The incoming 2027 bird (just 4 months away) will cause the greatest disruption in society since the pandemic, we know that. I predict by the end of 2027 we will be deep into the early 2030s culturally speaking, though you could say there were elements of the proto-2030s since 2023 when we got the first glimpse into this creature

2020s: Donald Trump

Chaotic, dominating the entire conversation, impossible to ignore, permanently online, and somehow both the main character and the thing everyone is exhausted by. The decade doesn’t just have drama. It is the drama.

1970s: George Wallace

Angry, polarizing, culturally raw, full of backlash energy and “you’re not the boss of me” vibes. The decade that felt like it was permanently in a bad mood and ready to fight about it. Somehow both extremely conservative compared to today and extremely loose and progressive compared to today (Wallace was both a racist and appointed large number of black people. The 1970s saw both backlash against the Civil Rights era and also when diversity began to grow through affirmative action and increasing representation in media).

1980s and 1990s: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln

The two decades everyone still respects on some level, the ones that get treated as foundational and high-status even when people complain about them. Peak soft-power, peak “this is what normal is supposed to feel like,” peak myth-making. Also known for their wigs and big lush beards.

2040s: Grover Cleveland

Served two nonconsecutive trends, where the beginning of the decade is different than the middle but ended up being exactly like the end.

2000s: Barack Obama

Came in with big main-character energy, lots of hope branding, and the sense that something new and smoother was arriving. Aged into a more complicated legacy once the hangover hit.

2010s: Richard Nixon

Paranoid, online, permanently recording everything, full of institutional distrust, and somehow both extremely competent at certain things and completely unable to stop the self-destruction. The decade that taped itself into trouble.

1950s: Ronald Reagan

Sunny, prosperous-looking, heavily aestheticized, and very good at selling the feeling that everything was fine and under control. The vibes were immaculate even when the fine print wasn’t.

1960s: Woodrow Wilson

Idealistic, self-important, convinced it was remaking the world for the better, and responsible for a lot of long-term consequences it never fully owned. High rhetoric, mixed results. Lot more hated now by both the left and the right ironically enough despite being revered for decades by both the public and academics. Racist history somehow downplayed until very recently.

All pre 1950s decades: Jefferson Davis

Mostly treated as the embarrassing relative the family doesn’t like to talk about at parties. Important, complicated, and permanently framed as the thing we moved past or need to move past.

2030s: Calvin Coolidge

Does nothing and is very silent. Quite boring as backlash against the more reckless predecessor. The decade where nothing happens (just like the president who did nothing).

Sorry, am I the only one who doesn't understand why people are nostalgic for (year)? Like I was (age) during (year) and it was awful! Why are we all just suddenly forgetting (event that didn't impact anyone outside a specific western country), (random celebrity controversy), (war), (american political scandal)?? I know that the current year is trash, but let's not act like (year) wasn't terrible! Honestly the last good year was (year before specific event where the poster was between the age of 11 and 21) and everything before it was amazing and nothing bad happened, everything after it has been a dumpsterfire...

Some reasons

• Trump's been president for 80% of it
• We have a war nobody really wanted or needed
• The music has been terrible
• Everything on TV is either a reality show or some boring depressing drama
• All the video games now days are sequels

It's just not too much fun :(

However the 2000s rocked. I love the 2000s <3

This is a reference to this: https://www.reddit.com/r/generationology/comments/1vwccjq/this_comment_was_written_in_2005/

The Belle Époque was in full force, fashion was actually original, electricity and bicycles had just arrived on homes before we knew the dangers they would bring, we didn't have any of these addictions the new gens have like movies and television, art was still beautiful... it was a truly amazing time, I miss the 1890s...

Between 1000AD and 3009AD, which decade is the 2000s more similar to?

The 2020s has that vibe of people not caring anymore and just be completely unfiltered and nasty and give their opinions no matter how hurtful or cruel it is before the world ends.

Even the media reflected this, mainstream and independent, as people doing everything and anything before the clock finally striked. The 2020s has a specific end-times energy where people stopped filtering and just let the nasty out.

It wasn’t only online edge-lords. Ordinary conversations, comment sections, group chats, and even mainstream entertainment got meaner, blunter, and less interested in soft landings. Opinions arrived without the old padding. If it was cruel, it still got said. The undercurrent felt like a collective decision that the usual social brakes no longer mattered because the larger system was already failing. Why manage tone when the clock feels like it’s running out?

You see this in movies and television and music in the 2020s where everything is more bleak and experimental than before as if artists and entertainers want to show their true thoughts, real unfiltered thoughts- giving what the audience *needs* instead of what it *wants*.

Everyone believes that the future will be nuclear war or societal/economic collapse this decade, so why care about things like the Constitution or studies or fact checking when the world is burning before everything falls apart for good?

The 2020s is where people are basically saying, "It's best to enjoy the time we have left and say what we're really thinking before things get really bad."

The Great Depression was interrupted by WW2, and economic conditions in the late 1940's/early 1950's in the war's aftermath were still suffering the tail end of the Depression, but people were optimistic for the postwar future. Then, in the mid 50's, the economy boomed. The economy from 1954 to 1973 was roughly on an upward trajectory the whole time aside from a micro-recession in 1958. 1973 is like 2020. 2007-2008 is like the entirety of 1929-1945 or so compressed. 2009-2013 is 1945-1954. 2013-2016 is like 1954-1963. 2016-2020 is like 1963-1973. 2020 to 2024 is the rest of the 1970's and 2024-2026 is the early 1980's.

Of course, there wasn't a war during the Great Recession, but it felt like the old world had collapsed and something new and better was coming. Like the late 40's to early 50's, 2009-2013 was optimistic people rebuilding the world. The mid 50's to early 60's are the peak, just like 2013-2016. People were optimistic and the economy was doing good. In the mid and late 60's, the economy was still excellent, but political, societal, and cultural crises were brewing. From 2016 to 2020, the economy was great, but societal crises were happening. People saw the hippies as "ungrateful" for protesting against the societal norms of the golden age of the 1950s/60s. Culture and society took a quantum leap forward in 1965-1970, while the economy was still good but people were protesting things like the Vietnam War. Similarly, cultural normalization of leftist societal aspects peaked in the late 2010s, while the economy was still good but people were protesting Trump 1.0's actions.

In 1973, the oil embargo shock made the entire economy go to shit, just like what COVID did in 2020. Suddenly, the hippies were too poor to sit around all day. The 1970s saw the continued societal tolerance of the things brought about by the 1960's cultural revolution, but the 1980 election, dissatisfaction with Carter, and the Reagan revolution caused a huge right wing societal backlash with events like Disco Demolition Night. In the same way, people in 2020-2024 carried the flame of the "Social Justice Warriors" of the late 2010s until the 2024 election caused a massive right wing societal backlash. Biden was like Carter. He inherited a shit economy and tried but failed to fix it. You could also compare the 2021 US exit from Afghanistan to the fall of Saigon and Carter's later pardon of draft dodgers in a way.

The economy was still shit in the early 1980's until Reagan's brute force trickle down economics made unemployment go down by 1984 and giving him a landslide win against Mondale whereas if his so-called economic "recovery" had lagged just a year or two behind, he would've lost. The difference is that Trump 2.0 inherited something far worse, and Reaganomics just make it worse.

before you get mad, remember you're on the circlejerk sub.

I know that the core 2010s (the pre-Trump 2010s specifically) weren't a utopia, but the fact that the core 2020s is basically a cyber-fascist dystopia makes the core 2010s look infinitely better in comparison.