I noticed something: the early 2000s were the same type of old school as the 80s and 90s

[u/Meta_human3010]

Even after 9/11 and DVDs overtaking VHS tapes (at least in the West), the 90s feel never went away until mid 2004.

The Holes movie felt pretty 90s (even the soundtrack and graphics feels more 1996 than 2006), the Neptunes’ music had the same drum beats as older hip hop/R&B, Wacky Pomo was still used, portable CD players were common (with athletic people or dancers still using cassettes), people were still using film cameras, HD was only a novelty or luxury used by rich people and kids went outside unsupervised. Even early 2004 still felt old school.

It stayed that way until mid-2004, when Jetix replaced Fox Kids, Kanye West released the College Dropout, the cover of Black Betty got released, iPods and MP3 players became common, the Athens Olympics happened, HD became common, Frutiger Aero came in, Mr Brightside got released and a lot more.

[u/SilenceOfTheClamSoup]

graphics

Motherfucker out here talking about a movie like it's a video game.

[u/MattWolf96 → u/SilenceOfTheClamSoup]

Special effects exist... That said. Don't remember any CG in Holes.

[u/SilenceOfTheClamSoup → u/MattWolf96]

Yeah but calling SFX "graphics" sounds chronically online.

[u/zozuto → u/MattWolf96]

They were never called graphics until videogames. Graphics used to mean like, pictures. Visual art. So graphics in a movie would actually mean any illustrations or visual design

[u/naju]

Man, I disagree. Maybe because I was an undergrad in college from 2000-2004 and had high speed internet. From 2000 on I was downloading music like crazy and amassing a huge collection of MP3s, downloading entire movies and watching them on my computer (this was how I saw Mulholland Drive and Donnie Darko in 2001, on my computer screen), listening to my MP3s on the go (via my Minidisc player as well as a CD player that accepted MP3 CDs), Morrowind came out in 2003 which is still the blueprint for Skyrim-style open world RPGs to this day, I started making music with VST plugins and DAWs which is still done today, etc. etc. Musically in 2000 Radiohead's Kid A came out which felt like a new decade, not a continuation of an old one. So much stuff in 2000-2004 felt like a new era.

Although I'm on the same page as you if you want to say there were two distinct "eras" within the 00s: 2000-2004, and 2004-2009. I think there's a lot to like about that division.

[u/Tree-V2 → u/naju]

Well yeah there is such a thing as earlier adopters, but statistically the vast majority of people did not have iPods/MP3 players in the early half of the 2000s (in fact people who did were a minority even by 2005 - source 1, source 2). People mostly had CD players at the time like the Discmans or boomboxes that played CDs. Similarly, dial-up still held dominance over broadband throughout 90% of the earlier half of the 2000s (up to July 2004 - source 1, source 2).

[u/glowing-fishSCL]

I remember 2004, and I remember the point, maybe around the Battle of Fallujah, when I realized the next couple years were going to be full of stories of young people being injured, often for life, and that at least some of them would be people I know, or the relatives of people I knew.

I don't remember a cover of Black Betty.

[u/GasDifferent2139]

In fact, the 2017–2026 period is far more similar; changes—especially in music and technology—have been minimal and stagnant.

[u/GasDifferent2139 → u/GasDifferent2139]

I was born April 11 2006. My childhood experience is more similar to being born in 2016 than being born in 1996

[u/UsherFanBoy → u/GasDifferent2139]

no it’s not 😂

[u/GasDifferent2139 → u/GasDifferent2139]

I know AI exists now, but people's daily lives aren't all that different from how they were in 2017. The Sharp TV (LE380X series) in my room and my old iPhone X still look modern and are perfectly usable today, even if only as backups.

In contrast, the Samsung TX-S3082WH CRT TV and Sony Ericsson W350i that were in my mom’s room back in 2008 felt truly old-fashioned and outdated by 2017.

[u/MattWolf96 → u/GasDifferent2139]

I'm almost exactly a decade older than you and yeah, 2016-present barely feels different technology wise.

[u/Crazypandathe20th → u/GasDifferent2139]

The biggest way the 2020s feels different than 2010s is definitely the vibes. Covid has really had a lasting impact on society from things like social behavior to the economy. Besides that a lot of things are pretty much the same.

[u/SkyMore3037]

I mean you can almost really pinpoint the split down to when Facebook exploded to worldwide popularity in my opinion as 2 different worlds.

Whatever exact year you wanna say that was 2007 - 2010 ... Somewhere in that timeframe you had the split of the old world culture to the new culture .

[u/puremotives]

I refuse to accept a time period I was alive during is "old school" in the same way the 80s are

I'm still young!!!

[u/Ill-You-3459]

Why do late millennials and Gen Z on these subs have such an obsession with trying to make the early 2000s and the 2000s in general old school? The 80s and early 90s already felt dated by the Early 2000s.

[u/glowing-fishSCL → u/Ill-You-3459]

Lack of reference. If you don't remember a time before internet (or home computers), the difference in the form of that internet makes a big difference.

[u/Upper-Flamingo-4297 → u/Ill-You-3459]

The same thing could be asked the other way around. Why do older people make the early 2000s seem as modern as the 2010s/2020s? And why do they constantly throw it in younger people faces that they missed out on “the old world” as if they have any control of when they were born? I don’t think anyone is arguing that the early 2000s is anything like the 80s. That would be insane. Heck, the 80s felt dated by 1995, but I wouldn’t say the years 2000 or 2001 are anything like 2026 either.

The early 00s and late 90s was a transitional era of its own where the internet was still growing, but quite a bit of the way we still lived back then (waiting for your favorite show on cable or network TV rather than streaming it, movie stores, dial up, physical media, landlines, more reliance on brick and mortar vs online retail) would be considered dated today and I think that’s what the op is trying to say. It’s not very “old school” but it’s not that modern either compared to today.

[u/Papoosho → u/Ill-You-3459]

1991 was dated in 1994.

[u/glowing-fishSCL]

I remember 2004, and I remember the point, maybe around the Battle of Fallujah, when I realized the next couple years were going to be full of stories of young people being injured, often for life, and that at least some of them would be people I know, or the relatives of people I knew.

I don't remember a cover of Black Betty.

[u/WilcoxArcade]

There will always be bleed between decades. Blu-ray discs debuted in 2006. I think your point is a little too...rose-tinted.

[u/Tree-V2]

HD TVs/monitors weren't more common until the late 2000s I'd say. That's when CRT TVs were outsold for the first time by flatscreens. CRT computer monitors were outsold by flatscreen monitors in late 2004 (source 1, source 2) but weren't surpassed in usage/ownership rates until around 2007. Even with iPods, I don't really remember seeing many people with an iPod in 2004 honestly. It was mostly Discmans and boombox CD players as well as 3-piece stereo systems (often with audio visualizers). The iPod was mainstream in the sense that it was frequently advertised but statistically most people didn't have an iPod/MP3 player.

2004 did have a transitional feel to it though. It was technologically "old school" enough to where it was still common to see things that were around in the 90s like VHS & dial-up, but it was also common to see the successors of those things as well. Almost half of U.S. households had DVD players by December 2003, so I'd imagine that 2004 (especially early-mid 2004) was fairly balanced when it comes to both DVDs and VHS. 2004 was also the last year that had ads for VHS on TV (as well as ads for music/audiobook cassettes), and the last year where they still had a large presence in stores. The first half of 2004 had dial-up still being dominant, while the 2nd half (starting in July 2004) had broadband becoming dominant, so dial-up & broadband was pretty 50/50 in this year. Audiobook cassettes were also outsold in 2003 & were surpassed in usage 1-2 years later (source 1, source 2). Film cameras & analog camcorders were still dominant in 2004, with film cameras having not been surpassed in ownership until late 2005-2006 & digital cameras/camcorders surpassing analog camcorders in usage by 2006-07.

[u/Upper-Flamingo-4297]

2004-2007 was its own era tbh, and the early 2000s was probably the last era where physical media still dominated (DVD, CDs, the last days of VHS) and you still had to go to music or electronic stores to buy or rent (circuit city, Best Buy, blockbuster, Sam goody, ect), so that does make it feel more old school compared to the late 2000s onwards. Social media was not a big thing yet, and we didn’t even use the term “social media” yet when early sites like MySpace, Friendster, livejournal, AIM, ect were around. If that’s what you mean by old school then yeah

Even though the internet was around before 2004, it was just different. Internet in 2000 is not the same as internet in 2026. Not everyone had wireless internet yet, you couldn’t take the internet with you in public either like you can now with smartphones, so there were still moments of being unplugged and participating in the outside world. Not everything required an app either

[u/Papoosho]

Nah, the last old school "Vaporwave" year was 1996.

[u/Alarmed_Grab7077]

Larger cultural shifts have tended to happen in the middle of decades...

1980 and 1989 are very different even though they are technically apart of the same decade.

But 1975-1984 = a more culturally similar 10 years than '80-'89.

1985-1994 = are more culturally similar 10 years than '90-'99... and so on

[u/Unlikely_Magazine_44]

At the time, my friends and I thought the 2000s sucked and we were pissed we missed the 80s. I remember being pissed about the clothes, graphic design, music. Just like young people now who wish it was the 2000s and the young people 20 years from now who will wish it was the 20s.

[u/Awesomov]

I wouldn't necessarily say to 2004, but yes, there's a reason we used to look at the mid-late parts of decades for nostalgia bait rather than the first couple years, because those first couple years at least since the end of WW2 were typically still like the prior one and the decade's real cultural identity didn't fully form until those later years. Doing otherwise would be like calling disco an 80s trend instead of 70s.

[u/Top_Court5184]

gen z cant accept that they did indeed grow up with the internet and a true modernizing world and not record players and casettes😂

[u/Suspicious-Slide-566]

Even Mid/Late 2004 Throughout Summertime 2005 Was Old School Like The 90s-Early/Mid 2004 The Early 2000s Were Definitely More Like The 70s And 80s And 90s Than the mid to late 2000s and 2010s and 2020s