Hmm, well, YMMV but I think that around 2010 was a good time in my life, but one that was wasted, I had some real issues in the later half of the 2000s, so it was a bit of a fresh start for me. Culturally, it was starting down to the woke era. Ignore the elections, this was Obama-mania's remains staggering on, doubling down on outrage culture, etc. They were being opposed by the Tea Party at this point, which had a chance to be something, I guess, but was quickly being co-opted to just mean "conservative." Its funny, thats a dead term now, isn't it, its all about the alt-right these days. I feel as though the last baggage of the previous decade was being shed this year, with things like Iraq fading into memory. I think this is also when we got UBL? People say that every decade but it just seems to have lined up at this time, it took Obama only two years to spell an end for whatever Bushism was. Only one cycle ago was the high water mark of the GOP using Gay Rights as a wedge issue (the Cali Prop) but it was already done with by this point. The Tea Party was into financial issues and cutting government, not on Adam and Steve.
2011 was me realizing that I was going to have trouble that year getting out of school. The culture war mentioned in the previous year continued on, very one-sidedly. At this point the Tea Party was turning into a joke. It didn't stand for anything, its leaders were grifters, its political candidates were of questionable intelligence, etc. This was about the time that smart phones stopped just being the thing for early adopters and started becoming, you know, the default.
I wasted 2012, nothing was accomplished in that year. Politically, it wasn't too different from the modern era. I'd argue the forces that elected Trump were already in play, but Romney and Obama certainly weren't going to be utilizing them. Cord cutting had been an ongoing thing for half a decade at this point, but I think this was around the time I realized that terrestrial TV lacked a long-term future. Netflix, Youtube, Twitch etc. That wasn't nerd stuff anymore.
2013 I got a job, not a good one but at least it was something to do and also money! And with money came spending, and still a little hope of getting a job in my field. I am pretty sure this was when GTA V was being hyped up/coming out. What a big event, for a game that is still being played today no less. I think we might have been getting the Avengers around this time too? I remember this year and the next one as sort of being a wash, politically.
2014 was me feeling like a vet at work with my one year of experience (what a fool I was.) Sort of set aside career advancement for awhile. I remember the 2014 elections being total bullshit, being decided by issues like ebola and how bored and dis-interested the electorate was. If Ebola was coming, then that means that Gamergate was too. Culturally, it was new console time, I suppose. I remember thinking that people would just stick with their 360s since games were already pretty great, boy was I wrong. People were chomping at the bit to own a PS4, I even remember one guy at work being super excited about the new Kinnect....
2015 was the start of my one hour each way commute, which has left me bitter and hateful to this day. With it sucking up more and more of my time, I spent less on stuff like TV. I was also in constant physical pain during this time, also due to work. Gamergate continued through this period, Trump announced he was running for president and NPR used it to talk about how much money his pageants would lose due to his horrible racism (one of those articles that seeks to drive the story, instead of report it.) I was not a Trump fan and assumed he'd be losing, at the time. Opposite Trump and GG, Trannies started crawling out of mental institutions and into national institutions. A match made in heaven except I liked and still like early GG. Anyways, its formation lead to a permanent divide in nerd culture. I feel that it is the left who left us, back in the day everyone would be united in a good old games journalism is a joke bash-fest, now I feel like saying that comes off as a political statement.
2016 was the year that 4Chan won. I got promoted at work. Switch came out. I joined Kiwifarms. Shit was good. Fracking and pipelines were in the news. Unfortunately, I believe this was the year of the Adpocalypse, when Google caved into a random trial lawyer and his peddled articles in the British tabloids and started heavily censoring Youtube. Pandora had opened the box and its effects are still ongoing to this day. If you want to know when I think the modern battle over free speech began, it was here.
2017 is sort of a blur. Trump turned out to be simultaneously more normal and weirder than anyone thought. The media attacked him relentlessly. It was the reverse of 2016, all of its gains were being back-slid.
2018 was the year I got fed up with work, but kept doing it. It feels pointless to list cultural events at this point, they are all too recent to have really stood any chance of time. A decade from now maybe we'll be talking about Amazon Echo and Prime Day, or maybe we'll just chuckle about them along with Google Glass and the aforementioned Kinnect.
2019, still actively looking for better jobs. Fell into a sloppy mess over a girl who didn't care for me. Had a bout of near-depression at the same time. It feels like the clock is really ticking on my life (you do only get so much time, how much have I wasted doing nothing...), started hanging out with people more. This was in my personal life a bitter year where I feel that everyone lost, despite everyone giving their best. As to politics? Its finally time to figure out if the Obama and Trump small re-alignments are going to solidify into a new normal, or if we will be going back to the Reagan-Bush coalitions. The Democrats have the chance to cut a bigger tent than Trump here, but their base is increasingly ideological and extreme. While that does not necessarily mean they will lose, I feel like we might be looking at 1980 all over again, where previous years might as well not even be mentioned when talking about the political situation. Culturally, you know, whatever. Subscribe to Pewdiepie!