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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Id say any individual decade pre 1865.
I happen to think that present day is worse, by the standards you’ve set out here, because:
- the nastiness you mentioned is not confined to fringe websites of edgelords.
- Reddit and Twitter have been legitimised and had everything but far-right views censored.
- Your government is more authoritarian
- Most films are remakes or ‘franchises’
- ‘Emo’ didnt stop people getting health care, rising prices and government cuts made healthcare unavailable to everyone. It’s not a question of merit, it’s a question of money.
- Shock jocks have been replaced by the manosphere. So instead of idiots loling at whatever the outgroup of the moment is, now theyre training boys to be pricks irl.
- We live in a de facto post-truth era, enabled by AI slop. You can’t just avoid tabloids you don’t trust. Basically everyone is at it.
Also, in the 2000s you could go and see a band play a thing called live music. Now, the venues have closed and the bands don’t even break even from touring, if they do.
Basically, I’m trying to say that everything shit from 25 years ago is hyper shit today.
As an American, 2020s and it’s not even close. The rise of Christian nationalism empowered by the Republican party has led to the loss of bodily autonomy and LGBTQ+ rights in red states. We have alienated our international allies. ICE has become Trump’s gestapo, literally ripping families apart and terrorizing cities. Blatant gerrymandering. Inflation is out of control. And we have a literal pedophile in office. I was born in the 80s and I can confidently say it has never been this bad in my lifetime. I am not even sure that we will have a fair election to begin to undo this damage.
2020s. Starts with COVID and gets worse
4chan/Kiwi
I kind of think the 2000s were better in this regard? It was much easier to not know those types of websites exist, let alone ignore those websites, and also to be anonymous on the internet back then then it is now.
The only thing better in the post-2010 world for me is that my parents don’t gatekeep my money.
If anything, facebook/reddit/IRL Christians are all functionally 4channers and KiwiFarmers now.
The 1490s.
2020s, by far. 2010s were the best, but after 2020, the world order I knew pretty much became undone and everything seems to just be getting worse. I was pretty hopeful and excited for the future before, but now we seem to be on an unrelenting march towards dystopia. Much of the societal progress we’ve made in prior decades is being reverted. Also not great when it came to personal events for me, as my dad died in 2021. I guess the decade still has a few years left to redeem itself, but that seems highly unlikely right now.
