When do you think "Current Year" began?

I don't know when it began exactly, but I know what kicked it off.

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CY began August 9-11th 2014, with the one-two punch of the Michael Brown shooting (I live within 100 miles of St. Louis so maybe it was more significant for me than for other kiwis) and Robin William's suicide (again maybe I'm biased but I can't remember another celebrity death being so surreal and upsetting in my lifetime) kicking off the downward spiral.
 
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What started Current Year fashion trends like enormous ear piercings, men going unshaven, "problem glasses," and excessive tattoos?
 
Being on the right side of history is the current year version of having God on your side. Even Alexander H. Stephens said the Union was on the wrong side of history for not recognizing that "the negro race was naturally inferior" in the cornerstone speech.
 
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ToroidalBoat said:
What started Current Year fashion trends like enormous ear piercings, men going unshaven, "problem glasses," and excessive tattoos?
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IMO: Insecurity about jawlines and facial structure. The need to non verbally communicate one's sociopolitical alignments.
 
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ToroidalBoat said:
I'm especially curious what line of thinking resulted in: "what if I put a 1 inch ring in my earlobe?"
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The willingness to mutilate one's self beyond the limits of general employment for the sake of personal aesthetics says a lot of things, and I don't think all of them are bad. Just some.
 
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NeoGAF Lurker said:
In some ways, SJWs are more insidious than ever. On the other hand, I’ve seen more pushback than I’ve seen in years. Cultural shifts aren’t going to stop on a dime so I suspect that both sides are going to keep pushing harder than before.

The push from the left is strong but it’s costing them. Media outlets are shuttering operations or making huge cuts to staff. People now openly question the value of academia in a way that was unheard of a decade ago. Yet progress is being stifled because banks and payment processors are now getting political. In the long term, this seems like an extremely bad strategy on their part.
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SJW bullshit has existed since at least the 1960s (in contradiction to the "it's a response to the Religious Right" theory bandied about here), but in the past, it was mostly laughed off by normal people. It was successful in expanding, but people mocked it and looked down on the politically-correct trend as being silly and goofy.

Television from that time period reflects there. Way back in the day, Archie Bunker was written by Hollywood to be a satire of the everyman, but he became a beloved character. Later on, King of the Hill would mock political correctness by having different new trends/issues serve as villains for everyman Hank Hill to go up against.

Nowadays the difference is that SJW culture has become so dominant that it's now oppressive and they force people to not only tolerate it but actually actively support it or they'll try to ruin your life. Thus, the contempt.
 
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Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
SJW bullshit has existed since at least the 1960s (in contradiction to the "it's a response to the Religious Right" theory bandied about here), but in the past, it was mostly laughed off by normal people. It was successful in expanding, but people mocked it and looked down on the politically-correct trend as being silly and goofy.

Television from that time period reflects there. Way back in the day, Archie Bunker was written by Hollywood to be a satire of the everyman, but he became a beloved character. Later on, King of the Hill would mock political correctness by having different new trends/issues serve as villains for everyman Hank Hill to go up against.

Nowadays the difference is that SJW culture has become so dominant that it's now oppressive and they force people to not only tolerate it but actually actively support it or they'll try to ruin your life. Thus, the contempt.
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Eh, you are partly right. The roots of SJW culture did begin with the New Left of the 1960's.

But this current SJW zeitgeist of oppression and dominance? That could not have happened if it weren't for the Religious Right being such a massive specter in American politics and culture for most of the 1980's, 1990's, and 2000's.

Most of the hardcore SJW's are Millennials who grew up around the time the Religious Right was actually relevant in American sociopolitical life, especially during the Bush years.

The contempt for Christianity, the co-opting of the LGBT community, the blatant Islamophilia...a lot of those common SJW stances were largely born out of a generation who grew up under Bush.

Yes, the Far Left has hated Christianity since at least 1917, but the more moderate Left simply wanted to secularize the greater society without going full on anti-theism.

But the love of queers and Muslims is a hallmark of the SJW Left's roots as a backlash against the Bush-era Christian Right, since most far-leftists were typically violently homophobic and Islamophobic during the Cold War years.

Keep in mind that Lenin enacted a policy of sending gays and lesbians to the gulags that continued unimpeded even after the period of "De-Stalinaztion" that reduced the scope of the Leninist and Stalinist gulag system.

And while the Left has always hated Israel, they also hated Islam as well, since a lot of the Muslim minorities in the Russian Empire were among the fiercest opponents of the Bolsheviks and their hardline state atheist policies.

Remember, the Soviets largely backed secular Arab states against Israel, such as Syria.

Part of America's relationship with Saudi Arabia was able to happen was because they hated Iran AND the Soviet Union.

The PLO was a very secular left-wing organization and jihadist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah didn't become the main enemy of Israel until well after the Cold War ended and the PLO lost a lot of its fighting capability since the Soviets would not be there to supply them (this was one of the reasons for the Oslo Accords in the 90's)


TL;DR-Many SJW ideas have been circulating around the American Left since the 1960's but the SJW movement as we know it today is a product of the 2010's and was largely informed by opposition and resentment towards the Religious Right of the 1990's and 2000's.
 
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To me, "the current year" is our entire contemporary zeitgeist, not just postmodern wokeness. It developed in a cultural shift that began in 2008 with the Great Recession and was largely complete in 2012 when net culture became mainstream, though time took until 2015 when it was in full effect with the "everything is phobistic" panic.
 
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Webby's Boyfriend said:
To me, "the current year" is our entire contemporary zeitgeist, not just postmodern wokeness. It developed in a cultural shift that began in 2008 with the Great Recession and was largely complete in 2012 when net culture became mainstream, though time took until 2015 when it was in full effect with the "everything is phobistic" panic.
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So going by the previous trends * this should fade in the next decade then?

* Zeitgeists tend to last 20 years on average from my observations.
 
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This current year crap began decades ago. It was stated differently though. "It's the 90s, so x is acceptable!" "It's the 80s, so x is acceptable!" "It's the 70s, so x is acceptable!" "It's the 60s, so x is acceptable!"
You don't want to live in the 50s, do you?
Etc.
It's been a tactic for a long time to rope stupids into accepting immoral / stupid / evil things.
 
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