The feel of the 2010's

[WashYourHands]

MDE’s World Peace

 

[version]

James Bond needing psychological help.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Kanye losing it like a proper mad cunt.

 

[craner]

So are we still in a long 2010s then? Is Biscuits correct, and the 2020s haven’t started yet?

 

[version]

I'm surprised @shakahislop hasn't mentioned his favourite subject: giant asses.

 

[craner]

Or has this thread turned into ‘the feel of the 2020s’ and the 2010s barely happened?

 

[version]

So are we still in a long 2010s then? Is Biscuits correct, and the 2020s haven’t started yet?

2016 being the start of the 2020s feel right to me, but also makes it difficult to distinguish between the two as we're arguing the 2020s started about halfway through the 2010s.

 

[craner]

2016 being the start of the 2020s feel right to me, but also makes it difficult to distinguish between the two as we're arguing the 2020s started about half through the 2010s.

I agree, that’s why I’m wondering if it was the decade that didn’t happen.

 

[craner]

The 2010s did not take place.

 

[version]

I agree, that’s why I’m wondering if it was the decade that didn’t happen.

I've heard that said about the 90s too, one particular Frenchman even claiming they should be dismissed in advance!

 

[craner]

I've heard that said about the 90s too, one particular Frenchman even claiming they should be dismissed in advance!

There is a similarity, in that all the extreme features of the naughties were gestating in the 90s and all of the most extreme events of the 90s were products or remnants of the conclusion of the 1980s. In some ways, the main distinctive features of the 90s are things that did not happen.

 

[dilbert1]

related to the above, and quite an obvious one: algorithmic optimisation reaching out into every corner of our lives. strange that something as dry as statistical models would end up being so influential. but this is a major shift.

“The essence of the world coincides with the statistical law by which its surface is classified.” - Hegel

 

[version]

There is a similarity, in that all the extreme features of the naughties were gestating in the 90s and all of the most extreme events of the 90s were products or remnants of the conclusion of the 1980s. In some ways, the main distinctive features of the 90s are things that did not happen.

Also, the collapse of the Soviet Union left the US without an opposing pole until 9/11 and the War on Terror ushered in the 2000s. Now that's been wound down and it feels as though we're all occupying ourselves with internal disputes until something, presumably China, steps into that role again.

 

[craner]

The 90s was the promise of an eternal 1980s, the crystalline, seductive essence of New Labour.

 

[craner]

Also, the collapse of the Soviet Union left the US without an opposing pole until 9/11 and the War on Terror ushered in the 2000s. Now that's been wound down and it feels as though we're all occupying ourselves with internal disputes until something, presumably China, steps into that role again.

The 2020s is the return of ethnonationalism, power politics and the spectre of thermonuclear war. The 2010s was the disappearence (not the end) of the war on terror into the invisible liberal drone wars.

 

[version]

the disappearence (not the end)

 

[dilbert1]

Perhaps parochial or anecdotal, but ‘08 and ‘16 almost precisely bookend the revival and demise of young people rediscovering punk and hardcore music in the US, and punk becoming ‘cool’, having artistic merit. Many in my circle slightly older than me date the beginning of this period to a band called Sex Vid and subsequent ‘mysterious guy hardcore’ groups. By 2015-16 or so this moment felt definitively over. Added irony when these punks analogized Trump’s election with the dawn of Reaganism and expected a punk rock renaissance, showing an unwillingness to recognize the one that just took place as on its last legs.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I've heard that said about the 90s too, one particular Frenchman even claiming they should be dismissed in advance!

Calling it now: the 2140s are going to be a total washout, make my words.

 

[version]

The 90s was also the final onslaught of a certain brand of American fiction. The decade was rammed with big books by people like Wallace and DeLillo and Roth and Gass and Gaddis and Pynchon then 9/11 happened and a bunch of people tried to declare 'the death of irony' and demanded novelists write about "feelings" as though none of those writers had.

 

[craner]

The 90s was also the final onslaught of a certain brand of American fiction. The decade was rammed with big books by people like Wallace and DeLillo and Roth and Gass and Gaddis and Pynchon then 9/11 happened and a bunch of people tried to declare 'the death of irony'.

Yes, but after Robbie Williams, irony really, really needed to die. You’re too young to remember what it was like in 1999 with all these smirking cunts everywhere.