Were the 2010s a blur? - (putting the "zoom" in "zoomer")

[ToroidalBoat]

2020 and 2021 seem more like one long year rather than two separate ones.

I've said it before, I see 2020-2021 as one year, even though at the same time the start of the coof feels long ago.

I guess the time blur is still going on to me.

 

[Dom Cruise]

I don't think it was a blur at all, but then, I'm probably younger than some of the people in this thread. In the 2010s I was finishing up high school and then going to university. For me, the time actually went very slowly and I can vividly picture what each year felt like individually. 2013 to me feels like a completely different world to 2019. The cultural changes that seemed to come around 2016 were so pervasive that it's difficult for me to look at those two years as even being part of the same decade.

2013 was the last hurrah for any remnants of 2000s culture, it is crazy to think 2013 and 2019 were in the same decade.

A few people have said it but there was one thing we had in the 2010-2015 period that we simply didn't have in the post-2016 period: Optimism. Regardless of what political background you were from, in the west at least, those first 5 years of the decade felt drastically more optimistic than what came after. People look back now and say "well we could see that X event led to Y", such as seeing that the Tumblr SJW fad led to the all-pervasiveness of woke and cancel culture in the late 2010s, but at the time no one could have known that. Similarly, someone of a progressive bent might look back on the Tea Party in the US or the rise of UKIP around 2013 in the UK and say "these were early signs of the rise of the alt-right", but it simply wasn't looked at in that way. 2010-2015 was a remarkably centrist era compared to now and most people looked at "the crazies" on both sides and dismissed them as if they would be short-lived fads. There was an optimism that most people had because they didn't believe the norms we had grown accustomed to could be broken.

One thing about the Tea Party is they never advocated for violence, meanwhile the left is all like " punch Nazis!" and "go out and riot"

To some degree our modern political zeitgeist did start with the Tea Party, but the left wing is who made things get so bad by bringing violence to the table.

One thing that people DID seem to overestimate and thought would drag on for years, but kind of didn't, was ISIS. Around 2014/15 it seemed to be the consensus that we were re-entering the War on Terror big time and that ISIS could establish itself as a major regional power in the Middle East that we would have to reckon with. But it ended up being a conflict that mainly played out in the background and, a few years later, dropped from the news cycle entirely.

Now that we're out of Afghanistan we are very much in a post-War on Terror era (or a post post 9/11 era if you will)

Covid fucked with everything too because it effectively put us in a cultural time-loop for 2 years

It's been a surreal as hell 2 years.

I've said it before, I see 2020-2021 as one year, even though at the same time the start of the coof feels long ago.

I guess the time blur is still going on to me.

2021 has gone by in a flash, I literally can't believe it's already almost December again already.

2020 on the other hand, when I think back to the early part of the year, feels so long ago it's absurd, 2019 feels like a long time ago too, longer than a couple of years has felt in a long time.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

2021 has gone by in a flash, I literally can't believe it's already almost December again already.

2020 on the other hand, when I think back to the early part of the year, feels so long ago it's absurd, 2019 feels like a long time ago too, longer than a couple of years has felt in a long time.

Maybe it could be like this: blur 2010s, slow 2020, and then a blur for some time after?

 

[Sekirodiealot]

It feels like a year ago to me somtimes since around the early 2010's was when i was in middle school and high school. I remembered when justin bieber was huge in 2011 and sround 2012 or so he lost relevancy quick and how nostalgic game consoles was starting to gain traction.
I remember around 2014 when SJW was starting to catch on and it was mainly because of how the left started power tripping after obama's relection and by 2015, it was common for people to claim they're moving to canada if Trump wins the election and how people constantly bitches about him 4 years straight and how the entertainment industry kept pumping out trump jokes after trump jokes and the sad thing is that people like Jimmy kimmel are STILL MAKING TRUMP JOKES ALMOST A YEARSINTO BIDEN'S TERM.

I miss the 2010's despite being born in 97 qnd growing up in the 2000's. I remember when newgrounds was huge before FNF made it relevant again.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I'm surprised this hasn't been posted yet. It's this thread in video form.

Skyrim feels like a recent game, but it came out about a decade ago.

I think this is not just an effect, but a cause. Very little is one and done these days. In the past, long, ongoing, consistently relevant entertainment was the exception.

I'm reminded of Resident Evil Remake. It felt so long between the original and the remake, and the upgrade between the two was night and day. Meanwhile, games like The Last of Us get a "remaster" that is basically the same game.

Skyrim was released a decade ago, nine years ago, eight years ago, five years ago, four years ago, and last month. Nothing has come close to it technically in all that time so it continues to be popular. Other games spend years in "early access" getting constant patches and content updates, and even after "1.0" DLC and free content mean that games are made over time.

 

[Dom Cruise]

I think this is not just an effect, but a cause. Very little is one and done these days. In the past, long, ongoing, consistently relevant entertainment was the exception.

I'm reminded of Resident Evil Remake. It felt so long between the original and the remake, and the upgrade between the two was night and day. Meanwhile, games like The Last of Us get a "remaster" that is basically the same game.

Skyrim was released a decade ago, nine years ago, eight years ago, five years ago, four years ago, and last month. Nothing has come close to it technically in all that time so it continues to be popular. Other games spend years in "early access" getting constant patches and content updates, and even after "1.0" DLC and free content mean that games are made over time.

It's true, games have longer legs these days, I remember revisiting some games from 2001 and 2002 once in 2004 and they seemed like they were fairly old at the time, now a few years old is still basically a new release.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

It's crazy that the year of "the rapture is totally going to happen", "the end of the world because an old calendar stops", and the fail of Occupy is already a decade ago.

 

[Jewelsmakerguy]

It's crazy that the year of "the rapture is totally going to happen", "the end of the world because an old calendar stops", and the fail of Occupy is already a decade ago.

But has it really stopped though? It seems every year every doomsday sperg has been doubling down on their "This is the day the world ends!" nonsense. Hell, last year people were going "when they meant 2012, they really meant 2021!". Now that we're a decade on from 2012, I bet you right now that they'll double down on that doubling down.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

But has it really stopped though?

In that "doomer" satire about Current Year never ending, I made up that end of the world predictions became a daily occurrence by 1000 years from now.

 

[Twinkletard]

1980s>1990s>2000s>2010s

Society just keeps getting worse.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Society just keeps getting worse.

It's like entropy.

So much for the idea that history is a one-way path of "progress"?

 

[MirrorNoir]

After a few days I guess I'll try to add more to this than a lame snarky joke, although that was the truth in some ways, I did a lot of drugs in the 2010s lol. I remember it all, just some of it may be viewed through an altered perspective that doesn't relate to the overall gist.

I think the best way to describe how I feel about the 2010s would be the speech Tony Soprano gives at the beginning of the Sopranos. I started to feel that way around the middle of the decade, maybe a bit earlier. Everything felt stale. It was like an existential crisis before I even had any right to have an existential crisis but I consistently had an overwhelming feeling that I had been born too late, that the best times I could have had were behind me, and that it was a downward slump from then on out.

Part of that could probably be blamed on my upbringing. I was brought up in a Christian household and though I wasn't going through boot camp learning bible verses or anything I absorbed a lot. So when I see the world and the direction things are going lining up so smoothly with what I have heard my entire life are signs that Christ is coming back and the world is close to being over, yeah, of course I started to feel like "what's the fucking point?" And the objective realist in me says "yeah that's just time going by and you're getting older, you're fine" but still I do feel like the sheer amount and combination of things that are lining up with scripture bears at least taking notice of.
But in retrospect I think even absent some end of the world chain of events, those of us who fall within the "early adulthood/adulthood" age range (probably most people on this site) honestly were just born on a down swing. History does not move in a straight line forward, it swings like a pendulum, rolls like a circle, whatever metaphor helps you get it. But there are ups and downs. The 80s through the 90s, though they had some minor downward trends, were overall a huge upward momentum period in human history. We hit plateau right around the turn of the millennium and stayed there until right around 2010 imo, we had a deep breath, then we began the big downward swing.
That explains why the time around 2000 seems to have been such a slow burn as it's been described ITT. We remember it clearly because we had ascended for several decades in all ways - technologically, socially, economically, etc - and we had a period of time to enjoy that. That time was very brief though, by 2001 the slope had begun to appear.
By 2011 we had passed the point of no return. The descent started somewhat slowly but a lot of people I have talked to seem to pinpoint 2014-2016 as a real turning point where progress was not only stalled but we were actively taking steps back. Now that feels even faster.
But tl;dr on that bit, I feel like we really are just living in an overall downward trend of history. Of course if that is true we should probably enjoy what we can while we can because the rock bottom point of the swings usually have fun events like "fall of rome" and "french revolution" and "world wars".

This clip applies more to the end stage Gen Xers/early Gen Y-Millennials. People like me, who came in the world just as the bottom started to fall out on everything and got to see it all fall away due to the War on Terror/911, the Recession of 2008, and the rise of the anti-life politics of the lunatic left.

We got just the briefest taste of paradise but it was the end of the paradise, before the horrific fall my generation would get to experience from the very beginning, as opposed to the younger generation (like you I would assume) who came into the world while we were already in free fall.

Brutalist McDonalds feels something out of a dark 2000s era satire of corporate culture.

It was even worse as it came from McDonalds doing everything but fixing the core problem that they've had for the last twenty years as they lost the fast food wars, not fucking changing their menus and keeping new items full time on said menu like other chains do.

Also, some stores DID hold off on this bleak as fuck "we want the applebees demographic!" but corporate finally broke them and forced them to change over to this god-awful style. Mine held out until around 2019 and they not only changed the insides but also tore down the playground outside so that Door Dash folks could park there.

 

[MirrorNoir]

Obama's second term is when life seemed to get both faker and gayer. People had always laughed at dangerhaired feminist wokescolds, but as soon as 2012 came around, important people -like big corporations--, started listening to them. It felt like society was being infiltrated from top to bottom by those with totalitarian mindsets, and social media just made it easier to monitor everybody and punish wrongthinkers. I don't want to invoke Godwin's law here, but I get the creeping feeling that this must've been what it was like for people in 1930s Germany who were going about their business to see more and more people walking around in swastika armbands and more brownshirts screaming at people in public for not supporting their politics. Then the brownshirts start burning city blocks down and abusing their government positions to jail their ideological enemies. I feel the only thing missing is Liza Minelli singing and dancing with a chair in a cabaret, (although these days it's more likely to be a drag queen dressed like a demon reading books to children in a library.)

I've long said that Obama getting re-elected, in hindsight, was the game changer moment that sent the left onto their downward spiral. Obama coming out of nowhere and denying Hillary the nomination and Presidency in 2008 was a legit black swan event and that EVERYONE naturally assumed that Obama would never be re-elected and that after four years of Mittens, Hillary would swoop in to "save the day" and the elites timeline would resume as planned.

Obama getting re-elected, combined with the half-measure health care reform and gay marriage getting made legal and the "demographics is destiny" meme, made the left and the elites think the Overton window had moved way more than they thought it could be moved in a short period of time and that they went hog wild, peddle to the metal in Obama's second term, pushing all sorts of bullshit thinking they could get away with it. Which backfired HARD and led to them tripling and quadrupling down out of spite.

 

[PaleTay]

Sometimes I feel like 2013 or 2014 was last year or at least fairly recent. I guess that's just school and work though.

 

[skykiii]

Yeah it was fucking uncanny. Everything post 2014 felt like a autistic sprint to the finish, while the 2000's felt like a slow burn.

I know this is an old fuck post but I just found this topic and yeah, this is how it feels to me too. After 2015 I kept having this phenomenon where I was struck by just how fast each year was going by.

That, and being caught off guard by changes. I remember for awhile being amazed that people called the PS3 a "retro" console. It was also odd watching things like seeing Five Nights at Freddy's go from some niche indie game to being a major marketing force that now people are accusing of being a sell-out.

The thing I hate most about the 2010s was this feeling of "transitory" that afflicted the decade. Everything feels like it was a flash in the pan and then it was gone. I almost suspect this is the reason for the remake hell and the intense focus on bringing back older franchises. Something like Alien will always be relevant, but who fucking cares about Random Internet Cartoon #66554?

Part of this, I think, is due to the internet and the "binge" culture. I recall hearing about this thing someone did where they posted chapters of Dracula on a monthly basis, and people actually got involved with it as if it was a modern program and not a hundred-year-old book, doing things like theorizing, fanficking, etc.... whereas shows that are binged tend to, again, be flashes in the pans that nobody cares about once they're done.

Then of course all the social stuff. the 201X's is when everything began feeling like you were walking on eggshells because the things that set people off seemed almost completely random. I recall writers complaining about making cartoons in the 1980s because of all the "you can't do this" restrictions, but if anything the 201X's felt like they were that, but worse... especially because they applied to way more than just cartoons, but even works by private individuals or just random things you happened to say on a street corner.

The most concerning thing is that the late years of this decade saw a big push into normalizing violence and rioting. The "It's just property" mantra entered here along with "mostly peaceful protests." We are actually watching people try and justify it in real time now.

Actually, forgive me if this sounds spergy--and also I am most definitely NOT advocating anyone here make plans or do anything, but I just have to get this off my chest...

I feel like one reason we ended up in Clown World is because... well, its mostly been the people with the Bad Ideas who are the most willing to be violent IRL. Meanwhile people pushing back, in my experience, tend to have this "no no we've gotta be all nice" thing going for them, which is effectively just tying their hands behind their back after handing a nuke to their opponents.

Full stop, being good, righteous and honorable does not matter, it does not win battles, and "moral victory" counts for jack shit.

The Bad Ones win because people are scared of them.

Have you ever had that thing happen where people treat you like trash, but then one day you snap and beat the crap out of them and turn out to be stronger than they expected, and then suddenly they're all about bowing and scraping to you and actually respect you?

Yeah, exactly.

Unfortunately, the people with the Bad Ideas happen to have a bunch of crazies willing to actually take action, while the people who see the Emperor's New Clothes for what they are... they always puss out. So society starts catering to the Bad Ideas, because they're scared of what those people might do. Anything else is just a bonus.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

The 1990s are as far from the 2020s as the '60s are from the '90s.

 

[JimJams1998]

I'm gunna necro because it was linked via another thread, but I think the blur was due to social media and the insane speed information travels at today. Back in early college, during the first 3rd of the 2010s social media was still very much relegated to your laptop or the computer lab, so you could only check new information so many times a day. I didn't see regular smart phone use in daily life until mid 2013, and by then everything really started to take off as a shitpost from spain could reach some asshurt danger hair in sanfran in an instant. I really do think this instant transmission form of communication is not only anti human, and works against our biology, but also responsible for a lot of the ailments we see societally today. From the feeling like time is speeding up (despite having gone to college in the 10s I graduated hs in the early 00s) and it is certainly moving faster than before even when I take into account my age. Shit just doesn't seem to last anymore, even beyond products. When anyone and everyone can instantly find your hip new subculture it doesn't last long before everyone is bored.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I think the blur was due to social media and the insane speed information travels at today.

For me it could be the latter because I never signed up for the former.

I really do think this instant transmission form of communication is not only anti human, and works against our biology, but also responsible for a lot of the ailments we see societally today.

More evidence of the theory that the modern world is trying to turn people into Borg IRL?

 

[God of Nothing]

Something something you have decades where nothing happens and years where decades happen something something

 

[Flavius Anthemius]

during the first 3rd of the 2010s social media was still very much relegated to your laptop or the computer lab, so you could only check new information so many times a day. I didn't see regular smart phone use in daily life until mid 2013

Yeah you do bring up a very important point about just how much faster we're able to attain any sort of information ever since smartphones became an everyday device for the vast majority of people, currently nearly everyone above the early teens has a mini computer in their pocket, that was something people only could have dreamed of back in the early 2000's, heck I remember when people thought that getting a flip phone was the technological revolution of the mobile phone considering the slight advancements it made.

When you would be out in public pre-smartphone days there was a disconnect between the online world and reality, you wouldn't have anyone using a phone to browse the internet that much in public, and even if they did they weren't using social media, you had more people living in the moment and fixated on the reality around them, rather then what your brain is processing on a little screen and worrying about a facebook/twitter feed. You could only connect to the online/digital world really if you sat down at a desk with a computer, or even if you watched tv on the couch, and people wouldn't use that as way to distract themselves whilst out and about, it was in it's own contained sphere.

Now as long as you have reception, there is no reason for you whatsoever to not be connected to the internet if you have the means to be, the line really has been blurred between what you see in the real world and what you see online, as you remember certain memories in the same time frame, it makes certain events blend in with each other, even if they didn't technically have anything to do with each-other (like as you said some meme from across the globe having some relevance to something you see happening in your local city).

We won't ever be in a world again where the "real world" was it's own contained sphere of reality, there is just so much more of an emphasis on this social media craze, always online mentality, that soon you'll pretty much have entire generations not ever knowing that the internet wasn't a major part of everyday life, and fewer will remember those days were they weren't.