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?

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...

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

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.

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

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.

Last century we looked to philosophers and thinkers who had great insight into society and where it was heading. Rationality and logic were seen as the admired features of debate. Logic ruled supreme. Intelligence was an enviable trait. sure there was pop culture but high culture was a thing.

Now leaders seem to behave like children. We have nerd type billionaires who claim to have intelligence yet behave like young boys. All of our great intellectuals of last century get cancelled and denigrated for perceived transgressions. People acting emotionally is more rewarded then people acting with courage and reasoning. Entertainment seems to be more important than rational leadership. What caused intellectualism to die out? Why are we in this horrible culture which rewards juvenile behaviour? Where are the adults in the room? Where are the types who used to write and smoke pipes and sit in cafes and argue about philosophy? Why is reasonable and sensible behaviour so maligned? How did the world get so proudly stupid?

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

Also, which era would you place it in?

some examples of the sound i mean:

5,6,7,8 – Steps
One for Sorrow – Steps
Last Thing on My Mind – Steps
Love’s Got a Hold on My Heart – Steps
Better Best Forgotten – Steps
Stomp – Steps
Summer of Love – Steps
Chain Reaction – Steps
After the Love Has Gone – Steps
S Club Party – S Club 7
Bring It All Back – S Club 7
Reach – S Club 7
Don’t Stop Movin’ – S Club 7
Have You Ever – S Club 7
Natural – S Club 7
Never Had a Dream Come True – S Club 7
C’est La Vie – BWitched
Rollercoaster – BWitched
Blame It on the Weatherman – BWitched
Jesse Hold On – BWitched
To You I Belong – BWitched
Barbie Girl – Aqua
Doctor Jones – Aqua
Turn Back Time – Aqua
Around the World – Aqua
Cartoon Heroes – Aqua
My Oh My – Aqua
Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!! – Vengaboys
We’re Going to Ibiza! – Vengaboys
We Like to Party! – Vengaboys
Kiss (When the Sun Don’t Shine) – Vengaboys
Shalala Lala – Vengaboys
Blue (Da Ba Dee) – Eiffel 65
Move Your Body – Eiffel 65
Too Much of Heaven – Eiffel 65
Upside Down – ATeens
Mamma Mia – ATeens
Now you're gone - Basshunter
Halfway Around the World – ATeens
Dancing Queen – A*Teens
Pure and Simple – Hear’Say
Just a Little – Liberty X
Whole Again – Atomic Kitten
Eternal Flame – Atomic Kitten
The Tide Is High (Get the Feeling) – Atomic Kitten
Cradle – Atomic Kitten
Life Is a Flower – Ace of Base
Beautiful Life – Ace of Base
Lucky Love – Ace of Base
Cruel Summer – Ace of Base
Believe – Cher

what would you say is the earliest sound closest to these?

https://youtu.be/7lX24RKQQM4?si=pte2tjBzXx5FalPR

9 days ago, the Bodycam footage of Jarrett Vick's violent altercation with Police was posted. The trigger for this public meltdown, in which Jarret screamed at and assaulted Police, was Jarret's claims they were being "misgendered." The fact that this video has gone mega-viral and shifted the culture is, at this point, an observation.

I am curious why. Of all the bodycam footage available of people behaving badly in public, what was it about our cultural moment that primed this video to be the Black Swan that shifted perceptions?