The long aughts

Chat about non-baseball topics. No political discussions!
Arthur Dent
Hall Of Famer
Posts: 12317
Joined: April 25 06, 6:43 pm
Location: Austin

The long aughts

Post by Arthur Dent »

After careful consideration, I have determined that the aughts period should be dated from 2001 to 2012. 2001 for obvious reasons, and 2012 because that appears to be around when the culture ran out of gas and stopped being able to produce much of value, and probably relatedly around the time we realized the Great Recession would drag out misery indefinitely leading to related insanity.

I’m too young to figure out when the 90s started, and I think it remains to be seen if the teens have ended, but would love to gather opinions.

User avatar
thrill
bronoun enthusiast
Posts: 30369
Joined: April 14 06, 10:45 pm
Location: barely online

Re: The long aughts

Post by thrill »

I am always loathe to draw a line between when the culture was good and when it wasn't, because literally every generation does that and they are all equally wrong and biased.

Having said that, allow me to do exactly that real quick. Culture really has changed during the social media era, which kicked off in earnest in the late aughts-early next period that you're defining, and I think there are some objective things that have made it legitimately worse and not just our generation approaching middle age and feeling the beginning pangs of irrelevance. Every single thing about today's culture is recycled, repackaged, and resold in an endless cycle of consumerism that feels like a cultural treadmill that isn't going anywhere. Millennials are responsible for, perhaps, my least favorite cultural trend which is what I would call wellness through consumerism. The "wellness" industry is garbage baby food being fed to a generation that is being forced to cope with the indefinite post-great recession misery through the only truly modern/american cultural contribution that exists, which is consumerism. "The world is bad! This product will care for you and make you feel good! Spend your money on this product rather than questioning the circumstances that have lead to this barely tolerable human existence!" Everything has to fit a certain world view or personal brand so there's something out there to spend money that validates everyone's existence and beliefs.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to center myself by utilizing the "breathe" app on my apple watch that I spent $800 on before I hit up the cold pressed juice spot to get an immune boost drink and do my afternoon affirmations. Probably throw back a CBD pill and listen to a podcast that affirms my anxieties too.

User avatar
pioneer98
Hall Of Famer
Posts: 22249
Joined: July 15 08, 8:24 pm
Location: High A Minors

Re: The long aughts

Post by pioneer98 »

I really do think the internet changed things in a really weird way that is worth noting, and it may or may not be because I'm an old codger now. I can't recall where I heard this, but one idea that has stuck with me is that now all cultural products like music and movies all exist alongside each other as equals, regardless of when they were made. It's just as easy to pull up a Neil Young song on Spotify as it is Cardi B. A platform like Spotify removes any context around the era that they came from. To some young kid, for all they know that Neil Young song may have been from 5 years ago. And it's the same with all the other streaming platforms like Netflix and so on. My wife got listening to some new agey-instrumental playlist on Spotify. These are musicians I've never heard of. I like some of it, but I could not tell you what year any of these songs came out. If you told me 1985 or 2005 or 2015, I'd believe any of those. Just absolutely no idea.

The other thing this has done that is harder to articulate is like music and film used to build on prior works. So like Smashing Pumpkins can say they were influenced by Black Sabbath, and I can kind of see that connection. Movies were similar where they'd build on some new technology or style or whatever as a prior movie. So there used to be some sense of progress or innovation. Today, since everything has been put into a giant blender, musicians can say they were influenced by other musicians from any era. Maybe what they did was an innovation of something from the 1960s, mixed with 1980s or whatever. But we've already tread that ground. Dozens of musicians have already done that thing. It's rare that we get something that feels truly new or different than what came before.

User avatar
Fat_Bulldog
likes to grate his own cheese
Posts: 12554
Joined: May 9 06, 12:41 pm
Location: Drunk

Re: The long aughts

Post by Fat_Bulldog »

Me too to all of this.

GET OFF MY LAWN!

User avatar
CardsofSTL
All Hail the GDT Master
Posts: 47815
Joined: April 26 11, 6:06 am
Location: Columbus, OH

Re: The long aughts

Post by CardsofSTL »

The Best is still yet to come [expletive].

Arthur Dent
Hall Of Famer
Posts: 12317
Joined: April 25 06, 6:43 pm
Location: Austin

Re: The long aughts

Post by Arthur Dent »

CardsofSTL wrote:
May 24 21, 11:28 am
The Best is still yet to come [expletive].
But when? I require arbitrarily applied artificial boundaries!

Are the teens truly ending now or will they drag on?

User avatar
CardsofSTL
All Hail the GDT Master
Posts: 47815
Joined: April 26 11, 6:06 am
Location: Columbus, OH

Re: The long aughts

Post by CardsofSTL »

Arthur Dent wrote:
May 24 21, 11:31 am
CardsofSTL wrote:
May 24 21, 11:28 am
The Best is still yet to come [expletive].
But when? I require arbitrarily applied artificial boundaries!

Are the teens truly ending now or will they drag on?
Our Great Awakening will begin on April 5, 2063.

Online
User avatar
heyzeus
Everday Unicorn
Posts: 41336
Joined: April 21 06, 10:14 am
Location: Austin, TX
Contact:

Re: The long aughts

Post by heyzeus »

Honestly, the Aughts probably lasted until the Brexit vote. What was that, 2015? Sure, the underlying factors that made the rise of rightwing ethno-nationalism were growing in significance before then. But I think that was the event that gave notice to the world that the things we thought we knew, we no longer actually knew.

Things like "you can do a poll and get honest, predictive answers." Things like "a country will act in its economic best interests, and not out of xenophobic, isolationist, far-right nationalism that ultimately is a suicide pact." Obviously, you get the Trump, Bolsonaro, Erdogan, Modi, Netanyahu etc etc that followed. Mix in there the Cubs winning the World Series, Covid throwing every border closed, and every boomer mind infected by the Facebook/Youtube extremism algorithm.

I think 2015 is the year we went from "the internet is fun and good and e-commerce is the future and internet ideas like gofundme and microloans will really improve global lives" to "wow, the all-seeing eye is being used against us to weaponize absolute idiocy."

User avatar
G. Keenan
Sucking on the Rally Nipple
Posts: 23459
Joined: April 16 06, 6:03 pm
Location: Chicago

Re: The long aughts

Post by G. Keenan »

I think the culture is actually better than it was in the past in lots of ways when it comes to its understanding of the social justice issues that have plagued us since the beginning. The tension of the moment comes largely from those who feel threatened by the ascendent voices in the culture being unable to sweep the discussion aside and bury it under the the promise of "the good life" through consumerism. That's not cutting it anymore. Rather than listen, or engage in introspection or dialogue, the old cultural forces have chosen instead to construct a parallel universe to inhabit that is less challenging to their sensibilities. I'd be interested in hearing from people who lived through the 60s & 70s as adults on this. Those were decades of open cultural warfare that were indeed more violent in terms of urban rioting and political violence than today, though we may be getting there more quickly than we think and could surpass it in very ugly ways.

Compounding that is what, imo, is a mindset of scarcity that has taken hold in our collective psychology. The narrative here used to be America as the land of opportunity, the land of plenty, with a rising tide lifting all boats. It's not like that anymore. The cost of living is so much higher than it was for the Boomers or even Gen X. Housing and higher education are ridiculously expensive compared to when our parents were young.

Unless you come from family wealth that can pay for your higher education and give you a downpayment on a house, you are very likely to start out your young adult life in America deeply in debt and spend the next 3 decades of your life paying it off. Upward mobility is just not as easy as it used to be and people can feel it. Our political process seems to have zero capacity to resolve this, and worse, a large faction of it is perversely incentivized to exploit this frustration and indeed do nothing whatsoever to alleviate it because the business model of the media their voters consume is centered around fear and resentment. And it's everywhere. You can't escape it. Even if you aren't a primary consumer of it you are forced to consume it secondhand because now, journalism, is 90% just reporting about what other people are saying. A summary of the day's social media garbage conversation. The advertising algorithms compound the misery in a mindless robotic race to the bottom of the discourse.

Meanwhile, we sleepwalk into oblivion as our politicians tell us we are special, we are great, we are chosen by God to be a great people. American Exceptionalism is our national religion and it is a myth. We aren't special. We're just regular people like everyone else. Like all the spoiled children of wealth who inherited their status, we think our comfortable existence derives from our personal virtue, when in truth we are just living off the legacy of past generations' labor. It wasn't easy for them to make their country a more civilized, prosperous place and it won't be easy for us either.

To quote The Eagles: "There is no more new frontier. We have go to make it here."

User avatar
ghostrunner
Hall Of Famer
Posts: 28729
Joined: April 18 06, 9:40 pm

Re: The long aughts

Post by ghostrunner »

Will just say as a parent with two boys in school I don’t think they lack for cultural markers. It’s very Internet/phone based but I don’t see a real problem there. That big blender pioneer talked about above is extremely positive IMO. The pop culture timeline where x leads into y and into a seems like a pretty temporary situation in the long view. Things used to develop more locally before “pop culture” and that too ended for many people.

There’s also a [expletive] ton of good music and movies from the last several years, as far as that goes. When I’m able to spend some time on it I’m never disappointed or discouraged. I should add there’s always bad stuff but I don’t feel like overall quality has gone down.

The only thing that discourages me is what’s going on politically on the right and how the urban/rural divide is so deep.

Also adding - if we’re talking about common culture, that’s probably gone but it’s also been deteriorating over the last few decades anyway. To the extent it even existed. I’ve read/heard various discussions about how Game of Thrones was probably the last big show everyone watched together at the same time and could be used as a somewhat common reference. Having said that, I think that’s probably reflecting a narrow frame of reference. Particularly white middle class people.

Post Reply