Whether you were born through it or learned about it.
Mine is the 2000s.
It was a very mean-spirited decade with very crude forms of weirdness thrown in between.
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It birthed communities like 4chan, SomethingAwful and Reddit. Where, these communities harbored some of the most degenerative behavior and content the internet has seen. They all predate later communities such as KiwiFarms, where it was seen acceptable to post racial, xenophobic, misogynistic content as well as turn select people’s lives upside down with constant scrutiny and mockery mixed.
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Porn and Gore content were running wild and unchecked. Porn became increasingly rampant as there were lack of censorship and places like Rotten.com existed.
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Shock Jock personalities like Howard Stern and Tom Leykis were on the radio. These two are examples whose careers earned them lots of money exploiting social vulnerabilities and putting them on the spotlight to point and laugh at. Tom Leykis’ entire show, revolved around edging against misogynistic tendencies, that prided in seeing women as nothing more than sex objects. Even going as far as to encourage men to see them as nothing more than sex objects.
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9/11 happens and we all know the repercussions of that event. The government’s response became incredibly fumbled, initiating a blanket war on the idea of Terror. This would sink the country into an eventual recession, it would see laws being passed that gave the government leverages like to spy and track on all citizens. It would also increase the national debt into irrecoverable levels that still remain today.
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Hollywood began their mark on remaking films by decade, starting with the 60s and 70s with movies like Starsky and Hutch, Dukes of Hazzard, The Honeymooners and more. It would be a trend we’d see since as the decades get higher. Despite some critically successful films, Hollywood also churned out numerously awful films although they would see some net positives in the box office that encouraged them to continue.
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The emo wave of the 2000s came twice, both early and in the middle of the 2000s. It was seen as the cool thing to dress up in all black, listen to bands like My Chemical Romance and portray themselves as depressed, suicidal individuals. The concern here is the fact that pretending to be suicidal sparked a controversial debate with mental health. Where it was harder for actual sufferers to get the attention and treatment they needed because they feared that they would be seen as fakers because of these scene movements.
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Tabloid culture took hold of media and media giants such as FOX were manufacturing so many stories around for views and to push political agendas. This all would predate and fuel the current problems we’re facing in regards to misinformation going wild today.
a lot of things you saw as cons of living through the 2000’s I saw as Pros that I still long for.
Personally I suspect the 30’s sucked. I imagine the 1860-1900’s did too with the U.S. industrial revolution & gilded age being considered a bad thing for people that weren’t mega-wealthy.(kinda like the direction we’re headed)
The 1990s, in recent history. The dissolution of the USSR was catastrophic, both for those living in the socialist side of the world and those without.
It’s dissolution was a dramatic setback in the global transition to communism. 7 million people are estimated to have died indirectly as a result of that, and we spent the next decades in bleakest reaction to it.
As an American, 2020s and it’s not even close. The rise of Christian nationalism empowered by the Republican party has led to the loss of bodily autonomy and LGBTQ+ rights in red states. We have alienated our international allies. ICE has become Trump’s gestapo, literally ripping families apart and terrorizing cities. Blatant gerrymandering. Inflation is out of control. And we have a literal pedophile in office. I was born in the 80s and I can confidently say it has never been this bad in my lifetime. I am not even sure that we will have a fair election to begin to undo this damage.
The US Empire has been collapsing for a long time. Trump didn’t turn ICE into gestapo, it already was. Christian nationalism rose as a consequence of imperialist decay, and a necessity to turn austerity inwards as the spoils of imperialism are drying up. What we can do is organize to establish socialism, by joining orgs such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
It cannot be stressed enough that the rise of the far-right is a consequence of the material reality of dying imperialism. The US Empire, post-World War II, has been the world hegemon and plunderer of the global south, the largest exporter of death and genocide. As the global south is decoupling from the US Empire and developing, this is causing an internal shift towards oppressing the US populace more to protect the superprofits from imperialism lowering.
I’m older than most on here and seen more decades, and yes, I agree totally.
We’re lucky enough to have lived through a long period of relative global peace, but that seems to be drawing to an end. Corruption, fascism, stupidity, control, fear and lack of freedom are all far more now than at any time since the 1940s.
Yeah this one’s easy, its now
If I had to pick from the four decades I’ve personally experienced. 2016-2026 is probably the fucking worst.
Of all time? 1936-1946 is probably up there.
1930s. Depression, war, etc. Though the music was good.
Thank god they were followed by 1940s where… wait.
I happen to think that present day is worse, by the standards you’ve set out here, because:
- the nastiness you mentioned is not confined to fringe websites of edgelords.
- Reddit and Twitter have been legitimised and had everything but far-right views censored.
- Your government is more authoritarian
- Most films are remakes or ‘franchises’
- ‘Emo’ didnt stop people getting health care, rising prices and government cuts made healthcare unavailable to everyone. It’s not a question of merit, it’s a question of money.
- Shock jocks have been replaced by the manosphere. So instead of idiots loling at whatever the outgroup of the moment is, now theyre training boys to be pricks irl.
- We live in a de facto post-truth era, enabled by AI slop. You can’t just avoid tabloids you don’t trust. Basically everyone is at it.
Also, in the 2000s you could go and see a band play a thing called live music. Now, the venues have closed and the bands don’t even break even from touring, if they do.
Basically, I’m trying to say that everything shit from 25 years ago is hyper shit today.
Yeah the 2000s were great compared to today. Early 2000s anyway
With the situation in the US right now plus the pandemic plus the job market plus all the other stuff that’s been bubbling up where I live, the new 20’s have been proving themselves to be pretty bad.
Yep, my life was awful in the 2010’s, but there was a LOT of hope and potential.
By 2020’s, my personal life improved, but Corona, the wars, Trump, breakdown of international law, MML doom, so on. All hope is dead, I know I’m dead as well personaly. Ngl, hoped the 2012 end of the world would actually happen.
2020s, by far. 2010s were the best, but after 2020, the world order I knew pretty much became undone and everything seems to just be getting worse. I was pretty hopeful and excited for the future before, but now we seem to be on an unrelenting march towards dystopia. Much of the societal progress we’ve made in prior decades is being reverted. Also not great when it came to personal events for me, as my dad died in 2021. I guess the decade still has a few years left to redeem itself, but that seems highly unlikely right now.
I’m tempted to try and actually make that damn death plague, not going to lie. It’s somewhat better than where we are going towards. Just a harmless cold that causes prion disease a year later…
2020s. Starts with COVID and gets worse
The 1490s.
1490s
Yeah. Why didn’t people just stay put?
Nah, migration is fine. It was the royally decreed, religiously supported, and philosophically justified systems of rape, genocide, enslavement, and environmental devastation that was the problem…
The decade that started all the problems we’re dealing with now tbh.
4chan/Kiwi
I kind of think the 2000s were better in this regard? It was much easier to not know those types of websites exist, let alone ignore those websites, and also to be anonymous on the internet back then then it is now.
The only thing better in the post-2010 world for me is that my parents don’t gatekeep my money.
If anything, facebook/reddit/IRL Christians are all functionally 4channers and KiwiFarmers now.
Id say any individual decade pre 1865.
