The 2010s — an overview

[ToroidalBoat]

GamerGate

What a freak show. I remember casually mentioning it on /vg/ around then. I was quickly told to never speak of it again.

 

[Syaoran Li]

All I can say is that the 2010s sucked on multiple levels for me. They got a bit better towards the latter half, but if I had a choice of going back to 2004 or 2014 I would chose 2004 every time.



This is going to be a very boomer question, but I honestly don't see what culture or counter/sub culture kids and teens of the 10's have. Like, when I was in middle/highschool you had gangbangers, emos, juggalos, anime and video game nerds, jesus freaks, a few holdover goths at the beginning and hipsters at the end. We liked memes, we drank Monster, we remember Myspace and when Shrek came out and what dial-up sounded like, we had 9/11 and the great recession. But it seems like since 2012 your only choices were troonism/SJW, still some anime nerds (though it way more mainstream and usually also tied to SJWism), bronies (now dead), 16-year-old Instagram thots, and.... Fortnight dancers? People who want to be professional youtubers? Tekashi 6ix9ine fans? I don't know, and even scarier, I get the feeling Gen Z doesn't know either.

The anime nerds of the 2010's are usually hated by the SJW's (My Hero Academia and nostalgic fare like Pokemon seem to get a pass) but otherwise you're spot on with this assessment.

I think 2010's nostalgia will be a lot like 1970's nostalgia was back in the 1990's, where it's more about gently mocking the extremes of the time and I imagine we'll see shows in the 2030's that make fun of SJW's and thots the same way that the sitcoms in the 90's would often crack jokes about the silliness of hippies, mohawk-clad punks, tacky mustaches, and disco, usually in reference to an older character's past.

When it comes to the big nostalgia decades, it's always either eras known for peace and prosperity such as the 1950's or the 1990's, or eras that were turbulent in terms of the era's events, but also had a strong and vibrant pop culture like the 1960's and the 1980's (and I suspect the 2000's will be looked at in a similar light as the 60's and the 80's currently are)

 

[Shadfan666xxx000]

All I can say is that the 2010s sucked on multiple levels for me. They got a bit better towards the latter half, but if I had a choice of going back to 2004 or 2014 I would chose 2004 every time.



This is going to be a very boomer question, but I honestly don't see what culture or counter/sub culture kids and teens of the 10's have. Like, when I was in middle/highschool you had gangbangers, emos, juggalos, anime and video game nerds, jesus freaks, a few holdover goths at the beginning and hipsters at the end. We liked memes, we drank Monster, we remember Myspace and when Shrek came out and what dial-up sounded like, we had 9/11 and the great recession. But it seems like since 2012 your only choices were troonism/SJW, still some anime nerds (though it way more mainstream and usually also tied to SJWism), bronies (now dead), 16-year-old Instagram thots, and.... Fortnight dancers? People who want to be professional youtubers? Tekashi 6ix9ine fans? I don't know, and even scarier, I get the feeling Gen Z doesn't know either.

Yeah, there were basically no subcultures by this time. People honestly seem to come into those more in their 20s than their teens now if at all. All the goths are fat chicks who are on the beat hunt, every tomboy you meet is a lesbian or otherwise anxious around men, and the rest of the folks (m+f) are random thots on a sliding scale of geeky weeb to prep. I dont know how much it changed since the early to mid 2010s when I was in the most contact with that age range but I doubt it changed much.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Sign of the times: yesterday there was this event at Target for that new Frozen movie.

In one place kids could sit down and listen to a story... which was told by one of those Google assistant things.

 

[Pointless Pedant]

All I can say is that the 2010s sucked on multiple levels for me. They got a bit better towards the latter half, but if I had a choice of going back to 2004 or 2014 I would chose 2004 every time.



This is going to be a very boomer question, but I honestly don't see what culture or counter/sub culture kids and teens of the 10's have. Like, when I was in middle/highschool you had gangbangers, emos, juggalos, anime and video game nerds, jesus freaks, a few holdover goths at the beginning and hipsters at the end. We liked memes, we drank Monster, we remember Myspace and when Shrek came out and what dial-up sounded like, we had 9/11 and the great recession. But it seems like since 2012 your only choices were troonism/SJW, still some anime nerds (though it way more mainstream and usually also tied to SJWism), bronies (now dead), 16-year-old Instagram thots, and.... Fortnight dancers? People who want to be professional youtubers? Tekashi 6ix9ine fans? I don't know, and even scarier, I get the feeling Gen Z doesn't know either.

Are you calling being a gangbanger a subculture? I guess it is in a certain sense but that really hasn't gone away if you live in anywhere with low income districts. My father works at a college which gets a lot of troubled teens and has to deal with those idiots on a regular basis, and he lives in a respectable neighbourhood.

Also it seems like you're just discounting the YouTube, TikTok, and video game cultures that young people are into as not being real cultures because you don't like them. Aside from that rap music and sports (mostly association football and cricket around here) are still as popular as they were. Barely anyone is a troon, I'd be surprised if it was even 1%, and anime is pretty niche, definitely not far more mainstream than it was back in the Dragon Ball Z days.

I'm not even a teenager but this site is the definition of the "30 year old boomer" meme. So many people seem stuck in the 2000s and don't understand younger people in the same way that their parents didn't understand them.

 

[Syaoran Li]

Are you calling being a gangbanger a subculture? I guess it is in a certain sense but that really hasn't gone away if you live in anywhere with low income districts. My father works at a college which gets a lot of troubled teens and has to deal with those idiots on a regular basis, and he lives in a respectable neighbourhood.

Also it seems like you're just discounting the YouTube, TikTok, and video game cultures that young people are into as not being real cultures because you don't like them. Aside from that rap music and sports (mostly association football and cricket around here) are still as popular as they were. Barely anyone is a troon, I'd be surprised if it was even 1%, and anime is pretty niche, definitely not far more mainstream than it was back in the Dragon Ball Z days.

I'm not even a teenager but this site is the definition of the "30 year old boomer" meme. So many people seem stuck in the 2000s and don't understand younger people in the same way that their parents didn't understand them.

Eh, I think the anime subculture is starting to make a comeback but it's mainly tied into the video gamer and meme subculture as well, and the troons are a lot smaller in number than people think, but they're very loud and visible and they seem more prevalent because social media is bending over backwards for them.

Then again, I'm mainly looking at things from an American perspective, and given you mentioned cricket and association football, I'm assuming you live in the United Kingdom, right?

A common mistake on this site is assuming everyone lives in the same country. I've been guilty of it myself.

The thing about pop culture and subcultures is that even in today's globalized world, there's a lot of differences among various nations. What may be big in the UK might be obscure or in decline in the United States, and vice versa.

 

[Shadfan666xxx000]

Are you calling being a gangbanger a subculture? I guess it is in a certain sense but that really hasn't gone away if you live in anywhere with low income districts. My father works at a college which gets a lot of troubled teens and has to deal with those idiots on a regular basis, and he lives in a respectable neighbourhood.

Also it seems like you're just discounting the YouTube, TikTok, and video game cultures that young people are into as not being real cultures because you don't like them. Aside from that rap music and sports (mostly association football and cricket around here) are still as popular as they were. Barely anyone is a troon, I'd be surprised if it was even 1%, and anime is pretty niche, definitely not far more mainstream than it was back in the Dragon Ball Z days.

I'm not even a teenager but this site is the definition of the "30 year old boomer" meme. So many people seem stuck in the 2000s and don't understand younger people in the same way that their parents didn't understand them.

I mean wiggers are still a thing.

 

[Terrorist]

The 2000s were shit and you know it. Every toxic trend and value we hate today was already germinating. People just think they were good bc muh nostalgia.

 

[FuckedUp]

The 2000s were shit and you know it. Every toxic trend and value we hate today was already germinating. People just think they were good bc muh nostalgia.

I don't think anyone believes they actually thought it was a good decade at the time, it's just that so many things we took for granted went to shit in the '10s.

Imagine if in 2009, someone told you there are more than two genders and that people should be arrested for saying "nigger".

 

[Dom Cruise]

Agreed up to a point. 2014 is when "Current Year" began in earnest, although I wasn't really following GamerGate or the rise of Black Lives Matter all that closely at the time, so the gravity of it all didn't really become apparent to me until 2016 or so.

I think 2017 is the worst year of the decade overall, since I'd wager that's when woke culture went into overdrive thanks to Trump unexpectedly winning the 2016 election. Trump won and the SJW Left went apeshit because they couldn't do the original tactic of incremental change like they did under Obama.

That's the year that gave us the Me Too witch hunt, the rise of Antifa as a national threat, and the Satanic Panic-tier hysteria over the nebulously defined "Alt-Right" that happened in the wake of Charlottesville.

2014 would probably be a contender for the second-worst year of the decade, since that's when everything really kicked off in full.

Honestly, 2019 is a pretty shitty year but I'd say it's one of the better years of the decade when compared to 2014-2018.

This is the first year where you really see a more effective backlash against SJW culture starting up. The Weeb Wars is the first major example of a concerted effort to actively fight Me Too (although the Kavanaugh hearings helped too) and you've been seeing the Left becoming increasingly venomous and violent in ways that are souring the general public at every turn, such as the attack on Andy Ngo in June and the Project Veritas leaks showing just how evil Google is.

People are getting fed up with increasing corporate censorship and secular puritanism.

Despite their best efforts, woke culture failed to cancel the new Joker movie which in less than the span of a few months is now one of the most profitable movies of all time. Zoe Quinn scored the first kill for cancel culture and nobody in the MSM is going to bat for her.

Anita Sarkeesian went from being someone who was above any form of reproach in the eyes of the media to a pathetic joke teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and her grift is failing her.

2020 is going to be the last grand stand of the 2010's decade, and depending on how the 2020 Election ultimately plays out, it could very well be the last chapter of the "Current Year" malaise.

See, this is where things get a little complicated, because on one hand we have the socio political climate of a year and then we have the personal.

2014 was a bad year for me personally as well, which is part of the reason why I tend to look down on it so much, you raise some good points about 2017, but 2017 was a much better year for me personally, so I have a hard time saying it's the worst.

2017 was also a phenomenal year for video games, so that helps lol.

Certainly it was one hell of a chaotic year though.

Personally, I think 2010 and 2012 were the best years of this decade. 2011 wasn't too bad culturally, but for me it sucked due to personal reasons.

2013 would be my personal pick for favorite year of the decade, but honestly 2015 was a pretty good year too.

2015 struck a healthy balance between the good and the bad of the decade, woke culture was certainly a thing and growing but after some of the initial heat of Gamergate had died down, it wasn't quite as bad in 2015 as it was the year prior and the years following.

And our obsession with reviving the pop culture of the past gave us Mad Max: Fury Road, an excellent film, as well as the not great but still entertaining Jurassic World, which I had been dreaming about a new Jurassic Park movie for almost a decade by that point, then there was Star Wars: the Force Awakens, another not great movie but you could see the potential, that is until The Last Jedi.

I definitely have some nostalgia for 2015.

I would say 2016 was when woke culture really started to become utterly intolerable though thanks to the election and it's been one huge shitstorm ever since.

I think 2010's nostalgia will be a lot like 1970's nostalgia was back in the 1990's, where it's more about gently mocking the extremes of the time and I imagine we'll see shows in the 2030's that make fun of SJW's and thots the same way that the sitcoms in the 90's would often crack jokes about the silliness of hippies, mohawk-clad punks, tacky mustaches, and disco, usually in reference to an older character's past.

When it comes to the big nostalgia decades, it's always either eras known for peace and prosperity such as the 1950's or the 1990's, or eras that were turbulent in terms of the era's events, but also had a strong and vibrant pop culture like the 1980's (and I suspect the 2000's will be looked at in a similar light as well)

That's what I imagine, picture a sitcom in the 2030s and they flashback to a character's past and they have died hair and "problem glasses" and everyone in the audience laughs a knowing laugh.

That's what I hope will be the case at least.

 

[Longjack Attack]

2013 would be my personal pick for favorite year of the decade,

You gotta admit though, late 2013 to the early- mid 2014 was annoying as hell. 2013 was when Frozen came out and totally eroded the pop culture scene with the song "Let it Go". Every parent and their 4 year old were trying to score internet fame by singing aloud to it in a car, to college football marching bands playing it during halftime. Late 2013 gave me feelings of despair almost for that alone. Everything related to the song was so unavoidable.

 

[Dom Cruise]

You gotta admit though, late 2013 to the early- mid 2014 was annoying as hell. 2013 was when Frozen came out and totally eroded the pop culture scene with the song "Let it Go". Every parent and their 4 year old were trying to score internet fame by singing aloud to it in a car, to college football marching bands playing it during halftime. Late 2013 gave me feelings of despair almost for that alone. Everything related to the song was so unavoidable.

I was paying more attention to the situation with Ukraine and Russia than Frozen.

 

[FuckedUp]

You gotta admit though, late 2013 to the early- mid 2014 was annoying as hell. 2013 was when Frozen came out and totally eroded the pop culture scene with the song "Let it Go". Every parent and their 4 year old were trying to score internet fame by singing aloud to it in a car, to college football marching bands playing it during halftime. Late 2013 gave me feelings of despair almost for that alone. Everything related to the song was so unavoidable.

Previous year's Gangnam Style was pretty cringe in hindsight, though. I actually completely forgot about Frozen, this is the song I think of when I think of late 2013:

 

[Longjack Attack]

Previous year's Gangnam Style was pretty cringe in hindsight, though.

I really wasn't rocking to the vibe to the song when if first came out. The only fact i payed attention to was the fact that it was going to be one of the many videos to gain 1 billion views tbh

 

[Dom Cruise]

Previous year's Gangnam Style was pretty cringe in hindsight, though. I actually completely forgot about Frozen, this is the song I think of when I think of late 2013:

OOMBAH GUNGNAM STYLE!

 

[Dom Cruise]

It’s easy to shit on the 2010s and for good reason but one positive is that video games are good again. The decade started off with a bunch of studio closures and everyone just assumed the future was mobile gaming and indie craparamas. Then it turned around a couple years ago and it’s probably the best it’s been in about 15 years.

I said so myself, 2009 to 2012 was a pretty bleak time for gaming, studio after studio closed, most Japanese devs were embarrassing themselves by churning out pale imitations of western games instead of doing something unique and bullshit like Farmville was being held up as the "future" of gaming.

The 7th gen was just overall a really awkward, transitional period for gaming.

But the 8th gen really breathed some new life into gaming and things got far more interesting, the only downside is SJWs removing sexiness from western games and other SJW stuff, but overall this gen has been way better than the last gen.

For some perfect examples of how gaming got better, compare Resident Evil 6 with the Resident Evil 2 Remake or the cancelled Doom 4 with Doom 2016.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

The anime nerds of the 2010's are usually hated by the SJW's

I've mentioned this before, but I think "weeb shaming" is rooted in identity politics.

In the West in the '80s and '90s, having an interest in anime or Japan wasn't really cared about. But of course, anime wasn't really that popular either. In the early 2000s when the "Golden Age of Anime" was in the West, the original term appeared as "wapanese," a term which specifically targeted white people. On 4chan, moot got sick of seeing the term thrown around, so he used the nonsensical word "weeaboo" from a Perry Bible Fellowship comic as a wordfilter. Of course, the term stuck and spread as a replacement. As the Western internet got more and more infested with identity politics, it seemed the use of "weeaboo" -- now applied to anyone regardless of skin color -- spread as well.

Fast forward to the West of Current Year. Now "weeaboos" -- or people accused of being such -- can be accused of rot like "cultural appropriation" or being of the nebulously-defined "alt-right." It's gotten to the point where even casual interest in Japan or anime can lead to a label of "weeaboo" or "weeb."

But there's still the more reasonable definition meaning Japan fangirl/fanboy (in a poser-ish way), and it's also used jokingly.

 

[FuckedUp]

I've mentioned this before, but I think "weeb shaming" is rooted in identity politics.

In the West in the '80s and '90s, having an interest in anime or Japan wasn't really cared about. But of course, anime wasn't really that popular either. In the early 2000s when the "Golden Age of Anime" was in the West, the original term appeared as "wapanese," a term which specifically targeted white people. On 4chan, moot got sick of seeing the term thrown around, so he used the nonsensical word "weeaboo" from a Perry Bible Fellowship comic as a wordfilter. Of course, the term stuck and spread as a replacement. As the Western internet got more and more infested with identity politics, it seemed the use of "weeaboo" -- now applied to anyone regardless of skin color -- spread as well.

Fast forward to the West of Current Year. Now "weeaboos" -- or people accused of being such -- can be accused of rot like "cultural appropriation" or being of the nebulously-defined "alt-right." It's gotten to the point where even casual interest in Japan or anime can lead to a label of "weeaboo" or "weeb."

But there's still the more reasonable definition meaning Japan fangirl/fanboy (in a poser-ish way), and it's also used jokingly.

weebs rise up

 

[Pointless Pedant]

I don't think anyone believes they actually thought it was a good decade at the time, it's just that so many things we took for granted went to shit in the '10s.

Imagine if in 2009, someone told you there are more than two genders and that people should be arrested for saying "nigger".

The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 (the UK law that banned excessive criticism of Islam etc) passed in the 2000s. The ridiculous speech policies today are just applications of this. In the USA the First Amendment protects offensive speech so no one can be convicted for saying nigger without it being overturned. People get arrested for all kinds of things but it's the convictions that ruin someone's life.

I've mentioned this before, but I think "weeb shaming" is rooted in identity politics.

In the West in the '80s and '90s, having an interest in anime or Japan wasn't really cared about. But of course, anime wasn't really that popular either. In the early 2000s when the "Golden Age of Anime" was in the West, the original term appeared as "wapanese," a term which specifically targeted white people. On 4chan, moot got sick of seeing the term thrown around, so he used the nonsensical word "weeaboo" from a Perry Bible Fellowship comic as a wordfilter. Of course, the term stuck and spread as a replacement. As the Western internet got more and more infested with identity politics, it seemed the use of "weeaboo" -- now applied to anyone regardless of skin color -- spread as well.

Fast forward to the West of Current Year. Now "weeaboos" -- or people accused of being such -- can be accused of rot like "cultural appropriation" or being of the nebulously-defined "alt-right." It's gotten to the point where even casual interest in Japan or anime can lead to a label of "weeaboo" or "weeb."

But there's still the more reasonable definition meaning Japan fangirl/fanboy (in a poser-ish way), and it's also used jokingly.

The main stigma around anime fans isn't that they're alt-right, it's that they're stereotyped as creepy, smelly, and perverted, especially that they're fond of underage girls. This isn't really politically motivated, though obviously some leftists apply politics to it as they do to everything.

 

[Syaoran Li]

The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 (the UK law that banned excessive criticism of Islam etc) passed in the 2000s. The ridiculous speech policies today are just applications of this. In the USA the First Amendment protects offensive speech so no one can be convicted for saying nigger without it being overturned. People get arrested for all kinds of things but it's the convictions that ruin someone's life.



The main stigma around anime fans isn't that they're alt-right, it's that they're stereotyped as creepy, smelly, and perverted, especially that they're fond of underage girls. This isn't really politically motivated, though obviously some leftists apply politics to it as they do to everything.

Again, from an American perspective, those same stereotypes of being creepy smelly perverts is also heavily tied into the stereotypes of the "Alt-Right" over here and I think that may have to do with anime being a lot more popular in America in the early 2000's and being a big actual fad among teens and young adults at the time.

There's also the SJW opposition to anything seen as "edgy" and a lot of anime released in America was intentionally marketed as edgy back in the 1990's and early 2000's, both the extreme VHS OVA's of the 80's and early 90's and the more "PG-13 but still edgy for American basic cable TV" stuff that aired on Adult Swim and Sci-Fi Channel at the time.

I suspect that anime was always more obscure in the UK, aside from the global hits like Dragonball and Pokemon back in the early 2000's.