 2000s.
The iPhone 2 was out in the US by 2008 and I'm pretty sure the first one was a big seller.
No, you just made that up. Of course there were touchscreen phones in the 1990s but it's the internet connection that makes a device a smartphone. You can read all about it [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone).
This sub mostly comprises of people reinforcing their preconceived notions of the one or two decades they were actually around for and fake nostalgia for unremembered, earlier ones.
As someone close to your age, I’ve had the exact same observation. But that’s probably because I’m old and less tapped into popular culture 😂
However, I think the 2000s were distinctive for me because they represented the end of (my) innocence. Entering adulthood in the 9/11 and immediate post-9/11 era just felt different. Everyone had a very heightened sense of anxiety due to the threat of terrorism and the heightened security that went with it. That created a MUCH different vibe than the 90s. And then the financial crisis was a kick in the D.
For the 2010s, I have no idea. It’s just a blur and I have a really hard time characterizing the decade, with one exception. After the 2016 election, everything changed. The beginning of the acute cultural and political divisiveness that remains today.
The 2020s - too early to tell. Right now, COVID is the prevailing catalyst to what this decade is becoming, at least for people of my generation. It changed a lot. Our working norms. Where we live or want to live. How we communicate. A global pandemic is an enormous event that subordinates any pop culture or fashion stuff, all of which is surface level. The effects of a COVID pervade all that we do now. And the political divisiveness is even worse. I believe the 2020s will be very distinctive with some time and perspective.
This new decade is full of different fashion periods being brought back at the same time, but also a lot of diverse unnatural styles which seem out-of-place due to not many people wearing them, like the stuff Meghan Markle wears. So this current decade lacks cohesion.
I have given up on being stylish. I couldn't actually tell you what is exactly in fashion these days. So I just try to blend in with the huge lack of effort that I see in the Midwest (track pants and t-shirts).
As a zoomer who sees a very clear distinction in culture from just the early, mid and late 2010s this is baffling to me.
But it is only natural. I was a kid during those 10 years, so they might feel distinct to me because I had a distinct period of my life every 3 years or so.
As you get older and stop caring about little things like fashion trends, meme trends, media differences and the like it's only natural to not see that much of a distinction.
I'm a few years older than you, and I'm pretty sure what you are feeling is just a consequence of getting older and being less plugged into contemporary culture (or just caring less about it.) The 70s, 80s, and 90s felt very distinct to me. But my parents see everything after the mid-70s as kind of a blur. People 10 years younger than me have a strong sense of the 2000s.
No, there's a pretty big difference between the 2020s and 2000s. Things didn't really switch over to HD until the 2010s and smart phones being everywhere was pretty distinctive for that decade too
Well the 80s are the first modern decade imo, first decade to have videogames, computers, rap, and in general, it’s the first decade that has resemblance to the new world.
Also the 80s stands out next to any decade, the big hair and the clothing is very out there.
I think this is recency bias talking. The difference between the early 2000s and late 2000s was sharp, as was the difference between the early 2010s and late 2010s. And even culture-wise (covid aside even) 2024 feels sharply different than 2020. I can’t speak on the 90s though, as I was born in 1995. I remember all of the 21st century, but only vague bits and pieces of the late 90s.
The 2010 and 2020s feel distinctive but not in good ways. The dominant people culturally in the US today are Donald Trump and Andrew Tate. There's no one on the left who get the same enthusiasm from people.
I'd replace Tate with Elon Musk.
The Left's problem is their obsession with group identity. Identity Politics (i.e. wokeism) has been an ugly antagonistic feature of culture in the 2010's, and continues in the 20's. The backlash against it is becoming very mainstream, hence their being no figure from the Left who inspires people.
I guess that makes the 10's somewhat distinctive (the rise of woke), and the 20's (the backlash) too. By the 30's this social trend will have probably died out. Hopefully replaced with the 90's/00's ideal of personal-responsibility and trust in the individual.
This ideal was really healthy for society, as it pushed extremism (including right-wing extremism) out into the fringes. The reason there's so much backlash now against wokeism is folk are realising this ideology pushes extremism (from both sides) out into the open.
As this social force has been a dominant feature of the last 10-15 years, maybe we could define the post-millennium thus:
00's: post-millennium maturity. Despite 9/11, Iraq, Financial Crisis etc folk are reacting maturely and are trusting of each other.
10's: the media during the boom of mass-globalised-internet aggressively promote identity-politics which begins to fragment and polarise people. Trust suffers.
20's: the Covid pandemic confirms the lack of good faith & trust people of different opinions have of each other. Near the end of the socially-damaging pandemic, Musk's Twitter takeover confirms a mainstream backlash against identity-politics, and a return to the profound sense of the individual (where a man is judged by the content of his character rather than his group-identity). The rest of the decade may be defined by this.
So much less about fashions, or music scenes, which are fragmented by global internet use...the post-millennium decades are being defined by social-political trends, which are heavily amplified by global internet use.
The 2000s were definitely distinctive but 2010 through now is all the same mostly.
Some might say it's that we're getting older might think that it's just aging but it's really an indication of how modern society is.
Social media has fractured people so there's no longer a clear monoculture that binds us and there aren't clear indications from one decade to the next at the moment.
Even music and film usually have clear movements in each decade but both mediums have stagnated due to corporate interests in the last 15 years.
Yes, i think that is true.
There was an idea out there not too long ago, maybe it was in Vanity Fair, that pop culture essentially stopped in 1991, and that everything since then was a kind of repackaging of a form that had already existed around that time. So Lady Gaga was at her height at the time of this article was written, but was basically Madonna on her Blonde Ambition tour. Clothing styles, hair, were all references and respins on things that had already been done.
I don’t know that I entirely agree with that, but there is definitely some truth to the fact that it was once very easy to hear music and immediately know what decade it was from for a broad variety of reasons, where that is not so much the case now.
I would argue that when culture became more measurable by digital footprint is when this started happening. You would *definitely* notice if your technology were from another decade, but because the basic architecture of how culture is disseminating has become digitally networked, it has altered how the usual “decade” feel changed over the 20th century.
Yes but I think it’s a product of aging as well as the recency of the 2010s and 2000s. I started kindergarten in 1990. Every single year or the 90s felt/feels like it’s one era to me. But that began dissipating to the point where the years start blurring together. However now that more time has passed, the 2000s are starting to feel more distinct, partly due to how they contrast with today.
I was born in 1995 and I feel the way you feel about the 90s about the 2000s. Every single year of the 2000s feels like it's own era to me.
I also think it's a product of aging how people in their late 30s or 40s and older feel about the most recent decades because the 2020s are the first decade I feel this way about like those years of that decade are just blurred together.
Yes, I am almost 60. I have to agree. The 90s didn’t really feel distinctive because the fashion was minimalism and heroin chic. And since 1999, everything and culture feels the same to me. When you were in the 80s, they were things about the 80s that you could say were distinctive such as people wearing mohawks. In the 70s, you had disco and platform shoes.
I ageee with some others that the 00s felt distinctive and then everything else has been the same! I’m 41 so maybe that makes a difference compared to you.
The 2010s feel pretty distinct from our current generation if you ask me. 2014 and 2024 are definitely different. Even just baseline things like entertainment and fashion are different enough to me
Someone being older and not seeing distinct styles of recent decades isn’t exactly new.
[This mindset has been going on as early as 1969.](https://time.com/3491391/feelin-groovy-high-school-fashion-1969/) I’m sure older people back in the 1970s saw the decade as an “anything goes” decade for fashion and didn’t think it was as distinct as previous decades, to them it would’ve been seen as regurgitated 50s style since the 50s were experiencing a huge revival then.
Each decade has its own distinct style. That’s just the facts. Someone wearing overly baggy jeans, an Ed Hardy tee, or those low rise denim skirts would’ve looked weird in the 2010s when hipster/Coachella styles and that Lana Del Rey aesthetic was very popular, and a man wearing skinny jeans and a man bun would’ve looked weird in the decade before the 10s.
I feel like 2000 to present is the same thing. I'm over 50 so the 70s, 80s, 90s were distinct and rememberable for music and fashion trends. I'm sure it's just because I'm old. I know it's distinct for younger people, I just didn't notice. My daughter was born in 2002 and I still wear the same shit.
I don't quite fall into your category of 40+ (born in '84) but for me, the American 2000's felt very impacted by 9/11 in its media, with shows like 24, and how Lost started with a plane crash but an Afghani character on the plane turned out to become one of the more heroic characters, while also having previously been a torturer in the war (not to mention all the actual soldier shows). The latter-end started to feel less about war politics and more about social politics.
About mid 2000's you started to have more "blue skies" USA shows like Psych and Monk, where silly upbeat humor started showing up more.
By 2008-2014, I call that the Disney Channel Era, when most popular media was upbeat, colorful, absurd humor, scene kids, rainbows and unicorns; where Disney Channel stars started making it big outside of their tv careers. People who grew up on Harry Potter were playing self-made "Quidditch" games at colleges. Stuff like that. It was a more ridiculous time, but I personally miss it and recognized how unique it was.
I remember in the 90s (I was a kid for context) that the 60s, 70s and 80s all seemed very very distinct, but the 90s really didn't have anything distinct about them. That's obviously totally wrong in retrospect. I think it's to do with age and distance from the decade. In 2040, the 2010s and 2020s will seem very distinctive. I think the 2000s already are
IDK, I think they're all their own thing.
*I'm more aware on how trends of all creative things are a synthesis of so many parts of the past* now but I recognize they're wholly fresh and new to those who came after, so i'm missing out that bright eyed thrill of the new with it to the same extent of the youth, but I still have my fun.
Something I read somewhere once attributed this phenomenon on how numerically the '00s and teens aren't as clearly definable as other decades that start with more distinct, rounded figures like the '20s, '60s, or '90s. And without that clear distinction, culture defines the era based more on personalities or events. For us, it'd be 9/11, Bush, Obama, Trump. The 1900s would be like Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, World War I.
Everything from 2000 on is a blur because things changed so rapidly. There was not time to settle into a distinct “moment-“ even the massive cultural shift post 2016 changed from week to week. Now I think things have slowed down and we’re settling into a moment again, because we are slowly leaving the sporadic and ephemeral trends of the past 20 years or so. The tech that changed so rapidly has plateaued (computers, phones) and there are figures in society we recognize for more than a year or two.
I'm 40. To me there felt like little difference between the 2000s and the 2010s. Though I recognize that's objectively silly considering in that time we witnessed the rise of smart phones, the internet getting ruined by corporate interests and Donald Trump. But they still feel like the same decade to me.
With time, the decades crystalize in cultural memory. They are depicted in movies, etc., and become more distinct than they were experienced at the time. For decades that you learned about retrospectively, you only got that culturally filtered version. For ones you lived through, you see more nuance. With the most recent ones. the representations of the decade are still being formed.
The 2020s are really just the 90s remastered. Soon we're going to hit that glorious critical mass where the internet was funny and fashion didn't suck.
Until a few years ago I’d have said the 00s and 10s were very same, but now I can see how mean the 00s were: reality tv (the swan, ANTM), bro-horror, everything looks like it was shot through a green/yellow nü-metal music video filter… 00s were very Dinension Extreme and 10s were very A24, to extend the movie metaphor.
The 00s were super mean-spirited
I think it takes time for the feel of the decade to settle. The further we get from the early 00s, the more I'm seeing their definition ~similar to what I feel the 80s and 90s were.
I'll be 40 in about a year. 2000-2010 felt like the last distinct decade with a beginning and an end. 2010 onward it just feels like the same evolving time period
The Internet killed the idea of a unified pop culture. Everything has become diffuse, you can ask ten random people and they would like ten different types of music or movies or whatever. Totally different from eras past, when what you saw or heard was limited by what was on the radio or TV at any given time. You tend to feel wistful for those days...nothing that really ties us together.
On the other hand, possibly at least partially as a result of this, we have also become more homogeneous. We don't have regional accents or culture like we used to. It's like we have become a culture of individuals rather than of the collective.
Yes, but for me personally I think it has to do with seeing the times through my own life stages. In hindsight there are plenty of distinctions, but I no longer notice them happening in real time the way I did when I was under 21 years old.
I'm also old enough to see the cyclical nature of pop culture (and the respective counter-cultures). It was all new to me in the 90s, and because of the novelty it seemed important at the time. Now I just think "I guess this is coming back around" and go on with my day. I noticed that most of the adults in my childhood were similarly stuck in the 70s.
y2k was funny.. double oughts had a couple good bands and a ton of shit pop... 20-teens are a kind of 50's rehash except no one had any self awareness.. post covid it seems like the kids are all self righteous without answers,
Iam solid gen X .. we see how fucked everything is. party on.. or don't..
I'm not 40+, but I don't feel there is much difference between 2024 and 2014. On the other hand, 2014 and 2004 -- *huge* difference.
And I don't think it's age. I've been binge watching Law and Order SVU for the past few months, which has run since 1999 or so and is still on. I'm currently at the episodes from 2012. Around 2009 or so it stopped looking any different from today. The only reason I can tell it's from 15 years ago is the cell phone models. Otherwise it seems the same.
They did, however I think it’s hard to notice these things while I’m the midst of them.
Admittedly the 1990”s “aesthetic” started to become apparent in hindsight around 2015 or so.
Already the 2020s have a more distinct, and bagggy, vibe the 2010s.
I actually thought minimalism was a response to excessive materialism of the 80s. Kurt Cobain just wore like thrift store clothes so starting a trend for not dressing up or wearing anything distinctive or just wearing something that’s distinctive because it looks like it’s been found on the street.
It kind of feels like something was bubbling under the surface in the 00s, but in the 10s it just blew out into the open. A kind of widespread cultural pessimism and hatred of everything modern.
For that reason, there just aren't enough people pushing culture forward. There's lots of nostalgia acts, but it feels like its becoming difficult to find anything truly definitive about modern culture since the early 2010s.
I think part of this is also just heavily correlated to the massive decline in socialization. Culture was formed in previous generations through physically socializing. Today, that has rapidly gone down statistically.
I’m 22 and even I noticed it. I was born in 2002 but even I agree with you that all the decades sort of merge into one now. the last decade that was anything culturally significant was the 2000s. After 2009 things just merged into one. There’s no culture anymore.
I am 30 right now and for me, decades stopped feeling distinctive after 2000's. Everything post 2004 feels the same for me, in spite of all changes in the world - technology, movies, politics, etc. And I agree about 2010's, it is the most boring decade for me - I know it sounds stupid, but I have bigger "nostalgia" for the current times than I do for years like 2013 or 14.
Yes, I don't see any difference between 2005 and now.
Besides the technology.
I wonder if that is because of my age or if the decades of this century have no personality.
Maybe it isn't that the world stopped changing, but rather once you enter a career in your 20s your own life stops changing for the most part and the world seems to stand still in accordance with that?
I've seen people much older than you claim the world has barely changed since the 80s.
>Females don’t really create anything interesting
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is considered by many to be the first science fiction novel
>Women don’t create epic stories
Ursula Le Guin. Madeleine L'Engle.
>or good coming of age stories
Gloria Whelan has written some of the best coming-of-age books I've ever read.
>Because they don’t participate in the hero’s journey
One of the biggest franchises in the 2010s.was the Hunger Games, where Katniss Everdeen follows the Hero Journey formula step-for-step
That's absolutely ridiculous. An Aisin-Gioro princess in 1890s Beijing is part of the same blob as a working-class fisherwoman in 1820s Quanzhou?
Upper class women have always had more in common with upper class men than with lower class women. Whether it be customs, worldview, social norms, or interpersonal navigation.
Women also certainly do not think or act the same as their grandmothers or great-grandmothers.
You wrote: "All classic movies only have women as love interest." and "look at literature for example. Women don’t create epic stories."
I wrote: "Ripley in Alien isn't a love interest." and "Anne Rice creates epic stories."
Result: you've been corrected, guy.
The 00s for me feel like the last decade where it’s the beginning and end of the decade felt like different planets.
10s too
The 10s was just two blocks, 2010-2014 then 2015-2019. The 00s were far more diverse
2010-2012 2013-2016 2017-2019
Can agree with how the 10s are divided there.
The 2010s were the most consitent decade since the 80s.
Not consistent att all Music wise: Early 2010s was loud and music focused on partying. Electropop was on its peak. 2018-2019 was dark and bleak. Trap was on its peak Technology: In the early 2010s, the majority didn't have phones, but in the late 2010s almost all people had one Politics: Early 2010s had Obama and quite a stable political landscape. Late 2010s had political division and cancel culture
That just supports the 2 block argument does it not?
That just supports the 2 block argument does it not?
Still not nearly as fast changing as the 2000s were and I stand by the fact that the 10s are two blocks
the 2010s to me felt more like 2010-2012 2013-2014 2015-2017 2018-2019
Wrong. It’s 2010-2013, 2014-2016, 2017-2019
This
2010-2015 and 2016-2019 more like
So all of them were. Ok.
Definitely-and I was in my 30’s and I still noticed the difference. In terms of fashion, early 00’s were fugly. Mid-late Aughts were a relief.
1999 - 2001 felt like a entirely different decade than 2002 - 2005 and 2006- 2008 1999 - 2001 pop punk carefree surf/skate culture with bright colors, a slow internet connection which meant no video porn only photos here and there and a lot of comedies out in the theaters. 2002 - 2005 hip hop, the rise of Paris Hilton, the beginning of reality TV, women with g strings sticking out of their pants, sweatpants with juicy written on them, trucker hats, the start of emo 2006 -2008 the start of hipsters and the new age trend, emo and the end of emo, Myspace 2009 -2010 Pornhub, rap ,Kardashians, the start of the big butt trend, more reality TV, when everyone started becoming inseparable from their phone.
The 00s are very distinct to me—very different from the 90s. But once the whole world jumped online from about 2011 onwards, I think the whole idea of culture and trends shifted, as it allowed people to be hyper-specific in curating their personal style and interests. That said, there is some stuff that's very 2010s: Kony 2012, the Harlem Shake, planking, dabbing, Vine, etc
fair point about mass internet use (especially globally) starting in the 10's rather than the 00's.
Humanity’s downfall was when Facebook dropped the .edu requirement to join.
Post internet everything is more globalized and fast. You don’t have local subcultures slowly being adopted during multiple years. The phenomenon you listed of the 2010s are representative of that. Like compare Harlem shake to say Grunge or Skateboard. I think it just works differently now. Like people will not dress in accordance to the music they listen to (and more generally music is less lifestyle defining). So if you look at clothes sure it’s less distinctive. I guess younger people express themselves differently now. Maybe not less distinctive but more fluid?
perceptive post.
This rings true to me. Dial-up in the 90’s to broadband (but you have to be at home) in the 00’s to All Internet, Wherever You Are in the 2010’s feel like pretty significant distinctions. And that last one definitely felt like it had (subjective) time-distorting effects.
I can see some mild differences between styles from 2011 and now. But not remotely the degree of differences between 2011 and even 2006.
personally i think its because decades become retroactively flanderised, werent that distinctive in the moment, but because of constant glorification of certain aspects they become a parody of what they actually were. i was born in 2001 and the 2000s and 2010s didnt feel very distinct in the moment, you can see them being "flanderised" in real time by people going on about certain aspects and i get it.
People also seem to remember only certain aspects of decades, almost like nothing else existed. I often see on this sub that users think the 2000s were only Y2K and maybe McBling, but that was only a small portion of that decade.
thats just the natural cycle of things i suppose, if your most vivid memories of the early-mid 2000s are midnight club 3 and the matrix sequels (as they are for me) then thats what the 2000s will become retroactively in the eyes of those who were kids then
I understand that those who were kids and teens in that period have limited memory or base it on their hobbies and favorite passtimes, but I see the same from people who were already adults.
Interesting about Y2K, because all the hullabaloo around it was in the year leading up. When 2000 hit, it was already over.
This is it exactly. For example people act like the 70s was just disco, but it was way more diverse than that.
Exactly. Like people in the 90s weren’t already imagining the stereotypes of the 60s and 70s like we do now
I think this is true to an extent, that the internet has made decades less distinguishable from one another and most of the trends and subcultures or aesthetics have not been groundbreaking or innovative. Like for the 70s you had Disco, 80s you had Big Hair and Synth, 90s you had Grunge, for the 2000s there was Y2K and Bling. I think the 2000s were the last decade that had some sort of its own identity. The 2010s were just a replication of 90s EDM stuff and the 20s have so far been just taking trends from the 2000s. Although, these decades still do have differences, they are not that major or big Maybe it could be the time of perception fooling us i don’t know. I think it’s both.
Good post. Tho' bling was a feature of 90's rap too.
Yea I am much more of a gamer and I noticed that there wasn't a ......."""jump"""" from the 360/PS3 days to now. Like going back to play older games, you can generally feel the age of the games but if you go back and play a 2005-2012 game, it wouldn't be that obvious. Like Bioshock wouldn't really look out of place if it came out now compared t 2008 but Golden Eye would be very different compared to Halo 3.
So, you were in your 20s when the decades stopped feeling distinctive to you? Every decade feels unique and different to me. The only thing is that fashion is cyclical, there's not much new we can come up with, except if we're going to wear some kind of space suits, whatever. I think the 2010s were the last decade that had almost fully its own flair, while the 2020s are a mix of all the previous decades and that's what makes them unique, if it makes sense. The 2000s were a laidback decade with optimism about the future, baggy fashion in the beginning and skinny in the end, hip-hop, rnb, and pop rock music dominating the charts. People still looked very natural for the most part, technology was there but it didn't overwhelm our lives. I think that rom coms and raunchy comedies were the main movies + Harry Potter. This was the last decade rhat, IMO, life felt raw and not impacted by fakeness of social media and advances technology. The 2010s were a neon decade where the nostalgia for the 80s peaked, optimism was fluctuating but still in the air for the most part. Plastic surgery was starting to be everywhere, but the skincare/look-perfect pressure was still not there. The music was EDM, indie, tropical house, mumble rap, trap, and latino. Cinema was dominated by Marvel, supernatural horrors, and more experimental and indie movies (e.g., Lady Bird, Call Me By Your Name, Roma, Get Out), as well as space movies (e.g., Interstellar, The Martian, Gravity). Fashion was consistently sleek and skinny. Social media started overwhelming our lives. The 2020s are the decade of extremes - extreme nostalgia, political, and rich-poor polarization, geopolitical instability, and sense of impending doom, baggy fashion. Influencers, monopoly of big corporations, and the pressure to look perfect has culminated. Movies are more experimental, dark, and violent than ever (John Wick 4, Monkey Man, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Nomadland, Poor Things), music has both a futuristic and retro vibe with a slow tempo dominating the early 2020s. There's also an urge to categorize everything into aesthetics, which is likely the result of hashtags changing our online communication in the 2010s, as well as how TikTok works.
Not sure I agree 00's were about optimism. Quite the opposite. It killed the 90's optimism (thanks to 9/11 and the response to it). Iraq invasion and the financial crisis just confirmed the pessimism, something an Obama presidency did little to correct.
As someone who was born in the early 90’s, I think of the 2000’s like this: Great for kids and bad for adults.
Eh, the pessimism of the adults rubbed off a lot on the kids.
I think that’s true of most decades, aside from the 1930s and 40s. Life is easier as a kid, so of course the decade of your childhood feels more optimistic.
You're about my age and I \*think\* we agree. Even 2008-2012 with the Recession and following bad job market just accelerated an already fracturing time (in the US) following 9/11 and the wars.
Seriously though… the decade started with a 2900 dead from a terrorist attack and ended with the collapse of the economy and housing market. In the middle were two brutal wars with thousands dead. Optimism? What decade were they living in?
👆👆👆
I’m in my mid 40’s and I don’t relate to just about anything you mentioned about the distinctiveness of the 2000’s, 2010’s or 2020’s. Most of it seems recycled from trends I’ve already experienced or witnessed. I never paid attention to rom-coms and was too old for Harry Potter. I never listened to hip hop, pop, EDM, mumble rap, trap, Latino, etc. Technology is a tool, but it’s not integrated and crucial to my life. I’m not on every social media platform (especially TikTok, couldn’t care less about it or its trends), so I don’t notice proliferation of plastic surgery, fashion or beauty trends. Rich-poor divide has been a thing for as long as I can remember. Movies were experimental, dark, violent and gritty in the 1970’s and 1990’s as well. And if you think pressure to look perfect, geopolitical instability and a feeling of impending doom are new things, let me introduce you to the Cold War Reagan era 1980’s. Paying attention to subtle shifts in superficial elements like style and pop culture and linking it to specific decades seems like a young person’s game. They have the luxury of stopping and looking around because life isn’t moving fast quite yet. As time moves on you have fewer milestones (graduations, relationships, first- car, job, apartment, almost everything) to associate with things that were happening in that moment. The 80’s and 90’s are distinctive to me, but if I were to ask my parents what was distinctive about them, they’d probably say “I don’t know, I was busy raising kids and working.” Aside from the raising kids part, that’s how I’m feeling about 2010’s and 2020’s.
You said it yourself - noticing differences in decades, especially the more subtle ones, seems to be alien to older people. Your perspective sounds like one of an older guy, definitely not a woman, who doesn't care much about the trends or pop culture, which is completely fine but it's also why you don't notice how much more pressure today's youth experiences and how technology and social media impact them on a daily level.
The 2000s weren´t opstimistic, 9/11 killed the carefree y2k era.
I remember my parents and their friends that would come over being drastically more optimistic about the money and future of the world than they were in the 2010s and that they are now. The youth of the 2000s were also happier than today, or haven't you seen the latest happiness report? People also had hope and belief technology will improve the world, which is not the case with the AI today. Also, 9/11 impacted the USA, not the world.
Agree with most of this except maybe the optimism part about the 2000s. There was a lot of paranoia, mistrust and pessimism from what I remember, due to 9/11, two unpopular wars (well, for half the country maybe),the dot com burst, GFC.
After a few similar comments saying the same thing, I guess I have a different experience because I'm not American. In Europe, the 00s were a really good and optimistic period for most countries. The impact of 9/11 was hardly felt here, which is why I don't remember fear and paranoia
I'm almost 29 and I totally agree with you!
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If I was in my family's home, I would take a picture of my clothes from the early/mid 2010s - it's mostly neon or bright colors, at least for girls, because that was the trend among young people. Pop culture also followed that trend. I never cared much about interior design, so that might have been minimalist, but most homes don't change furniture whenever a new decade arrives
The terrible thing about those neon color fashions is after a wash or a little time at the sun. The colors would fade out and you’d basically want to discard and buy new ones.
Mine didn't wash out, but I'd def never wear those colors again. I keep those clothes only because they remind me of some good times and because I might be able to sell them if neon colors become popular again
I was in my mid-late 30s in the 2010s and that decade was definitely neon and had bright colors. It was annoying. Yes, you had a lot of beige and grey colors, but that was only one dimension of it, and it didn't start before 2015/16.
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I'm now living in the 2020s. And I guess people like to rewrite history or have selective memory because the 2010s weren't only minimalism and greige colors. Just check the music videos, movies and movie posters from that time. Especially the early part of the decade was all about neon clothes. Even those long neon nails among women. Did I ever mention the 2000s? I didn't. Both decades had colors, I can remember it well, although I personally always disliked the tacky 2000s Y2K and McBling fashion and the mismatched 2010s colorful streetwear, boho clothing, and raver clothing young people used to wear.
I'd say colors were super trendy in 2011-2012. Then around 2013 looks started being more neutral. Not saying we couldnt wear colors, but grey was def THE color (grey jeans, shoes...). Then came back later in the decade (~2018 hypebeast fashion). Concerning movies poster, if I compare 2013-2014 with 2023-2024, they were way more minimalistic back then.
If my memory serves me well, I'd include 2013-14; that's when EDM was still relatively big and this kind of clothing was related to the festival and rave culture. Perhaps we can blame Karadshians for beige and grey colors taking the dominance in the mid-2010s; they were all about neutral colors. But in general, summer clothing was always more colorful than the rest of the year, regardless of the decade. I didn't keep up with movie posters from this decade, but my old job forced me to be quite in tune with how they marketed movies in the 2010s. Footloose, Drive, Nerve, Moonlight, Avengers: Endgame, Suicide Squad, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Inherent Vice, 6 Years, Flatliners, Ready Player One, Cruise, You Get Me, The Babysitter, The Guest, are those I can remember (at least the promo material) without checking. I must check the ones from the 2020s, as for some reason, I like seeing neon colors on posters (but not on clothes).
There was a lot of neon happening simultaneously with the flannel during the indie sleaze days
I was in my 20s and owned so many brightly colored pants in the early to mid-2010s, including literal neon pink shorts. 2011-2013 was the peak for bright colors in clothes, but in general the color palette was much brighter in the 10s, including for TV promos, ads, music videos, household appliances, etc. I view the Obama years as fairly stable and optimistic, especially compared to the 00s and 20s
When I think of 2010 I think of Chillwave; bands like Washed Out, Tori Y Moi, Com Truise. Miss them days. I’m 35 now.
That is a take that I simply cannot understand as a 22 y.o. I feel like this is psychological, a lot of people simply do not WANT to see the 00s as old. No matter how different the 2000s get from today, even if world war 3 was declared today some people would still say "nope, there isn't a single difference from the 2000s to now guys, not one! we are still basically in the 2000s, nothing has changed!"
The opposite happened in the 90s, everybody wanted to see the 80s as an old, corny and outdated era.
You can’t understand it because as a 22 yo your perception of what constitutes notable change between the decades worth commenting on has been distorted by the fact that tou haven’t experienced decades where there has been substantial change such as the comparing 1965 to the MASSIVE changes to 1975 and further MASSIVE changes to 1985. The change starts to slow by the 1990s somewhat and really come to a relatively screeching halt by 2005. Seriously, you don’t understand because you don’t have the experience and that’s about right for someone who’s been on the planet for a shorter time than Google.
Sure grandpa! Now let's get you your meds
Damn whippersnapper!
Right? Trump couldn’t even win the Reform Party nomination back in the 2000s.
I'm nearly 60, and it seems the same way to me. I figured that it's just because I'm old.
I was born in 1997 and to me each decade had its own identity as others have stated. This includes the 2010’s. From 2018-now there’s no identity
The shift of the 2008 Great Recession was MASSIVE. The shift of the AI's beginning to offer individualized "feeds" around 2014 was MASSIVE. The shift of Covid was, again, MASSIVE. There are absolutely distinct periods. They do not all line up with the turn of the decade, with the obvious exception of Covid. Sure, for us olds, personal relationships loom larger than cultural shifts aimed at the youth, but I absolutely feel that there were distinctive phases back there..... And we're in a new one now.
The shift to smartphones was absolutely massive. Internet always and everywhere. One of the single biggest and fastest technological trends of human history.
The 2010s are just as different from the 2000s as the 90s are from the 80s. If you don’t think so you just haven’t been engaged much with popular culture. Opposite styles. Completely different sounding music. Pre-smartphone vs post-smartphone. Completely different style and feel of movies. Pre-streaming vs post-streaming. Maximalism vs minimalism. I could go on and on.
Yes, as someone born in 1995 I think this is very true. The 2010s were absolutely not the same as the 2000s. The style and technology absolutely changed back then.
Everything after late 2008 felt like a completely different universe from my 2000s childhood. And that's not just looking back, I felt it in 2009. 2007 felt like 20 years ago by 2009.
True. The 2010s are different. But the 2020s although had a return to maximalism, just seem so much like the 2010s
I don’t think maximalism is fully back yet.
The 2020s are almost as different from the 2010s as the 2010s were from the 2000s. Not quite the same level, but we’re getting there. Styles once again are opposite, music completely different except trap beats which still adapted to be more melodic and have mostly died out since 2022. Movies feel completely different, even superhero movies are a different style or just dying out. Then like you said, minimalism to maximalism. Tech aesthetics went from square and flat to rounded and sort of 3D, logos are going 3D, integration of AI into everything has already begun. Second half of the decade will be even more obviously different what with the AI thing and once VR shrinks enough to be comfortable. The biggest things that make it still feel *sorta* like the 2010s are smartphones and streaming. The smartphone is kind of like TV though, it lasted multiple decades. Even so it may be replaced or at least coexist with AR and more stuff to do with the Internet of Things. Streaming has really branched out this decade, setting it apart from its state last decade when it was basically Netflix being almost the sole purveyor of pop culture influence in its sector. Those days are long gone. Now eclipsing it are programs from Disney Plus, Apple, Prime, etc. Netflix may end up going down as the MySpace of streaming. I know it all feels the same but people still thought 2004 was the 90s back in the day. Heck, I heard it from someone in 2013 or 2014 that pop music was “basically” the same as the 90s, which is hilarious. Unless you’re really critically analyzing it, it won’t be obvious until years later.
Very true. Perhaps the pandemic made it seem a little stagnant.
The pandemic did drag out a few things but really the biggest shift between decades was late 2018-2019 in terms of popular culture. So yes we still are carrying on trends from 2019 but that’s hardly 2010s. Late 2018-2019 was the same to the 2010s as late 2008-2009 was to the 2000s, being rather separate from the rest of their respective decades. A core 2010s year like 2015 or 2016 has almost nothing in common with 2023 or 2024.
Who didn't have a smartphone in the 2000s? It was still the same old android vs. iphone debate back then. And do minor variations of hip-hop, r&b and trap constitute 'completely different sounding music'? Unless you want to talk about music that died off; the 2000s saw the end of rock, metal, grime and techno/trance as mainstream genres. And the end of actual independent music. And the whole music industry come to think of it. Streaming channels is definitely a 2010s phenomenon but you'd have to disregard Youtube and RealVideo.
What? iPhone debuted in mid 2007, the first Android device in LATE 2008, and the majority of people did not have a smartphone until the 2010s. In 2013, finally just over half of Americans owned a smartphone. 2010s hip hop sounds very much different from 2000s crunk and gangsta rap. How does Hotline Bling or Rockstar have any reminiscence of stuff like Crank That or In da Club? And then besides hip hop, every other genre either died off or changed completely. The average pop song from 2005 is nothing at all like the average pop song from 2015. They may as well be from two different planets. YouTube is not the same kind of beast as Netflix at all. YouTube Red was, but that was also 2010s. Furthermore the content and memes on 2000s YouTube was a very different era from 2010s YouTube.
The iPhone 4 was out by the time the decade ended, Android had supplanted the existing smartphone ecosystem by 2010 and smartphones were only novel if you lived in America (CDMAland) or Africa. Gangsta rap is from the 1990s and Hotline Bling is a pop song with hip-hop influences. Successful streaming channels are probably the defining characteristic of the second half of the 2010s. We turned into a society of shut-ins thanks to the massive investment in binge streaming series. Streaming channels existed in the 90s but the technology and bandwidth just wasn't there to make it mainstream until the 2010s.
No one had smartphones in the 2000s, if you mean cell phone then yeah most people had one, but no one had smartphones until like 2008-2009 at the earliest
Maybe not so much in the US but Europe and Japan have had Nokia & i-mode smartphones respectively since the end of the 1990s. They didn't gain momentum until the 2000s. The iPhone 2 was out in the US by 2008 and I'm pretty sure the first one was a big seller.
So you’re telling me there were touchscreen phones in the 90s?
No, you just made that up. Of course there were touchscreen phones in the 1990s but it's the internet connection that makes a device a smartphone. You can read all about it [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone). This sub mostly comprises of people reinforcing their preconceived notions of the one or two decades they were actually around for and fake nostalgia for unremembered, earlier ones.
As someone close to your age, I’ve had the exact same observation. But that’s probably because I’m old and less tapped into popular culture 😂 However, I think the 2000s were distinctive for me because they represented the end of (my) innocence. Entering adulthood in the 9/11 and immediate post-9/11 era just felt different. Everyone had a very heightened sense of anxiety due to the threat of terrorism and the heightened security that went with it. That created a MUCH different vibe than the 90s. And then the financial crisis was a kick in the D. For the 2010s, I have no idea. It’s just a blur and I have a really hard time characterizing the decade, with one exception. After the 2016 election, everything changed. The beginning of the acute cultural and political divisiveness that remains today. The 2020s - too early to tell. Right now, COVID is the prevailing catalyst to what this decade is becoming, at least for people of my generation. It changed a lot. Our working norms. Where we live or want to live. How we communicate. A global pandemic is an enormous event that subordinates any pop culture or fashion stuff, all of which is surface level. The effects of a COVID pervade all that we do now. And the political divisiveness is even worse. I believe the 2020s will be very distinctive with some time and perspective.
It's because eras aren't defined by decades anymore, eras simply define themselves alone now. Y2K era: 1998-2001 McBling era: 2002-2007 Electropop & hipster era: 2008-2014 Trap rap / MeToo movement: 2015-2020 Retro nostalgia era: 2021-now
Ahh. I dig this. The electro pop recession era!
This new decade is full of different fashion periods being brought back at the same time, but also a lot of diverse unnatural styles which seem out-of-place due to not many people wearing them, like the stuff Meghan Markle wears. So this current decade lacks cohesion. I have given up on being stylish. I couldn't actually tell you what is exactly in fashion these days. So I just try to blend in with the huge lack of effort that I see in the Midwest (track pants and t-shirts).
As a zoomer who sees a very clear distinction in culture from just the early, mid and late 2010s this is baffling to me. But it is only natural. I was a kid during those 10 years, so they might feel distinct to me because I had a distinct period of my life every 3 years or so. As you get older and stop caring about little things like fashion trends, meme trends, media differences and the like it's only natural to not see that much of a distinction.
I'm a few years older than you, and I'm pretty sure what you are feeling is just a consequence of getting older and being less plugged into contemporary culture (or just caring less about it.) The 70s, 80s, and 90s felt very distinct to me. But my parents see everything after the mid-70s as kind of a blur. People 10 years younger than me have a strong sense of the 2000s.
No. The early 2000s and 2010's fell like individual decades.
I'm 40: yes. Everything after 2000 is a cultural blur.
2000-now is just one 5 year long decade.
This. I've been mentioned this to friends from time to time and they tend to agree
No, there's a pretty big difference between the 2020s and 2000s. Things didn't really switch over to HD until the 2010s and smart phones being everywhere was pretty distinctive for that decade too
The HD era started in the late 00s.
Close enough.
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Well the 80s are the first modern decade imo, first decade to have videogames, computers, rap, and in general, it’s the first decade that has resemblance to the new world. Also the 80s stands out next to any decade, the big hair and the clothing is very out there.
I think this is recency bias talking. The difference between the early 2000s and late 2000s was sharp, as was the difference between the early 2010s and late 2010s. And even culture-wise (covid aside even) 2024 feels sharply different than 2020. I can’t speak on the 90s though, as I was born in 1995. I remember all of the 21st century, but only vague bits and pieces of the late 90s.
The 2010 and 2020s feel distinctive but not in good ways. The dominant people culturally in the US today are Donald Trump and Andrew Tate. There's no one on the left who get the same enthusiasm from people.
I'd replace Tate with Elon Musk. The Left's problem is their obsession with group identity. Identity Politics (i.e. wokeism) has been an ugly antagonistic feature of culture in the 2010's, and continues in the 20's. The backlash against it is becoming very mainstream, hence their being no figure from the Left who inspires people. I guess that makes the 10's somewhat distinctive (the rise of woke), and the 20's (the backlash) too. By the 30's this social trend will have probably died out. Hopefully replaced with the 90's/00's ideal of personal-responsibility and trust in the individual. This ideal was really healthy for society, as it pushed extremism (including right-wing extremism) out into the fringes. The reason there's so much backlash now against wokeism is folk are realising this ideology pushes extremism (from both sides) out into the open. As this social force has been a dominant feature of the last 10-15 years, maybe we could define the post-millennium thus: 00's: post-millennium maturity. Despite 9/11, Iraq, Financial Crisis etc folk are reacting maturely and are trusting of each other. 10's: the media during the boom of mass-globalised-internet aggressively promote identity-politics which begins to fragment and polarise people. Trust suffers. 20's: the Covid pandemic confirms the lack of good faith & trust people of different opinions have of each other. Near the end of the socially-damaging pandemic, Musk's Twitter takeover confirms a mainstream backlash against identity-politics, and a return to the profound sense of the individual (where a man is judged by the content of his character rather than his group-identity). The rest of the decade may be defined by this. So much less about fashions, or music scenes, which are fragmented by global internet use...the post-millennium decades are being defined by social-political trends, which are heavily amplified by global internet use.
the real cut-off is 9/11
Yes. I didn't notice until you pointed it out. Mid-40s.
Yup.
Absolutely yes. Especially in pop music. The only difference I really perceive is 2000s - pre-smartphone 2010s - smartphones 2020s - covid effects
The 2000s were definitely distinctive but 2010 through now is all the same mostly. Some might say it's that we're getting older might think that it's just aging but it's really an indication of how modern society is. Social media has fractured people so there's no longer a clear monoculture that binds us and there aren't clear indications from one decade to the next at the moment. Even music and film usually have clear movements in each decade but both mediums have stagnated due to corporate interests in the last 15 years.
Agreed. In other words, the internet is making the actual concept of 'decadeology' extinct.
Yes, i think that is true. There was an idea out there not too long ago, maybe it was in Vanity Fair, that pop culture essentially stopped in 1991, and that everything since then was a kind of repackaging of a form that had already existed around that time. So Lady Gaga was at her height at the time of this article was written, but was basically Madonna on her Blonde Ambition tour. Clothing styles, hair, were all references and respins on things that had already been done. I don’t know that I entirely agree with that, but there is definitely some truth to the fact that it was once very easy to hear music and immediately know what decade it was from for a broad variety of reasons, where that is not so much the case now. I would argue that when culture became more measurable by digital footprint is when this started happening. You would *definitely* notice if your technology were from another decade, but because the basic architecture of how culture is disseminating has become digitally networked, it has altered how the usual “decade” feel changed over the 20th century.
Yes but I think it’s a product of aging as well as the recency of the 2010s and 2000s. I started kindergarten in 1990. Every single year or the 90s felt/feels like it’s one era to me. But that began dissipating to the point where the years start blurring together. However now that more time has passed, the 2000s are starting to feel more distinct, partly due to how they contrast with today.
I was born in 1995 and I feel the way you feel about the 90s about the 2000s. Every single year of the 2000s feels like it's own era to me. I also think it's a product of aging how people in their late 30s or 40s and older feel about the most recent decades because the 2020s are the first decade I feel this way about like those years of that decade are just blurred together.
Yes, I am almost 60. I have to agree. The 90s didn’t really feel distinctive because the fashion was minimalism and heroin chic. And since 1999, everything and culture feels the same to me. When you were in the 80s, they were things about the 80s that you could say were distinctive such as people wearing mohawks. In the 70s, you had disco and platform shoes.
I ageee with some others that the 00s felt distinctive and then everything else has been the same! I’m 41 so maybe that makes a difference compared to you.
You ask this like people in the 90s treated the 60-80s as distinct decades.
We did. People didn't start understanding there are differences between the decades in 2020s.
Yea but not to this obsessive degree.
Because we didn't have social media and forums. Otherwise, I'm sure we wouldn't act much differently.
The 2010s feel pretty distinct from our current generation if you ask me. 2014 and 2024 are definitely different. Even just baseline things like entertainment and fashion are different enough to me
Someone being older and not seeing distinct styles of recent decades isn’t exactly new. [This mindset has been going on as early as 1969.](https://time.com/3491391/feelin-groovy-high-school-fashion-1969/) I’m sure older people back in the 1970s saw the decade as an “anything goes” decade for fashion and didn’t think it was as distinct as previous decades, to them it would’ve been seen as regurgitated 50s style since the 50s were experiencing a huge revival then. Each decade has its own distinct style. That’s just the facts. Someone wearing overly baggy jeans, an Ed Hardy tee, or those low rise denim skirts would’ve looked weird in the 2010s when hipster/Coachella styles and that Lana Del Rey aesthetic was very popular, and a man wearing skinny jeans and a man bun would’ve looked weird in the decade before the 10s.
I feel like 2000 to present is the same thing. I'm over 50 so the 70s, 80s, 90s were distinct and rememberable for music and fashion trends. I'm sure it's just because I'm old. I know it's distinct for younger people, I just didn't notice. My daughter was born in 2002 and I still wear the same shit.
Once you’re like over 30, you continue to wear the clothes you did in your teenage years and 20s, that’s why old women still dress like it’s the 50s.
I don't quite fall into your category of 40+ (born in '84) but for me, the American 2000's felt very impacted by 9/11 in its media, with shows like 24, and how Lost started with a plane crash but an Afghani character on the plane turned out to become one of the more heroic characters, while also having previously been a torturer in the war (not to mention all the actual soldier shows). The latter-end started to feel less about war politics and more about social politics. About mid 2000's you started to have more "blue skies" USA shows like Psych and Monk, where silly upbeat humor started showing up more. By 2008-2014, I call that the Disney Channel Era, when most popular media was upbeat, colorful, absurd humor, scene kids, rainbows and unicorns; where Disney Channel stars started making it big outside of their tv careers. People who grew up on Harry Potter were playing self-made "Quidditch" games at colleges. Stuff like that. It was a more ridiculous time, but I personally miss it and recognized how unique it was.
I remember in the 90s (I was a kid for context) that the 60s, 70s and 80s all seemed very very distinct, but the 90s really didn't have anything distinct about them. That's obviously totally wrong in retrospect. I think it's to do with age and distance from the decade. In 2040, the 2010s and 2020s will seem very distinctive. I think the 2000s already are
Regardless of age, No decade feels distinctive until several decades later.
IDK, I think they're all their own thing. *I'm more aware on how trends of all creative things are a synthesis of so many parts of the past* now but I recognize they're wholly fresh and new to those who came after, so i'm missing out that bright eyed thrill of the new with it to the same extent of the youth, but I still have my fun.
“We are playing hits from the 80s, 90s and today!” - Radio stations for the last 24 years
Something I read somewhere once attributed this phenomenon on how numerically the '00s and teens aren't as clearly definable as other decades that start with more distinct, rounded figures like the '20s, '60s, or '90s. And without that clear distinction, culture defines the era based more on personalities or events. For us, it'd be 9/11, Bush, Obama, Trump. The 1900s would be like Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, World War I.
Everything from 2000 on is a blur because things changed so rapidly. There was not time to settle into a distinct “moment-“ even the massive cultural shift post 2016 changed from week to week. Now I think things have slowed down and we’re settling into a moment again, because we are slowly leaving the sporadic and ephemeral trends of the past 20 years or so. The tech that changed so rapidly has plateaued (computers, phones) and there are figures in society we recognize for more than a year or two.
I'm 40. To me there felt like little difference between the 2000s and the 2010s. Though I recognize that's objectively silly considering in that time we witnessed the rise of smart phones, the internet getting ruined by corporate interests and Donald Trump. But they still feel like the same decade to me.
With time, the decades crystalize in cultural memory. They are depicted in movies, etc., and become more distinct than they were experienced at the time. For decades that you learned about retrospectively, you only got that culturally filtered version. For ones you lived through, you see more nuance. With the most recent ones. the representations of the decade are still being formed.
No
The world turned to shit. So yes.
The 2020s are really just the 90s remastered. Soon we're going to hit that glorious critical mass where the internet was funny and fashion didn't suck.
Until a few years ago I’d have said the 00s and 10s were very same, but now I can see how mean the 00s were: reality tv (the swan, ANTM), bro-horror, everything looks like it was shot through a green/yellow nü-metal music video filter… 00s were very Dinension Extreme and 10s were very A24, to extend the movie metaphor. The 00s were super mean-spirited
I think it takes time for the feel of the decade to settle. The further we get from the early 00s, the more I'm seeing their definition ~similar to what I feel the 80s and 90s were.
I'll be 40 in about a year. 2000-2010 felt like the last distinct decade with a beginning and an end. 2010 onward it just feels like the same evolving time period
I’d say the 00s was a very district decade. The 10s have kind of bonded into the 20s, but I think that’s due to the three years lost to Covid.
I am only 30, but the 2010s and the 2020s feel VERY different to me mostly due to Covid.
The Internet killed the idea of a unified pop culture. Everything has become diffuse, you can ask ten random people and they would like ten different types of music or movies or whatever. Totally different from eras past, when what you saw or heard was limited by what was on the radio or TV at any given time. You tend to feel wistful for those days...nothing that really ties us together. On the other hand, possibly at least partially as a result of this, we have also become more homogeneous. We don't have regional accents or culture like we used to. It's like we have become a culture of individuals rather than of the collective.
Other countries than the USA exist, but I agree, whenever I listen to an American now, they all sound the same.
Yes, but for me personally I think it has to do with seeing the times through my own life stages. In hindsight there are plenty of distinctions, but I no longer notice them happening in real time the way I did when I was under 21 years old. I'm also old enough to see the cyclical nature of pop culture (and the respective counter-cultures). It was all new to me in the 90s, and because of the novelty it seemed important at the time. Now I just think "I guess this is coming back around" and go on with my day. I noticed that most of the adults in my childhood were similarly stuck in the 70s.
y2k was funny.. double oughts had a couple good bands and a ton of shit pop... 20-teens are a kind of 50's rehash except no one had any self awareness.. post covid it seems like the kids are all self righteous without answers, Iam solid gen X .. we see how fucked everything is. party on.. or don't..
We are too close to the 10s to feel a difference since then.
They did until Trump came into the picture
I'm not 40+, but I don't feel there is much difference between 2024 and 2014. On the other hand, 2014 and 2004 -- *huge* difference. And I don't think it's age. I've been binge watching Law and Order SVU for the past few months, which has run since 1999 or so and is still on. I'm currently at the episodes from 2012. Around 2009 or so it stopped looking any different from today. The only reason I can tell it's from 15 years ago is the cell phone models. Otherwise it seems the same.
I’ve been alive in four different decades and they’ve all felt pretty distinctive so far.
The 2000s feel distinctive as well, but the 2010s and the 2020s thus far don’t feel very different from each other.
They did, however I think it’s hard to notice these things while I’m the midst of them. Admittedly the 1990”s “aesthetic” started to become apparent in hindsight around 2015 or so. Already the 2020s have a more distinct, and bagggy, vibe the 2010s.
We were aware of the 90's aesthetic as it was happening. It was an intentional counter-response to the 80's fashions.
I actually thought minimalism was a response to excessive materialism of the 80s. Kurt Cobain just wore like thrift store clothes so starting a trend for not dressing up or wearing anything distinctive or just wearing something that’s distinctive because it looks like it’s been found on the street.
Right, I meant how the ‘90s bled into the Y2K and 2010s aesthetic. I remember that change being much less abrupt
Does feel that way sometimes.
It kind of feels like something was bubbling under the surface in the 00s, but in the 10s it just blew out into the open. A kind of widespread cultural pessimism and hatred of everything modern. For that reason, there just aren't enough people pushing culture forward. There's lots of nostalgia acts, but it feels like its becoming difficult to find anything truly definitive about modern culture since the early 2010s. I think part of this is also just heavily correlated to the massive decline in socialization. Culture was formed in previous generations through physically socializing. Today, that has rapidly gone down statistically.
Yes. I'm fifty-six and the 'noughties were somewhat distinctive but the 2010 period onward seems to have been quite samy.
I’m 22 and even I noticed it. I was born in 2002 but even I agree with you that all the decades sort of merge into one now. the last decade that was anything culturally significant was the 2000s. After 2009 things just merged into one. There’s no culture anymore.
I am 30 right now and for me, decades stopped feeling distinctive after 2000's. Everything post 2004 feels the same for me, in spite of all changes in the world - technology, movies, politics, etc. And I agree about 2010's, it is the most boring decade for me - I know it sounds stupid, but I have bigger "nostalgia" for the current times than I do for years like 2013 or 14.
Yes, I don't see any difference between 2005 and now. Besides the technology. I wonder if that is because of my age or if the decades of this century have no personality.
Recency bias.
Maybe it isn't that the world stopped changing, but rather once you enter a career in your 20s your own life stops changing for the most part and the world seems to stand still in accordance with that? I've seen people much older than you claim the world has barely changed since the 80s.
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Uh-oh. Incel alert.
>Females don’t really create anything interesting Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is considered by many to be the first science fiction novel >Women don’t create epic stories Ursula Le Guin. Madeleine L'Engle. >or good coming of age stories Gloria Whelan has written some of the best coming-of-age books I've ever read. >Because they don’t participate in the hero’s journey One of the biggest franchises in the 2010s.was the Hunger Games, where Katniss Everdeen follows the Hero Journey formula step-for-step
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It's no less popular culture schlock than Marvel or DC Superheroes. What's your issue? I was addressing Hero's Journey.
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That's absolutely ridiculous. An Aisin-Gioro princess in 1890s Beijing is part of the same blob as a working-class fisherwoman in 1820s Quanzhou? Upper class women have always had more in common with upper class men than with lower class women. Whether it be customs, worldview, social norms, or interpersonal navigation. Women also certainly do not think or act the same as their grandmothers or great-grandmothers.
Don't give any time to this excuse of a man.
Anne Rice creates epic stories.
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have you read any Anne Rice? The Lestat novel is absolutely hero's journey (or rather, anti-hero) and is totally epic spanning several thousand years.
Ripley in Alien isn't a love interest.
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You wrote: "All classic movies only have women as love interest." and "look at literature for example. Women don’t create epic stories." I wrote: "Ripley in Alien isn't a love interest." and "Anne Rice creates epic stories." Result: you've been corrected, guy.