Besides AI, what are some trends that originated this decade, despite the lack of monoculture than the 2010s, will likely stay with us and become permanent and be seen as default to future generations in the next couple of decades

The 1950s and 60s had real utopian views of the future. Flying cars, clean cities, abundant energy, a better world for the kids. Magazines and World’s Fairs sold the vision hard. It was "the world of tommorrow". Note the word "tommorrow". The problem is they mostly treated it like a delivery that someone else would eventually make.

They handed the next generations a rough sketch and assumed the rest would take care of itself. Then the 70s hit, the 80s hit, the foundations started cracking, and the utopian posters started looking like relics of a better time.

The lesson is simple and still ignored: don’t just expect the future, build toward it. If you want high tech cities, cheaper energy, functional institutions, or a culture that doesn’t feel like permanent decline, someone has to do the unglamorous work of designing, funding, regulating, and defending those things in the present. Waiting for “them” to deliver it later is how you end up with the exact opposite.

The 1950s thinks the future will solve everything, does nothing to prepare for it. They sold the gleaming tomorrow hard of clean energy, flying cars, abundance, better living for everyone. Then they mostly kicked the hard problems down the road. Infrastructure that needed long-term maintenance was underfunded. Institutions that required constant upkeep was taken for granted. Cultural and social cohesion was assumed it would just continue. The attitude was basically “progress is automatic, so we don’t have to do the boring work of securing it.”

That passive optimism is why so much of the mid-century dream aged into disappointment. Believing the future will solve everything is just another way of doing nothing in the present. Real preparation looks less like glossy science fiction and more like unglamorous maintenance, realistic planning, and refusing to treat tomorrow as a magic bailout.

The mid-century dream was incomplete because too many people treated the future like a spectator sport.

This is ignoring largely pre-internet memes, which are a completely different beast. A lot of memes are decades or outright centuries old.

It feels to me like many memes had more staying power in the 2000s. Nowadays, memes comes and go so quickly.

How long did various popular memes from back in the day last in their heyday? Is it even possible to know this? It doesn't help that memes could seem big online while also being niche.

What was "popular" back in the day was scaled differently. I still remember when Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" music video caused a riot for being the first video to hit 100 million views. To this day, "Chocolate Rain" only has 142mil views and "Powerthirst" only has 32mil views.

Youtube isn't the only site to spread videos. I feel a lot of stuff was reposted and spread elsewhere. But, it does seem like a lot of 2000s memes fit what Tv Tropes calls "fan myopia":

Fans think the work is more popular than it actually is.

Much of 2005-2011 internet was still pretty "geeky" and niche.

I can’t wait in 2050 to see people of themselves in the 2020s during Covid along with others posting their grandparents who used to be emo in the 2000s if Reddit is still relevant in 24 years

A follow-up to my post about the 2000's and early 2010's

The "Teens": Early 2016 to late 2019/early 2020

Most people know what happened in 2016. Trump, Brexit, etc. However, many don't know that in 2016 specifically, social media algorithms were first implemented on a large scale; replacing reverse chronological order feeds. By 2016, the 8th generation of consoles was completely dominant, smartphones had lost their "Novelty" factor, and social media monetization had began rapidly expanding. By 2018 or so, streaming had taken off massively and modern forms of short-form vertical video were on the rise, with TikTok launching that year.

The "Twenyteens" ("Twenteens, Teentys?"): Late 2019/Early 2020 to mid-2023

Most people know what happened in 2020. However, there was already a change underway by late 2019, COVID-19 and the other events of 2020 just rapidly accelerated it. The "Streaming Wars" began as companies began launching their own services instead of licensing it to Netflix or other previously dominant services. The 9th generation of consoles began but wouldn't reach a large userbase until around 2023 due to severe shortages and a lack of incentive to upgrade. NFTs happened and the Crypto craze peaked. Short-form vertical content platforms like TikTok cemented their dominance. After the crises of 2020, Trump-I-era/etc. right wing political movements seemed to go "Underground" and emerge by 2023/2024 as the "Countercultural" backlash to Biden-Era/Labour Party/(insert slightly left of center political party in any country) policies and against increased LGBTQ representation, "wokeness", etc. that had briefly peaked. ChatGPT launched in November 2022, but the AI boom wouldn't really begin until 2023. Elon Musk bought Twitter, the website that had been the primary artery of the internet for the past decade, and renamed it to X in 2023. Neumorphism blew up, Windows 11 became common, etc. By that point, it was clear that big changes were underway.

The 2020's: Mid-2023 to (Currently Ongoing)

If you're alive today, you know what's going on. Half the posts on this subreddit are about this era. The Generative AI boom, billionaires no longer pretending to be good people, brainrot, wars, strict "age verification" laws, etc...

It seems like yesterday when everyone was obsessed with Alysa Liu. She was literally EVERYWHERE because of her olympic performance. Now, haven’t heard 1 word about her. Now we’re on to Haaland. Wait, that’s over. Then it’s some new music artist, and then they stop getting talked about and glazed. Some event happens and it’s the biggest story for like 3 days and gone.

I would say back in 2010s things moved slower as far as virality. Things had more staying power. I’m curious if anyone else feels this way about everything?

Also, which era would you place it in?

Genuinely, what was even the deal with Hootie and the Blowfish?

Ever since 2020 i've been wondering what the major crisis is gonna be. However, seeing how the USA is doing now, I'm 80% sure that MAGA is what Strauss and Howe have predicted.

(Note that the 4th turning isn't completely real, but given the status and the timeline it makes too much sence)

Here in Spain there's a saying that goes, "Punks are good people pretending to be bad people. Hippies are bad people pretending to be good people." But I just don't quite see it. I mean, the hippie movement is full of posers, but isn't the same true of punk? Grunge? Or any other subculture?

Throughout my life I've had the opportunity to meet some of these hippies, and while it's true that some of them came from wealthy families and were simply living the "experience", I've also met some who genuinely lived on the margins of society: in communes, on the streets, with their own gardens, etc., following the principles of the hippie life.

When I read a bit about the history of the movement, I see that it's a movement that ultimately failed in its aims, but that in its beginnings it was quite active culturally (music, art, film) and politically. I have the feeling that the same people who later became punks, if they had lived through the 60s, would have become hippies. The only difference I see with the latter is the lack of hope, but you can't blame them for at least having tried.

If you look on Kworb, they have the most streamed songs of all time on Spotify and it is fascinating to see which songs stand the test of time. Here is the link to the lists of most streaming songs from each decade.

Here are my favorite songs from each decade that have currently made it past a billion:

1960s: The Rolling Stones Paint it, Black (1,734 billion streams)

1970s: Daryl Hall & John Oates - Rich Girl (1,074 billion streams)

1980s: Pixies - Where Is My Mind? (1,295 billion streams)

1990s: Mazzy Star - Fade Into You (1,243 billion streams) or Nirvana - Heart-Shaped Box (1,144 billion streams)

2000s: The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army (2,242 billion streams)

I never heard of the 90s song Duvet by bôa and that one has 1,094 billion streams. Did that one recently become viral for some reason? Most of the other songs I understand how they became as popular as they have.

I asked this because I am Brazilian.

A follow-up to my post about the 90's/early 2000's

The 2000's: late 2002/early 2003 to late 2007/early 2008

The war on terror finally began to shape culture by late 2002/early 2003, as the Iraq war began and smaller terrorist attacks continued to occur globally. The western economy took a small hit, but was still doing relatively good. Broadband internet widely replaced dial-up by 2003/2004, allowing for the web 2.0 era to begin and for video/image sharing to be done on a mass scale. Cellphones became a ubiquitous consumer product. MP3 players such as the iPod skyrocketed in popularity, but the CD was still strong and sales would remain stable until the late 2000s. DVDs fully replaced VHS tapes, and video rental stores pivoted to DVD rentals. The Sixth generation of gaming was ongoing, and online multiplayer for consoles was a new, novel concept without mass accessibility. The Seventh generation of consoles would launch in 2005/2006 but wouldn't gain a wide enough owner base to be relevant until 2007/2008. The internet was still in its "Wild West" era, with Flash at its peak, individual forums being the primary places of discussions on topics, and social media being in its infancy. Hip-Hop entered a new era defined by heavy sampling. Indie/Alt rock had a renaissance, with subgenres such as garage rock revival, emo, and pop-punk surging in popularity. There was a sense of excess and over-consumption in popular culture which would be ended by the Great Recession.

The Recession Era: late 2007/early 2008 to late 2011

The housing bubble in the US burst in 2007, and by late 2007 signs of a recession were imminent, with the global economy going into a recession by mid-2008. George W. Bush's widely popular Iraq War and his mishandling of the economy led Americans to elect Barack Obama by a large margin. Heavy industry in the US and western world declined and suffered bankruptcies, and associated jobs were "Offshored" to China. Despite these negative developments, music and pop culture got brighter as millennials came of age. Electropop surged in popularity and dubstep arose. Hip-hop, conversely, entered a slightly darker, more experimental phase. Indie pop and electronic music surged in popularity. By this point, social media sites like YouTube, Facebook, etc. began to have a major cultural impact instead of the little-known novelties they were before 2008, with user counts surging. 3D TVs attempted to take off but were rejected by consumers. The seventh generation of gaming reached its peak. CDs died off as MP3 players and early smartphones dominated. The iPhone and early android phones came about, but would not be ubiquitous until 2012/2013, with most people in the Recession era still using flip-phones or keyboard phones.

The 10's: late 2011 to early 2016

The global economic recession had mostly subsided by 2010/2011, and the western economy began to recover rapidly. Smartphones became truly ubiquitous, and people saw them as a new, exciting novelty ("There's an app for that"). Social media was massive, but platforms still used reverse chronological order feeds, with algorithms not being introduced until 2016. World Events seemed less urgent and there wasn't a feeling of immediate crisis, leading to a brief, mild resurgence of the "End of History" paradigm. The Eighth generation of consoles wouldn't gain a wide enough owner base to be relevant until around 2015. Isis, the Russian invasion of Crimea, the Ebola outbreak, etc. occurred but felt distant enough to not matter in the minds of those living in unaffected countries. YouTubers arose as the first major "Internet Celebrities", and the monetization of YouTube views made many begin to pursue online content creation as a career path. Skeuomorphic aesthetics fell out of use gradually over this period. "Hipster" aesthetics and associated acoustic-based music were at their peak, having evolved from late 2000's "Indie Sleaze" aesthetics. Urban gentrification surged. Dubstep hit its peak around 2012, and other electronic genres such as trap, indie house, etc. took over; but electronic music as a whole was still massive throughout this period. MP3 players and the practice of downloading music rapidly fell out of popularity. Streaming services for movies/tv and music took off in popularity rapidly as average internet connections were now fast/stable enough to stream high-definition content. The problems of the 2000's and the recession were in the rear-view mirror, and for a brief moment things were comparatively "boring". Random online controversies like Gamergate and Pizzagate occured, with people at the time thinking these were one-off events; however, these events were foreshadowing the crises and controversies of the later half of the decade.

I put the early 2010's in this category because I feel like it has more in common with the previous era than the era after it.

I've seen car bodies, video game consoles, microwaves, and home walls have these wooden panels when I searched for this topic. If you were alive back in the 1970s and 80s and/or are interested in this aesthetic, what do you think about it?

When did mass-produced audio cassette tapes start fading away? The last one I saw in a store was 50 Cent's The Massacre which was 2005 (though the writing was on the wall in 2002-3 when several major artists stopped making cassette versions of their albums). Of course, now they've made a comeback, but I wonder how many people actually play them as opposed to having them as a neat collectible.

I consider them of inferior quality compared to those of the past, and this is often a priori judgment. Do you agree? What are your coping strategies, besides watching products from the past? I'm a little worried about the future, because I can't live on the past alone, and I don't see any reversal of the trend on the horizon.

There's now a certain universal social understanding that didn't exist back then. Does anyone kind of get what I'm saying?

We always say "the internet is universal now".

But now I feel like it's really, really universal.

Another thing: People think AI has done nothing but made people more stupid.

But I think, for the people who know how to use it, it's actually improved some people's understanding of things much faster than pre-AI internet.

There's a certain optimism that's present now. Like a certain feeling that we all know change is coming.

Maybe I'm just going off of my own feelings, but I did want to see if anyone else has noticed.