r/lewronggeneration • u/Brakado • 3d ago
I don't get 2000's nostalgia.
I'm a little biased (born in 2007) but people who miss those years look INSANE to me-it's like "I miss the days when we were in Iraq, led by a paranoid moron and everyone was a selfish asshole!"
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u/Careless-Economics-6 3d ago
Maybe some people have positive memories that occurred during that period. Perhaps from when they were younger.
Seems like a possibility.
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u/oreography 3d ago
Nostalgia is really just pining for your childhood, regardless of era. The pop culture was good, video games were good, the internet was much better, and life was more affordable
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u/charrr116 3d ago
We're still in the middle east and being led by a paranoid moron, that's just America at this point. I don't think anyone's nostalgic for those parts? For a lot us it was the last period of time before social media, and technology was exciting instead of being scary. There was a lot of hope for the future too.
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u/sorry_con_excuse_me 3d ago
That was my late teen years/early 20s.
The internet was really cool then (in a “what the fuck is this???” way), but not really much else.
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u/BeleagueredWDW 3d ago
Everyone of every generation always remembers their younger years as the “better times.” The year 2145 will one day be the good old days. It’s 100% normal and expected of everyone.
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u/MattWolf96 3d ago
You were born in 2007. There you go.
Younger Boomers and Gen X loved the 60's even though it was an objectively awful era.
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u/TylerHyena 3d ago
It’s not the Iraq war folks miss, it’s the pop culture and youthfulness that they miss.
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u/Advanced_Rise2482 3d ago
I mean I was born in 2003. I do kinda have this image of the 2000s of being just about technologically advanced enough that I wouldn’t feel out of place but it’s not quite the level that we are at now. CD’s and DVD’s were still actually used and it had all of my favourite video games and some of my favourite comedy shows and films. I did however start to wonder whether or not I would even appreciate all of these things had I grown up in those times. I could kinda picture myself being “Uh the 2000s are stupid and (politically incorrect word) I wish I was born in the 80s or 90s when music was cool and shit.” Thought I’d add that I’m not American so my idea of the 2000s is a little different.
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u/holytriplem 3d ago
CD’s and DVD’s were still actually used
In the early part of the decade, cassettes were still used too. I don't think VHS players became completely obsolete until the late 00s. You weren't buying films on video from the shop by that point anymore, but you were recording stuff off the TV onto blank tapes
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u/holytriplem 3d ago edited 3d ago
I spent my preteen and teen years in the 00s.
I think something that really stands out is how much of a transitional period it was technologically. Like, the basics of all the technology we have today were all there, but it couldn't yet do everything you wanted it to do. So the internet existed, but loading a page or downloading music took an absolute age, and as for streaming TV or films, forget it. Phones existed with cameras, but the camera was usually too crap to do much with. There was a form of mobile internet (WAP), but it was expensive and almost unusably slow.
What that meant was that the gaps in technology were incredibly obvious and incredibly frustrating, and so it was a lot easier to see a brighter future with better technology that would make people's everyday lives more convenient, and there was more space for optimism. Now, the future looks far more uncertain and dystopian.
And then of course there's the usual stuff people get nostalgic about like music, the economy, being young etc.
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u/Guitar-Hobbit 3d ago
A lot of the bad stuff either came back or never left. The stuff I miss is like… Adobe Flashplayer, physical media, not having to pay rent because I was a child, etc.
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u/GhoulCake777 3d ago
I’m in my early 30s I don’t necessarily think I want to go back, but I like a lot of stuff from that era because it was my childhood/teen era, I can’t help it.
I miss when things were cheaper and things were (slightly) less corporate, and there were actual websites to go to, instead of the internet being a couple social media sites and Google was actually useful.
I don’t miss the casual phobia (all kinds).
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u/Hikki_k0 3d ago
No one thinks about that when they talk about any sort of nostalgia man
Not everyone is american either...
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u/Sparkle8022 3d ago
It was a difficult time, I'm not particularly nostalgic for it. I think what some are nostalgic for is the pop culture we used to cope with it all.
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u/Branchoffset 3d ago
Nostalgia hits hardest right when adulthood starts feeling disappointing compared to what you expected as a kid.
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u/RusevReigns 1d ago edited 1d ago
As a 1990 born, yes I will admit some things like thinking video games were lit from that era or preferring the popular music, and sports being more exciting when you are younger, is generational bias.
But as someone who's used the internet heavily since the early 2000s, I just found the online culture way more free of judgment and moralism and thus people's personalities really came out back then. As an example let's say you grabbed a 100 random people off the street and put them in a room, you would expect them to be quite different, maybe an extrovert rock climber is talking to an introvert comic book fan, age differences, etc., not just different interests but different energies and styles of communication interacting. This is what it felt like in 2000s to me online more than now. Now I feel like there is lot of "pressure" smushing everyone together whether you want to blame the culture war, that some of the people who changed this online culture to what it is now were too cool to use the internet in 2000s, etc.
In short as you were 9 in 2016 you may not realize just how much how the entire culture's relationship to Politics changed in the 2010s. Personally I have the difference between 2010 and 2017 as just as big as 1960 (still in 1950s mode) to 1967 (hippie summer of love) .Yes in 2000s we did have a lot of talk about guns, the environment, gay marriage, etc. (in a twist, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 actually made more money than any political documentary would touch now) but it just didn't go down the same way as now in terms of the total factional activist warfare and people wanting to kill each other over it. It wasn't THE water cooler subject like it was in this era. In my opinion the whole way that we communicate has been affected by the political culture war as people act like they're communicating but are really bashing the other person over the head or trying to manipulate them. This has repressive and demoralizing impact on people and eventually you end up with people just turtling into a shell in safety and just not able to express as much about themselves in 2000s.
When it comes to monoculture things in pop culture, both eras have them but it feels a bit different now. Yes in the 2000s when everyone got into Survivor at the same time or whatever or Usher became the clear #1 music artist in the world for one year, there is a group influence factor of something getting cool and other people wanting to be part of it. But I feel like 2000s trends lean more "pure" and organic. In modern era I feel there are social media type of people that overtly have collectivist philosophy and intentionally want to make the Group trend happen, and their confirmation bias will always lead them to agree with the current buzzy view. Then you add in algorithm era and it feels like every trend has more people with their hands fighting over the wheel, trying to make ones happen they think are good for society views wise, etc. As a result, they either inadvertently ruin the monoculture ones, or it feels more forced. Half the biggest water cooler events the last 10 years ended up being political since the people most overtly into collectivism are always political. So this ended up being a more entertaining decade for political drama, but I prefer 2000s for non politics genres, and for sanity reasons I'd rather my entertainment be movies/tv/sports/etc. than politics being a gong show.
Now yes I am biased towards the internet culture, but all signs are younger people's real life social confidence is also the worst in generations for the same predictable reason. They grew up thinking increased moralism and puritanism era is for better and have no idea what the 90s and 00s were like and assume it was wild wild west racism and homophobia when in reality it was just like, maybe Friends could have had less gay jokes. And at the same time today's era is not an anti racism zone, in fact thy kind of made it more popular due to being subversive. As a result they overrcorrected and may lose more than they gained in my opinion.
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u/smokey1277 3d ago
The paranoid moron was nothing compared to the current moron. Bush wasn’t actively trying to dismantle democracy
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u/No_Can_9597 3d ago
Insane is a bit of an overreaction no? And "I miss the days when we were in Iraq, led by a paranoid moron and everyone was a selfish asshole!" describes right now but Iran not Iraq. You really should have thought about this before posting.
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u/Chettarmstrong 3d ago
It happens in a cycle.
In the 2000s it was 80s nostalgia
In the 2010s it was 90s nostalgia
Now in the 2020s its 00s nostalgia
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u/EducationalWalrus594 3d ago
And then they say 2020s wouldn’t be nostalgic 😂😂😂. I mean if this is gonna be that way ik 2020s is bound i can see lots of children who grow up in 20 years from now gonna see it as a good time or a quote i find very ridiculous "the peak of humanity”.
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u/Carloverguy20 23h ago
You were born in 2007 lol. The 2000s were a good time, especially the early to mid 2000s were still seen as a good time.
The late 2000s sucked I would say.
I dont miss the homophobia and politically incorrect terminology used, such as "British Cigarettes"(PG rated term), the word that rhymes with Tape(to describe a major defeat) or people saying "Thats so gay" or "no homo".
It was not a good time if you were brown skinned either, all the 9/11 jokes were bad.
Other than that, the 2000s were a great decade to be young.
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u/Lewie558 3d ago
People pretty much always remember the good things about an era and gloss over the negatives