The Aughts (The 2000s, 2000-2009)

external hard drives

ffs it's "aughts"

it oughta be

things that feel 'decade-ey' about "the oh oh's" five years out to me:

pop music of the first half of the decade: its already happening but 00's themed dance parties will be a thing just as 80's or 90's one are
emo, screamo & associated haircuts, hot topic: everyone's forgotten about it but it was a huge part of youth culture
myspace.com
idk why but iced lattes? lol. did those exist in the 90's
the partic indie aesthetic spanned by like wes anderson, the decemberists

that one run of MF Doom albums

It's all about DFA records.

mf doom is a good call

sorry flopson

my first decade on my own away from my parents, lots and lots and lots of partying, the end of MTV ever showing any music videos, LOST, new Dr. Who, 30 Rock, It's Always Sunny, the Star Wars prequels (and subsequent penultimate expression of George Lucas's solitary vision for Star Wars (meaning in 35 years they will study The Phantom Menace as a new Plan 9 From Outer Space)), pointless wars and wiretapping and torturing and basically the US doing everything it can to destroy any shred of integrity in line w what i was taught our country was about as an impressionable youth, playing in a bunch of bands, getting on david letterman, going to egypt, going inside the great pyramid at giza and hearing that endless reverb, living in an apartment with a rooftop pool for a while, having two cars totaled by wreckless drivers on the same road, lots of failed relationships, building up a pretty rad occult book collection, continuing my vinyl collection (mostly thrift stores, $1 or less(i have like 500 records now i think)), living in a dozen different places, playing in 30+ bands, working a late-night shift at The Majestic Diner in East Atlanta the day after some crazy guy smashed a guitar over someone's head just outside the restaurant, playing the High Museum with a telephone i modded with my dad to have a 1/4" jack that could go through a guitar amp, playing a bunch of shows with a TV doing Nam June Paik-style feedback in an act called NTSC, seeing first-hand the pyramids of the black ufo cult in South Georgia, blacking out halfway through a show where i played drums for an hour, playing theremin next to a guy with a chainsaw and King Khan holding a pig's heart, etc.

alice the snorg tees girl in an i "love lamp" tee shirt is as good a summation as anything

j. OTM

great post AB; feel like you used the 2000s a little better than i did tbh

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/01/04/what-do-you-call-it

we were all really upset about the Bush administration in the aughts, now endless war is just not even worth arguing about

feel like we're trying to come up with another verse for "Positive Jam"

I spent the aughts going from age 10 to 21 so that's like my entire adolescence, upon which I tend to reflect "man I was depressed for a lot of that"

* the Daily Show with John Stewart being seen as key and relevant
* comics for bohemians and grownups, much-heralded in the 90s but generally confined to underground status, become ubiquitous - Chris Ware and Daniel Clowes at Borders, Fun Home, Scott Pilgrim, cool kids with broader non-nerd hobbies reading and recommending lengthy manga series, etc.
* being a "foodie," being into design/typefaces, being into high-quality and/or microbrewery beer. all things that obviously have long existed for some subset of those with money, but i feel like in the 2000s these got big with people who in other decades would have given more attention to hi-fis, cars, and other things on which you might spend money or read articles
* Sacha Baron Cohen
* non-bubble (i.e. what will actually make the "decade" shows and halloween costumes): American Idol

oxys

Brooklyn, writers named Jonathan, Brooklyn writers named Jonathan.

delineation between 2000s and 2010s might be that at some point in the last few years, a basic understanding of the current events of today, whether trivial or important, somehow became expected of all of us. at least it feels that way. so many of the headlines on information outlets, large and small, are self-referential or assume a familiarity with the topic at hand.

almost as if the plea to just "google it" that used to proliferate more widely have finally been internalized (at least by most of us)

I have no idea what the aughts were to me (outside of depressing political stuff). I feel like expanses of time have been more difficult to delinneate or sum up as shared culture (or 'culture') has slowly fizzled away. There hasn't been a Thrillers or a final episode of M*A*S*H to unite us for some time now.

The last episodes of Friends, Frasier, and Everybody Loves Raymond were all pretty big.

American Idol dominated the overall '00s tv ratings.

in the UK: going to university because you want to learn vs going to university so you can get a job.

decent into plutocracy
mainstreaming of indie

digitisation of any/all content for personal consumption / globalisation of everything would be the two defining/most interesting characteristics impo. the earnest fashion for declaiming that your generation invented/perfected cruelty/war/environmental destruction/idiocy/poverty/corruption/discrimination is the least interesting characteristic that ppl seem to think was emblematic but rly wasnt

American Idol OTM

* the Bourne films
* Fight Club and V For Vendetta take over as signifiers of iconoclastic cool among high school seniors, et al.

Who were the most bankable stars in the 2000? I was thinking Russell Crowe but then I looked over his filmography and apparently I imagined that. Maybe the peak of Clooney as movie star but obviously he has a strong 90s presence.

Pitt at start, Damon/clooney axis, depp at end, Downey Jr since, maybe?

jolie throughout, maybe?

Emma Watson's films averaged 900mil in box office :)

Ornaldo Bloomps' aughts films grossed $6.5 billion

- Social interactions fully transactional - whether it's likes, RTs, whatever.
- Economy(ies) at event horizon where 100% of financial movements occur in One Percenter land. In terms of economic significance, the rest of us are as important and tolerated as picnic ants.

Oh man, Will Ferrell will be in there for sure - Old School, Elf, Anchorman, Talladega Nights - none of those have gone away at all. Ben Stiller also did shockingly well for himself, with Zoolander, Dodgeball, Along Came Polly... and both of the first two Meet the Parents films - inexplicably - were top ten for their years, as was Night at the Museum (!).

I guess it was nice that comedies could still even make the list back then - that's actually a big shift in the 2000s that might go unmarked by history. Now it's all big epics, superheroes, and animated things, and so far in the 2010s the only essentially comic top ten grossers are Men in Black III, which is borderline action/scifi, and The Hangover II. From 2001 to 2010 there's My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Men In Black II, Bruce Almighty, Meet the Fockers, Hitch, Night at the Museum, The Simpsons Movie, Mamma Mia!, Hancock (really?), The Hangover... plus non-CGI-blockbuster-style action and adventure pictures like Ocean's Eleven and Twelve, Mr. and Mrs Smith, Bad Boys II, I Am Legend, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, and Minority Report, and odd things like Signs and Passion of the Christ... none of which I can imagine making the top list today. Not saying any of those are precious underdog gems crushed by the blockbuster onslaught - - - just that what kind of thing makes a blockbuster has shifted, though this also has to do with the growing Asian market, etc.

Brokeback Mountain, Avatar, and Passion of the Christ for "event" films, btw.

nolan killed light cinema the bastard

Jackson and Gore Verbinski, as much or moreso.

Thing that sticks out as most different to me was the existence of Borders. I used to spend a lot of time there, amazed by the variety of magazines and wondering who on earth read them all (I can't help but think the magazine selection killed them more than books, cafe, films and music). I remember a point where there must have been like 6 or 7 magazines about vintage monster movies on the go. Shitloads of arty fashion magazines. Also remember seeing a fascinating magazine about cutting edge theatre set design.
Remember in the early 00s looking in the classics section and most of them were £1.50, this truly shocked me but it wasn't long before most of them were raised to regular book prices.

MySpace definitely.

2010s will be noted for the atomization of culture fostered by the internet

orange and teal

Although Fellowship of the Ring felt like the first true 21st century blockbuster. Maybe a case for Gladiator, but it feels more like a late-90s film by comparison.

Radiohead and globalisation [Started by Billy Dods in September 2001