Whether you were born through it or learned about it.

Mine is the 2000s.

It was a very mean-spirited decade with very crude forms of weirdness thrown in between.

• It birthed communities like 4chan, SomethingAwful and Reddit. Where, these communities harbored some of the most degenerative behavior and content the internet has seen. They all predate later communities such as KiwiFarms, where it was seen acceptable to post racial, xenophobic, misogynistic content as well as turn select people’s lives upside down with constant scrutiny and mockery mixed.

• Porn and Gore content were running wild and unchecked. Porn became increasingly rampant as there were lack of censorship and places like Rotten.com existed.

• Shock Jock personalities like Howard Stern and Tom Leykis were on the radio. These two are examples whose careers earned them lots of money exploiting social vulnerabilities and putting them on the spotlight to point and laugh at. Tom Leykis’ entire show, revolved around edging against misogynistic tendencies, that prided in seeing women as nothing more than sex objects. Even going as far as to encourage men to see them as nothing more than sex objects.

• 9/11 happens and we all know the repercussions of that event. The government’s response became incredibly fumbled, initiating a blanket war on the idea of Terror. This would sink the country into an eventual recession, it would see laws being passed that gave the government leverages like to spy and track on all citizens. It would also increase the national debt into irrecoverable levels that still remain today.

• Hollywood began their mark on remaking films by decade, starting with the 60s and 70s with movies like Starsky and Hutch, Dukes of Hazzard, The Honeymooners and more. It would be a trend we’d see since as the decades get higher. Despite some critically successful films, Hollywood also churned out numerously awful films although they would see some net positives in the box office that encouraged them to continue.

• The emo wave of the 2000s came twice, both early and in the middle of the 2000s. It was seen as the cool thing to dress up in all black, listen to bands like My Chemical Romance and portray themselves as depressed, suicidal individuals. The concern here is the fact that pretending to be suicidal sparked a controversial debate with mental health. Where it was harder for actual sufferers to get the attention and treatment they needed because they feared that they would be seen as fakers because of these scene movements.

• Tabloid culture took hold of media and media giants such as FOX were manufacturing so many stories around for views and to push political agendas. This all would predate and fuel the current problems we’re facing in regards to misinformation going wild today.