What the Hell Happened to our Culture after the 2000s?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 มิ.ย. 2024
- Have you ever felt like the our culture came to a near standstill in the past 10-15 years? Well, you're not alone. For me, the year our cultural stagnation started is around 2008. Now, I'm not saying things haven't changed at all. I'm saying that, technology aside, things have severely slowed down since then. I anticipate that this topic will be quite divisive, and some people will feel like things have advanced greatly since the 2010s while others feel like we're still living in an updated version of the 2000s.
In my mind, the pre-millennium decades, (50s-90s) all felt so distinct and different from each other. In 2002, Vice City, which was set in 1986, felt like it took place on another planet. By the late 2000s, The WWF Attitude Era felt like a relic of an ancient civilization. Going back to the late 2000s in games like GTA4, while fun, just doesn't have that same WOW factor.
I think there are two primary reasons for this phenomenon (along with things like 9/11 and Covid):
1) The death of Monoculture - Monoculture being the grander shared experiences and fandoms we used to have like Beatlemania, Michael Jackson, Star Wars, etc.
2) The internet/technology essentially replacing our cultural focus, which ended the cultural golden age of the 1950s-1990s (you could maybe squeeze the early 2000s in there).
One of my favorite TH-camrs, David V Stewart, has discussed a similar topic called "Cultural Ground Zero" before. The general idea is that the culture entered a non-stop period of regression since the year 1997. It's a fascinating idea and worth looking into. You can read about it here:
dvspress.com/the-corporate-pe...
I agree that the culture may have died in 1997. If you looked at it like a bell curve, maybe 1997 was the peak. But you still at least had some 90s culture bleed into the 2000s (aka 90s cool). I feel the late 2000s was the point where that feeling of cultural regression REALLY started to kick in.
Let me know what you think! I'm sure I'll get plenty of comments about how out of touch I am. But if thousands, and potentially millions of us have noticed this trend, we can't all be wrong (I think)! - บันเทิง
The 80s as an aesthetic wasn't what the 80s actually looked like. For the average person there wasn't a huge difference between the 70s 80s and 90s.
In general suburbia? Yes, absolutely. Your average living room and lifestyles would probably be similar for the average family. Nobody was living in a neon wonderland in their own home center. In urban, cultural hotspots? Not so much. What you would hear on the radio, see on television, and in the movie theater, and just the general overall aesthetic? Totally different. Look at the difference in WWF crowds from the late 80s vs the late 90s as an example.
@@LifeofSlicey1The thing is though that, as someone who grew up in the 2000s and came of age in the 2010s, they feel completely different in my memory, and in much the same way you just described. “Ordinary life” looked more or less the same, but even that’s not entirely true, I noticed changes in fashion and interior design over time. But mainly I think it was in pop culture. When I think “2000s aesthetic” vs. “2010s aesthetic” two completely different things come to mind. A lot of this stuff is subjective and based on individual experience
Except for the pop culture that many people - especially teens in suburbia - embraced, in terms of clothing, music, make-up, and most of all hair styles. My sister was a teen in the 80s, and I saw a lot of the "everyday person" aesthetic at shopping malls and movie theaters. 80s aesthetics weren't just neon lights and the suits Crocket and Tubbs wore in Miami Vice lol.
Yeah, you don't know WTF you talking about.
Yes the actual 80s had a lot of brown decor and smelled like cigarettes in a Iot of places
When I was in high school in the 90s there were all these different tribes: preppies, surfers, jocks, goths, skaters, punks, ravers, etc. Now I look at my son’s high school and every kid likes rap music, wears casual athletic clothes and has broccoli hair. I think Smart phones/Social media actually increased monoculture due to things like peer pressure. Everyone is afraid to commit to any weird aesthetic or be sincere about anything due to fear of being mocked on social media and losing status, this is why everything is so bland and boring now.
Man, that's a fantastic point. The fear of being shunned/humiliated online has pacified everyone and made people choose the safe option. Wish I thought of that! You may be right on that aspect of monoculure fashion for young people. But I think there are still less shared cultural experiences than before (ie, 52 million people watching the finale of Survivor.) Maybe TH-camrs like Mr. Beast, but his audience is mainly young people.
@@LifeofSlicey1 yea I think the generation gaps are bigger now, but more technological than cultural in the sense of fashion/music/art. The remaining boomers and older gen xers still watch cable tv, maybe use Facebook, younger gen x and millennials watch TH-cam and use Twitter or instagram, TikTok is for zoomers etc.
My main problem with the “no more monoculture” theory is that culture is always driven by young people and there are less youth cultures now, so it’s not that people broke off into various subcultures to replace the monoculture. The biggest subcultures would be anime or K-pop fandom, but those aren’t new things and their popularity is the result or westerners having to go outside of their own culture to find alternatives.
Obviously a very complex topic you could do a 20 hour video on but you did a good job of summing it up.
"Broccoli hair" 😂
From the perspective of someone probably around your son’s age. Different groups still exist, I think our generation just doesn’t label ourselves like you guys did. Yes there will always be brain dead followers, but there still exists pure individuals. Like every generation.
Finished school in 2002 and I completely agree. I was a bit of a stoner but very athletic. Not sure which category I fit into. I hated school and intend on homeschooling my kids. Would never put them through that manufactured education system.
It's globalisation my man. Everything is the same everywhere. Im from Poland and if you go out to the streets of any big city you gonna see zoomers with broccoli hair and air pods listening to some shitty mumble rapper while recording tik toks. And I bet that you can see that in New York and London. Western culture became homogenous and stagnant because everything is the same everywhere. Being born smack dab in the middle of the 90s I witnesed insane growth of the technology, the jumps from ps1 to ps2 to ps3 were insane. Jump from ps3 to ps4 was minor in comparison and from ps4 to ps5 is non existend. Everything is just incremental now. We are in the late stage of Roman empire when people are becoming more and more lazy, art regresses and technology stagnates.
Touch grass go live life find happiness
@@SahilKhan-jo3et blah blah blah
Technology isn't really stagnating, artificial intelligence is the prime example. But to be fair, that's not really technology but scientific innovation
Technology is stagnating despite the mass production of artificial intelligence? Also weird take that people are becoming lazy when it's become a common trend in the US, Canada, and UK for young people to work immense hours yet receive little payment.
@@altechelghanforever9906 hardware is stagnating, look up moores law. Real quantum computers could change things up
Agent Smith in the Matrix really wasn't kidding when he said that the year 1999 was the peak of the human civilization.
he also wasn't kidding about the virus known as Outdated farm machinery that destroys cultures
He also compared life in the Matrix to being in a zoo. I think he might have been on to something...
2020 would be more accurate
@@franzeusq"The peak of human civilization being in 2020"? Of all the years to pick, that's yours? I'd love to know why.
He also said that humanity is like a virus. Which it actually is. Agent Smith perhaps was less of a bad guy that we've all made been made to believe
It's because this whole nightmare we have now started in 2008 specifically. Phones, social media, bad games, bad music, and most of all - the first serious world economic crisis.
2008 is like a cutoff point past which little makes any real sense for those of us who have been there in the 90s and 2000s.
2007 was the last year that had any of that mid-90s to mid-2000s feel that we all want to go back to but never will, since today, the world is broken in ways which are already visible through the cracks. It will get a lot worse.
Reading this actually makes me wanna crawl in a hole and die. The world was in such a good place then people had to go ruin it
Glad I'm not the only one who noticed. 2007 was the last good year for a lot of things.
"bad games"
you say that in the same year that Metal Gear Solid 4, GTA 4, Devil May Cry 4 was released and a few months later Assassin's Creed 2.
our culture declined between 2013 and 2016
The mid 90's feel was pretty much done by 2004.
@@1kracuauker797 And we better not mention Fallout 3, Left 4 Dead, Gears Of War 2, Dead Space, Persona 4, etc, etc, etc.
2008 was one of the most packed years in gaming history.
The death of Nerd Culture is probably the most noticeable aspect of Monoculture to go by by. It started grass roots, swelled until it became suffocating, and then expired after End Game.
Broadening the demographic killed nerd culture. Companies appealed to people who didn't like nerd stuff in the first place and destroyed the original vibe. Now its just generic slop.
@@EresirThe1stThe same can be said for every subculture of music, films, art etc. Once they enter the mainstream that is filled with oppertunists, frauds, posers etc. What matters is to allow a growing audience without surrendering to the mainstream. Or what made it awsome in the first place.
So is that why the internet has been shit since 2017
Nooo not the nerds...😭😭🤓
nah that's normie culture. nerds be doing their own thing without the popular cultural wave
I’m in my 40s… I’ve never been so bored and uninspired by society and popular culture. I tend to be very positive and optimistic about life, but man, 2010 onwards has been very, very lame.
Everyone is a victim, everything is everyone else’s fault, and we’ve lost the ability to find artistic value and commonality as a whole. Instead, we have douches blocking highways, spray painting art and monuments, and just… Blaaaaaaaa.
Here’s to better times ahead!
Weird I'm 25 and I actually felt that exact same way around 2010 as a kid. I remember loving early 2000s and then all of a sudden I remember how boring and uninteresting things became. Wrestling, games, movies, clothing style everything started to suck to me.
Im 29 but the turning point was around 2012 for me. But yea I completely agree with you.
That second paragraph describes hippies in 60's-70's, though?
You nailed it.
@Iunanec Not entirely. What is your point?
Social media has mentally castrated this world
From everything that I have seen over the past decade I agree
Not really the internet just opened their eyes, we live in a heirachy to our job's, wealth, social status. I can tell you don't have a job, it's a self interest world. The real truth this is a survival of the fittest type world, maybe someday you will understand that. We are just organic talking virus that's all we are.
Everyone has to walk on eggshells today. You can't make innovative or edgy content anymore, or at least: corporations won't let their authors do it, because they're too scared of social media reaction.
@@souljastation5463 Sounds like a you problem to me.
@@ambskater97 "you problem"????? how????
Culture just went corporate. No taking risks, no controversy. Yet a lot has changed in different areas that are maybe not as noticeable visually. Take the last year with the rise of publicly available a.i. there are loads of changes ahead in the next two years. You’ll see.
then the corpos thought that mainstream culture was without risk, then realizing that the culture was that of a few loud progressives.
The thing with companies in general so that you may call them 'late stage capitalism' is that they have reached their full market potential. There's no more possible audiences to reach organically, so they have to water it down to reach a few more people or make it so efficient that there's no room for creativity anymore. This is all because shareholders demand an even higher profit every year. So the answer is stock market investors, who became more cautious and demanding after the 2008 crash.
@@renaatsenechal I don't know, man. Gaming companies for example, could easily make more money by dropping all the woke nonsense, stop making female characters ugly and just makes good games again. Just look at the popularity of Stellar Blade and Black Myth Wukong.
@@renaatsenechal I don't agree, things have gotten more popular these days without having to be watered down, they haven't reached everyone or everything, the problem IS that they're trying to reach everyone and everything, but not to benefit every individual, only themselves. COD for example. They've made it "easy" for people who aren't that good at shooters, at least for the first few rounds before they're beaten down the next 5 games because they've done "so good" when they were just competing against other weaker players.
@@renaatsenechal exactly. Nothing more to say other than that this is the state of not only culture related industries but the entire western economy. Venture capitalists fear for their profits so they try to maximize profits or buy up real estate or infrastructure in a big way, so they can ensure others steady flows of profits. I just can’t see how this can end well, without the lower classes loosing big time. Even the ones who seem to be well off will probably be sucked into the vortex when the market crashes.
You also have to remember how much of pop culture came from underground counterculture rather than mainstream pop culture. Rock music, indie movies, pre crash video game development and distribution, anime OVAs making their way overseas in the 80s and 90s before toonami and adult swim came on the scene in the early 2000s. You can argue the internet and the instant speed of word of mouth these days doesn’t allow smaller subcultures to ferment and grow into larger cultures icons in the future.
The commercialization of social media and then Covid and post covid is what shut everything down. I said it before. The 2020's is where fun and culture dies.
I used to feel like that too but getting older and learning about human history made me realize we're not the first ones to feel this doom it's been happening though all of recorded history and beyond. and whoever first said history always repeats was a extremely wise person. we go through cycles in society the Internet and social media has definitely changed things that's new but I believe we are all craving for human connection deep down and things will turn around
I think eventually things will work themselves out, look how many layoffs there are in the video game industry. And the Hollywood box is not what it was pre-pandemic. People will just get bored of the safe, focus-tested stuff.
COVID is not to blame - the stagnation of culture began LONG before that.
You sound like a boomer who is like "in my days everything was different..."
@@lf2052Getting older you should also realize that civilizations can and did collapse. I'm sure some Babylonians thought they were just going through a phase right up until their fall.
The reason why the Beatles look like they went through several lifetimes is because technically they did with all the LSD they took
If you look purely at the online space the culture shifts every year or two. That's where it went. Compare the 2014 meme game to now. The reason it isn't offline is because the physical space has become a dumpster fire. Economic failure, demographic changes, lack of 3rd spaces, anti-free speech actions, etc. have all coalesced to make a low-trust fragmented society.
Someone explained to me that their kids never go out into the real world because nobody can afford to drive a car around. Gas is high, cars are expensive and the internet connects them just fine enough.
Makes me sad knowing all the fun I had going out into the world, but the kids will figure something that works out for them. It sure seems unsatisfying to me though.
Even the Internet has gotten that way now. Every platform has nebulous tos that are enforced arbitrarily to suppress whatever the corporation who runs it happens to dislike. Then there's the AI either deleting or hiding every single post it flags as problematic (ie: not the most bland milquetoast nothings possible). And then there's the people who want to shut down anything and everything because its offensive or problematic or abusive so they can look so virtuous online.
@2beJT Thr new generation is so low iq and brainwashed the state will tell them what to enjoy.
Anti-free speech actions? Huh?
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e mass bannings of "offensive content" and "hate speech" which are really just nice words whatever the corporation which runs the site disagrees with, combined with shadow banning and hiding content.
You ever see a comment here that has 25 replies listed, but then you click "show replies" and only see 5? That's because the other 20 were hidden by a bot for mentioning controversial or brand unsafe topics.
I find it rather ironic that we have better technology for content consumption than ever in the history of mankind while at the same time the creation of new content and culture is pretty much dead.
That's is ironic, I blame the combination of woke culture and monopolies that are afraid of taking risks or offending people. Ironically woke culture is basically destroying entertainment and destroying the golden gooses of money making series and franchises and pissing off more people than if they were trying to push the boundaries
There's a lot of content creation, but the innovative stuff is buried in niche subgroups. The Internet and social media is about scale, so for big budget stuff- if it's not a safe bet for scale - it just never gets made. At least it seems like only the safest, milquetoast stuff gets greenlit. My teenage nieces were complaining that the 2024 remake Mean Girls is so sanitized compared to the original 2004 version.
All I'm gonna say is 'Limitation breeds Innovation'
There's better ways to consume and you complain that people are consuming more? That's not ironic at all
Nah. The main difference is that culture is more decentralized today compared to the past where you had the TV as the main and a common source for culture. The thing is that information in decentralized systems tend to propagate rather than be broadcasted, and people have more agency over the how the information propagates.
In simpler terms, it's like you saying that culturally there's nothing new over, say, Japan. You don't live there, you have no idea what's going on there unless somebody that does tells you. Everybody now lives in their own "country" culturally. There's innovation and stuff happening everyday, just not in your bubble.
Early 2000s had so much more to explore online.....blogs and message boards....all written and commented on by actual individuals (with a few trolls for entertainment) ....I'm convinced the old internet has been supressed and replaced by google and facebook based bots......even YT has a set formula with promoting the rise and fall of certain content creators, play the game or get bypassed by the algorithm.
I miss old TH-cam
also TH-cam comment sections have degraded so much, I think 20% if not more comments are bots
@@BananaPhoPhillyits also wayy too obvious how filtered the comments are. If the algorithm finds something even slightly offensive about your comment it will be hidden away.
Yup. Most of the old net has been buried or erased entirely. For instance, you can barely find any images that were posted to the internet before like 2012 on Google Images now.
@@MajimaEnterprises I have a bunch of web pages and images I saved as pdfs incase they ever went away.....I never thought it would actually happen some day
There is a major difference between now and the early 00s. Now the internet is dead, is just a improved version of cable.
Ironically that basically how I saw when I first got on in the early 2010s the internet and what I feel in love with movies and free tv show at the touch of my finger tips, video game reviews and retrospectives, history documentary and all the horror movies I could ever watch and I feel in love with the internet, honestly I mainly just used TH-cam and couldn't care less about taking to people for a literal decade I don't think I talked to a single person online before 2020, now TH-cam kinda sucks so I actually talk to people online because I'm bored and the Internet sucks but I've been basically spending too much time on it so it a habit like smoking is, it doesn't feel like a improvement version of cable anymore the magic is gone to much drama and divisive political stuff nowadays
@@shaneriggs6678 breh Internet in early 2010s was basically the same as it is today. Major corporations already owned most of it. You just grew up.
The reason why old farts like me rever Internet in the 90s and very early 00s is because it was complete anarchy. I mean imagine no TH-cam, no Facebook nor social media at all, no Google even if you're old enough. Pure chaos. Interested in, idk, anime? Let's say Google is there already. Nowadays you'd probably join some group on some social media page and have it all available right away, back then you'd see 100s of weird forums with random people, or IRC chats, made by some dude in his basement as opposed to some corporation. Truly we didn't appreciate te complete beautiful anarchy of it all and the freedom which came with it until it was all sterilised.
@@aw2584 well I was never really cared about talking to people online so I basically just completely ignored the internet until around 2010 , I only reason I even started to care about the internet was TH-cam had access massive amounts of movies, tv shows and game reviews, I only talked to people nowadays online because modern entertainment sucks and culture war politics drama basically makes me feel depressed and kinda just talk to people for who the hell even knows
@@aw2584 That's so true. People built their own websites in html, they usullay looked like crap but they had a soul and the raw opinions and passions of the creators. There were countless forum sites, etc. non controlled or censored by some giant corporation. There was a real spirit of freedom and self-expression. Nowadays everything feels restricted, soulless and castrated.
GTA4 really encapsulates the sarcastic and jaded nature of everything then. the people, the adverts, the music, everything. fresh off of 9/11 and other events, the world was so out of it, that being out of it became it
San Andreas did the same thing Vice City did in terms of capturing the aesthetic of the time period it was portraying, but except with 90s west coast hip hop culture
A huge thing is as technology improved & subcultures fractured into tiny micro cultures the corporate business world consolidated to an extreme. There isn't the ecosystems to support the micro cultures. There is more experimental music today globally than ever before but there are 3 labels that control 90% of music releases. Look at every medium and it's the same story. A few monopolies with total control & a million basement hobbies with nothing in the middle. There are people creating the next thing every day but it gets crushed before it even had a chance to grow. Auto companies makes the same 3 crossovers in the same color with different badges instead of having unique products for different people. Mergers & acquisitions killed culture. Standardized killed creative expression. A soap ad, music tour announcements & pictures of your pets have to fit in the same Instagram box. It's not a cultural failure it's a business choice. We should be in a golden age but maximizing markets cuts it off. Thankfully things do occasionally slip through & there are a million amazing things down in the cracks.
Totally agree. If only we had a way of connecting people to things organically without it becoming bastardized and for-profit as soon as it finds any success.
I agree with a lot of this, but stuff like the auto companies making the same three crossovers has to do with tightening safety regulations (which is why so many cars look the same) and sales. People love crossovers. Car companies see the demand, so the trend continues. What's the point in doing anything else if they're successful? If/when the trend dies, then something else will take it's place. It's always been like that with vehicles.
What doesn't get crushed by mergers, acquisitions and monopolies, get cancelled and destroyed by cancel culture and mods of woke lunatics who are obsessed with controlling everything every hobbie has to preach their narrative and messaging or be silenced and destroyed
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e It seems like internet culture is a little immune to it.
When you mentioned the cars you're right. I think the only company actually making new kinds of cars is Tesla, with the Cybertruck. People may hate it, but it is different and innovative.
9/11 and the response to it gave the western world PTSD and we've been in an existential tailspin ever since. The internet fragmented everything and provided people an opportunity to retreat into themselves.
I'm wholly convinced that the covid pandemic lockdowns were only possible because of 9/11. Those two events bookend a chunk of time that need to be studied.
i for one can’t wait till gen alpha is like “omg who knew a two year lock down stunted my growth”
I don't mean to say you're overrating the 911, but c'mon, if 911 gave the world a global PTSD then we as a species all must be living in a constant PTSD throughout our history, as there had been much and much more gruesome acts of terror not even too long before 911, in 2001 we even still had plenty of people who witnessed WW2, Hiroshima nuclear massacre, holocaust, Vietnam, Korean war, regular terror attacks in post-Soviet Russia, Yugoslavia war, and many many other stuff. I don't mean to devaluate the tragedy, but compared to all the other stuff in the 20th century the 911 was a rather bleak accident that I only remember seeing on TV as a kid with just slight confusion, continuing to play chess with some other kid
Hence why I support Israel
911 was the death of truth in our society. Ever since then things have just got worse as time goes by.
Our governments shifted from pretending they were democratic to actually growing in overt authoritarianism. The veil of freedom was lifted and the ugly truth of what we actually live under was there with anyone who had eyes to see. Our political parties all merged into different colours of the same shit.
The left went from equality for all to outright cultural communism and now it's perfectly legitimised on main stream tv to be racist to white people.
We're all living in a top down society driven by a shadow hand towards war, famine and depopulation.
Yes, 911 traumatised us.
@@iustin898what?
The best example of this cultural stagnation is the now decade year old GTA5. Nobody playing that game for the first time would have any reason to think it isn’t set in 2024, besides maybe the absence of Tik Tok
This is spot on.
Culture has been incredibly stagnant since the late 2000s, this is a fact. It's a concept known as "cultural ground zero", and it has been explored by many writers.
I'm guessing you're a fan of David Stewart? I really enjoy his videos on the subject. I think he JD Cowan, and Brian Niemeier knocked it out of the park with that theory.
I like Mark Fisher and his concept of hauntology. It's pretty chilling that he's dead now.
Because of woke.
Yeah, people are too afraid of offending somebody, so nobody uses original ideas anymore. Best to play it safe and reboot something that everybody loves.
@@finnpendleton4615
I get the Feeling that Wokeness i slowly Dying in 2024 it began arround 2008 and now it FINALLY Starts to really Bore and Piss People Off.
A lot of it also has to do with globalism, neoliberalism, corporatism, and the rise of pc culture. All of these things are eliminating any differences in culture across communities and nations, thereby making everything feel bland and sterile and eliminating any risk in starting something new.
Plus the shrinking youth population combined with the self-censorship they impose on each other means there is no counter-culture. The 90s/00s had goths, punks, stoner dudes, and the whole skateboarding phenomenon. The 2010s and 2020s "counter culture" is to repeat the same corporate talking points about diversity and inclusion to create a more homogeneous society
This, read the liberal manifesto by Guy Verhofstadt. It talks about making a monoculture if consumers through multiculturalism and destruction of the nation state and religions
I was born in 1999. The world has changed so fucking much throughout my life. The world has changed so much since i entered highschool..
I'm also a 1999 baby. The world has changed, but it also hasn't. I dunno, I'll talk to people younger than me by over half a decade at my job and half the time I forget they're not even my age. Maybe it depends on the type of person.
I was born in 2001, and my life as a 2000's kid isnt the same as now, a 2020's young adult. Truly the world has changed a lot in 20 years.
Same here. It's "changed" in an unfortunate way.
everything's different but nothing has changed
Being born in 1993 and actually remembering 9/11, you really see some crazy shifts.
And now AI is here to kill the remnants of what little culture we still had left going on by now..
This is what happens when corporations control everything.
Lmao, like they weren't in the 80s or 90s
@@kleiner3469 In 80's and 90's the world weren't too globalized and monocultured as is now
It's called "Late-stage Capitalism".
@@PseudonymsAreGovno we've been in "late stage Capitalism" since around the 50ies-80ies. The real problem can be gleaned from your own analysis of the perceived cause. In reality the stagnation is indeed due to progressivism (rebranded and slightly modernized communism) and the authoritarian bent it takes wherever it reaches. Censorship, Panopticon. In a way it's a weird kind of corporate "wokeness" that crushes culture.
@@vornamenachname594 you're correct it's called Globalist-Socialism the opposite of Nationalist Socialism history rhymes once again this time
Damn no wonder why GTA IV hits extremely different playing it today.
I'm glad other people have noticed this. I have mixed feelings about it. On the positive side I can still wear the same kinds of clothes I wore back in the 90s and still look current. On the negative side it's boring and everything since the late nineties has just blurred together. Music hasn't even moved forward that much. That's probably the biggest disappointment. Throughout the 20th century new genres of music were popping up regularly. Now it's just the same stuff we had 30 years ago. Fortunately unlike my parents who hated my music I can enjoy the music young people make today because it's basically the same kind of music I grew up with. Young people also seem to like older music more than my generation did so that's also a positive.
Have you been ignoring the merging of rap and country?
Right? No new genres, just new sub-genres, mixes of two old things.
Then again, must we constantly get completely new things culturally? I don't know the answer to this question yet.
Music has actually been moving forward a lot, you just need to look in the right places… although older music is still very popular
@@no_not_that_one where exactly. It's all remixes and mashups of the same old stuff that came before.
@@badart3204 So like Eminem wears a cowboy hat nowadays, or what?
I was having a discussion similar to this with my mom; specifically concerning music. There's no big musical movement anymore like grunge, or, what I experienced in my youth, nu metal. The internet fragmented the music scene and now everybody just listens to their own niche artists; smaller but more dedicated audiences. I now listen to synthwave and not too many people have heard of it.
I’d say the closest thing to a big musical movement is the rise of hyper-pop in like 2020 & artists adapting that sound to other genres
Edit: I’ll say that hyper-pop WAS the last big musical movement with the youth (so far). Its effects can still be felt/seen in pop and hip hop today, mostly
Can't say I've heard of hyper-pop
Plenty of people have heard of synthwave. You sound like a "hipster" who says they listen to "underground" artists like Arctic Monkeys, Mac Demarco, and Tame Impala.
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e not really, no, whenever I say I like synthwave I get asked "what is it?" And more besides... I don't expect people to know artists like lazerhawk or scattle, it's quite niche
Synthwave seems like it somewhat popular
I am a 90's kid. For me, video games stopped developing anything new and interesting in 2015. At that point something happened in video games that rymes with gate, and shifted producing nothing new, but opened up for me the video game media and their focus on politics, not games and mechanics in games. Monetization after 2015 in video games just became predatory, and today you have games as a service.
Considering TV, Breaking Bad for me was the last great series. Nolan is today the last director that I think can draw crowds in theatres and make something new.
After the death of Akira Toriyama, as well as Kentaro Miura, I can't see that anime will interest me with anything new anymore.
Music, I can't say anything new about it as I never follow new music but listen to very old pop/rock music.
Akira toriyama scarcely made anything new, he just made more and more dragon ball. Anime is still awesome
Dune (especially part 2) are worth watching imo, it was an incredible experience in theatre, somethng becoming extremelly rare nowadays
sorry to ask but what rhymes with gate that you are referring to?
for anime i will argue it has actually become more new now... it's just that since avg. age of Japanese is now 40 years...... they now making isekai anime targeting that age group which may appear bland....compared to teenage targeted shonen anime like dbz,naruto,fairy tail,one piece or bleach
@@SoAaron_ Gamergate
Judging by the amount of synthwave TH-cam recommends me the 80's never actually ended.
Was talking with my brother about this exact topic, we grew up in the 90s. I couldn't agree more when you said as children we were surrounded by this boom of incredible and ground breaking art and it shaped our world view. I'd say human creativity peaked around the early to mid 2000s. Just go back and look at the quality of films/video games that came out during that time, every year was exciting. Now we're in a trough it seems and I'm waiting for things to pick up again.
I view the 80s as the peak as it gave us so many of the iconic franchises to this day, but there's a good argument from anywhere from the 50s-early 2000s. A lot of good stuff came out of the early 2000s and it still had that unique feel that the 80s/90s did.
The 80s was the peak for our culture, But the 2000s was the peak of civilization, The mid-late 2000s were as good as they were ever going to be. Everything since has been a series of rapidly diminishing returns despite "progress" being made technologically.
There was plenty of garbage in those years too. You're viewing it years later when we forgot about the trash and only remember the memorable games, movies, music, etc.
Every time is a retread to some extent and the 90s was the same.
It’s more specific example but in the UK we had Britpop take over in the mid 90s, and a lot of that music was heavily inspired or straight up borrowing from the 60s.
@@user-vi4xy1jw7eyou didn't have annoying people saying that if you didn't like this movie or games bigot, sexist or some kind of phobic, you did have people saying that the fans and audience were entitled and spoiled and were horrible people for their opinion on a movie or games, you didn't have the psycho drama that revolves around modern entertainment, if you didn't like something bad back then you just moved on. We didn't have a culture that revolves around victemhood Olympics and constantly trying to piss people off for attention 24/7 like nowadays, we didn't have the drama constantly about weather you like something or not, you wasn't transphobic for liking Harry Potter and you weren't a sexist for not liking the new ghost busters movie
I don't know man. Things were much less polarized in 2008 compared to now... so it is a huge shift but I saw it coming already in early 2012 and 12 years later it has just gotten worse...
On top of what you mentioned though the ''monochramy culture'' or whatever you called it, I didn't have a word for it before but it does make sense. It seemed like a lot of people were fixated on many of the same bands. I think being a fan of Alice In Chains in the early 90s would actually make it easier for you to talk with others compared to now where people are much more elitist with their views. But that isn't to say I haven't done the same myself.
My main passion is cars and I see this shift in that culture too. New cars designs and their ads prioritise touch screens. Even the proven silhouette of the 911 which hasn’t really changed shape in decades, needs a big wide screen inside.
Old cars modified for fun may not have the screens inside, but their connection to culture is to be constantly shared on short videos online.
Feels like the attention economy effects just about every hobby when you look into it!
This is exactly why I don't plan on purchasing any newer model cars. Plus, touch screens inside of cars are a major safety hazard.
Tesla cyber trucks are the new latest thing when it comes to cat innovation design . They`re different from other cars.
@@lovelydolltime8006hundred percent agree. Your not allowed on your phone whilst driving but your allowed to fiddle around with setting of your touch screen (radio, heating, etc)
Worst one in my opinion (about the cars hehe) is what they did to the latest Mustang dash. Horrible rectangular touch screens replaced those iconic gauges and mustangy accents. The exterior still carries the Mustang essence (ugly upturned headlights suck though) but the interior is horrible and unoriginal.
I see it too. So many new cars are nigh indistinguishable from each other nowadays, giving rise to a sort of an "aerodynamic blob" design that lacks the flair/pizzazz/"that thing" from older cars.
I believe that part of it is that to make vehicles "safer," companies just increase the ride height of their vehicles, so that instead of being crushed, whoever is behind the wheel does the crushing of the poor bastard who likes his classic roadster/other smaller car.
Additionally, the point you and others have made regarding screens is spot on; when every interior features a ridiculous screen in the center of the dash, rather than buttons/dials/etc. they all blend together, going back to the "blob" design I mentioned earlier.
Creativity is mostly dead due to creative fields like film, TV, and advertising no longer being staffed by misfits but by credentialed careerists from the suburbs who all had helicopter parents and structured every minute of their childhood.
Film studios are now controlled by financial interests and refuse to take risks, instead choosing to create Terminator 13 over and over again.
Most industries have been regulated into oblivion, making innovation impossible except in tiny niches of the market not yet heavily regulated, like tech and SaaS (which is why basically all innovation is taking place in a digital realm).
We no longer tolerate boredom, because we have dopamine machines in our pockets 24/7/365. Boredom is a great source of creativity and change.
Cultural stagnation is also a consistent trend of falling empires. It was a prominent theme early in Edward Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," for example.
A few things you said were great signals that you understand little to nothing about the world, and are just parroting the broken record talking points of pseudo intellectuals, like constantly blaming suburbia for every problem and bringing up the roman empire.
First of all the best way to create a healthy civilization is the family unit, who have their own single family home and their private space, away from the crowds. Suburban life does exactly that, though small towns are even better.
Second, whenever somebody compares the US to rome, I know that person does not posess critical thinking skills. Rome was a regional power, the US is a global power. Learn geopolitics and you'll see the US is here to stay for good, likely being the last country standing after everybody else is gone.
Lastly, you managed to make an extremely good point which is a big contrast compared to the rest of your comment.
We no longer tolerate boredom. And we have dopamine machines in our pockets 24/7/365. I could not agree more with this. Growing up without internet (I was born in the 1990s), having only 6-7 channels on the TV, being patient while waiting for your favorite cartoon show to air on weekend mornings, were some of the most important lessons anybody can learn.
Even with that experience, this new tech is conditioning it out of us to be patient. You can imagine what it does to people who grow up with this and never learn the earlier lesson.
And another thing that had a catastrophic effect on people - the internet has conditioned people that they're never wrong. Due to talking with internet comments in pretty much full animosity, theres no shame, or sense of guilt, or humility. Its always the other person who is wrong, never you. The same argument that was dismantled on one comment thread 5 minutes ago, can be used up over and over again on other threads and videos till it sticks. And then, you're right. You knew the whole time you were right you just needed to find the right group of people to confirm that.
@@DesertStateNevada
@@DesertStateNevada I didn't blame suburbia, I don't think suburbia is part of the problem at all. I blamed the switch in who makes up creative fields from largely misfits who did not possess college degrees (actual free thinkers) to credentialed college graduates who are more risk-averse and likely less talented. Suburbia is sort-of related to that, but no I would absolutely agree that a strong nuclear family is the core of a strong society, at least in the west.
The point I was making hinged much more strongly on the point about "helicopter parents [who] structured every minute of their childhood" thus harming their ability to be creative. It's effectively the exact same point as the boredom point you so charitably gave me credit for.
That's also wild to assume that no comparisons can ever be made to the Roman Empire or "you don't possess critical thinking skills". Our culture has many similarities to other falling empires, and I would argue that it's just the ever-constant hubris of "current year-ism" that makes you believe America will last forever. There are a number of historical trends that always precipitate the decline and fall of empires, which we are currently seeing. Like the removal of sound money, an obsession with gender and the subsequent role-reversal of the sexes, declining birth rates among natural born citizens and an increasing reliance on foreign-born workers and soldiers, declines in religion, decadence and materialism (Epicurianism in the Roman era), the list goes on. America is technically more stable than other first-world countries and won't immediately fall, but it's historically illiterate to act like there's nothing to worry about with the American Empire.
@@BarnJ Alright the first 2 paragraphs I agree with, and even with the signs of declining civilizations, such as the removal of cash, and the other things you listed.
But the roman empire example no. Look at the USSR. It fell hard, so hard that it changed the world. Yet in just 20 years Russia is back and stronger than ever.
In fact even Italy is still here, way more powerful than the roman empire ever was.
The US is such a global power that it will outlast every other country. Sure economic declines happen, even cultural declines, but whatever can make the most powerful country in the world disappear like the mayans, will make the entire world disappear.
@@DesertStateNevada ok that's your opinion and you're entitled to it.
One prime example of this stagnation is that they are still selling Ninja Turtles in every toy store. This was a cultural phenomenon nearly FORTY years ago yet it still hasn't gone out of style. This would be like finding Howdy Doody toys in the 90s stores.
Pretty sure Batman toys are still sold, and that’s a character who predates Howdy Doody by nearly 20 years.
I think about this every day. I was a kid/teenager through the whole 2000s, and it was a great era to grow up in. But minus the early 2010s, the 2010s had a soul crushing feeling of society becoming a culture of one that is that of fast diminishing returns. Now after 2020, I feel like I'm on a completely different timeline and I dont like it.
Very few things read as they did when I was growing up. I feel so far removed from my little sisters childhood than I do from my parents and even grandparents. And I grew up in a very noticeable different world than my elders. But I have a connection the the things they grew up with, where as my little sister( who's 17 years younger than me) vaguely knows a slight bit about the world I grew up in, but she turns her nose up at it or just doesnt even get it every time I try to introduce her to it. This is foreign to me since I was introduced to my parents and grandparents childhoods and while I didnt like all of it. I, as well as many other Millennials did enjoy their younger year experiences.
Sounds accurate, I blame activist, SJWs and wokeness for ruining the 2010s decade they made everything political and revolve around constant drama for attention and to push their political ideologies into everything
If you weren't a grownup before 9/11, you can't really grasp how hard the world flipped upside down. It's a much darker, meaner place now.
Edit: new car paint with all metal flake removed, leaving a bland cream finish with no pop. That is the epitome of modern culture to me.
Yea the past was sunshine and rainbows before 9/11…..got it buddy
@@urbanlegendd6646 Hank is right though yeah, sure the world was never perfect and never will be. But the pre 9/11 world was much more optimistic it had a party vibe to it is the best way I can explain it. Post 9/11 is like someone flipped a switch and said the party is over.
@@ToeTag9899 are speaking for everyone or are u speaking from ur perspective and experience?
@@urbanlegendd6646 General
@@ToeTag9899 did you experience the 80s and 90s…. be honest ?
Back then, going to the internet was an event. I remember gather around with friends and family to look up a site and wait minutes for the page to load, it was tedious but i remember enjoying it more. Now we got everything on one device and it's quicker yeah, but it feels boring like there's nothing special about it anymore.
I think the perfect balance between technology and life was before the iphone. You wanted to contact somebody? You called them.
You wanted to look something up? You used the computer.
You wanted to listen to music? You used your ipod or mp3 player.
You get the point.
I think there is still hope for the new generation. They just need to realize and wake up.
All excellent points.
Here is the silver lining: I think that the evolution of culture is actually slowing down to what it NORMALLY is in historical terms. Our ancestors largely did live in times where you did largely the same things your grandparents did. Things got better or worse as princely states rose and fell, but the average person didn't feel this so much
I think the cultural shift was mostly seen on the internet and basically we were more of technological advancement era more than everything. I think with the shift of political correctness, the 2010s never got to be truly defined. I would remember fondly how everything was over the top and unfiltered. Now it’s sanitised
2010s big contribution was making everyone afraid to read their Biology textbooks out loud.
@@2beJT...What are you even talking about?
Political correctness and the obsession with politics and victimhood Olympics made the 2010s a nightmare, honestly I don't really feel the difference between 2010s And 2020s from a cultural perspective, it feels like we been in a pot of boiling water for a decade and we might be more divided and political polarizatlized but honestly that was starting to happen even before trump even ran for president, we been in a moral panic and culture war for a decade
@@user-vi4xy1jw7eI think it kinda obvious, how many genders are there?
@@shaneriggs6678 I mean, you have to look no further than Gen Z, the difference between older and younger zoomers is very jarring when the older zoomers are probably more politically incorrect and don’t mind edgy humour. Meanwhile, every young zoomer is very over sensitive and can’t take a joke. It doesn’t help post Trump, cancel culture and just extreme behaviours on such as doxxing became very commonplace. People are essentially extreme ends of the political spectrum to the point it’s almost seen as alien to just be a centrist. It’s really about era built on hatred towards eachother.
I'd say if we suddenly woke up 20 years into the past we'd instantly notice the differences. The technology, the fashion, the vernacular, the types of ads and brands that existed back then.
Even things that are piss easy these days like organising to meet up with a friend. You'd have to be given instructions on where to go, or know how to read a map in real time and pay much more attention to your immediate surroundings in the real world. These days skills like memorising street names aren't all that common, unless you work for Uber or other such companies. Back then, for the average Joe you wouldn't have a smartphone with Google Maps to help you navigate the city. Some people wouldn't even have cellphones, so you'd be calling their home phone and give their parents/roommates a message for you to call them back. To tell the time you'd have a watch, or ask a stranger to give you the time.
Going back to this way of living would be a self-imposed challenge if you were to do it these days. And you'll be quickly called out for not being with the times if you try it. At worst your friends might even get mad at you for being hard to reach if you didn't own a phone and don't have at least 1-2 messaging apps installed.
What is especially striking is how older generations (so people who were adults going into the 2000s) generally picked up the phone when someone rang them. In this day and age calling someone born in and around or after 2000s nets you a 50-50 chance of them picking up if it's not in a work setting. Older people will prefer phone calls or face-to-face to written messages, and will get miffed if you don't answer. For younger generations it's being called that is a cause of frustration. The amount of times I thought: "what the fuck does this guy want?", or "who the hell is calling me?", or "ohh not this again, why can't this idiot just type 3 words on his fucking keyboard and leave me alone already?", or variations of these phrases whenever someone calls me highlights how different our approach to communications is today.
The early 2000s lead to the 2010s where everything got smaller, sleeker, darker. And now the 20s are sort of indulging in (while at the same time critiquing) the "brain rot" content that lasts less than 10 seconds and overstimulates your brain. In any case, I noticed a gradual shift from "gritty", "depressing", "lacking soul" content in mainstream media to more "colourful" and "positive" content in recent years. Like compare the MCU movies from end of 2010s to movies from the early 2010s, sure writing quality has gone down since, but at its best flicks such as Thor: Ragnarok and Infinity War have much more personality and dare I say "fun" in them than for instance Sony's Spider-Man duology. These Spider-Man movies aren't bad films, in fact I do really like them, but only they do perfectly illustrate my point that movies could really reinforce how, umm - fucking depressing life could be during that decade. Compare Raimi's shots of Spidey swinging across New York and landing on old-fashioned buildings, and him interacting with cheesy over the top characters in a vibrant setting; versus edgy Sony Spider-Man swinging across a grey city, filled with identical glass buildings, and dealing with somber melancholic characters in a fairly cold world. That's how I remember the 2010s. Black and grey technology. Minimalism and efficiency everywhere. No more colour. That is until the end of the decade where things were allowed to become a bit lighter in tone, both literally and metaphorically.
Anyways, I kind of went into a rant towards the end, my point is: things have changed. Only, now I don't know where we are going. Have fun reading my nonsense!
Honestly I don't think I would have any problems with going back 20 years
I've chosen to live like it's the 2000s and its given me a sense of peace and happiness in this stupid modern world I'm stuck in. And besides, who actually cares about "being with the times" (other than stupid conformist sheep)?
Some people that are broke still live like this.
yes this is what he mentioned is the rise of the internet and associated technology is easily the most noticeable change. There have been some cultural trends like dubstep and EDM and game of thrones but it doesnt seem to have the same relevance as the past decades many would agree.
Culture became stuck in the early 2000s and itll get weird once yhe last gasp of the current paradigm dies
When do you think that will be?
9:42
I like to say that the Walking Dead had this same effect with its first 3 seasons. I remember it being the talk of the town with anybody each time a new episode would air on TV.
I think this same collective buzz got stirred up again with the Force Awakens, but immediately died down after that movie, because all of its shortcomings and how disappointed people were of it and how it began to divide people.
I would say game of thrones was even bigger
That civilizational cycle of what society finds important seems to be flipping back into the world war phase.
Quality narrative TV is still in the sway of a true golden age. It has replaced mainstream film as the barometer for storytelling and iconography.
This is the best youtube essay i've seen in months. Great work, dude.
We're in the Matrix, bro!
That's why everything is slowing down, they're creating the perfect world to freeze us into!
"Perfect" not in the sense of happy, but in the sense of the most optimized in order to keep us under control!
Lol, I'm just joking.
On a more serious note, for most of history, technological and cultural progress has been VERY slow.
What we experienced in the last few decades is extremely uncommon.
History usually advances in slow, short leaps.
We complain that "modern music sucks" - ignoring two things:
1. plenty of good music outside of the mainstream
2. even today, we still play classical music - music that was written even three hundred+ years ago. That is normal.
Theater plays that were written hundreds or even thousands of years ago are still studies in schools.
We got used to the massive changes we experienced, due to the fantastic technological progress.
Maybe things are just slowing down, like they normally should do.
If it will last, or there will be some new great technological innovation that will change the cultural zeitgeist, only time will tell.
(I've always wanted to say "cultural zeitgeist", yipee!)
Or maybe there will be some massive event that will change the world, like WW3. Let's hope not.
I wish we were in the Matrix, because then the machines would keep us in 1999... Thank you for your very insightful comment. All great points.
I wanted to include this in my script, but I didn't want to get too carried away. There's a concept I've heard pro wrestlers talk about, where you should never take things too far or you can never top it. I can't remember the term for it. In the late 90s, they had guys falling the length of a two story building. There's no way you can thrill a crowd after that, short of actually lighting someone on fire (which they also did).We basically had our "Mankind falls off the Cell" moment in the 80s/90s. It's hard for any human being to top a performer like Michael Jackson.
@@LifeofSlicey1 Yeah, I agree, keep it short and sweet, you don't want to overstay your welcome.
Besides, it's one more reason for us to comment.
If you covered everything, what would we be left with?
Things were good until 2014. Some of the best games, movies etc came out between 2000 and 2014.
I'd say that perhaps gamer gate and later the presidential election of 2016 were the turning point for things
I think it is mostly explained by that smartphones and social media finally became fully universal and ubiquitous around 2014 in the western world - AKA everyone from elementary school kids to your grandma had a smartphone or social media account starting from around that time. 2008-2013 was a weird time where this development was skyrocketing, but lots of people still had flip phones and social media was mostly a thing you scrolled and updated from your desktop computer for less than an hour per day, if you even had it at all…
After 2014, it became almost impossible to survive or keep being updated without it - which alongside the rise of streaming services and the gig economy killed monoculture cable TV, cinemas and radio/Record industry and gaming as well. Algorithms and hyper customized content for every individual made it much harder to make money from groundbreaking and culture altering releases that would gather a big chunk of the population, but it also enforced tastes and preferences and made people less open to try new things - so business related to content creation focused on quantity over quality so that all niche interests in the individualistic smartphone era was catered to. And much of this watered down to nostalgia and already established things via reboots and recycling fashion, music sounds and media overall.
The bulldozing impact of neo-liberalism and woke culture is also a factor; the elite have hijacked cultural milestones in order to "modernise" (i.e. destroy) them and cancel culture makes everyone walk on eggshells in order to avoid cancellation. Finally, preoccupation with pleasing the algorithm in order to maintain your income is another problem. That's some of the worst conditions for creativity.
I stop reading whenever someone uses woke unironically.
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e What's the correct term then?
Lmao you’re just a socialist, but instead of accepting that you actually care about the world and other people, you channel your sadness at the world into contempt and resentment for other people. Grow up dude
Awesome video I’ve been thinking about/ saying things about this topic in pieces for years
But never have I ever been able to summarize it as beautifully as you did
Good stuff man!
I feel like when there's any terrible event happening (that define a period) people tends to look back at stuffs from previous decade with nostalgia such as the 80s during 2000s or 90s during 2010s...
Currently it's 2000s nostalgia because today's adults are kids during 2000s which remembered 2000s differently from adults who grew up during 70-80s (popular opinion back in 2000s often regards the period as the worst decade, a reason why so many movies back then were full of gritty self-serious stuffs)
That's an explanation, but it still doesn't change the fact my Dad could have safely hitchhiked to California to meet friends there (he did) and I'd never try that. He was able to feel connected enough to random people in a way that would have made my skin crawl just 30 years later.
@@2beJTI don't get the point of your comment. Are you saying it's less safe now to hitchhike or that people now are just more aware of what can happen, leading you to never entertaining the idea of it? Regardless, it's a personal anecdote.
theres literally no society anymore
@@bahshas touch grass
@@2beJT They had lots of serial killers back then during 70`s especially in places like California for example . Hitchhikers were sadly the most common targets because they jump randomly into an stranger cars , only to be never heard from again . yes , lots of people did hitchhike back then and most came out fine but few did not ; some of which die in most grumesome matter like being tortured and/or raped before being killed .
This was a good algorithmic score. New sub
Love it when TH-cam gives me and others a gem
Yep GTA 4 did come out in 2024 😂😂😂
You and 24 other people did not get the idea bro.
Gta vice city takes place in 1986 and the game came out in 2002, 16 year difference.
Same time skip goes for gta 4 and 2024, which is the exact point of the video, of how slowly culture is changing ever since 2001
@@hodoupmerI liked the video, it was pretty good. I just thought the thumbnail was funny. The video itself was very insightful.
The people that hated and bullied me for the things I liked as a kid are now the ones in charge of and making the things I used to like.
As. 23 year old I agree but completely disagree. A lot of People are getting way weirder than they were a decade ago
Progressivism is failing, and its zealous supporters are going kookoo
I think he means specifically pop culture. I think people have changed lot in the past 10 to 15 years
Yes, people have changed, but pop culture is largely the same. I was surprised when I see that young people today dress the same as they did 20 years ago.
@@Planeet-Long I've been noticing that fashion hasn't really changed much in 20 years. Outside of tattoos being more common and a few different hairstyles.
I think the 2010s had its own identity. Was it the best? No but it had an identity. However the 20s will be the worst decade ever. This is why albums n movies are flopping. Nothings changing! Like you said we still have 40-50 yo at the top. There’s nothing new and no youth! For example Kevin hart still out here thriving. Decades ago his time would’ve been up. There’s no comedian to take his spot. So he stays. No teenage heartthrob. No boy or girl bands. No variety. Just the same stars from yesteryear and reboots. If you’re old. You’re winning rn. I go to the club and all I hear is 00s hits. It’s insane. We hit a wall in technology and creativity. But seems like the puppeteers wanted this. Sucking the life out of us. Sad facts. Great video.
Media companies are making shitty contetnt on purpose because they want to push a political message, not make art.
The 2010 felt like a retread but at least it was the first retread so it felt fresher.
Basically, cultural creativity is dead.
People who are 40 and 50 are practically infants relative to the people who are truly at the top
What? There's still new up and coming comedians, teen hearthrobs, and boy/girl bands. Sounds like you're just out of the loop.
Thank you so much for this video, I Subbed with bells
Thank you! I appreciate the support.
Fantastic essay. Finally some good content on my feed
It isn't what happened to our culture after the 2000s, it's what has focusing on string theory as a viable solution to anything done to physics, which in turn has stalled us out.
Obvious fashion and design differences aside, if I took someone from 1972 and dropped them into 2024 and hid all the monitors/flat screens, they would not be able to tell much had happened since 1972.
String theory has stalled us out and we are experiencing just how bad a stall out in physics is for the advancement of the planet. Our understanding of physics after about 1960 is the equivalent of Crocodile Rock having been the number one song on the charts since it came out with no change.
Every time I watch one of your vids I look at your sub count and go...huh??
Keep going dude, you're gonna blow up more and more, awesome video!!
I'm grateful to have anyone watching at all, but comments like this are really motivating for the grind. Thank you! Plenty more ideas in the tank, just need the time haha.
I think it's cause the rise of the internet and social media being at your very finger tips at any point and any time you want has caused culture to become homogeneous. You no longer have many different unique and diverse styles of speech, fashion and lifestyle (They DO still exist but on a much smaller scale now) cause everyone is always on board with the exact same trends at all times.
Bingo. Cultural homogeneity and globalism is happening.
add to this pervasive censorship enforced by globally acting corporate progressive monoculture and you get total stagnation.
As someone born in 2004, I feel like I'm at the very tail end of consciously witnessing this perceived shift in culture. I entered grade school in the late 2000s, middle school in the mid 2010s, had nearly half of my high school experiences before the Pandemic, and started College at the end of the covid craze. I was 16 when everything shut down. As a 20 year old, my life experience is short to none compared with the rest of this comment section, but I so deeply miss the last grasps of the analog days of my childhood. Whatever I remember left of it... Big box TV's, playing with my mother's phone's retractable antenna, reading movie listings and the comics in the newspaper, our family's computer room, physical photos and photo albums of my childhood. Oh how I appreciate the little time I had before the world became numb to its own desires and passions...
Truly thought provoking stuff. Well done!
Great video!!! I love topics like these I always find them so interesting. I do agree agree about the stagnation starting around 2008. Also I think TH-cam and Netflix are huge parts of the slow death of monoculture. Also the decline of MTV going into reality tv full time is a good measuring stick. The last time for me when MTV played a video where people would quote the lyrics was Gwen Steffani Hollaback song "This shit is bananas" B-A-N-A-N-A-S. which was in 2005 I remember seeing it on MTV all the time. The same year later TH-cam came out ironically and changed everything.
I think globalization has made world culture more homogenous. Additionally, I think the stagnation really began in the early 2010s.
I love this video, very well put and written!
I always show people that David Bowie clip because it's amazing how spot on he was AND that the interviewer scoffed at him for it! Awesome reference, well spoken and great video.
It was special to witness the jump in technology from the mid 90s to the mid to late 2000s specifically in movies and entertainment. After that it has seem to stagnate as movies from the late 2000s could almost pass as a movie that came out today. You couldn’t say that about a movie that came out in 2007 and compared it to a movie that came out in 1990
I imagine its something that many people notice, but also many question themselves, wondering if they just didnt see it.
i'm just here to quip that light years is a measure of distance, not time. thanks for your intuitiveness.
How was it ever any different? Woody Allen once noted ,"The whole country was tied together by radio. We all experienced the same heroes and comedians and singers. They were giants."
Whole world is arriving at one singular truth. Health, looks, intelligence, power and pleasure that is becoming our culture.
Especially looks.
Man this are some solid ass facts
Gta san and vc were groundbreaking, combining satire and free roam , then aorund 2013 shit got bugger with realism in gta v
We had cgi 3d cartoons competing with drawn ones
We had white culture back then , shows like 24 , songs like you belong with me , shows like snallville and VD
Eminem , southpark and family guy were out of pocket
Deathnote and last airbender came out in that era
Cartoon network, nickelodeon were having their golden years
Numetal , brit pop and alternative, hip-hop and rnb were all competing in the market
Culture back then was super diverse and the world had more nuance and relatability, todays culture just seems like fast food content everywhere
This video needs at least 1 million views! Some intriguing ideas that more people need to hear.
Happy to stumble on your channel. Shocked at your subscriber count. Not gonna stay there for long
1980s culture imo is basically the 70s post disco
I could say same about 70s being 60s with drugs
@@Stephen-vq1wc true lol
And 90s culture is just a toned down 80s, with a touch of black leather.
@@Stumme-40203 that's early 90s. somewhere around 1995 and 1996 everything changed
I been thinking about this topic a lot recently and now I know I’m not alone in the respect!
What a lot of people are missing is the influence of youth on culture. Globally, youth populations have been in decline since the 90s. That means fewer new ideas, music genres, rebellious phases, everything
Our Prof asked us what philosophers and other authors are formative for our generation. The answer is as sad as it can get: no one. Not because no one is reading anymore, but because there aren't generation defining things anymore.
there are they just aren’t as important because everybody already did everything already there is nothing left to do now than just use the technologies we have at our disposal and see where that’ll take us you have to takes risks and not care what others think to do something like that and honestly the world is ending so who cares about culture if the world is dead so is culture
i’ve always seen it as a result of how connected we’ve become. i don’t think it’s a bad thing we’re connected, we have so many abundance online resources as long as we use positive intent with it. it’s just the fact that the system we live in also really outdated too and does not fit in with our united digital world
i do think culture has definitely taken shifts since the 90s, and i think the disappearance of the Frutiger Aero aesthetic by the end of the 00s caused people to view culture as a plateau
idk this is just me. i prefer to live in the present and make the best out of what i have now. sure it’s good to reflect on our past cultures, but we shouldn’t stare. it’d be good to make best with what we have culturally so we can create more of an intentionally positive impact with it, i think that’s what the word needs
Out of all the comments, i feel this is the one that actaully offers a solution. The situation we are it's not ideal, but after all, WE are the present, and it's up to us to make this present worthwhile for ourselves and for the generations to come, despite the grievances of modernity.
I find your comment uplifting, thank you!
It all started with the 2008 recession.
the second half of the 20th century saw an unprecedented rise in living standards for huge numbers of people which lasted just long enough to enable the creativity boom ascribed to this time. as the economic boom tapered of, the wealth gap increased, creativity decreased. look at any wealth gap graph; the curb starts accelerating exponentially upward in perfect correlation with the creative stall.
People complain about how much better other decades were and how they went to go back, but then they say our culture is stagnate because it's like it's stuck in said older decades. What a contradiction.
I can stand our current culture that revolves around politics drama and divisive that we have been stuck in since the middle of the 2010s
🤓
The funny thing is, nobody thought of the 00s as a "good" decade to live in. People hated the music, fashion, and the politics at the time. They wanted to go back to the 80s, and I kinda was one of them. Time has passed, and now people are saying about this decade and wanting to go back to the 00s.
@@TheListenerCanon I never had any problems with the music, fashion, I didn't like bush but that was only because he created the patriot act that allowed government to spy on civilians without a warrant other than that i ignore political stuff in the 2000s and political since the 2010s have been unavoidable and vindictive between left and right, for some reason even entertainment has developed into a battle between left and right with the current culture war that started around 2014 and still continues to today, 2010s sucked and the 2020s suck and even without COVID the 2020s would have sucked because we still have the same culture as the 2010s
?? You most likely use Reddit bro lol. I'd rather live in an era where the current culture was at least refreshing at the time.. you typically don't think before you type, do you helmet head?
dont worry i have a feeling its gonna get real fun real soon. good video btw
As do I.
13:00 It's not that there only so many chord progressions or haircuts and story ideas, It's that we're limiting ourselves to think that. And if you really think that, then you either haven't been appreciative enough of haven't done enough exploring. Martin Scorsese turned 80 years old and he says that he has finally begun to get an understanding around film making
I had never thought of this, very interesting topic, loved the video!
It feels like technology is stagnating too. What can you do with your pc that you couldn't do fifteen years ago? The only thing I can think of is AI and all that does is automate stuff we already did.
Yeah, paved roads haven't changed much in 15 years either :)
@@Alfenium No, they've decayed quit a lot since then. Lotta potholes and cracks that weren't there 15 years ago. Technology is the same. Hardware stagnated, software got worse.
Use more demanding software? In 2009, what could you do with your PC that you couldn't do 15 years before that? I don't know what you want exactly. Lol
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e The software gets more demanding but it does the same things. A great example is video playback. Back in 2009 any cpu on the market could handle playing compressed hd video locally or over the Internet. In 2024 you just try watching TH-cam on a low end Core Solo. Or web browsers, Chrome does all the same shit now that it did back then, it just uses 100x the RAM and requires a 64 bit sse3 cpu. Even games quit improving around 2014. They all look the same, just use more resources.
While I understand your point, my computer can render a helluva lot more polygons these days 😅
I see what you mean but feel you gotta look in the right places. The drug trade in the 2010s and today isnt going to be Italians or whatever selling coke in the city, but new groups selling Fentanyl and Opioids around the border and rust belt. The aesthetic of the 2010s is beards, man buns, vape pens and mods and hookahs instead of cigars and cigarettes. You see way more delivery, food truck and gig economy workers, more multigenerational households. And way more openness about mood disorders, anxiety and gender politics. Also, dating norms and etiquette are wildly different since 2010. To me, thats a world away from 2008. Just gotta know where to look.
This video is an absolute masterclass in video essays. Thank you for sharing
amazing amazing video I can’t wait to share with my friends ! sorry for so many comments it really got me thinking lol. The way you ended it by saying the next iphone steve jobs thing may be around the corner gave me such a profound feeling lol .
I appreciate that man. My goal with this video was to get people thinking and drive a conversation, so I'm happy its doing that! As for your questions: the WW1 art is from the "domination" victory cutscene in Civ 6, and the K-Pop song is Seven by Jungkook.
COVID is not to blame - the stagnation of culture began LONG before that. Also 9/11 didn't have much of an impact on culture, if at all.
No one has mentioned this, but a SIGNIFICANT change to western culture over the past decade is "political correctness". Since about 2010 I would say, our culture began to become obsessed with not offending people. See, in a society obsessed with not offending, means less new ideas can take hold. To stick with entertainment media as an example - there is no way we could have Top Gear (with Clarkson, May and Hammond) now-a-days - even in the early 2010s Clarkson's edginess was making waves at the BBC. We can't have a movie like Gladiator now-a-days, as a heroic white, male protagonist is almost non-existent in media these days.
Everything now-a-days has to be "safe" and can't risk offending someone. Really to be blunt it's Left-wing politics which is a partial cause to the stagnation of western culture over the past decade-ish. Hence also why so many things now 9fashion, music etc) are just re-hashes of something from the 90s or 2000s, as barely anything new can be attempted now incase it offends someone.
facts. something needs to change we need to wake up these people.
@@Dinglebob69 100%. Not sure what will wake these people up.
It's da joos :>)
a heroic white, male protagonist is still every where a hand full of woke flims won't change that lol most of the stuff you loved in the 60 70 80 90 were made by leftist
With correctness I’m worried once the rainbow acceptance bullshit ends people will over correct and make society over conformist and totalitarian instead of the “emperor with no clothes” situation we have here, featuring the destruction of all those social development we made that were actually good (an overwhelming majority of them made before the new millennium)
I was born in 2009, I wish I could’ve experienced the world pre-2010 …
The 2000s were sort of an echo of the '90s, at least in America. More new websites, drastic innovations in video games, sitcoms, boy bands, hard rock, etc. Internet culture was the wild west and humor was less policed and organic.
You def missed a much better times haha
Great video and essay.
This was a great video, very consise and to the point
You wanna know something creepy this was a topic I was thinking of in my head and TH-cam just recommended it to me 😂
Google-ception.
To be fair it could just be that the 50s to 00s are unique in history due to things like advancing technology.
If you think about it alot of human history kinda blends together with gradual shifts in culture rather than every decade being unique- much the same way that technology gradually innovated slowly over time until finally started leap frogging in the 1900s
When you add in the prosperity of a post wwii west I think it caused our culture to "leapfrog" along with tech.
Alot of our modern advancements in tech aren't nearly as drastic on the macro scale as something like a microwave or a space shuttle or a color tv or cell phone were in their times.
Along with that we're a much more globally connected world than we were back then, so cuktures tend to blend together into a sortof cultural grey mash rather than taking inspiration from each other.
More people have a smartphone in the world than ever had a TV (or Color TV) and how do cultures blend together without taking inspiration from each other?
Best video i've ever watched. You are smart beyond belief
Great stuff subbed
I think the jump in technology from 2008 to 2013 was INSANE but SINCE 2013 really ONLY mainstream CULTURE changed to be more ANNOYING and pc but tech is not a whole lot different. My Smartphone from 2013 can still do allmost everything my phone from 2024 can do but my flip phone from 08 oh my god.