Does anyone else genuinely miss the 2000s?

[MrJokerRager]

I missed good American cartoons.

Me too, I miss the old school version of Teen Titans or Scooby Doo or many other good old american cartoons like Tom and Jerry. I don't dig this new calarts style.

 

[Webby's Boyfriend]

I missed good American cartoons.

I don't. because I think we live right now in the best time for cartoons ever.

Sorry for the thread necromancy, but I've been thinking on something lately.

@Dom Cruise and I both have mentioned how the early 2010's (2010-2012) seemed to be a lot more positive than the woke malaise of the "Current Year" era that has succeeded it.

Even with Occupy Wall Street (probably the closest thing we have to a single origin point for SJW's) there seemed to be a lot of positive vibes from 2010-2012 and even the Occupy protests seemed to be a lot more innocuous at the time than they have become in hindsight.

But something happened that caused the cultural shift and I'm not fully sure what that is. Obviously, a lot of this stuff had been brewing underneath since the Great Recession (and for some issues, since 9/11) and Occupy was probably the first "bubbling over" of the Woke Left before we went into full "Current Year" around 2014-2015.

2013 is kind of a weird outlier year because it wasn't quite as hopeful as 2010-2012 but it also wasn't quite as woke scold as everything from 2014 onward. The Trayvon Martin trial was a big deal that year, which was almost like a preview for the insanity of Black Lives Matter.

Something happened in the latter half of 2012 that really accelerated this cultural shift, and a lot of people will say it was Obama's reelection that year, and while that definitely played a part, I'd say the bigger "wake-up call" event would be the Sandy Hook massacre at the end of 2012, at least in the United States.

Sandy Hook really was a game-changer for the Left and a lot of the gun control spergs started going into overdrive after it. The gun control debate drifted away from pistols to rifles, specifically the AR-15 and its many derivatives.

Both the Woke Left and the liberals tend to get really emotional and angry over Sandy Hook even to this day. While it was a horrifying tragedy where innocent people were killed, the way that they react to it today, especially with regards to "truther" conspiracy spergs.

When they un-personed Alex Jones, a lot of the justifications the media gave was because of his asinine statements about Sandy Hook. But here's the thing, there have always been "truther" types when it comes to politically significant tragedies.

You have the 9/11 truthers, and back in the Bush years, most 9/11 truthers were explicitly left-wing and usually militantly atheist (Zeitgeist: The Movie and the Tuscon shooter) with Alex Jones as the sole major exception for most of the 2000's.

Hell, there's even Columbine truthers, who were a big part of Web 1.0 culture (at least in conspiracy circles) and a lot of their rationale was similar to the Sandy Hook conspiracy nutjobs, but they didn't attract near the amount of MSM ire that Sandy Hook truthers do.

I personally think that Sandy Hook was just one of those "black swan" events that helped forge the Woke Left in its early days, along with the 2008 Recession, Occupy Wall Street, and The War on Terror.

Earlier in this thread, we talked about how certain major events signified the demise of 90's culture and the beginning of 2000's culture and I think it was @Dom Cruise who mentioned Columbine, 9/11, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq as those big changeover moments, and I see a similar trajectory with the transition from 2000's culture to 2010's culture.

The Great Recession was probably the defining moment of the late 2000's and in many ways, it did a lot to set the stage for the culture of the 2010's. It was sort of the "Beginning of the End" for the culture of the 2000's in the same way that Columbine was for the 1990's.

Occupy Wall Street was the direct response to it, and I think this would be the best "start date" for 2010's culture much like how 9/11 is often seen as the event that truly kicked off the 2000's.

I think Sandy Hook was probably the point where any of the positive vibes of the early 2010's and the hard-partying nihilism of the 2000's were killed for good, although you could probably have the Zimmerman trial or Ferguson as that event as well.

Politics already sucked in the 2000s - Dubya, Fundies, 9/11, the Iraq War & Great Recession. You just didn't notice it that much because most people didn't have internet access and those who did didn't have social media like today.

 

[AnOminous]

I don't. because I think we live right now in the best time for cartoons ever. And because of this, I think that this:

Politics already sucked in the 2000s - Dubya, Fundies, 9/11, the Iraq War & Great Recession. You just didn't notice it that much because most people didn't have internet access and those who did didn't have social media like today.

Lolcows of some form or another have existed as long as the Internet itself. Even back in the old text only days you had weird freaks like the fundie Steve Winter rampaging around on Fidonet BBS echoes.

 

[Syaoran Li]

I don't. because I think we live right now in the best time for cartoons ever. And because of this, I think that this:

Politics already sucked in the 2000s - Dubya, Fundies, 9/11, the Iraq War & Great Recession. You just didn't notice it that much because most people didn't have internet access and those who did didn't have social media like today.

Disagree for cartoons, unless you're talking about having easier access to older material thanks to a wider variety of streaming and digital download options.

Do agree with the politics of the 2000's, although I think part of why the anti-Bush sentiment didn't seem as bad had more to do with the fact that Bush was objectively a bad president. Most people had internet in the United States for most of the 2000's, although social media wasn't really a thing until the late 2000's and it wasn't as influential then as it is now.

Comparing the 2000's to the 2010's, the bad stuff in the 2000's was routinely condemned by the mainstream media and the general public, save for the invasion of Iraq and that quickly changed once Baghdad fell and then all hell broke loose because Saddam wasn't around to keep a lid on things.

In the 2010's, nearly everything wrong with the decade is openly endorsed and celebrated by the mainstream media and establishment and it's a lot more socially authoritarian compared to the 2000's. If you supported Dubya in 2004, you might get called a redneck and your positions would get mocked by Jon Stewart, but that would be the end of it. You weren't totally condemned as an evil Nazi incel and forcibly made into a pariah by the tech overlords because you dared to disagree with the opinion of some woke neon-haired sow on Twitter over some inane issue.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Sorry for the thread necromancy, but I've been thinking on something lately.

@Dom Cruise and I both have mentioned how the early 2010's (2010-2012) seemed to be a lot more positive than the woke malaise of the "Current Year" era that has succeeded it.

Even with Occupy Wall Street (probably the closest thing we have to a single origin point for SJW's) there seemed to be a lot of positive vibes from 2010-2012 and even the Occupy protests seemed to be a lot more innocuous at the time than they have become in hindsight.

But something happened that caused the cultural shift and I'm not fully sure what that is. Obviously, a lot of this stuff had been brewing underneath since the Great Recession (and for some issues, since 9/11) and Occupy was probably the first "bubbling over" of the Woke Left before we went into full "Current Year" around 2014-2015.

2013 is kind of a weird outlier year because it wasn't quite as hopeful as 2010-2012 but it also wasn't quite as woke scold as everything from 2014 onward. The Trayvon Martin trial was a big deal that year, which was almost like a preview for the insanity of Black Lives Matter.

Something happened in the latter half of 2012 that really accelerated this cultural shift, and a lot of people will say it was Obama's reelection that year, and while that definitely played a part, I'd say the bigger "wake-up call" event would be the Sandy Hook massacre at the end of 2012, at least in the United States.

Sandy Hook really was a game-changer for the Left and a lot of the gun control spergs started going into overdrive after it. The gun control debate drifted away from pistols to rifles, specifically the AR-15 and its many derivatives.

Both the Woke Left and the liberals tend to get really emotional and angry over Sandy Hook even to this day. While it was a horrifying tragedy where innocent people were killed, the way that they react to it today, especially with regards to "truther" conspiracy spergs.

When they un-personed Alex Jones, a lot of the justifications the media gave was because of his asinine statements about Sandy Hook. But here's the thing, there have always been "truther" types when it comes to politically significant tragedies.

You have the 9/11 truthers, and back in the Bush years, most 9/11 truthers were explicitly left-wing and usually militantly atheist (Zeitgeist: The Movie and the Tuscon shooter) with Alex Jones as the sole major exception for most of the 2000's.

Hell, there's even Columbine truthers, who were a big part of Web 1.0 culture (at least in conspiracy circles) and a lot of their rationale was similar to the Sandy Hook conspiracy nutjobs, but they didn't attract near the amount of MSM ire that Sandy Hook truthers do.

I personally think that Sandy Hook was just one of those "black swan" events that helped forge the Woke Left in its early days, along with the 2008 Recession, Occupy Wall Street, and The War on Terror.

Earlier in this thread, we talked about how certain major events signified the demise of 90's culture and the beginning of 2000's culture and I think it was @Dom Cruise who mentioned Columbine, 9/11, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq as those big changeover moments, and I see a similar trajectory with the transition from 2000's culture to 2010's culture.

The Great Recession was probably the defining moment of the late 2000's and in many ways, it did a lot to set the stage for the culture of the 2010's. It was sort of the "Beginning of the End" for the culture of the 2000's in the same way that Columbine was for the 1990's.

Occupy Wall Street was the direct response to it, and I think this would be the best "start date" for 2010's culture much like how 9/11 is often seen as the event that truly kicked off the 2000's.

I think Sandy Hook was probably the point where any of the positive vibes of the early 2010's and the hard-partying nihilism of the 2000's were killed for good, although you could probably have the Zimmerman trial or Ferguson as that event as well.

You know what, I never really thought about Sandy Hook and the impact it might have had on the left, but I think you're right.

The timeline of early woke culture would be first there were "slutwalks" in 2011, then OWS the same year, then Zimmerman, then Anita Sarkeesian's Kickstarter, then Sandy Hook, then the Zimmerman trial and then things finally exploded in 2014 with Ferguson and Gamergate.

 

[Cryonic Haunted Bullets]

Even with Occupy Wall Street (probably the closest thing we have to a single origin point for SJW's) there seemed to be a lot of positive vibes from 2010-2012 and even the Occupy protests seemed to be a lot more innocuous at the time than they have become in hindsight.

But something happened that caused the cultural shift and I'm not fully sure what that is. Obviously, a lot of this stuff had been brewing underneath since the Great Recession (and for some issues, since 9/11) and Occupy was probably the first "bubbling over" of the Woke Left before we went into full "Current Year" around 2014-2015.

I've seen some people argue that the SocJus movement exists to protect Wall Street and "woke" corporations at the expense of class-based activism.

 

[Fluke]

Ok boomers

 

[Syaoran Li]

I've seen some people argue that the SocJus movement exists to protect Wall Street and "woke" corporations at the expense of class-based activism.
View attachment 1013567

That would probably explain a lot. actually.

I wouldn't put it past the big corporations to co-opt Occupy back in 2011 and astroturf the fuck out of the movement so it could be neutralized.

When Occupy first started, it got really big really quick and it wasn't "woke" but by mid-late 2012 it was going in a direction that was sort of woke, especially in places like California and the Pacific Northwest (Antifa black bloc attacks also made a few appearances at Occupy events up and down the West Coast) but making something like Occupy go woke and veer off into identity politics would be a great way to sink the movement by muddying the waters to keep the whole thing from getting centralized and also promoting unrelated stuff like intersectionality to distract from economic issues.

Combine that with a brewing resentment towards the old Bush-era order (and Obama's continuation of many Bush era policies) and the fact that so many Millennials went to college with worthless degrees and then got indoctrinated into intersectional bullshit, and it made the astroturfing of Occupy fairly easy.

Then it got out of hand and now look where we're at. The corporations created a monster and they can't really control it anymore, at least not as effectively as they did before.

 

[Dom Cruise]

I've seen some people argue that the SocJus movement exists to protect Wall Street and "woke" corporations at the expense of class-based activism.
View attachment 1013567

This is something I've long thought myself, because I noticed how almost all this stuff seemed to crop up right after OWS.

And it's bizarre how much SJWs suck corporate cock, the corporation used to be the number 1 enemy of the left, remember the Seattle WTO protests from 20 years ago? Imagine liberals being mad about world trade today, now corporations are a SJWs best friend.

 

[Freddy Freaker]

This is something I've long thought myself, because I noticed how almost all this stuff seemed to crop up right after OWS.

And it's bizarre how much SJWs suck corporate cock, the corporation used to be the number 1 enemy of the left, remember the Seattle WTO protests from 20 years ago? Imagine liberals being mad about world trade today, now corporations are a SJWs best friend.

I'm sure a big part of it is nerd culture becoming the norm and heavily commercialized, along with trendy hipster types always chasing the newest electronics for cheap. Tumblr culture was heavily tied into both OWS and the early woke shit too.

So yeah, who cares about POCs working in terrible conditions to make the iPhone 27X with built-in dilator? Gotta consume them products, sweaty! Check out my Star Wars Funko pops!

 

[A Grey Cat]

I miss 2006
The Xbox 360
Deadrisisng
Civil war (the comic not the movie)
This

 

[CherryBlossomTree]

No, I don't miss the broken economy.

 

[Ghost of Wesley Willis]

Every damn day.

I miss the days when making fun of GWB was fun and people like Stephen Colbert actually were humorous.

I miss the days of turning on Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network and getting good shows that aren't Calarts ctrl+v shit.

I miss the old Steam UI.

I miss the days of AWPs being banned in 90% of CS lobbies.

I miss the days of playing flash games on school computers when you're supposed to be doing homework.

I miss the days of Windows XP.

I miss the golden age of YouTube.

I miss the days of making fun of the weebs naruto running during gym class.

I miss the days when the Motorola Razr was the coolest fucking phone ever made (fuck that, it is the coolest phone ever made)

 

[snailslime]

2015+ was the decline of the 21st century.. the 2020 decade is going to suck so hard

 

[Whatsup bud?]

I miss my hot young body circa 2008 but thats about it.

 

[FluffyTehFennekin]

Ahh, the 2000’s. You see I was toddler during the first part, and during the later years, I was just starting school. So my memories of the 2000’s of probably more fond then others because I was a little kid back then.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

We're getting pretty deep into this disturbing new millennium when "the 20s" won't automatically mean the 1920s anymore...

 

[TV's Adam West]

2001-2006 is truly a cozy period. I miss skateboarding with my old friends, watching jackass. Waiting in line for CD's and going to blockbuster.

Everything now just feels so impersonal and anti social.

It hurts bro.

 

[Cheemsburbger]

You mean when I was a kid and thought retarded running horse was the best thing ever? In some ways, fuck yes. But I've also grown up and I have an entire life to look forward to

 

[Niggerlicious]

Someone else said in another thread around a similar topic that the introduction of social media in the later half of the 2000's marked the end of the normie-free Internet.

I think the world was better before the internet—which was originally made to share information—became another diseased dumping ground for the human condition. Instead of ye olde sperging at peers in one's respective town or city, or going full sped to try and make the news during the cable era, one truly exceptional fellow could now cry as a collective with millions upon millions of other spergs on social media, which has started to noticeably affect various aspects of real life at an alarmingly fast pace throughout the 2010's.

Hypochondria is being rewarded. Mental illness is being glorified and profited on instead of attempting to fix the root cause of the issue. Any person who claims to be of a different gender instantly becomes a socially and politically protected class without further question. If you question what the fuck is going on at all you are socially condemned. If you express yourself anywhere outside the vaguely-defined box, you will be the target of such cannibalistic barbarism you could make a chimp blush.

TL;DR everything up until 2007 was great