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Should the 00s be separated in two parts?

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T

ThePrequelsSuck

Banned
The 00s felt like two distinct decades in one, rather than one decade, to the point that I think people should distinguish the decade in two parts: 2001-2006, and 2006-2009.

sFMuO48.jpg


2001-2006, kicking off at 9/11, was like some weird 90s+ pocket universe/DLC to me where technology was advanced, but not TOO advanced to the point where it consumed our whole lives. In this era pop culture was very "x-treme" in "in your face", similar to the late 90s. Social media barely existed, save for MySpace in the last few years of this era.

The 2006-2009 era, kicking off around the Democrats winning Congress in November 06, felt closer to today with the rise of the Internet and social media, the Recession, Obamamania, the popularization of "electropop" music, AutoTune becoming widely used in music, etc.
 
L

lastplayed

Member
Yeah, but I feel like it's been like that every decade I've seen. The early 90s is quite distinct from the late 90s, same for the 80s.
 
P

Pop-O-Matic

Banned
You'd see similar discrepancies between halves of other decades. Things change gradually instead of everything just transforming the minute we arrive at a year that ends in 0.
 
A

AALLx

Member
Thought you were talking about Gundam 00. First half: everything before and during the Allelujah/Marie arc (elevating 00 as one of the best Gundam shows ever); and second half: everything else after that (trash that retroactively ruined the show)
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
This is actually a pretty funny counterpart to all the "the 2000s doesn't even have its own identity" threads we've had around here. Here's a thread that argues that the 2000s had so many cultural touchstones that it actually requires being segmented in two due to the difference.

I'll just say that to me, the early 90s and late 90s are completely distinct as well. Early 90s was an 80s hangover, that 80s sound leaking into dance music (think CnC Music Factory) and hip hop. Lots of squiggly lines and shit in pop art (Fido Dido). Think what the Fresh Prince rapped in front of. This was also the era of the 16-bit wars... it was all about 2D gaming.

By the late 90s you had the internet takeover (GAME CHANGER new subcultures emerging on black webpages with green or purple text) and a lot more embrace of digital culture permeating everything from music to movies to games. A lot more techno orientalism was in the culture and was red hot (anime became cool). Rap got more aggressive and featured more authentically electronic sounds (any music video that Hype Williams directed). I really associate this time with the idealism about the potential of digital technology. The N64 was a big console, but to me its all about PS1 and all of the weird synth sound/FMV weirdness that came out of it. Lots of technological idealism, later crushed by post-9/11 cynicism and the uncoolness of your mom owning an iPod.

I also see a sharp divide in the 2010s. Just looking at one area: online social justice.... it seemed like the Left owned the online discussion 2010-2015, and 2016+ has been the revenge of the Right. I also think dubstep was THE sound of the first half, but is probably a little played out by now (at least without being mixed with other flavors).
 
T

TheJoRu

Member
Pop-O-Matic said:
You'd see similar discrepancies between halves of other decades. Things change gradually instead of everything just transforming the minute we arrive at a year that ends in 0.
Click to expand...

Yup. The only decade I can think about having something of a common thread throughout is the 80s (even that is obviously debatable), with the fall of the Berlin Wall right at the end of it marking a monumental change.
 
A

Alphahawk

Member
No, you could make the argument for any decade. You are just not seeing the full picture because we are not far enough away yet.
 
D

DrSlek

Member
2007 was the release of the iPhone and the GFC. Its certainly a very different era to the first half of the decade.
 
1

120v

Member
all decades are like this bub

for example watch a movie from the early 80s then watch a movie circa '89. chances are the early 80s movie will look like it was filmed 20 years earlier in comparison
 
T

ThePrequelsSuck

Banned
BocoDragon said:
I also see a sharp divide in the 2010s. Just looking at one area: online social justice.... it seemed like the Left owned the online discussion 2010-2015, and 2016+ has been the revenge of the Right. I also think dubstep was THE sound of the first half, but is probably a little played out by now (at least without being mixed with other flavors).
Click to expand...
*puts on nerd glasses* The shift the right really happened in 2015 when I started hearing people mock concepts such as "safe spaces" and "trigger warnings", with the Yale and Mizzou incidents began huge catalysts. Also that's when Milo Yiannopoulus got popular.

Technically the first half of the 2010s, mathematically, is 2010-2014 while the second half is 2015-2019 so it works out either way.
 
T

ThePrequelsSuck

Banned
120v said:
all decades are like this bub

for example watch a movie from the early 80s then watch a movie circa '89. chances are the early 80s movie will look like it was filmed 20 years earlier in comparison
Click to expand...
Yeah. Blues Brothers was released in 1980 and my whole life I thought it was a 70s movie, because it has a very 70s feel to it (particularly the music) with little 80s style in sight. Of course, that's a given, since it was released very early in the 80s.
 
D

Dirtyshubb

Member
Due to the rise of the Internet and the exponential growth in awareness and saturation I don't think we will Ever be able to easily define decades into distinct eras like we used to. Interests are satiated too quickly to spread out over a long time to create that memorable association with that time period.
 
Y

yanipheonu

Member
I mean, the real answer is choosing to seperate decades by 10 is ultimately arbitrary.

No reason we couldn't measure it 6 years at a time or 8 years at a time.
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
yanipheonu said:
I mean, the real answer is choosing to seperate decades by 10 is ultimately arbitrary.

No reason we couldn't measure it 6 years at a time or 8 years at a time.
Click to expand...
But we don't have 6 or 8 fingers or toes ;)


SuperBanana said:
Pre-iphone and post-iPhone worlds are vastly different it's quite staggering.
Click to expand...
Indeed. But the Internet (rather, the WWW) arriving in the middle of the 90s would also cleave that decade in two, wouldn't it?
 
M

Moppeh

Banned
yanipheonu said:
I mean, the real answer is choosing to seperate decades by 10 is ultimately arbitrary.

No reason we couldn't measure it 6 years at a time or 8 years at a time.
Click to expand...

Separating decades by 10 isn't arbitrary is decade literally refers to 10 years.

But yes, measuring the progression of time through decades is arbitrary.
 
S

SuperBanana

Banned
BocoDragon said:
Indeed. But the Internet (rather, the WWW) arriving in the middle of the 90s would also cleave that decade in two, wouldn't it?
Click to expand...

90's internet was very slow and nothing like today though. It didn't really shift into a huge thing until the Myspace/Youtube era in the early to mid-00's. Early and late 90's do feel very different as well though.
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
SuperBanana said:
90's internet was very slow and nothing like today though. It didn't really shift into a huge thing until the Myspace/Youtube era in the early to mid-00's. Early and late 90's do feel very different as well though.
Click to expand...
I disagree greatly that the 90s internet wasn't a "huge thing". It was one of the biggest shifts in human organization in history. They put the printing press in the history books, but that's nothing compared to what the Internet did even by 1995. Distant cultures cross-communicating with one another on the regular was an insane shift in our self conception of humanity. I remember the early days of the Internet when our stereotypes of other cultures (the only notion we had of other cultures) melted away.

Note that the Internet had pulled the rug out from underneath the music industry before the birth of the millennium.

I think the degree to which we rate things like mobile and social media making more of an impact only seem more impressive in a world in which we already take the Internet for granted. The fact of the Internet had already re-arranged so much of business and culture before Web 2.0, social or Mobile.
 
L

LiveFromKyoto

Member
The dividing line is the launch of the iPhone, human history will be categorized into pre and post-smartphone eras.

Its rigorous simplicity (subsequently copied en masse) brought networked technology to the masses in a way nothing else could have. The ensuing explosion in social media, the radical changes in political interaction (the Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter, Trump becoming the most powerful man in the world through Twitter) and self-perception (the art of the constructed selfie) that brought, and the intertwining of the personal and technological spaces changed humanity more radically in a short time span than at any point in human history.
 
1

120v

Member
LiveFromKyoto said:
The dividing line is the launch of the iPhone, human history will be categorized into pre and post-smartphone eras.

Its rigorous simplicity (subsequently copied en masse) brought networked technology to the masses in a way nothing else could have. The ensuing explosion in social media, the radical changes in political interaction (the Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter, Trump becoming the most powerful man in the world through Twitter) and self-perception (the art of the constructed selfie) that brought, and the intertwining of the personal and technological spaces changed humanity more radically in a short time span than at any point in human history.
Click to expand...

thing is the line is kind of blurry. blackberrys were around in the early 00s granted they were relegated to more of the white collar crowd. but still there were more mainstream phones like the sidekick

iphone and smartphones in general blew up later in the decade and 'changed everything' but it was a fairly steady buildup.
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
LiveFromKyoto said:
The dividing line is the launch of the iPhone, human history will be categorized into pre and post-smartphone eras.

Its rigorous simplicity (subsequently copied en masse) brought networked technology to the masses in a way nothing else could have. The ensuing explosion in social media, the radical changes in political interaction (the Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter, Trump becoming the most powerful man in the world through Twitter) and self-perception (the art of the constructed selfie) that brought, and the intertwining of the personal and technological spaces changed humanity more radically in a short time span than at any point in human history.
Click to expand...

I would argue that AR technology will render that theory of a dividing line in history as obsolete.

Once the internet is just "in the real world" at all times, explaining why the little rectangle in your hand mattered more than just the beginning of the international communication network itself will be confusing.

There will be far more technological innovations that will place the internet further and further into our lives, so choosing one single line of division based on the latest innovation is folly. The smartphone isn't a singular dividing line, it's one of a series of gradiations that brings the internet into our lives. And faced with the fact that there will be a gradiation of internet into our lives (internet -> smartphone -> IOT -> AR -> neural interface), the only logical starting point for the "big division" is the birth of the network itself.
 
T

The Albatross

Member
You can do this with any decade because decades are long.

Early 1990s... NWA, Metallica, Nirvana. Late 90s, Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, and ICP.

And here's the thing about the internet in the 1994... You didn't know it was slow.
 
S

sa201674

Banned
It's 3 tbh.

2000 - 2002 The early 00s / y2k era

Very late 90s-ish in terms of carefreeness. Lots of Pop punk, Nu Metal, Teen pop, RnB in vein of Destiny's Child and Dr Dre beats during this era.


Early nokia phones and blobby tech design was still in.

Fashion still has that late-90s spiky-haired skater-board aesthetic 70s.


The mood during this time felt very Trl-era MTV with a dose of Eminem and Blink-182.



2004 - 2006 The mid 00s

The least distinct part of the decade IMO.
Just think of all the dull Crunk songs, pop music in vein of Beyonce's "Naughty Girl" and all the EMO music and you've got the mid 00s.

A lot of shows that started during the 90s ended in 2004 e.g. Friends, Frasier, Buffy.



2008 - 2009 The late 00s

Think of the Obama administration and the switch to High Definition. Think of the fact that Facebook and Youtube were now household names at this point. Phones were less nokia and more Iphone and Android.

Think of the dissonance between the very dire economic situation and the very colorful Electropop led by Lady Gaga.

This was also the start of the Golden Age of television.





2003 and 2007 were in-between transition years.
 
S

sa201674

Banned
BocoDragon said:
This is actually a pretty funny counterpart to all the "the 2000s doesn't even have its own identity" threads we've had around here. Here's a thread that argues that the 2000s had so many cultural touchstones that it actually requires being segmented in two due to the difference.

I'll just say that to me, the early 90s and late 90s are completely distinct as well. Early 90s was an 80s hangover, that 80s sound leaking into dance music (think CnC Music Factory) and hip hop. Lots of squiggly lines and shit in pop art (Fido Dido). Think what the Fresh Prince rapped in front of. This was also the era of the 16-bit wars... it was all about 2D gaming.

By the late 90s you had the internet takeover (GAME CHANGER new subcultures emerging on black webpages with green or purple text) and a lot more embrace of digital culture permeating everything from music to movies to games. A lot more techno orientalism was in the culture and was red hot (anime became cool). Rap got more aggressive and featured more authentically electronic sounds (any music video that Hype Williams directed). I really associate this time with the idealism about the potential of digital technology. The N64 was a big console, but to me its all about PS1 and all of the weird synth sound/FMV weirdness that came out of it. Lots of technological idealism, later crushed by post-9/11 cynicism and the uncoolness of your mom owning an iPod.

I also see a sharp divide in the 2010s. Just looking at one area: online social justice.... it seemed like the Left owned the online discussion 2010-2015, and 2016+ has been the revenge of the Right. I also think dubstep was THE sound of the first half, but is probably a little played out by now (at least without being mixed with other flavors).
Click to expand...

What about the mid 90s though?
The era when hip hop was at its golden age thanks to gangsta rap and when Grunge was at its height?
Th mid 90s doesn't have the party-oriented neon colored one hit wonders of the early 90s nor does it have the new millenium-oriented teen pop of the late 90s.
 
L

Lubricus

Member
The dot.com bust of 2000, Enron scandal of 2001, the stock market crash of 2002, the housing bubble burst in 2007-2008, and the recession starting in 2007.
Not the best decade for finances.
 
bengraven

bengraven

Member
TheJoRu said:
Yup. The only decade I can think about having something of a common thread throughout is the 80s (even that is obviously debatable), with the fall of the Berlin Wall right at the end of it marking a monumental change.
Click to expand...

Early 80s still looked like the late 70s. Late 80s was the more colorful memorable part.

Photos of me as a young kid look like a 70s porn film but around the NES boom everything is hot pink, hair clips, and Zubaz.
 
E

Etrian Oddity

Member
CNN's decades (The Sixties/The Seventies/The Eighties) miniseries definitely bring this to light, in how the eras don't find their identity right off.

I'm so excited for The Nineties.
 
S

Schlorgan

Member
We should split it into:

Pre Spider-Man 3
Post Spider-Man 3

That movie is like an inflection point for all of society.
 
K

kswiston

Member
Every decade is like that. We started the 90s without the worldwide web. Only computer super nerds had the internet. By the end of the 90s, most households had the internet, and we were taking baby steps towards the net's more modern format.
 
J

jstripes

Banned
acheron_xl said:
Yeah, most decades are like this. 79-83; 84-88; 89-91; 92-96; 97-01 - all are distinctly different from one another.
Click to expand...

Yup. The '90s were three distinct periods.

Early: Very '80s, but more self aware. Neon colours, the last gasps of hair metal.

Mid-Early to Mid: Grunge, cynicism, introspection.

Late: Internet, nuMetal, pop punk, juvenile bullshit, graphic design was "high tech".
 
T

ThePrequelsSuck

Banned
jstripes said:
Yup. The '90s were three distinct periods.

Early: Very '80s, but more self aware. Neon colours, the last gasps of hair metal.

Mid-Early to Mid: Grunge, cynicism, introspection.

Late: Internet, nuMetal, pop punk, juvenile bullshit, graphic design was "high tech".
Click to expand...
Comparing the mid 90s and the late 90s, it's striking how pop culture seemed to get a lot more silly, wacky, and "childish" around 1998-1999, when compared to the angsty grunge period of the mid-90s.
 
S

sssstententen

Member
Sorry this seems like such a shallow and hastily thrown together idea.

Large events have been splitting era's since the beginning of human history.

A decade isn't arbitrary, its 10 years. Its just a way we tell time. Go back to any period and you'll find breaks in decade's.

Take a step back and realize 10 years is nothing in the scheme of things.
 
A

airmangataosenai

Member
Its actually a bit shocking to me how little the aesthetic of consumer electronics have changed in the past decade. In the past I became used to such huge shifts but a lot if not most of electronics from 2007 wouold not look out of place or ridiculously antiquated the way say, a huge CRT monitor from 2000 would in 2010. Shit in 2005 HD TVs were still not the standard.
 
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