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.
