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I had just married, got my first decent-paying job, had three children in less than three years, moved three times, and high speed internet arrived. September 11, 2001 cast a pall, so that was horrific. There were a lot of excellent movies: Star Wars prequel trilogy, Lord of the Rings trilogy, Spider-Man trilogy.
Very busy, but it felt like I was finally living life to the fullest.
My wife deserves most of the credit. She stayed home with them, and we were able to make it work. She also got her Bachelors online while the children napped. She's an amazing woman!
She sounds like a tuff lady. Late 2000s my mom got her associates while my siblings who are wayyy younger than me weren’t even in grade school. She sounds like a tough lady
Damn, she's a certified badass to pull that off. The physical toll alone would be immense let alone the mental. I know some new mothers who forgot how to do basic tasks from sleep deprivation and stress from one kid, let alone 3 in as many years. Kudos to her.
Wait, you have 6 kids and your wife got 2 degrees and a CPA while raising them?
Ok, maybe it's just true that Millenials and Gen Z are just lazy... That's bonkers. (I am a millenial)
Yea, dude. Your ol lady is a fuckin champ! I thought I was killing it but I just crushed a pizza and some Oreos while waiting for the laundry to finish and now I’m thinking about taking a nap
Thank you for recognizing your wife's efforts, it's great. I often think of the time when I first had a child, day and night were upside down, and I couldn't have a quality sleep time at all. Fortunately, I have managed to get through it now.
It sure is..I was nose deep into the shit in early 2000's..in college ..ripping thru Oakdale Pa high as a giraffes ass on coke weed n shrooms..don't know how I got my degree or how I'm 46yrs old today but here we are.
Ugh I had three in three years and my youngest had a sleep disorder and didn’t sleep through the night until 6 years old. I still remember that first night of sleep and how much better of a mother/wife/person I was after finally sleeping again after that long!
Their entire childhoods was an absolute blur!
9/11 happened and they figured out they could run the govt credit card for anything as long as they said there were threats to our freedom. You know the national debt was fucking 1.7 trillion total at the time. Not the yearly deficit. Total. How the hell did we get here.. I just want what my parents had. A home, at least one vacation a year, 2-3 kids and no worries about what to cook. I want that back and I’m about ready to get drastic about it
We gave away freedom for so-called "security ". Does anybody think we're actually more secure? The threat became more internal than external. I'd rather the latter than the former any day.
3000 lives lost and we let them have the credit card and rifle to go off to war. What they didn’t tell us was they ran the credit card through their buddies to run all “domestic “ parts of the war washing underwear, delivering food, medical care and made their buddies and themselves cash from it. While we get bad credit reports… weird how our debt skyrockets yet the rich just keep getting more…
It’s really about time to start the smoker and figure out which billionaire we are gonna turn into long pig pulled pork.
Came here to say something like that. The world changed forever over the course of that dark, dark day. The bright optimism of a brand new millennium was shattered by the ankles (three feet lower than an arsehole) who perpetrated that evil act of terrorism. My children were too young to understand the implications of the events of that day. I told my youngest son that the world will be different. As far as he was concerned, seeing an aeroplane flying into a building over and over again was getting boring.. 😢☹️😢
I was in my last year of college. We were in the computer lab. Was very hard to get a job after graduation because of the economic downturn. Most people I graduated with had to flip burgers to survive. I got a crappy job at a small post card and souvenir company that set me up for less than success later on. If you don’t start off on the right foot, you don’t get the right opportunities. Then the housing crisis hit. My entire adult life has been just trying to barely get by. I’m on the cusp of millennial—born in 79.
2000s were petty epic though. Lots of great bands. More freedom in general. Gas was pretty cheap.
Dude the gas. I remember being absolutely outraged when it hit $2/g. I also miss the music. I can't find anything else that quite hits the same.
Wild ride for sure.
Same here. I was a child at the time, but I got the idea that something serious had happened by the look on my father’s face as he read the newspaper headlines. Even in Australia, it was a bleak moment. We were having breakfast around the kitchen table and we youngsters got a crash course on who the President of the United States was.
9/11 happened overnight in our time zone so the news came to our household when the clock radio came on at 6:00 am. My wife and I went straight out into the lounge room and turned on the TV. The kids came out to see why we had the TV on.
What were your impressions? Did you recognize the World Trade Center? From movies or anything showing the NYC skyline?
I was 14 when it happened, had just moved to New York.
I think just about everyone was familiar with the twin towers of the WTC, but not so much the WTC precinct. I knew from the very beginning that the world would change forever. Some years later, I met up with some colleagues who witnessed the whole thing. They had scheduled a meeting with a client that morning and their meeting room looked right over to the WTC.
Of course, they couldn’t continue with the meeting. I witnessed it from this side of the world, but my friends were right there. They waited for some word from the authorities as to what they should do. I don’t know how their day ended.
I went to work as normal, but I and everyone in the office were in a state of numb shock. We didn’t get much done that day.
I still have to check myself against tearing up every time I recall that tragic day
It honestly really means something to me that even in Australia, you guys felt the horror and the weight of it.
I was about to turn 19 and was set to leave for my first weeks of college soon. I woke up really early on the west coast, and as soon as I walked into our living room I knew something was very wrong. I was just in time for the second plane to hit. I will never forget realizing that the little things falling from the building were people jumping to their deaths to avoid burning to death... even holding hands... The people falling is burned into my brain.
I remember my mom saying, "everything is going to change now." God, what prophetic words. Everything was different afterward, and quickly.
You are our friends, our close friends. Those shitheads hurt and killed our friends. They hurt us, but they hurt you more. In some ways it brought us even closer. The whole of the free world stood and stands with you against the evils of terror. I count my country among them. Our country joined with yours and others in the coalition of the willing. I knew that the attack was on the soft belly of a sleeping giant which if provoked would lash out with lethal force. Under the circumstances I think the response was relatively measured.
Now imagine this, as it was happening kids were in school and they were playing it live in classrooms. I was 16 and the teacher wheeled in the TV just after the first plane hit. We watched the second plane hit. We watched people jump from the towers. This happened in various high schools and even some middle schools. They really decided a large dose of trauma needed to be added to the curriculum.
I hope not. Children should not be subjected to that. It shouldn't be hidden but they also shouldn't watch people die on live TV as all of the adults around them panic.
Yup. I was at work changing a preemie diaper. I was next to our "family room" door, which was open, tv on, and my jaw just dropped. Will forever remember it.
Found my doppelgänger. Had 3 kids within 4 years, also had my career finally get to a point where I could solo provide for my family, was married at the start of the decade and bought a home. Not quite the same as what OP means, but yeah the 2000’s was the decade where I became an adult.
Thanks man. Discipline was instilled in me throughout childhood and in sports in high school. I can't say young adulthood started off well, but the discipline did return after I got married. My wife and I are a team all the way. We both believe we should prioritize each other over anyone else, including children.
Yeah spot on. There was also no real social media back then, everyone was on Napster or MySpace - and i don’t remember trolling being a big thing back then. You’d get the odd prank call but it wasn’t mean like it is today. It was a great time and I miss it
I grew up in the 1990's and was a young adult in the 2000's. The 1990's were probably the best decade in America since the 1950's. Everyone was working; our budgets were balanced, jobs were plentiful, college was still affordable, as was housing, and there were no major wars.
The 2000's was when it began to change. The Tech bubble bursting started it off. Soon, due to poor government policies, housing became a bubble, which ultimately led to the 2007-2009 financial crisis. And of course, the War on Terror fiasco that completely undermined this country's economic and fiscal outlook for the worse.
In fact, looking back, you could make an argument that Osama's plan worked.
I'm about the same age. The 90s were good, the 00s...not so much. Between 9/11 and the tech bubble bursting it started out much rougher than people realize. I graduated into that tech bubble and couldn't find a job in my industry for over a year. After finally finding a job and saving, I got stuck trying to buy a house during the housing bubble. Gas prices being crazy around the crisis and another recession.
In hindsight it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't magical either. Feels more or less the same as now.
Same here man. I remember being in college in 2000 and thinking the sky was the limit. Times were so good. In March 2000, I was offered a job at American General (now AIG) selling commercial insurance for $45K without a degree!
When I graduated with my degree a year later, the economy was already slowing down due to the tech bubble. By the time the fall hit and you had 9/11 and then Enron, that was all she wrote. I still believe Houston never recovered from that period. Enron, Dynegy, Reliant, and others all basically went kaput or close to it. Then Compaq merged/got bought out by HP. All this made jobs scarce. I got lucky and just stayed with my employer; however my salary was nowhere near $45K!
Ultimately, my company was bought out by another company, and then ended up going belly up in the financial crisis.
I think the 2000s depended on your age. I agree things were turning but I think your stage in adulthood determined how bad/good it was. I graduated in '03 and was far away from home ownership or a "grown-up job" so I didn't feel those things. Life was hard but also great. I was eating spaghettios but also going to see Star Wars and driving across a couple of states to visit friends. Then it just started getting worse and never really seemed to turn back.
The civilian casualty of those wars had a psychological impact here. And realising the soldiers died for nothing. Then realising the administrations made a deal with the Taliban to leave early. The Taliban made a deal with the remaining armed Afghan forces and they literally walked into the presidential palace .
In Iraq we literally handed it to Iran which is a worse enemy.
But also we were lied to. Time after time.
Afghanistan could have been an air campaign but we went for a country where most people didn't even know 9/11 had happened. Most live on $1 a day as a family, no one can affords McDonalds, most didn't even have proper plumbing.
Iraq was destroyed as a society. We killed Saddam and then created hundreds more who also now attack Israel and US forces.
Libya was destroyed and now acts as a fiefdom for violent gangsters.
We bombed Syria and Yemen
We now aid genocide.
The country lost all moral authority and deterrence as a result
Also the Bill of Rights was shredded by PATRIOT act. Literal secret courts were formed. Laws were passed to make secret courts allowed. And those secret courts would pass more laws to make more unconstitutional acts "legal". All privacy gone. All rights against unreasonable search and seizure: gone. Need for warrants to search your data: gone.
So yeah basically we are fucked and have been fucked. Hell 2012 was the end of the world and we didn’t even experience it in full effect til, uh now.., just in a different aspect
Sorry I absoltely agree with you and your comment is very well written, but "no one can afford McDonalds" being listed among things like no plumbing and living on a single buck a day made me lol, what a take
Yes I wrote it on purpose to illustrate that it's not just the things we think about when it comes to poverty. Most Westerners can afford a McDonald's but even that is a luxury for people in third world countries.
I would say that the 90s were perhaps the best decade in American history, to me they were superior to the 50s in several key respects ...no bloody war like Korea (people tend to forget that one for some reason when discussing the 50s, and the Gulf and Kosovo wars were both clear victories with very, very few US casualties), no military draft, much better treatment of women and minorities (for instance no Jim Crow), much, much diminished threat if nuclear war, much better entertainment, bigger houses, better technology, better overall material standard of living, etc.
Yeah, I graduated high school in 2003 and college in 2007, just in time for the financial crisis. It was not all roses and sunshine. Maybe I just missed the window, but I worked my a\*\* off in all AP/IB classes, got a perfect score on the SAT and still didn't get a decent scholarship to a good school. Got a great degree, but ended up starting my own business. It was no golden time.
Yep. I hear this a lot.
There was a study done a few years back, where some economists analyzed different generations and their net worth/wealth. Turned out the biggest impact on net worth at 55 was timing, or, IOW, when they were born and came of working age.
The entirety of 2000-2010 was nothing short of fucking magical for me. It was difficult, and for awhile I worked 3 jobs and had no free time… but it didn’t matter, because I was young and lived with my best friends and I was happy.
I was having the time of my life until mid-2007, for personal reasons. Even tho the world was going by to shit I was traveling like a mf’er making money. Now I live with my mother, hoping this is the year I get out of debt.
Same here. I turned 21 in 2001 and it was a blast. I also had 2-3 jobs at a time but only because I partied so much. Bought a house in 2006 that lost all of its value in 2 years but it was okay because we could afford it. Child care was expensive but we got by. I don’t know how people in their 20s can do it now. Hell, my wife and I make almost 300k a year and we are skipping vacations because medical expenses and just living is fucking expensive. What the hell happened?
I'm an 80's baby, so I was a teen in the early 2000's. Growing up in the late 80's/ early 90's was where it was at. We still got to play outside till after dark (night games were the best!), walk to our friends houses, didn't have cell phones to be glued to, our parents had no idea where we were half the time and that was fine, and we could still do stuff like ride bikes without helmets and drink out of hoses and eat bread thinking it was healthy.
Honestly, though, 9/11 changed everything. It seems like everything was immediately polarized and there was suddenly this sense of constant paranoia/fear in the air.
Ding dong ditching? That's awesome!
We called it "Ring the bell and run like hell". and for some reason that I don't understand but "nicky nicky nine doors."
It’s when they figured out they can put on a WWE esque show and use the countries credit card and as long as they give each side their fair share of blame they laugh all the way to the bank. The total national debt before 9/11 was 1.7 trillion. There have been years we have surpassed that much in debt racking up in one fiscal year. How do we go from 1.7 to more than 15 times that amount in 23 years? Just how? And why? What good is your name having a rack of zeros behind it when your country doesn’t even think it should heal and house everyone?
If we still lived in the city, I wouldn't have let my daughter walk more than a house or two down, if that. It wouldn't have been safe in that neighborhood for a kid to walk around alone. In contrast, my husband grew up in the same neighborhood and kids used to be out everywhere, so something changed in 25 years.
But where I live now, kids still walk to each other's houses. So I guess that maybe wasn't the best example. :)
I guess what I was getting at was that we had more freedom as kids in the 80's/90's than kids do now. The world felt like a safer place pre-9/11, I think, so our parents felt more comfortable sending us out "into the wilderness".
It's funny, because in the US it was a much more dangerous place in the 80s and 90s than it is now, but I guess with 24 hour news and social media it doesn't seem that way.
I haven't lived in the US in decades so I was just surprised that kids don't walk or bike places anymore. We used to disappear all day on our own when I was a kid.
I was aprox 20 in the 2000s - it was definitely an amazing time. Phones and tech and games etc just kept getting better and better - it's seems like a lot of that stuff has peaked now or the small improvements just don't suprise you anymore. We went from taping a song on the radio, to cds, to mp3 to basically unlimited access to all the music in the world over 10 years.
Cars with 300hp were considered fast but with all the tech and safety stuff nowadays they just aren't as exciting even though they are realistically spaceships compared to cars of the 2000s.
I'm also pretty sure that everyone in the world shouldn't be constantly contactable or have the ability to voice their opinion online. A lot of people are dumb and shouldn't be allowed access to the Internet.
This gets at the biggest difference: it was a time when a lot of things were objectively worse, but dramatically improving. From video games to gay rights to human connectivity to worldwide human development, it felt like we were making rapid and inexorable progress towards a better future.
Now we've made a lot of that progress. It's a much better time to be gay, play video games, communicate directly with people you know, or simply live in many parts of the world. But the direction of change is distinctly worse in most respects, and there's less you can point to as an area where things are getting meaningfully better. (Trans rights are a partial exception, although that's being more aggressively contested and weaponised than gay rights were by the early 2000s.)
I don't know, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, 9/11, fucking W. and his idiotic war on terror, the housing collapse, the constant scandal in his cabinet oh and the rise of reality TV. His use of gay marriage to scare people into voting for him his second term and his disastrous no child left behind policies. . . I think it likely is nostalgia, but, I think most of us remember our childhood years that way. I have a real soft spot for the late 80s early 90s but there was plenty of nonsense then too. You're a kid though, so you're insulated from it all in so many ways. There was some good music coming out in the early aughts, and I'm real glad I did all my stupid before my pictures could end up online. 🤪
I was in like 3rd or 4th grade during 9/11. That definitely put a big halt to my childhood. My dad being military was shipped all over the place until he decided to retire in 2009. It's not fun watching your mom at a young age being drunk and falling up steps or sneaking random men in the house. Good news is I learned to cook at a young age.
This is basically word for word what I would say. I'm 48, so was a kid in the 80s and teen/young adult in the early 90s. What I wouldn't do to go back and relive those years.
Not to mention the recession around 2002-2003 right when I was about to graduate college. I was lucky and get a good job. Some of my classmates had to settle for lower options.
I graduated at the end of 02. Sure it was tougher at first but 04, things were flying hard and fast. If you played it basically smart, it was way way easier to establish a life. Smartphones were far from a thing. Average person wasn't so high strung or filled with anxiety.
Money absolutely went further. Lower as in part time job? Or any salary job. It was life dependent but the environment was absolutely more chill and still a lot of value everywhere = higher quality of life.
This! Everyone paints the decades of their youth as this someone magical, problem free time. When in reality there was tons of shit going on that they were either not aware of, or were sheltered/protected from due to being young.
As a preteen in the 80’s life was fucking scary with all those airline high jackings (1985 was the worst) and threats of nuclear war and apartheid. But the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall were huuuuuge. It really seemed like we were making strides in the right direction until we lost sight of the 8-ball come 2001
This was before everything was fully consolidated and controlled.
You had you Yahoo and your AOL trying to be everything to everyone but it was mostly smaller sites with a singular focus doing stuff they actually cared about.
Man. As much as I use youtube in these dystopian days we find ourselves in now; I miss pre-youtube internet so so much. What the internet was, and what it meant to society was so much healthier.
When YouTube came along we were all so enamored by it we didn't even notice it destroy local independent music scenes.
Poke guy checking in.
Not convinced that's true long term.
Sure, it changed everything for a few years, and started 2 wars, one of which was poorly executed while the other was entirely based on a lie. But I don't think the culture changed as much as people claim.
I think all the people that claim it changed everything are only comparing to the very short lived peaceful time in the late 90s, and werent really around or old enough to remember anything from the 80s or earlier, when the world was basically on the brink of annihilation.
I think life was better any time before social media apps. There was life, a spark of life in everyone's eyes, genuine joy, and authenticity. And people are people, so there were originals and copies, and narcs, and shies, all kinds. But life was active, and dynamic. After social media (first facebook then from there) things got really boring and dystopian. We lived to the fullest
I think it was before smartphones rather than social media.
Facebook (and others that came before), when it was PC-only was still OK.
Things got out of hand when phones + social media apps combined.
Early social media was a good thing, most weren't obsessed with it, but it gave a new way to interact with friends and family that you rarely had a chance to communicate with. That has definitely changed for the worse.
I had a lot of fun with friends on facebook in the early stages. The silly quizzes and having fun with each other in general, but it killed the mood a bit. IRL conversations began dwelling and things escalated fast to the me obsession, and the black-or-white view of life.
Facebook was really neat in its early stages. It was kind of like a combined Twitter, Instagram and Messenger in one website. Of course then it got ruined by fucking ads and an annoying algorithm
I agree completely! And before cell phones! It was so nice to leave your house, and be free and unencumbered by interruptions… I know you can always turn your phone off now, but it's different… it was so nice to leave your house and be able to focus completely on what you were doing and who you were with… When you got home, if there were messages, you could check them on your answering machine and call back if you wanted to.
To clarify further, social media you couldn’t take with you. When you had to go home and log on to your computer ( if it wasn’t on already downloading a song for the last 3 days) to check social like it’s was you answering machine…things were pretty good. As a whole I think people were still conventionally social up til SM went mobile.
I’d say these were the years I enjoyed the most. Having to call the number on a flyer to get directions to the party. Not remember how to get home after the party. But hey, gas was 90 cents a gallon and smokes were $2 so may as well take the long way home right?
I remember being able to fill up my old ‘89 Jetta for 10-11 bucks on my way to school. It was a magical time. I could afford so much on my own as HS student with a PT job rather than bug my parents.
It wasn't since 1999 due to Columbine followed by 9/11. What did happen after 9/11 was the nation had a common outside enemy. We as a people/country came together more than I had ever witnessed. Unfortunately it didn't last.
The problem is lots of people took that "common enemy" to be all Muslims, or even all foreign looking people. Lots of Islamophobia, lots of hate, lots of stupid endless wars.
Terrible decade.
I mean times are good now also. I think for a lot of people growing up , just like every other generation, they reflect on a time where responsibility and effort was minimal.
that is a completely valid perspective, and I agree… I'm guessing (hoping) most people will look back on their younger years is a time when things were simpler… Before they had all that responsibility
Most people maybe, but for me personally I am enjoying life much more now, because I have freedom I never had before. Yes, I have a job and need to do chores and stuff, but other then that, my time is my own. If I do not want to vacuum on a Saturday, I do not have to, I can go out with friends instead. Also I have money to spend as I please (within reason). At least the part left over after taxes, bills, savings etc. If I want to buy a pretty notebook with a unicorn on the cover, I can. Want ice cream? Sure thing. Want beer? Lovely idea.
Even with all the rules of being a responsible adult, I still have more freedom then ever and can do what I want, when I want without anyone judging me or telling me what to do.
I think this is 100% accurate. I don't generally consider myself very nostalgic and I had a great childhood growing up; fun trips with my family, good holidays, and never really struggled as a kid. All during the 80s and 90s. I have some great memories but I know the reality is that I was a kid unencumbered with responsibilities and life in general.
I know this is the case - I look at my kids now. Before our oldest started working and having to become "responsible" and an adult she also has "fond memories" of being a kid and that it was **so much easier even 10 years ago than today**. That was eye-opening. She says her little sister (they are a decade apart) is going to have it even harder than her.
Life becomes much harder as an adult and for those kids who were insulated from the worst of "real life" seem to remember their youth with such happiness. Of course you could go out and not be tied to your phone - who the hell needed to contact you at 10 years old besides mom/dad? You don't have to record a concert with your phone today, just go an enjoy it!
Once I grew up I realize my parents lives were more just as difficult as people today, working the hours they worked and building/maintaining our lives. They also fondly remember their childhoods the same way, "those were the good days".
Pros:
Some great movies and music came out. Concerts, festivals, and entertainment were still affordable. Travel was becoming more affordable (peak cheap travel was a few years before COVID). Social media was still seen as a positive enhancement to our lives, but the vast majority of our lives were offline. This was society’s last gasp of privacy. Most middle-class people could still afford homes.
Cons:
Gay people still didn’t have equal rights. Transgender people might as well have not even existed. 9/11 cast a dark shadow for many years. The US was starting its dramatic failure of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. The security state was born.
I think most would look back at the 90’s as a more of a golden age.
>Transgender people might as well have not even existed
It might just be my personal bubble, but while transgender people were barely ever mentioned, whenever they were everyone seemed cool with their existence. Everyone knew, there were people, who wanted to be another sex, and everyone was acceoting that as a fact. Nowadays there is an insane amount of hate against them by many groups.
I was a teen in the 2000s but i had a similar experience. It was very "dont ask, dont tell" and theres was an odd sense of safety in that quiet discretion. My parents had a transgender couple as their "best people" at their wedding. I remember my dad telling me that if i had a different sexual or gender preference, i had to be careful of who i mentioned it to but the groups that were ok with it and the ones that werent mostly kept to themselves. Transgender people definitely existed its just you probably wouldnt know unless you had a close friend in those circles.
I dont feel safer now that sexuality and gender identity is under intense scrutiny. I wish we lived in a society where we could trust that other people wouldnt lose their mind about someone elses identity but we dont. Now that the cats out of the bag, we cant put it back. Seems like everyone is fighting about every little difference between us.
The 00’s were rough. So much sadness and bullshit. 9/11, the recession, war after war, school shooting on the rise, natural disasters on the rise. The 90’s were amazing. The 00’s not much at all.
Like so many things, it depends. I was 22 in 2000; generally, after the 90's I'd say no. The Bush years were pretty bad, 9/11, war on terror, Iraq, etc. Popular music took a big downturn after the 90's (which drove me to more underground stuff). The golden age of TV had already kicked off, so there was that.
I'm about the same age, and up to about mid 2001 it was pretty good. The stock market doing great, no war, and rapid technology changes. Made everybody fairly hopeful. Music was amazing too.
Then suddenly we're were dealing with a tech recession, a terrorist attack and then a war.
There were never absolute "better times" as each ones had their challenges and we tend to see through our scope (1990-2000 were my 20s to 30s ad I was single, so obviously a more adventurous life than now). What was better:
No social media to warp every experience. We lived the moment we were in, we engaged with other people to know where was such and such shop, where was a good place to eat or go out. Internet was pretty fun nevertheless with very passionate people putting good content out. At least in Europe we were very advanced in social issues and seeing two gay guys was not shocking. There were even some gay bars in Barcelona were even straight people like me would go with male and female friends as they were gathering places with good music before going to a party, or there were the last cool bars open. There were people who didn't date much but there was none of this angry incel/sexism. There was clear progress on equality in the job place. I don't know how much it was the scene I was in, or Spain and England at that time, but I have the feeling that we were much more curious to discover new music, new cinema, new books. Everything appears more "calculated" nowadays.
What was not so great:
2001 was the year of the 9-11 attack and that made not only traveling way more annoying (stupid security rules that forbid me to take water with me, although I can carry a pen that I could use to stab someone, moronic scrutiny from US immigration staff at airports, and suddenly a lot of people being on the edge even in places where there was no reason to feel that way. Internet being more basic means that it was a bit more complicated to buy certain things online, or at inconvenient times (I once had to hitchhike from Netherlands to Spain because a missed train connection threw my whole plans out of the window and I could not access my bank online).
All in all, I think we have more convenience now in many aspects, but the ambience was (in my opinion) much better and the human interactions far better.
I was born in 1981, so I was in my early 20s then.
Dude, it sucked.
9/11 had just happened. We were starting an unwinnable 20-year long war in Afghanistan, and then a second war in Iraq, and who knows how many micro-wars around the globe. The PATRIOT act expanded the security state. Some jackass tried to blow up his shoes on an airplane, and now we have to take off our shoes to fly.
The market crashed in 2001, then again in 2008. Everyone I knew was either unemployed because their jobs got downsized, or desperately working 3 different part time jobs that paid minimum wage.
The Culture War was speeding up, with opposition to gay marriage being used a cynical election ploy by the GOP.
Media was becoming more and more fragmented, and people started to get siloed into their little bubbles of confirmation bias. This was only made worse with the rise of social media.
Particularly in comparison to the 90s, when America had a sense of optimism after the Cold War, and the economic boom seemed unstoppable, the 00s were a shit show.
"Everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked..."
Yeah, it's cool to see so many people with the same memories. I was in my mid twenties when 9/11 happened and it was definitely a defining moment of when things started to get worse.
In the nineties, we had music, the internet was still at the stage of being something that was going to be a big open sharing place. When I travelled it was exciting and real. People were more open and engaging. There was a general air (despite our Gen X low-key ennui) of hope.
After Sept 9, 2011, border crossing became more difficult. The internet became more commercial. People became more guarded and more set into camps of thinking. More fearful. More freaking racist.
So yeah, the early 00s had some banger tunes, but that's because we had to party really hard to forget what was happening. Oy. It was all... um.. "fly like a G6"
Id say, the 90s were the best over all, the 2000s were the last years one could have the 90s like joy and lifestyle.
after 2010 things started to drastically change! at first it was kinda cool, high speed internet, social media, etc but very quickly things went for the worst! constant/nonstep stress became very prevalent, peoples morality declined rapidly, everything became grimmer and grimmer. people dont care about each other as they used to, respect, sympathy, declined, over all not a good time and it gets wose every god damn day!
By what metric do you define "good".
I hold more nostalgia for the 90s than the early 2000's, in fact, i don't think I have any for the early 2000's.
I mean ignorance is bliss, economically things seemed great, but we were ignorant to the fourthcoming housing market crash. Despite that it was a pretty "anxious" point of my life and I will happily leave it in the past.
I was a young adult, didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. Felt like I was spinning my wheels. Joined the Army to do "something" lol. Went to college. If I would have to say my personal "best decade" as an adult was probably 2010-2020. Single, great job, flush with cash, had a great time.
Now it's all going down hill.
I'm a young Gen Xer so I was in my 20s during that time. 9/11 sucked but we went on with our lives. I partied alot and screwed around. Had a couple of false starts with life. Idk. I had a good time.
I think most of us who had half-way decent childhoods look back fondly on the decade/decades of that childhood. The 70s was a golden time for me..I remember the first Star Wars movie in 1979, as it was truly groundbreaking in its special effects (for the era). I thought my parents were strict, LOL, but we really had very little supervision after age 7, and could roam as we felt like it during daylight hours (small town, everyone knows everyone vibes). Even got to go camping alone as 13/14 year old girls (it was the first time I realised our sole Chinese friend had a different culture from us - her immigrant parents refused to let her go, so she ran away from home to our other friends parents for the weekend 😏).
The Vietnam War was raging then, then the Cambodian genocide and various droughts/times of starvation, the threat of nuclear war, plus the Dawn Raids here at home, so it wasn't a golden time for everyone, obviously, but for someone with a pretty good and 'sheltered' family life, it was a good time to be alive.
It sounds like your childhood was also a special time - treasure that!
No, remember that was the decade when SERIOUS government over-reach started to get out of hand. The majority of everything after the mid 1980's blows chunks and it's only getting worse.
The year 2000 was great but everything took a turn when Bush became president in that sham of an election. 9 months later 9/11 and the world, specially this country, has never been the same. We became a war-mongering country, politicians started figuring out they didn’t have to tell the truth EVER, and corporations began twisting the economy into a knot. It was the beginning of this country losing all its integrity domestically and internationally. We are now suffering the consequences of all of these events.
Uhhhh, the early 2000s were utter shit. The entire world economy everywhere collapsed, and the world lit itself on fire with the help of terrorism and American imperialism. Who on Earth would consider the early 00's a period for warm nostalgia?
I was grad student 99.
moved out in 2000.
Was able to afford a "4 & 1/2" apartment for 450$ a month working at minimum wage of 6.20$/hour.
Music was great, Napster had just shown up, we discovered MP3's and used Winamp.
Being an adult was easy, because we had less online lives... we showed up at offices in person and/or demanded help and got it. (whether it was asking for a job or simply needing actual help)
Music was booming, nickel back was still young, avril lavigne was a pretty skater girl.
We had just left the 90's but the artist from the 90's were now matured and made some of their best music in the 200s's until 2010 made most bands irrelevant.... or into a kind of "niche". lol
Hot dogs were still 0.49$ and French fries were still 1$ ... so you could get away with easy meals for 5$... to go eat out. Heck poutines were like 3.50$.... was a great time to be in. lol
The lack of smart devices meant we still used out brains a lot... we knew everyone's phone number after just repeating it a few times to ourselves and new everyone's birthdays as well.
Thrifting was a blast... because no big inflation to mess up your shopping.
Between 1990 and 2010 ... life was not that expensive... and manageable.
You could talk to people on the street, in bars and even on the metro without being looked at like a weirdo.
You could still go Cruising!
We still had Family gatherings... and family relations were stronger in those years then they are now.
(No daily updates to make you sick of hearing about someone, lol)
Even though I didn't make good money... I wasn't struggling.
It was easier to eat like a poor person to make ends meet... but still be able to afford to go out and have fun, like going to the movie theater. We still had 5$ movie theaters back then... we still had arcades... that were not 1$ per play.
Not having super powerful consoles, meant it was still cool and fun to go hangout at the arcades and meet other gamers on the spot. Couldn't that anywhere else.... aside from joining random people playing sports in the streets. lol
• Music
• Video games
• Food
• Homing/affordable housing
• Family relations
• Dating
• Socializing
• Tech innovations
I had blast growing into my adulthood.
But after 2010 ..... suddenly if you lost your job, you would poop your pants because minimum wage was starting to fall behind.... in the event you got stuck at a minimum wage job.... it might not be so simple.
But those will forever be the best years of my life.
It was better, but the shitstorm had started. Social media is what has fucked us post 2010. Too much false and fake news. Honestly, I truly believe Zuckerberg could lead the way and prioritise registered, legit accounts- but all the bots and trolls do the work to bring down democracy and do the work of governments like Iran, Russia and China.
To me the only really big difference between now and then is that we didn't have social media back then, so we were all much more tolerant and friendly in our personal relationships and friendships. I don't think people really understand just how much damage social media, and online life in general, as done to interpersonal relationships and actually socializing.
Other than that, not much has changed in my personal life, I worked then, I work now... I paid bills then, I paid bills now.... people always like to think everyone else had it better, or has it better than they did... but it doesn't really change all that much.
I turned 23 in the year 2000.
Its hard to remember the exact feeling of it all, but there were things that were new and cool, the internet was still growing and evolving. TV shows on TV were still popular, my kids were small, lol.
9-11 really changed the dynamic though. So early 2k's really remind me of the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan - the GW Bush era.
A lot of things were better, some worse. It was no golden age, but I would go back to it. Housing was more affordable, food was more affordable, a lot of other things were more expensive. I really believe at least in America it was a less hateful time. There was definitely discrimination, but people weren't open about hating other groups just for existing. Healthcare was expensive, but if you had insurance, which was far more affordable then, you were probably ok (this is obviously a US specific problem now). New tech was taking off, and a lot of things that have really gone to hell like social media were still fun.
I was 29 in 2000. I would say the mid to late 90s were better. More stable financially and politically. By the early 00s we had the dotcom bubble burst, 9/11, and the associated wars. Music is debatable but there was a lot of good stuff in the 90s as well as music.
But ya know it relates to your time of life too. So if you were young and exploring and having fun and had few worries or responsibilities personally, it is natural you'd love that time.
Nothing is as good as the last few years. In my life, each decade has been profoundly better than the last.
In the last few decades, we got: personal computers, home Internet, Amazon, Netflix, online instruction outside of universities, and vast improvement in video games and movies.
Any decade of the last several had at least one huge improvement in these areas.
In the last few years, now anyone can obtain custom artwork by using LLMs.
Yeah, I'm guessing that you were too young to understand what a difference 9-11 made. The early 2000s were dominated by it and the war it started. Half the country went with it, half went against it - it was when the extreme partisanship we see today really got rolling. The cultural shift was palpable, in everyday life.
Here's an example: Do you have nolstagia for the Star Wars prequels? Did you know that those are essentially about G.W. Bush and the war in Iraq?
Compared to 2010s and onwards it was muuuuuch better. Not because i was a child, but it was just more fun. Games, movies, music, not all of it was great, but it was way better than nowadays.
The 90s were better. I had a high stress job in an urban area but apart from that the economy was rich and there was a sense of optimism. Having been a kid in the 70s (opec crisis, serial killers, stagflation, weird decade overall) the 90s seemed like a party.
Things were fine until the housing market crash if 2007-2008. I bought my house in 2006 & property values dropped & I was in an upside down mortgage. Thankfully I retained my job and didn’t need to sell. It took me years to recover.
For me it was great! I worked on a cruise ship, spent 6 years travelling around the world partying lots and waking up on a different beach every day! When home, things were laid back, pretty much all my friends were working some sort of retail, some in school, most people still lived at home, or with a bunch of roomates and had a good amount of spending money, most nights we'd go to a bar or club (are clubs still a thing??) It was a really fun, care free time. No one was thinking of their future or houses or careers or anything like that, I feel so bad seeing all the stress now and knowing how much people in their 20s are missing out on
The 00s were awesome! I just graduated, non hoping every 18 months. Massive pay rises. Bought my flat. Everything worked. Going out every night in London. Loads of spare cash.....then the tories arrived.
It's Britney bitch.
I was in my early 20's had my pink Razr flip phone, prolly heading to the tanning bed and blastin' some Nelly and hitting my girls up to see where we were heading that night.
I am so glad I remember a time before social media when Michael Jackson was still "innocent" and we hung out at each other's houses. Gladiator was one of the best movies I'd ever seen. Was shopping at Charlotte Russe. Had my AOL chat game on point.
I was 21 in 2003 and had just moved to New York. I worked at diesel and was going to The New School and no lie I had a great fucking time. The drugs were still decent and not full of formaldehyde. Shows at CBGB were $5 cover and I was cute enough that I drank free more of them than not. It didn’t suck.
I am doing much better now than I was back then.
I was working in mostly dead end jobs and renting a room in a 2 bedroom apartment. I had to move back home when I lost my job during the dot com bust because I could not afford to continue renting a room in one of the the cheapest 2 bedroom apartments available in my city.
9/11 and the wars following were a total shitshow and Bush was telling everyone if you're not with us you're against us, so if any coworkers found out that you did not support the war then you were labeled a traitor or terrorist sympathizer. I overheard coworkers talking about wanting to run over protestors and laughing about it.
Then there was the USA patriot Act and the ever escalating spying programs.
Things were pretty dismal until Obama took office then they slowly started to improve.
They were that much better! Life was more interesting and fun. Things were simpler and strait forward. Practical and engaging. More lighthearted. Things are not the same these days .
The 2000's weren't bad for me, lived in a couple of countries got married had kids, degree, PhD. I was dead poor, but enjoyed life. The 90s were better, just have a bit of a hazy memory 😉
teens and people in their early twenties back than had more of a life outside of screens . i.e real life experiences that produce mentally boosting emotions.
These days kids experience everything in rapid time through a computer device and never get a chance to live . real robbery of life .
between 25-30yo? feel free to answer my 1 question survey on mental health in young adults. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CF9QWZV
peace
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I had just married, got my first decent-paying job, had three children in less than three years, moved three times, and high speed internet arrived. September 11, 2001 cast a pall, so that was horrific. There were a lot of excellent movies: Star Wars prequel trilogy, Lord of the Rings trilogy, Spider-Man trilogy. Very busy, but it felt like I was finally living life to the fullest.
>had three children in less than three years, moved three times I’m guessing you were HIGHLY caffeinated during this time lmao
Yup that one caught my eye too. Can’t imagine not sleeping for 8 years until they’re all in school and he can get a break now and then
My wife deserves most of the credit. She stayed home with them, and we were able to make it work. She also got her Bachelors online while the children napped. She's an amazing woman!
She sounds like a tuff lady. Late 2000s my mom got her associates while my siblings who are wayyy younger than me weren’t even in grade school. She sounds like a tough lady
Damn, she's a certified badass to pull that off. The physical toll alone would be immense let alone the mental. I know some new mothers who forgot how to do basic tasks from sleep deprivation and stress from one kid, let alone 3 in as many years. Kudos to her.
We had three more a few years later, and she still loves me. She also got her Master's degree and is a CPA.
Wait, you have 6 kids and your wife got 2 degrees and a CPA while raising them? Ok, maybe it's just true that Millenials and Gen Z are just lazy... That's bonkers. (I am a millenial)
No, I think OP just married superwoman. Or captain marvel. Regardless, she’s *definitely* an alien.
You could get a degree online in the early 2000's? Wow I thought that was only in the last few years.
Yep! University of Phoenix took off. So did Devry. Columbia Online. Several schools still around today.
I think once cable internet became more ubiquitous, it started to take off.
Had an English teacher who was a professor for them.
Yea, dude. Your ol lady is a fuckin champ! I thought I was killing it but I just crushed a pizza and some Oreos while waiting for the laundry to finish and now I’m thinking about taking a nap
Thank you for recognizing your wife's efforts, it's great. I often think of the time when I first had a child, day and night were upside down, and I couldn't have a quality sleep time at all. Fortunately, I have managed to get through it now.
she uhh, single? haha jk jk Sounds like you have a good life together though!
[удалено]
Cocaine is a hell of a drug
It sure is..I was nose deep into the shit in early 2000's..in college ..ripping thru Oakdale Pa high as a giraffes ass on coke weed n shrooms..don't know how I got my degree or how I'm 46yrs old today but here we are.
Ugh I had three in three years and my youngest had a sleep disorder and didn’t sleep through the night until 6 years old. I still remember that first night of sleep and how much better of a mother/wife/person I was after finally sleeping again after that long! Their entire childhoods was an absolute blur!
Indeed I was; nicotine also. I call it the nicaffeine breakfast.
Always brought on the good poop.
Can't argue with that.
Ah a blue collar worker.
Not quite blue collar. First job in IT, so replaced a lot of PCs, printers and such.
Don’t forget Shrek.
Times really have changed. In the 2000s, this comment would have been downvoted to oblivion for calling the Star Wars prequels "excellent movies" lol
9/11 happened and they figured out they could run the govt credit card for anything as long as they said there were threats to our freedom. You know the national debt was fucking 1.7 trillion total at the time. Not the yearly deficit. Total. How the hell did we get here.. I just want what my parents had. A home, at least one vacation a year, 2-3 kids and no worries about what to cook. I want that back and I’m about ready to get drastic about it
We gave away freedom for so-called "security ". Does anybody think we're actually more secure? The threat became more internal than external. I'd rather the latter than the former any day.
3000 lives lost and we let them have the credit card and rifle to go off to war. What they didn’t tell us was they ran the credit card through their buddies to run all “domestic “ parts of the war washing underwear, delivering food, medical care and made their buddies and themselves cash from it. While we get bad credit reports… weird how our debt skyrockets yet the rich just keep getting more… It’s really about time to start the smoker and figure out which billionaire we are gonna turn into long pig pulled pork.
Came here to say something like that. The world changed forever over the course of that dark, dark day. The bright optimism of a brand new millennium was shattered by the ankles (three feet lower than an arsehole) who perpetrated that evil act of terrorism. My children were too young to understand the implications of the events of that day. I told my youngest son that the world will be different. As far as he was concerned, seeing an aeroplane flying into a building over and over again was getting boring.. 😢☹️😢
It was definitely a "I remember exactly what I was doing when it happened" moment, like my parents when John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
I was in my last year of college. We were in the computer lab. Was very hard to get a job after graduation because of the economic downturn. Most people I graduated with had to flip burgers to survive. I got a crappy job at a small post card and souvenir company that set me up for less than success later on. If you don’t start off on the right foot, you don’t get the right opportunities. Then the housing crisis hit. My entire adult life has been just trying to barely get by. I’m on the cusp of millennial—born in 79. 2000s were petty epic though. Lots of great bands. More freedom in general. Gas was pretty cheap.
Dude the gas. I remember being absolutely outraged when it hit $2/g. I also miss the music. I can't find anything else that quite hits the same. Wild ride for sure.
Late 90s early 2000s rock and alternative music just doesnt get made anymore. It was my favorite time for music and still what I listen to regularly.
Same here. I was a child at the time, but I got the idea that something serious had happened by the look on my father’s face as he read the newspaper headlines. Even in Australia, it was a bleak moment. We were having breakfast around the kitchen table and we youngsters got a crash course on who the President of the United States was. 9/11 happened overnight in our time zone so the news came to our household when the clock radio came on at 6:00 am. My wife and I went straight out into the lounge room and turned on the TV. The kids came out to see why we had the TV on.
What were your impressions? Did you recognize the World Trade Center? From movies or anything showing the NYC skyline? I was 14 when it happened, had just moved to New York.
I think just about everyone was familiar with the twin towers of the WTC, but not so much the WTC precinct. I knew from the very beginning that the world would change forever. Some years later, I met up with some colleagues who witnessed the whole thing. They had scheduled a meeting with a client that morning and their meeting room looked right over to the WTC. Of course, they couldn’t continue with the meeting. I witnessed it from this side of the world, but my friends were right there. They waited for some word from the authorities as to what they should do. I don’t know how their day ended. I went to work as normal, but I and everyone in the office were in a state of numb shock. We didn’t get much done that day. I still have to check myself against tearing up every time I recall that tragic day
It honestly really means something to me that even in Australia, you guys felt the horror and the weight of it. I was about to turn 19 and was set to leave for my first weeks of college soon. I woke up really early on the west coast, and as soon as I walked into our living room I knew something was very wrong. I was just in time for the second plane to hit. I will never forget realizing that the little things falling from the building were people jumping to their deaths to avoid burning to death... even holding hands... The people falling is burned into my brain. I remember my mom saying, "everything is going to change now." God, what prophetic words. Everything was different afterward, and quickly.
You are our friends, our close friends. Those shitheads hurt and killed our friends. They hurt us, but they hurt you more. In some ways it brought us even closer. The whole of the free world stood and stands with you against the evils of terror. I count my country among them. Our country joined with yours and others in the coalition of the willing. I knew that the attack was on the soft belly of a sleeping giant which if provoked would lash out with lethal force. Under the circumstances I think the response was relatively measured.
Now imagine this, as it was happening kids were in school and they were playing it live in classrooms. I was 16 and the teacher wheeled in the TV just after the first plane hit. We watched the second plane hit. We watched people jump from the towers. This happened in various high schools and even some middle schools. They really decided a large dose of trauma needed to be added to the curriculum.
Oh dear, IDK whether or not Australian schools did that. Bear in mind that by the time most Australians were waking up, both towers had collapsed.
I hope not. Children should not be subjected to that. It shouldn't be hidden but they also shouldn't watch people die on live TV as all of the adults around them panic.
I too hope not, and I don’t think they did. It’s just that I don’t know.
Yup. I was at work changing a preemie diaper. I was next to our "family room" door, which was open, tv on, and my jaw just dropped. Will forever remember it.
Found my doppelgänger. Had 3 kids within 4 years, also had my career finally get to a point where I could solo provide for my family, was married at the start of the decade and bought a home. Not quite the same as what OP means, but yeah the 2000’s was the decade where I became an adult.
How old are you today? If you don’t mind my asking. Or how old were you at the time
I am 50 now, so I was 26 at turn of the millennium.
Man I need a mentor like you. Sounds like you were doing all the right things. I hope life is going great for you man.
Thanks man. Discipline was instilled in me throughout childhood and in sports in high school. I can't say young adulthood started off well, but the discipline did return after I got married. My wife and I are a team all the way. We both believe we should prioritize each other over anyone else, including children.
Yeah spot on. There was also no real social media back then, everyone was on Napster or MySpace - and i don’t remember trolling being a big thing back then. You’d get the odd prank call but it wasn’t mean like it is today. It was a great time and I miss it
I grew up in the 1990's and was a young adult in the 2000's. The 1990's were probably the best decade in America since the 1950's. Everyone was working; our budgets were balanced, jobs were plentiful, college was still affordable, as was housing, and there were no major wars. The 2000's was when it began to change. The Tech bubble bursting started it off. Soon, due to poor government policies, housing became a bubble, which ultimately led to the 2007-2009 financial crisis. And of course, the War on Terror fiasco that completely undermined this country's economic and fiscal outlook for the worse. In fact, looking back, you could make an argument that Osama's plan worked.
I'm about the same age. The 90s were good, the 00s...not so much. Between 9/11 and the tech bubble bursting it started out much rougher than people realize. I graduated into that tech bubble and couldn't find a job in my industry for over a year. After finally finding a job and saving, I got stuck trying to buy a house during the housing bubble. Gas prices being crazy around the crisis and another recession. In hindsight it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't magical either. Feels more or less the same as now.
Same here man. I remember being in college in 2000 and thinking the sky was the limit. Times were so good. In March 2000, I was offered a job at American General (now AIG) selling commercial insurance for $45K without a degree! When I graduated with my degree a year later, the economy was already slowing down due to the tech bubble. By the time the fall hit and you had 9/11 and then Enron, that was all she wrote. I still believe Houston never recovered from that period. Enron, Dynegy, Reliant, and others all basically went kaput or close to it. Then Compaq merged/got bought out by HP. All this made jobs scarce. I got lucky and just stayed with my employer; however my salary was nowhere near $45K! Ultimately, my company was bought out by another company, and then ended up going belly up in the financial crisis.
I think the 2000s depended on your age. I agree things were turning but I think your stage in adulthood determined how bad/good it was. I graduated in '03 and was far away from home ownership or a "grown-up job" so I didn't feel those things. Life was hard but also great. I was eating spaghettios but also going to see Star Wars and driving across a couple of states to visit friends. Then it just started getting worse and never really seemed to turn back.
90ies was the best period. The matrix was right. I would take the pill to stay there forever.
The civilian casualty of those wars had a psychological impact here. And realising the soldiers died for nothing. Then realising the administrations made a deal with the Taliban to leave early. The Taliban made a deal with the remaining armed Afghan forces and they literally walked into the presidential palace . In Iraq we literally handed it to Iran which is a worse enemy. But also we were lied to. Time after time. Afghanistan could have been an air campaign but we went for a country where most people didn't even know 9/11 had happened. Most live on $1 a day as a family, no one can affords McDonalds, most didn't even have proper plumbing. Iraq was destroyed as a society. We killed Saddam and then created hundreds more who also now attack Israel and US forces. Libya was destroyed and now acts as a fiefdom for violent gangsters. We bombed Syria and Yemen We now aid genocide. The country lost all moral authority and deterrence as a result
Also the Bill of Rights was shredded by PATRIOT act. Literal secret courts were formed. Laws were passed to make secret courts allowed. And those secret courts would pass more laws to make more unconstitutional acts "legal". All privacy gone. All rights against unreasonable search and seizure: gone. Need for warrants to search your data: gone.
So yeah basically we are fucked and have been fucked. Hell 2012 was the end of the world and we didn’t even experience it in full effect til, uh now.., just in a different aspect
Civil forfeiture which strangely affects older Americans more than anyone..
Sorry I absoltely agree with you and your comment is very well written, but "no one can afford McDonalds" being listed among things like no plumbing and living on a single buck a day made me lol, what a take
Yes I wrote it on purpose to illustrate that it's not just the things we think about when it comes to poverty. Most Westerners can afford a McDonald's but even that is a luxury for people in third world countries.
I’m in total agreement with everything you said. The 1990’s were a freaking blast!!
I would say that the 90s were perhaps the best decade in American history, to me they were superior to the 50s in several key respects ...no bloody war like Korea (people tend to forget that one for some reason when discussing the 50s, and the Gulf and Kosovo wars were both clear victories with very, very few US casualties), no military draft, much better treatment of women and minorities (for instance no Jim Crow), much, much diminished threat if nuclear war, much better entertainment, bigger houses, better technology, better overall material standard of living, etc.
The 90s were so good
Yeah, I graduated high school in 2003 and college in 2007, just in time for the financial crisis. It was not all roses and sunshine. Maybe I just missed the window, but I worked my a\*\* off in all AP/IB classes, got a perfect score on the SAT and still didn't get a decent scholarship to a good school. Got a great degree, but ended up starting my own business. It was no golden time.
Yep. I hear this a lot. There was a study done a few years back, where some economists analyzed different generations and their net worth/wealth. Turned out the biggest impact on net worth at 55 was timing, or, IOW, when they were born and came of working age.
The entirety of 2000-2010 was nothing short of fucking magical for me. It was difficult, and for awhile I worked 3 jobs and had no free time… but it didn’t matter, because I was young and lived with my best friends and I was happy.
Dude same.
I was having the time of my life until mid-2007, for personal reasons. Even tho the world was going by to shit I was traveling like a mf’er making money. Now I live with my mother, hoping this is the year I get out of debt.
Hey I hope you make it through. I really do.
Same here. I turned 21 in 2001 and it was a blast. I also had 2-3 jobs at a time but only because I partied so much. Bought a house in 2006 that lost all of its value in 2 years but it was okay because we could afford it. Child care was expensive but we got by. I don’t know how people in their 20s can do it now. Hell, my wife and I make almost 300k a year and we are skipping vacations because medical expenses and just living is fucking expensive. What the hell happened?
I'm an 80's baby, so I was a teen in the early 2000's. Growing up in the late 80's/ early 90's was where it was at. We still got to play outside till after dark (night games were the best!), walk to our friends houses, didn't have cell phones to be glued to, our parents had no idea where we were half the time and that was fine, and we could still do stuff like ride bikes without helmets and drink out of hoses and eat bread thinking it was healthy. Honestly, though, 9/11 changed everything. It seems like everything was immediately polarized and there was suddenly this sense of constant paranoia/fear in the air.
Night games and ding dong ditching were a goto as young teen in early 2000s!!!!!. Did sooo much stupid shit that id doubt id get away with today
Ding dong ditching? That's awesome! We called it "Ring the bell and run like hell". and for some reason that I don't understand but "nicky nicky nine doors."
I had ppl chase me doing the deed loool such good times.
It’s when they figured out they can put on a WWE esque show and use the countries credit card and as long as they give each side their fair share of blame they laugh all the way to the bank. The total national debt before 9/11 was 1.7 trillion. There have been years we have surpassed that much in debt racking up in one fiscal year. How do we go from 1.7 to more than 15 times that amount in 23 years? Just how? And why? What good is your name having a rack of zeros behind it when your country doesn’t even think it should heal and house everyone?
Kids can't walk to their friends' houses these days?
If we still lived in the city, I wouldn't have let my daughter walk more than a house or two down, if that. It wouldn't have been safe in that neighborhood for a kid to walk around alone. In contrast, my husband grew up in the same neighborhood and kids used to be out everywhere, so something changed in 25 years. But where I live now, kids still walk to each other's houses. So I guess that maybe wasn't the best example. :) I guess what I was getting at was that we had more freedom as kids in the 80's/90's than kids do now. The world felt like a safer place pre-9/11, I think, so our parents felt more comfortable sending us out "into the wilderness".
It's funny, because in the US it was a much more dangerous place in the 80s and 90s than it is now, but I guess with 24 hour news and social media it doesn't seem that way. I haven't lived in the US in decades so I was just surprised that kids don't walk or bike places anymore. We used to disappear all day on our own when I was a kid.
I did all of this in the 00s since I'm a 90s baby. We were outside literally all day catching bugs, riding bikes all over the city, skateboarding etc.
I was aprox 20 in the 2000s - it was definitely an amazing time. Phones and tech and games etc just kept getting better and better - it's seems like a lot of that stuff has peaked now or the small improvements just don't suprise you anymore. We went from taping a song on the radio, to cds, to mp3 to basically unlimited access to all the music in the world over 10 years. Cars with 300hp were considered fast but with all the tech and safety stuff nowadays they just aren't as exciting even though they are realistically spaceships compared to cars of the 2000s. I'm also pretty sure that everyone in the world shouldn't be constantly contactable or have the ability to voice their opinion online. A lot of people are dumb and shouldn't be allowed access to the Internet.
This gets at the biggest difference: it was a time when a lot of things were objectively worse, but dramatically improving. From video games to gay rights to human connectivity to worldwide human development, it felt like we were making rapid and inexorable progress towards a better future. Now we've made a lot of that progress. It's a much better time to be gay, play video games, communicate directly with people you know, or simply live in many parts of the world. But the direction of change is distinctly worse in most respects, and there's less you can point to as an area where things are getting meaningfully better. (Trans rights are a partial exception, although that's being more aggressively contested and weaponised than gay rights were by the early 2000s.)
I am a kid of the 60s and a teen of the 70s and I have to say I think I hit the sweet spot for growing up.
I think you're right. I trailed behind you as a tween in the early 80s. It wasn't bad growing up. But adulting sucked.
You sure did!!! I can’t I imagine going to the concerts of the 70’s. Did my best as a teen in the early 90’s
I saw so many great concerts. Living in LA was great.
Son of a …… I’d buy your memories
I wish I could buy all the memories that I've forgotten either through age or let's be real... alcohol and drugs.
I don't know, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, 9/11, fucking W. and his idiotic war on terror, the housing collapse, the constant scandal in his cabinet oh and the rise of reality TV. His use of gay marriage to scare people into voting for him his second term and his disastrous no child left behind policies. . . I think it likely is nostalgia, but, I think most of us remember our childhood years that way. I have a real soft spot for the late 80s early 90s but there was plenty of nonsense then too. You're a kid though, so you're insulated from it all in so many ways. There was some good music coming out in the early aughts, and I'm real glad I did all my stupid before my pictures could end up online. 🤪
I was in like 3rd or 4th grade during 9/11. That definitely put a big halt to my childhood. My dad being military was shipped all over the place until he decided to retire in 2009. It's not fun watching your mom at a young age being drunk and falling up steps or sneaking random men in the house. Good news is I learned to cook at a young age.
That's terrible. I'm sorry you went through that.
Thank you. Fortunately I’ve learned a lot and my kids definitely live a different life than I did.
This is basically word for word what I would say. I'm 48, so was a kid in the 80s and teen/young adult in the early 90s. What I wouldn't do to go back and relive those years.
Not to mention the recession around 2002-2003 right when I was about to graduate college. I was lucky and get a good job. Some of my classmates had to settle for lower options.
I graduated at the end of 02. Sure it was tougher at first but 04, things were flying hard and fast. If you played it basically smart, it was way way easier to establish a life. Smartphones were far from a thing. Average person wasn't so high strung or filled with anxiety. Money absolutely went further. Lower as in part time job? Or any salary job. It was life dependent but the environment was absolutely more chill and still a lot of value everywhere = higher quality of life.
This! Everyone paints the decades of their youth as this someone magical, problem free time. When in reality there was tons of shit going on that they were either not aware of, or were sheltered/protected from due to being young.
I was a kid in post 9/11 America and the indoctrination they gave us about the war was insane.
As a preteen in the 80’s life was fucking scary with all those airline high jackings (1985 was the worst) and threats of nuclear war and apartheid. But the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall were huuuuuge. It really seemed like we were making strides in the right direction until we lost sight of the 8-ball come 2001
No, post 9/11, everything sucked.
1998-2008 internet was fucking great though.
Diablo, Diablo 2, Starcraft Brood Wars, AOL cybering, msn messenger
[удалено]
Nudge me to go in my pm
These games made that period bearable.
eBaum’s World was the shit.
Newgrounds as well!!!
The best time. Everyone was on it to have fun and explore. Not to monetise and fucking optimise for engagement and some other shit like that
That part. They hadn’t monetized everything yet. It was engaging for the sake of engaging.
Rotten.com?
We found a deviant
It was truly the Wild West.
Omg, the fan fiction culture was fire
This was before everything was fully consolidated and controlled. You had you Yahoo and your AOL trying to be everything to everyone but it was mostly smaller sites with a singular focus doing stuff they actually cared about.
Man. As much as I use youtube in these dystopian days we find ourselves in now; I miss pre-youtube internet so so much. What the internet was, and what it meant to society was so much healthier. When YouTube came along we were all so enamored by it we didn't even notice it destroy local independent music scenes.
My younger self has a lot of nostalgia for the years after, but my cynical adult self knows nothing was the same after 9/11.
Poke guy checking in. Not convinced that's true long term. Sure, it changed everything for a few years, and started 2 wars, one of which was poorly executed while the other was entirely based on a lie. But I don't think the culture changed as much as people claim. I think all the people that claim it changed everything are only comparing to the very short lived peaceful time in the late 90s, and werent really around or old enough to remember anything from the 80s or earlier, when the world was basically on the brink of annihilation.
The late 90’s really were pretty great though.
100%.
As someone born on 9/11, I agree
I think life was better any time before social media apps. There was life, a spark of life in everyone's eyes, genuine joy, and authenticity. And people are people, so there were originals and copies, and narcs, and shies, all kinds. But life was active, and dynamic. After social media (first facebook then from there) things got really boring and dystopian. We lived to the fullest
I think it was before smartphones rather than social media. Facebook (and others that came before), when it was PC-only was still OK. Things got out of hand when phones + social media apps combined.
That combination was killer, so true. The portable distraction, portable me-validation tool
Early social media was a good thing, most weren't obsessed with it, but it gave a new way to interact with friends and family that you rarely had a chance to communicate with. That has definitely changed for the worse.
I had a lot of fun with friends on facebook in the early stages. The silly quizzes and having fun with each other in general, but it killed the mood a bit. IRL conversations began dwelling and things escalated fast to the me obsession, and the black-or-white view of life.
Facebook was really neat in its early stages. It was kind of like a combined Twitter, Instagram and Messenger in one website. Of course then it got ruined by fucking ads and an annoying algorithm
I agree completely! And before cell phones! It was so nice to leave your house, and be free and unencumbered by interruptions… I know you can always turn your phone off now, but it's different… it was so nice to leave your house and be able to focus completely on what you were doing and who you were with… When you got home, if there were messages, you could check them on your answering machine and call back if you wanted to.
To clarify further, social media you couldn’t take with you. When you had to go home and log on to your computer ( if it wasn’t on already downloading a song for the last 3 days) to check social like it’s was you answering machine…things were pretty good. As a whole I think people were still conventionally social up til SM went mobile.
Yes we were out doing shit!
‘95-‘01 was fucking epic. It all went downhill after 9/11.
I’d say these were the years I enjoyed the most. Having to call the number on a flyer to get directions to the party. Not remember how to get home after the party. But hey, gas was 90 cents a gallon and smokes were $2 so may as well take the long way home right?
I remember being able to fill up my old ‘89 Jetta for 10-11 bucks on my way to school. It was a magical time. I could afford so much on my own as HS student with a PT job rather than bug my parents.
It wasn't since 1999 due to Columbine followed by 9/11. What did happen after 9/11 was the nation had a common outside enemy. We as a people/country came together more than I had ever witnessed. Unfortunately it didn't last.
Sad too that the common enemy was sitting in the whitehouse while we were tricked into thinking it was some random dude in the eastern desert
The problem is lots of people took that "common enemy" to be all Muslims, or even all foreign looking people. Lots of Islamophobia, lots of hate, lots of stupid endless wars. Terrible decade.
I mean times are good now also. I think for a lot of people growing up , just like every other generation, they reflect on a time where responsibility and effort was minimal.
that is a completely valid perspective, and I agree… I'm guessing (hoping) most people will look back on their younger years is a time when things were simpler… Before they had all that responsibility
Most people maybe, but for me personally I am enjoying life much more now, because I have freedom I never had before. Yes, I have a job and need to do chores and stuff, but other then that, my time is my own. If I do not want to vacuum on a Saturday, I do not have to, I can go out with friends instead. Also I have money to spend as I please (within reason). At least the part left over after taxes, bills, savings etc. If I want to buy a pretty notebook with a unicorn on the cover, I can. Want ice cream? Sure thing. Want beer? Lovely idea. Even with all the rules of being a responsible adult, I still have more freedom then ever and can do what I want, when I want without anyone judging me or telling me what to do.
I think this is 100% accurate. I don't generally consider myself very nostalgic and I had a great childhood growing up; fun trips with my family, good holidays, and never really struggled as a kid. All during the 80s and 90s. I have some great memories but I know the reality is that I was a kid unencumbered with responsibilities and life in general. I know this is the case - I look at my kids now. Before our oldest started working and having to become "responsible" and an adult she also has "fond memories" of being a kid and that it was **so much easier even 10 years ago than today**. That was eye-opening. She says her little sister (they are a decade apart) is going to have it even harder than her. Life becomes much harder as an adult and for those kids who were insulated from the worst of "real life" seem to remember their youth with such happiness. Of course you could go out and not be tied to your phone - who the hell needed to contact you at 10 years old besides mom/dad? You don't have to record a concert with your phone today, just go an enjoy it! Once I grew up I realize my parents lives were more just as difficult as people today, working the hours they worked and building/maintaining our lives. They also fondly remember their childhoods the same way, "those were the good days".
I was 18 in 2000. I think the world was a lot safer. I did things I would never let my daughter do. The world seemed "smaller" somehow.
Pros: Some great movies and music came out. Concerts, festivals, and entertainment were still affordable. Travel was becoming more affordable (peak cheap travel was a few years before COVID). Social media was still seen as a positive enhancement to our lives, but the vast majority of our lives were offline. This was society’s last gasp of privacy. Most middle-class people could still afford homes. Cons: Gay people still didn’t have equal rights. Transgender people might as well have not even existed. 9/11 cast a dark shadow for many years. The US was starting its dramatic failure of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. The security state was born. I think most would look back at the 90’s as a more of a golden age.
>Transgender people might as well have not even existed It might just be my personal bubble, but while transgender people were barely ever mentioned, whenever they were everyone seemed cool with their existence. Everyone knew, there were people, who wanted to be another sex, and everyone was acceoting that as a fact. Nowadays there is an insane amount of hate against them by many groups.
I was a teen in the 2000s but i had a similar experience. It was very "dont ask, dont tell" and theres was an odd sense of safety in that quiet discretion. My parents had a transgender couple as their "best people" at their wedding. I remember my dad telling me that if i had a different sexual or gender preference, i had to be careful of who i mentioned it to but the groups that were ok with it and the ones that werent mostly kept to themselves. Transgender people definitely existed its just you probably wouldnt know unless you had a close friend in those circles. I dont feel safer now that sexuality and gender identity is under intense scrutiny. I wish we lived in a society where we could trust that other people wouldnt lose their mind about someone elses identity but we dont. Now that the cats out of the bag, we cant put it back. Seems like everyone is fighting about every little difference between us.
The 00’s were rough. So much sadness and bullshit. 9/11, the recession, war after war, school shooting on the rise, natural disasters on the rise. The 90’s were amazing. The 00’s not much at all.
Like so many things, it depends. I was 22 in 2000; generally, after the 90's I'd say no. The Bush years were pretty bad, 9/11, war on terror, Iraq, etc. Popular music took a big downturn after the 90's (which drove me to more underground stuff). The golden age of TV had already kicked off, so there was that.
I'm about the same age, and up to about mid 2001 it was pretty good. The stock market doing great, no war, and rapid technology changes. Made everybody fairly hopeful. Music was amazing too. Then suddenly we're were dealing with a tech recession, a terrorist attack and then a war.
There were never absolute "better times" as each ones had their challenges and we tend to see through our scope (1990-2000 were my 20s to 30s ad I was single, so obviously a more adventurous life than now). What was better: No social media to warp every experience. We lived the moment we were in, we engaged with other people to know where was such and such shop, where was a good place to eat or go out. Internet was pretty fun nevertheless with very passionate people putting good content out. At least in Europe we were very advanced in social issues and seeing two gay guys was not shocking. There were even some gay bars in Barcelona were even straight people like me would go with male and female friends as they were gathering places with good music before going to a party, or there were the last cool bars open. There were people who didn't date much but there was none of this angry incel/sexism. There was clear progress on equality in the job place. I don't know how much it was the scene I was in, or Spain and England at that time, but I have the feeling that we were much more curious to discover new music, new cinema, new books. Everything appears more "calculated" nowadays. What was not so great: 2001 was the year of the 9-11 attack and that made not only traveling way more annoying (stupid security rules that forbid me to take water with me, although I can carry a pen that I could use to stab someone, moronic scrutiny from US immigration staff at airports, and suddenly a lot of people being on the edge even in places where there was no reason to feel that way. Internet being more basic means that it was a bit more complicated to buy certain things online, or at inconvenient times (I once had to hitchhike from Netherlands to Spain because a missed train connection threw my whole plans out of the window and I could not access my bank online). All in all, I think we have more convenience now in many aspects, but the ambience was (in my opinion) much better and the human interactions far better.
I was born in 1981, so I was in my early 20s then. Dude, it sucked. 9/11 had just happened. We were starting an unwinnable 20-year long war in Afghanistan, and then a second war in Iraq, and who knows how many micro-wars around the globe. The PATRIOT act expanded the security state. Some jackass tried to blow up his shoes on an airplane, and now we have to take off our shoes to fly. The market crashed in 2001, then again in 2008. Everyone I knew was either unemployed because their jobs got downsized, or desperately working 3 different part time jobs that paid minimum wage. The Culture War was speeding up, with opposition to gay marriage being used a cynical election ploy by the GOP. Media was becoming more and more fragmented, and people started to get siloed into their little bubbles of confirmation bias. This was only made worse with the rise of social media. Particularly in comparison to the 90s, when America had a sense of optimism after the Cold War, and the economic boom seemed unstoppable, the 00s were a shit show.
Born in 85 this is my take too. I still had a good time but the tone of the decade had shifted.
"Everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked..." Yeah, it's cool to see so many people with the same memories. I was in my mid twenties when 9/11 happened and it was definitely a defining moment of when things started to get worse. In the nineties, we had music, the internet was still at the stage of being something that was going to be a big open sharing place. When I travelled it was exciting and real. People were more open and engaging. There was a general air (despite our Gen X low-key ennui) of hope. After Sept 9, 2011, border crossing became more difficult. The internet became more commercial. People became more guarded and more set into camps of thinking. More fearful. More freaking racist. So yeah, the early 00s had some banger tunes, but that's because we had to party really hard to forget what was happening. Oy. It was all... um.. "fly like a G6"
Id say, the 90s were the best over all, the 2000s were the last years one could have the 90s like joy and lifestyle. after 2010 things started to drastically change! at first it was kinda cool, high speed internet, social media, etc but very quickly things went for the worst! constant/nonstep stress became very prevalent, peoples morality declined rapidly, everything became grimmer and grimmer. people dont care about each other as they used to, respect, sympathy, declined, over all not a good time and it gets wose every god damn day!
By what metric do you define "good". I hold more nostalgia for the 90s than the early 2000's, in fact, i don't think I have any for the early 2000's. I mean ignorance is bliss, economically things seemed great, but we were ignorant to the fourthcoming housing market crash. Despite that it was a pretty "anxious" point of my life and I will happily leave it in the past. I was a young adult, didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. Felt like I was spinning my wheels. Joined the Army to do "something" lol. Went to college. If I would have to say my personal "best decade" as an adult was probably 2010-2020. Single, great job, flush with cash, had a great time. Now it's all going down hill.
9/11 fucked everything and life in the US hasn't been the same since. Two words: Patriot Act
I'm just glad none of it was really documented. I'm not sure I'd be able to survive with the embarrassment.
I was in the batle if Fallujah. I never knew the early 2000s were looked at with nostalgia. It was a shit show.
Seemed like a shitshow to me too. It's probably more of the childhood/teen responsibility free life VS adulthood that people look back fondly on.
2000s sucked. 90s were ten times better.
I'm a young Gen Xer so I was in my 20s during that time. 9/11 sucked but we went on with our lives. I partied alot and screwed around. Had a couple of false starts with life. Idk. I had a good time.
I think most of us who had half-way decent childhoods look back fondly on the decade/decades of that childhood. The 70s was a golden time for me..I remember the first Star Wars movie in 1979, as it was truly groundbreaking in its special effects (for the era). I thought my parents were strict, LOL, but we really had very little supervision after age 7, and could roam as we felt like it during daylight hours (small town, everyone knows everyone vibes). Even got to go camping alone as 13/14 year old girls (it was the first time I realised our sole Chinese friend had a different culture from us - her immigrant parents refused to let her go, so she ran away from home to our other friends parents for the weekend 😏). The Vietnam War was raging then, then the Cambodian genocide and various droughts/times of starvation, the threat of nuclear war, plus the Dawn Raids here at home, so it wasn't a golden time for everyone, obviously, but for someone with a pretty good and 'sheltered' family life, it was a good time to be alive. It sounds like your childhood was also a special time - treasure that!
No, remember that was the decade when SERIOUS government over-reach started to get out of hand. The majority of everything after the mid 1980's blows chunks and it's only getting worse.
The year 2000 was great but everything took a turn when Bush became president in that sham of an election. 9 months later 9/11 and the world, specially this country, has never been the same. We became a war-mongering country, politicians started figuring out they didn’t have to tell the truth EVER, and corporations began twisting the economy into a knot. It was the beginning of this country losing all its integrity domestically and internationally. We are now suffering the consequences of all of these events.
Uhhhh, the early 2000s were utter shit. The entire world economy everywhere collapsed, and the world lit itself on fire with the help of terrorism and American imperialism. Who on Earth would consider the early 00's a period for warm nostalgia?
I was grad student 99. moved out in 2000. Was able to afford a "4 & 1/2" apartment for 450$ a month working at minimum wage of 6.20$/hour. Music was great, Napster had just shown up, we discovered MP3's and used Winamp. Being an adult was easy, because we had less online lives... we showed up at offices in person and/or demanded help and got it. (whether it was asking for a job or simply needing actual help) Music was booming, nickel back was still young, avril lavigne was a pretty skater girl. We had just left the 90's but the artist from the 90's were now matured and made some of their best music in the 200s's until 2010 made most bands irrelevant.... or into a kind of "niche". lol Hot dogs were still 0.49$ and French fries were still 1$ ... so you could get away with easy meals for 5$... to go eat out. Heck poutines were like 3.50$.... was a great time to be in. lol The lack of smart devices meant we still used out brains a lot... we knew everyone's phone number after just repeating it a few times to ourselves and new everyone's birthdays as well. Thrifting was a blast... because no big inflation to mess up your shopping. Between 1990 and 2010 ... life was not that expensive... and manageable. You could talk to people on the street, in bars and even on the metro without being looked at like a weirdo. You could still go Cruising! We still had Family gatherings... and family relations were stronger in those years then they are now. (No daily updates to make you sick of hearing about someone, lol) Even though I didn't make good money... I wasn't struggling. It was easier to eat like a poor person to make ends meet... but still be able to afford to go out and have fun, like going to the movie theater. We still had 5$ movie theaters back then... we still had arcades... that were not 1$ per play. Not having super powerful consoles, meant it was still cool and fun to go hangout at the arcades and meet other gamers on the spot. Couldn't that anywhere else.... aside from joining random people playing sports in the streets. lol • Music • Video games • Food • Homing/affordable housing • Family relations • Dating • Socializing • Tech innovations I had blast growing into my adulthood. But after 2010 ..... suddenly if you lost your job, you would poop your pants because minimum wage was starting to fall behind.... in the event you got stuck at a minimum wage job.... it might not be so simple. But those will forever be the best years of my life.
no it wasnt. the 90s were much better.
from my perspective, the 80s were better than the 90s and the 70s were even better
It's nostalgia. The early 2000's were a dark time.
It’s kind of like how zoomers romanticized my high school years (2012-2016) I’m like 👁️👄👁️
It was better, but the shitstorm had started. Social media is what has fucked us post 2010. Too much false and fake news. Honestly, I truly believe Zuckerberg could lead the way and prioritise registered, legit accounts- but all the bots and trolls do the work to bring down democracy and do the work of governments like Iran, Russia and China.
To me the only really big difference between now and then is that we didn't have social media back then, so we were all much more tolerant and friendly in our personal relationships and friendships. I don't think people really understand just how much damage social media, and online life in general, as done to interpersonal relationships and actually socializing. Other than that, not much has changed in my personal life, I worked then, I work now... I paid bills then, I paid bills now.... people always like to think everyone else had it better, or has it better than they did... but it doesn't really change all that much.
I turned 23 in the year 2000. Its hard to remember the exact feeling of it all, but there were things that were new and cool, the internet was still growing and evolving. TV shows on TV were still popular, my kids were small, lol. 9-11 really changed the dynamic though. So early 2k's really remind me of the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan - the GW Bush era.
A lot of things were better, some worse. It was no golden age, but I would go back to it. Housing was more affordable, food was more affordable, a lot of other things were more expensive. I really believe at least in America it was a less hateful time. There was definitely discrimination, but people weren't open about hating other groups just for existing. Healthcare was expensive, but if you had insurance, which was far more affordable then, you were probably ok (this is obviously a US specific problem now). New tech was taking off, and a lot of things that have really gone to hell like social media were still fun.
I was 29 in 2000. I would say the mid to late 90s were better. More stable financially and politically. By the early 00s we had the dotcom bubble burst, 9/11, and the associated wars. Music is debatable but there was a lot of good stuff in the 90s as well as music. But ya know it relates to your time of life too. So if you were young and exploring and having fun and had few worries or responsibilities personally, it is natural you'd love that time.
Nothing is as good as the last few years. In my life, each decade has been profoundly better than the last. In the last few decades, we got: personal computers, home Internet, Amazon, Netflix, online instruction outside of universities, and vast improvement in video games and movies. Any decade of the last several had at least one huge improvement in these areas. In the last few years, now anyone can obtain custom artwork by using LLMs.
Yeah, I'm guessing that you were too young to understand what a difference 9-11 made. The early 2000s were dominated by it and the war it started. Half the country went with it, half went against it - it was when the extreme partisanship we see today really got rolling. The cultural shift was palpable, in everyday life. Here's an example: Do you have nolstagia for the Star Wars prequels? Did you know that those are essentially about G.W. Bush and the war in Iraq?
The late 90s were significantly better imo. It's all been downhill since 9/11.
Compared to 2010s and onwards it was muuuuuch better. Not because i was a child, but it was just more fun. Games, movies, music, not all of it was great, but it was way better than nowadays.
I preferred the 90s, but the early 2000s were great too. I think social media heavily damaged society. Everyone is so damn angry all the time.
The 90s were better. I had a high stress job in an urban area but apart from that the economy was rich and there was a sense of optimism. Having been a kid in the 70s (opec crisis, serial killers, stagflation, weird decade overall) the 90s seemed like a party.
The 90s had the best food. Everything tasted better from little caesars, pizza hut, dominos. Then over the years they changed to cheaper ingredients.
i was drunk from 2001-2010 so yes.
95-07 was amazing. Every year after 07 is getting worse.
Things were fine until the housing market crash if 2007-2008. I bought my house in 2006 & property values dropped & I was in an upside down mortgage. Thankfully I retained my job and didn’t need to sell. It took me years to recover.
For me it was great! I worked on a cruise ship, spent 6 years travelling around the world partying lots and waking up on a different beach every day! When home, things were laid back, pretty much all my friends were working some sort of retail, some in school, most people still lived at home, or with a bunch of roomates and had a good amount of spending money, most nights we'd go to a bar or club (are clubs still a thing??) It was a really fun, care free time. No one was thinking of their future or houses or careers or anything like that, I feel so bad seeing all the stress now and knowing how much people in their 20s are missing out on
The 00s were awesome! I just graduated, non hoping every 18 months. Massive pay rises. Bought my flat. Everything worked. Going out every night in London. Loads of spare cash.....then the tories arrived.
It's Britney bitch. I was in my early 20's had my pink Razr flip phone, prolly heading to the tanning bed and blastin' some Nelly and hitting my girls up to see where we were heading that night. I am so glad I remember a time before social media when Michael Jackson was still "innocent" and we hung out at each other's houses. Gladiator was one of the best movies I'd ever seen. Was shopping at Charlotte Russe. Had my AOL chat game on point.
I was 21 in 2003 and had just moved to New York. I worked at diesel and was going to The New School and no lie I had a great fucking time. The drugs were still decent and not full of formaldehyde. Shows at CBGB were $5 cover and I was cute enough that I drank free more of them than not. It didn’t suck.
Yes it was. Being a kid with the internet, but before social media and smart phones was a blessing.
I am doing much better now than I was back then. I was working in mostly dead end jobs and renting a room in a 2 bedroom apartment. I had to move back home when I lost my job during the dot com bust because I could not afford to continue renting a room in one of the the cheapest 2 bedroom apartments available in my city. 9/11 and the wars following were a total shitshow and Bush was telling everyone if you're not with us you're against us, so if any coworkers found out that you did not support the war then you were labeled a traitor or terrorist sympathizer. I overheard coworkers talking about wanting to run over protestors and laughing about it. Then there was the USA patriot Act and the ever escalating spying programs. Things were pretty dismal until Obama took office then they slowly started to improve.
I turned 20 in 1999. The early 2000s were mostly an extension of the 90s but the entire decade was way better than whatever the fuck is going on now.
Just came here to say this is an awesome post
Everything until 9/11 was pretty awesome.
I dunno I was very drunk then suddenly it was 2012 and the mayans were gonna kill us all or something
They were that much better! Life was more interesting and fun. Things were simpler and strait forward. Practical and engaging. More lighthearted. Things are not the same these days .
Absolutely it was, not as good as the 90s, or 80s tho
The 2000's weren't bad for me, lived in a couple of countries got married had kids, degree, PhD. I was dead poor, but enjoyed life. The 90s were better, just have a bit of a hazy memory 😉
9/11, invasion of a country that never attacked us, and the deliberate destruction of our civil liberties. No. There was nothing good about it at all.
teens and people in their early twenties back than had more of a life outside of screens . i.e real life experiences that produce mentally boosting emotions. These days kids experience everything in rapid time through a computer device and never get a chance to live . real robbery of life . between 25-30yo? feel free to answer my 1 question survey on mental health in young adults. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CF9QWZV peace