No matter how we try to break up trends into eras that fall into ten-year epochal cycles, I'm going to assert that the first two decades of the 21st century were just one 19-year-long era that began on September 11th, 2001 and ended on March 11th, 2020 when the NBA cancelled the remainder of its season due to Covid.

There are no clear break points between 2009 and 2011, no decisive before and after moment separating the 2000's from the 2010's. If you want to peg it to Obama's inauguration, then the 2000's "decade" lasted 8 years. Not acceptable.

I know exactly why this is the case, and it's going to sound kooky, but I am absolutely certain this is the explanation for why the 2010's weren't a distinct decade from the 2000's:

They didn't have catchy names.

I'm not talking about a nickname like "The Roaring Twenties," I just mean it's awkward to talk about those decades, as in, physically awkward to say aloud. If you talk about the 2000's, you have to clarify if you mean the decade or the century. This decade has been saved somewhat by Y2K being appropriated to discuss it, but that typically means turn-of-the-millennium trends, not the actual whole first decade of the century. The 2010's are in an even worse position. It's way too many syllables to say out loud without feeling foolish, and we've all collectively decided it's not okay to call them "The Tens" because in English numbers don't go "ten-one, ten-two," etc. except in the trucker dialect.

This matters because decadeology is fake. Trends and historical events do not, by nature, confine themselves to 10-year-chunks based on a miscalculation of the birth of Christ. We create decades by discussing them, and you can't discuss something if it doesn't have a name.

A cultural decade exists purely as a constructed narrative, and the first two decades of a century having awkward names makes that narrative literally harder to construct. If you don't know what to call a thing, it's harder to describe it. That's human psychology, that's why we have names for things in the first place. Decadeology just represents a very extreme version of this, where the naming of the thing is the only force which brings it into existence.

I got my first home internet connection in 1998. (Actually, college dorm room, but same thing).

Any form of internet is so transformational, and changed the way we look at the world, so much, that all types of internet are closer to each other than they are to not having internet. In 1998, I had dial-up on a 56K modem. It took at least 10 minutes to download a 3 minute song. Webpages loaded 100k pictures bit by bit. There was no file sharing or embedded video.

That 1998 internet is closer to my 2026 internet where I have a smartphone and can watch movies and upload my own videos and where I am getting pinged about social events all the time---all of that, however different it is from 1998, is still closer to 1998 than 1998 was to pre-internet time.

(This is a "Hot take", so I might be overstating the case a little, but I think people that grew up with the internet don't realize how much of a change it made, and focus on differences in formats, rather than how similar any type of internet is)

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.

Is it just me, or does it feel like the 2030s could be the peak of the Western world before everything begins to plateau? From technology and music to Hollywood, culture, and society as a whole, I have this feeling that we're approaching a high point in Western civilization. I can't quite explain why, but does anyone else feel the same way?

There's a style that's been haunting me the last few years. So far, I haven't found a name for it or even that anybody has identified it as a style. The best description I have for it is "2000s vector art". It's typified by

• logos (often used as background elements)
• bright, vibrant colors
• simple shapes, often repeated
• straight lines, stripes, arrows, etc. used to give impression of movement or dynamism

I've attached a few images that I feel represent this style. It feels post-cyberpunk, because it sometimes uses elements that look like they're inspired by computer interfaces, but it's all very clean and polished, not gritty like cyberpunk.

Any information or commentary on this style is appreciated, especially if somebody can tell me that this has been written about and/or named.

I went to a K-12 private school, so I have 12 years worth of yearbooks that are nice displays of 2000s/Early 2010s style and fashion (well, as much as you can get for a school with a dress code). I always liked the World Yearbook that was provided by Herff Jones, the yearbook company our school used. We only used them up until 2008 unfortunately, but luckily that's when I actually started paying more attention to current events lol. Here are the books for 2001 and 2002 as an example. I can post more if there's any interest!

I believe that the Biden era 2020s (2021-2024) was almost a breather between 2020 and 2025-now because it was caught up between the two chaotic Trump eras and people want a return of normal politics. Do you agree that the 2020s Biden era felt like a breather between 2020 and 2025-now?

Which 2020s celebs do you think won’t be able to find success past the current decade that made them? Or, which current celebs of the decade will simply be looked back on as a product of their time/era? (Not saying Sabrina in particular btw just a famous person).

So if I was to post about 1670s fashion or the technology of the 1890s, would that still be appropriate?

nothing will ever come in and out of fashion

no aesthetic will ever get old or die

time will stop pulling ideas apart limb from limb

the generation gap will cease to exist

nobody will ever lose their childhood

the only trend will be expressing yourself

To the older generation: When did you first hear about Dubai? Was it well-known or popular 30-50 years ago?

Maybe it was a hallucination from my part or maybe I'm onto something since I'm seeing he was on X-factor around the time or the Neo-British Invassion of the late 2000s-early 2010s. I remember a lot of his songs from that era, he was quite popular in my household lol. But I feel like since then I haven't heard of him AT ALL. Did he continue releasing music? In what year did he fade away into general obscurity, or is he still popular in the UK? Tell me your experience with this guy's music and if you know other examples of people who were THE thing in the 2010s and then just randomly disappeared lol.

P.S: That fuck-ass hat is the most early 2010s thing ever oml, that's how I remember him in every video.

to me it’s the coolest Rock look ever it just looks cool and badass

Many times on here, people talk about certain technologies as if they are epic watersheds in human development. And sometimes they are. But often they have precursors and are not as totally modern as people think they are. Many people in the past would recognize the basic idea, even if only as a piece of science-fiction.

Take for example the smartphone. The iPhone was first released in 2007, and while it was revolutionary, it was also basically a fix for things that made PDAs difficult, like having the keyboard onscreen. And including a phone. But PDAs and cell phones had existed for a while, so if you showed a 2026 iPhone to someone from the 1990s, you might be able to explain "its a PDA and a cell phone combined!" (Although even that was possible in 1996).
Before the 1990s, the idea of a smartphone would still be understandable, it would just be science-fiction. But the idea of a portable computer with telephone, television and radio would be familiar things, just combined together. So as far back as the 1920s, the idea of combining these technologies would have been understandable.
It is when you go before about 1900, maybe before the 1880s, that it would be totally incomprensible by any existing technology or experience that people had with things.

And this goes for a lot of technology. Show a modern drone to someone from the 1950s, and they would be amazed at what remote control airplanes are like---but they would understand, this is a remote control airplane. Show a drone to someone from before 1900, they would have no way to understand it.

(Paragraph about motor vehicles deleted because it for some reason triggered a filter? Readded in comments.)

So when it comes to what technology is "modern", it comes down to:
1. When would people recognize it as an extension on something they already had?
2. When would people understand the principles behind it?
3. When would it be totally incomprehensible?

Has anyone else noticed that there's been an upward rising trend in celebrity tell-all memoirs, ever since the pandemic started ?

I personally feel like it's an inflection point in our American culture and society, seeing as how a lot of these celebrities went through massive and serious amounts of abuse, and a lot of them are still alive and well enough to tell the story.

That being said, why are there so many of them in this decade specifically compared to decades past ? Is it a reflection of how disgusting the 2000s were in terms of celebrity treatment and how that bled into the 2010s, only for all of us as a collective culture and society to notice that it's really not okay to abuse celebrities, since they're just like us too ?

Wondering about outfits that could be worn repeatedly, not just one time as an experiment.

EDIT: I should have clarified: I mean provocative not only in the sense of sexual, but also as weird, politically challenging etc

I’d argue 90s nostalgia is much stronger this decade than it was in the 2010s, the 2010s was full of 80s nostalgia besides that grunge revival in the early 2010s

I wonder why almost ever teen show made the characters wear high heels to high school smh, however I guess it made most of us believe that was normal.

Every decade gets its own completely inaccurate historical rebrand. The 80s become neon and leg warmers, the 90s become grunge even though that was only a fraction of the decade, the 60s become one giant hippie commune. Like what weird revisionist bullshit are the new gens gonna project onto the 2010s and 2020s? What random aesthetic is gonna become the entire historical identity of these decades? I already see them doing this with the 2000s now and labelling the entire decade as “y2k”