Does anyone else genuinely miss the 2000s?

[JamesFargo]

Remember when your vaccination status wasn't a political thing?

This country has been red-baited into oblivion. I've got relatives mumbling about moving to Florida to escape godless communism.

Sad to think this will be the deciding issue of the '24 race.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

This country has been red-baited into oblivion.

The powers that shouldn't be seem to want a one-world commie tyranny.

A free and independent America goes against, so "they" summoned 2020?

 

[Oglooger]

I often think of what the best way to sum up the culture of the 2000s.

The best might simply be "shallow but honest"

It wasn't exactly a smart culture, but it was at least a lot more honest and down to Earth, people liked to have a good time, they liked sexy men and women, they liked humor to actually be funny, they liked entertainment to actually be exciting, they liked fashion to actually look cool, everyone just minded their own business and pursued their own happiness, not everything was a zero sum game between the different demographics.

Sure it wasn't perfect, that shallowness and lack of intelligence could sometimes be, make no mistake, incredibly obnoxious and loathsome in it's own way, but everything is just so damn pretentious and full of shit now, I feel like there was an effort to make American culture a little smarter, but it failed and we wound up with something even more obnoxious and loathsome than where we started.

So now we're "shallow but intellectually dishonest"?
Nowadays the culture prances around sniffing it's own farts and pretending it's intelligent because it refrenced a random thing with snark, pretending that it makes one "witty" and "quirky".

 

[ToroidalBoat]

What if Al Gore Won In 2000? - YouTube

(by AlternateHistoryHub)

 

[Never Scored]

What if Al Gore Won In 2000? - YouTube

(by AlternateHistoryHub)

They would have found some other excuse to cram through the surveillance state. If it wasn't the Patriot Act, it would have been something else. Remember, Edward Snowden went into hiding well into Obama's presidency. Obama/Biden actively pursued him. The Dems love being able to watch what you're doing too.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

I don't know how anyone could genuinely miss the 2000s. I remember it being an incredibly boring and demoralizing decade, marred by cynicism, elitism, and economic depression.

The neocons had full control of the US government, just about every leader in Europe was some flavor of polished, neoliberal centrist, and much of the clattering classes were busy beguiling themselves with the banalities of a post-Cold War intellectual malaise which allowed for little if any substantive debate or alternative viewpoint.

The 2010s was when things started getting interesting, since the internet was increasingly poking holes in the status quo of the prior two decades, and the powers that be could no longer continue to hubristically ignore public opinion (though they still tried). Remember how the cheerleaders for the "war on terror" enjoyed a largely unopposed voice in both the media and the government 15-20 years ago? Do you miss those days? Because I certainly don't.

 

[The Lawgiver]

I don't know how anyone could genuinely miss the 2000s. I remember it being an incredibly boring and demoralizing decade, marred by cynicism, elitism, and economic depression.

The neocons had full control of the US government, just about every leader in Europe was some flavor of polished, neoliberal centrist, and much of the clattering classes were busy beguiling themselves with the banalities of a post-Cold War intellectual malaise which allowed for little if any substantive debate or alternative viewpoint.

The 2010s was when things started getting interesting, since the internet was increasingly poking holes in the status quo of the prior two decades, and the powers that be could no longer continue to hubristically ignore public opinion (though they still tried). Remember how the cheerleaders for the "war on terror" enjoyed a largely unopposed voice in both the media and the government 15-20 years ago? Do you miss those days? Because I certainly don't.

2000s had the same shit as the early 2010s in terms of the "poking holes int he status quo" thing. However, 2011 or 2012 onwards is when the megacorps hypersanitization efforts began getting actual traction and it's how we're where we are now in current day current year where you WILL be screamed at by smug people who's brains are consumed by politics team shit more than you'd be in the 2000s and they're backed by the status quo big government and corporations despite claiming to be the counterculture. if you were screamed at in the 2000s through 2012 it was mostly funny dumb shit like linking a video that was months old somewhere or liking a thing someone else didn't like and you could still respond with "NO FUCK YOU MANG" without getting removed by bot moderators and shit.

late 2000s to early 2010s is the last time I saw a lot of shit with actual SOUL in it for lack of a better way of putting things. There's still shit like that but it's slowly being stamped out in favor of tickbox pandering shit.

 

[AnOminous]

I don't know how anyone could genuinely miss the 2000s. I remember it being an incredibly boring and demoralizing decade, marred by cynicism, elitism, and economic depression.

I was too busy actually doing shit to pay any attention to most of that. Come to think of it I should probably get back to that.

 

[Never Scored]

I don't know how anyone could genuinely miss the 2000s. I remember it being an incredibly boring and demoralizing decade, marred by cynicism, elitism, and economic depression.

The neocons had full control of the US government, just about every leader in Europe was some flavor of polished, neoliberal centrist, and much of the clattering classes were busy beguiling themselves with the banalities of a post-Cold War intellectual malaise which allowed for little if any substantive debate or alternative viewpoint.

The 2010s was when things started getting interesting, since the internet was increasingly poking holes in the status quo of the prior two decades, and the powers that be could no longer continue to hubristically ignore public opinion (though they still tried). Remember how the cheerleaders for the "war on terror" enjoyed a largely unopposed voice in both the media and the government 15-20 years ago? Do you miss those days? Because I certainly don't.

Most people, myself included, are more nostalgic for the way media and the internet was. Movies/TV/Music/Comedy were at a point where is was cool to push the envelope and be offensive. Imagine how fast you'd be cancelled if you made an episode of TV like the South Park episode Red Man's Greed today. Nothing was scared and you could make fun of anything. The internet was basically the wild west and there was no regulation or control. Talking less 2000-2010 here and more 1995-Great Recession.

 

[Law]

Yeah man, middle school was fucking tight.

 

[Internet Explorer]

The 2000s in one image.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

2000s had the same shit as the early 2010s in terms of the "poking holes int he status quo" thing. However, 2011 or 2012 onwards is when the megacorps hypersanitization efforts began getting actual traction and it's how we're where we are now in current day current year where you WILL be screamed at by smug people who's brains are consumed by politics team shit more than you'd be in the 2000s and they're backed by the status quo big government and corporations despite claiming to be the counterculture. if you were screamed at in the 2000s through 2012 it was mostly funny dumb shit like linking a video that was months old somewhere or liking a thing someone else didn't like and you could still respond with "NO FUCK YOU MANG" without getting removed by bot moderators and shit.

There were plenty of people who opposed the status quo back in the 2000s; the difference was that back then they were largely without a voice, since social media was very much in it's infancy, and just about everyone exclusively got their news from mainstream news outlets. As a consequence, what constituted acceptable political opinion 20 years ago was much narrower than it is today, and having a lack of any real opposition essentially allowed the hubris of the ruling class to run amok, often with disastrous results (see: war on terror, financial crash, etc).

The silly culture war nonsense and political harassment which infests the internet today is a price I'll happily pay to have a spirited civil society with a plurality of ideas; however moronic many of them may be. The upside is that the political establishment cannot ignore public opposition to their less popular agendas in the way that they used to, and the result is that the original cheerleaders for disastrous causes (like the war in Afghanistan) have had to become far more timid about it in recent years. I'd call that progress.

 

[The Lawgiver]

There were plenty of people who opposed the status quo back in the 2000s; the difference was that back then they were largely without a voice, since social media was very much in it's infancy, and just about everyone exclusively got their news from mainstream news outlets. As a consequence, what constituted acceptable political opinion 20 years ago was much narrower than it is today, and having a lack of any real opposition essentially allowed the hubris of the ruling class to run amok, with disastrous results (see: war on terror, financial crash, etc).

The silly culture war nonsense and political harassment which infests the internet today is a price I'll happily pay to have a spirited civil society with a plurality of ideas; however moronic many of them may be. The upside is that the political establishment cannot ignore public opposition to their less popular agendas in the way that they used to, and the result is that the original cheerleaders for disastrous causes (like the war in Afghanistan) have had to become far more timid about it in recent years. I'd call that progress.

They weren't voiceless they were just mostly on actual sites that weren't just fucking reddit facebook and twitter lmao. The "hackers on steroids!" fox news segment wouldn't have existed if they had no voice. Forums and imageboads were plentiful and had generally strong communities, Now pretty much everything is drowned out by what politicians, places of "authority" and megacorps want. Content continuously becomes more stretched for top ad rev imaginable to the point you have 5 hour long videos talking about how a show is good or bad . It's hell.

 

[Never Scored]

There were plenty of people who opposed the status quo back in the 2000s; the difference was that back then they were largely without a voice, since social media was very much in it's infancy, and just about everyone exclusively got their news from mainstream news outlets. As a consequence, what constituted acceptable political opinion 20 years ago was much narrower than it is today, and having a lack of any real opposition essentially allowed the hubris of the ruling class to run amok, often with disastrous results (see: war on terror, financial crash, etc).

The silly culture war nonsense and political harassment which infests the internet today is a price I'll happily pay to have a spirited civil society with a plurality of ideas; however moronic many of them may be. The upside is that the political establishment cannot ignore public opposition to their less popular agendas in the way that they used to, and the result is that the original cheerleaders for disastrous causes (like the war in Afghanistan) have had to become far more timid about it in recent years. I'd call that progress.

If you think the political establishment gives a shit about public ideas and opposition more than they did 20 years ago because muh social media, you should be riding the short bus to school.

 

[AnOminous]

As a consequence, what constituted acceptable political opinion 20 years ago was much narrower than it is today, and having a lack of any real opposition essentially allowed the hubris of the ruling class to run amok, often with disastrous results (see: war on terror, financial crash, etc).

That's nonsense. "Acceptable" political opinion has rarely been more constricted than it is now, with any deviation from an incredibly narrow set of beliefs being considered literal Nazism, with the mainstream media colluding and issuing continual Two Minutes of Hate denunciations, often entirely fabricated, about any dissent.

And even the Internet, which in the early 2000s was something of a curative to this, is increasingly turning into a collection of walled gardens and echo chambers. 4chan is dead and there is no real substitute. The few places that do have a similar ethos, like here, are under continual siege.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

If you think the political establishment gives a shit about public ideas and opposition more than they did 20 years ago because muh social media, you should be riding the short bus to school.

I never claimed that the political establishment suddenly cared about public opinion, only that they can't ignore or suppress it to the degree that they could when the internet was a novelty. Everyone being online now means that popular opinion is able to find a voice in a way that it couldn't before, and this has clearly had a significant impact on the degree to which those in power can force through unpopular agendas (see: war in Afghanistan).

That's nonsense. "Acceptable" political opinion has rarely been more constricted than it is now, with any deviation from an incredibly narrow set of beliefs being considered literal Nazism, with the mainstream media colluding and issuing continual Two Minutes of Hate denunciations, often entirely fabricated, about any dissent.

I think what you mean to say is that the media's attempts to control which political opinions are considered acceptable has rarely been more fervent than it is now, which I would argue is evidence of their waning influence: those who are desperate to stay in control will often resort to increasingly desperate measures.

The reality on the ground is actually somewhat different, and you only have to look at the changing political landscape to see it: back in the 2000s, politicians as far from the political mainstream as Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson, or Marine Le Pen wouldn't have stood a chance of getting elected. They stand a chance now because the establishment doesn't have the same grip on the public consciousness as it once did.

 

[Never Scored]

I never claimed that the political establishment suddenly cared about public opinion, only that they can't ignore or suppress it to the degree that they could when the internet was a novelty.

Uhhh... What planet are you living on?

 

[LeChampion1992]

The 2000s does seem much better because in the culture war sense the right wing still had a shred of actual power.
One could make right-wingers be the punchline of a joke and most of the audience would laugh because you weren't telling a stale joke but speaking truth to power.

If one looks at the media that came out in video games a generation of creativity came out. We saw grand theft auto in late 1999 come out as a top down game by 2009 become a High definition masterpiece that would be known as GTA4. Geeks went from being the butt of the jokes to being chic for a few years. Before Funko pops came out and made a joke out of everything series made out there.

 

[The Lawgiver]

Shit like this not surviving past the 2000s is and continues to be a crime against both the natural and unnatural orders of the universe.

 

[MadStan]

I just got out this capsule from 1993...WTF have you guys down to the place?!