THE YEARS: TIME magazine has declared this the worst decade ever.
Calling the 2000s “the worst” may seem an overwrought label in a decade in which we fought no major wars, in historical terms. It is a sadly appropriate term for the families of the thousands of 9/11 victims and soldiers and others killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the lack of a large-scale armed conflict makes these past 10 years stand out that much more. This decade was as awful as any peacetime decade in the nation’s entire history.
Considering George W. Bush was president for 8 of these 10 years, I’m inclined to agree and so is this guy (I think, I only read the first three pages of excellent points until my Pet Peeve meter kicked in that this article is unnecessarily divided into FIVE PAGES just to up page views, which personally is one of my least favorite things about this fucking decade). Mediaite points out that TIME already called this one in 2000, when, fumbling for the right word for 00s, haphazardly named the decade ‘The Whatevers.”
We would like to direct you to the classic film Dazed and Confused which was obviously produced in 1993, far before things began to suck:
Cynthia:“It’s like the every-other-decade theory, you know? The ’50s were boring, the ’60s rocked, and the ’70s– Oh, my god, they obviously suck. Come on. Maybe the ’80s will be radical. You know? I figure we’ll be in our 20s and, hey, it can’t get any worse.”
So because the ’00s obviously suck, the ’10s will rule. She was wrong about the ’80s/’90s thing, but that’s another story, and we’re running out of time.
FACEBOOK: If you are someone who does not have a conflicted relationship with Facebook, do not click on this link – but also, stop lying to us and yourself. Why are we obsessed with it? This author postulates that it’s because of her complex sixth-grade best friend drama! Maybe she’s right, who knows! – At 34 years old, I finally feel like a popular seventh-grader. How sad is that. I am someone with a life. I have a career, a son, a husband, an active volunteer life, and many current and real-life friendships that need maintenance. I have a work deadline in three hours, plus dinner isn’t ready. The laundry remains unlaundered. Why, then, am I sitting at my computer, concerned to distraction over the activities of the people who were cruelest to me during my formative years? (@salon)
RIP: Veteran Trans Sportswriter Dies. Veteran Los Angeles Times sportswriter Mike Penner, who made headlines in 2007 when he announced that he was transitioning from male to female—from Mike Penner to Christine Daniels—has died. The 52-year-old, who last year began identifying as a man again, was found dead at his L.A. home. Suicide is the suspected cause of death. (@advocate)
DADT: Titled “Dont’ Ask, Don’t Tell,” L.A. photographer Jeff Sheng’s latest project consists of a series of stark, sometimes sad, portraits of U.S. soldiers who are forced to hide a part of who they are.
GAY CHURCH: Five years after same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts, the local Episcopal bishop yesterday gave permission for priests in Eastern Massachusetts to officiate at same-sex weddings.
FOOD STAMPS: The New York Times reports that the stigma of food stamps is fading and one in eight Americans are on food stamps. I think it will now be one in seven, because right now a bunch of people like me are wondering if possibly I qualify? The Disconcerting Reality of Food Stamp America America’s food stamp welfare program is now feeding one in eight Americans, and almost one in every four children. This is terrifying for a number of reasons, the least among them being “everyone’s poor.” (@gawker)
GREY: You could think of Sasha Grey as a het porn star, or as a pretty self-possessed and interesting lady who has accomplished a lot both in acting and directing, especially with this year’s art flick The Girlfriend Experience. If you’re more inclined towards the latter, you might be interested in her thoughts on things like the modern family and relationships: “I don’t think it’s a breakdown, I think it’s actually a good thing, because maybe people are learning how to grow and be individuals – for a long time it was come home from work, pregnant, babies, marriage. In that instance, you end up hating the person you are married to because you share no similarities, you have no emotional connection, and you never did. That’s because for one person it was based on family and another it was based on circumstance.” Also, she is the same age as Intern Rachel, who is apparently very underaccomplished. (@nerve)
FEELINGS: Is ‘Emo’ a hip way to police emotional expression? I’m concerned that at the core of the “emo” label is a judgment of both the validity and the presentation of another person’s strong emotional expression. (@bitch)
Two fun things to end this daily fix:
The 29 Greatest Chalkboard Gags in Simpsons History: The Simpsons” is in its 21st season, making it one of the longest running shows of all time. Over the past two decades its producers have churned out over 450 episodes, each with an opening chalkboard gag. We sifted through hundreds of openings to narrow it down to the top 29 for your amusement and judgment. Vote!
Nerd-tivity Scenes: (via @buzzfeed)
I’m so so so ready for this silly decade to be over.
That lady’s thoughts on Facebook are my thoughts on the Internet as a whole. Like, why am I just staring at this screen instead of doing the 8 bajillion things on my to-do list? I don’t know. I just am.
I HAVE THIS THOUGHT AT LEAST 500,000 TIMES A DAY SARAH
Sometimes I think I will just go live in the woods in a tent for a month to reset my brain. Maybe when I come back we’ll have equal rights & I won’t be addicted to Gmail.
This is why I go on periodic hiatuses from the computer/my blackberry.
brooke’s hiatuses are really fun
roar.
ah see i pretty much did that and although was relieved to find i didn’t really miss the internet at all, now spend just as much time as ever on it!
WHO WANTS TO KNOW MY LIFE PLAN OKAY HERE IT IS:
I am going to get an organic farm, detach completely from modern medicine, and live upstate having a summer camp for girls who feel like weirdos to come hang out with other weirdos rather than what they do now which is starve themselves, cut themselves, loathe themselves etc. There will be books and we will make all our own food from the land.
Can I be a counselor? I’ve stayed on an organic farm and picked potatoes. I keep telling myself I’m going to go stay a week in their mud hut and just read and write. Then I think about being alone in the woods with no cellphone signal and I pee myself.
I AM GOING TO RUN THIS CAMP WITH YOU WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT
LANEIA WILL BE RUNNING THE CAMP WITH ME AND I WILL LIKE IT WE HAVE SIMILAR GOALS AND IDEALS SO IT WILL BE PERFECT
Elizabeth you are also hired as a counselor/farmer. cell phones are evil, i never listen to mine, though they are good for checking email.
Dawn you are invited to sign up.
Where can I sign up? I can bring queer YA books!
I will be there and so will be my books. But I feel we need to do something for the weird world, like, write books on the necessity of parallel existences in space and time and how the trees really know everything there is to know.
I love the 00’s! It brought us so many wonderful things in technology and entertainment. It was the start of the new millennium which automatically makes it awesome. I grew up in the 00’s so it will hold a special place in my heart forever.
I’m over this decade also. I’d like to time travel back to the 80’s when all I ever wanted or needed were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
I’m grateful that I grew up in the 80s and early 90s, without Facebook, texting and the internet at the intensity as it is today. While I do think that the technology is life-changing for the better as an adult (except maybe Facebook – I’m in the camp of some people are better left in 8th grade), I do feel sorry for kids in high school who can be hurt so easily by reading whatever is written on the internet about them. I do feel life & relationships were a lot more organic even just 10 years ago, when everything was less of a photo-op and documented to within an inch of its life.
oh my god, just last night i was watching old episodes of glee and the episode where quinn’s pregnancy came out via blog made me reflect aloud that I AM SO GLAD THERE WERE NO BLOGS WHEN I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL. cell phones were like, the most forward thing anyone had.
I had a pager in high school. It was blue.
My pager was brown. My first bf gave it to me so he would know where I was (possessive much?). I think that kids are now updating and twittering and missing out on so much more in life. Not that I don’t update and twitter and blog, but they are not going to understand what they are missing out on until they miss it. And they certainly won’t understand the repercussions for things like inappropriate updates, pictures, and mean things they may say on facebook. Thank the Lord I grew up when I did. Sometimes my Barbies dry humped, but that’s as bad as we got…
We played outside, were mallrats, saw movies. Just yesterday I watched a 2 year old sit himself in front of a computer and begin using the mouse. It wasnt on, and he didnt click anything, but he sure as hell knew what he was doing. SCARY!
i had a pager too! mine was red. when i finally got a cell phone it was like, zack morris big.
I actually wrote, printed and distributed my own short stories and magazines and novels throughout elementary & middle & high school, apparently I was THAT COMPELLED TO SHARE MY FEELINGS with or without livejournal’s help!
no, but i think it’s the eternal debate. on the one hand, i would’ve felt much less alone. on the other hand, i would’ve probs stayed up all night to see what people were saying about me on facebook and trying to guess my best friend’s xanga password so that i could see what she was saying about me and then when i found out i would cry in my bed and hit my pillow and then put glitter all over my face
i used to write letters. in pen, on paper. REMEMBER LETTERS? long, multi-page letters about feelings, passed as superthick folded squares in front of lockers or across desks. now i just use pens for crosswords. sad.
i sent out for pen pals in the mail (they’d advertise like where you could get pen-pals in different magazines that i read, or we would get them via school or girl scouts) and then wrote them letters. i actually got my school pictures every year with extra wallet sized photos SO I COULD SEND THEM TO MY PEN PALS. cuz everyone wanted to send photos to pen pals. i liked having pretty girl penpals for some strange reason.
And we passed notes a lot special folding and so forth.
I use pens for “brainstorms,” notes, crosswords and I write first drafts in pens for shorter pieces too. i always have a pen on me.
LETTERS. NOTES. i wish i remembered how we folded them. we were so creative. DO YOU REMEMBER WRITING THEM IN A CIRCULAR PATTERN AROUND THE PAPER DO YOU DO YOU. my friend and i would write letters in wingdings. that’s right, i said we’d WRITE the letters IN WINGDINGS.
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what do they do now? text? there’s no lasting copy of a text message! i still have notes in shoe boxes. KIDS TODAY SIGH.
i was thinking about this the other day! “this” being Cynthia’s decade logic. as radical as the ’80s were for giving us Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) and The Safety Dance, there was just something about the ’90s and being able to run around in those sweet elastic-y spiral shoelaces with flannel tied around my waist only slightly obscuring my fanny-pack which probably had a beanie baby sticking out of it and a tamagotchi key chain… so yeah, bring on the ’10s.
since there is a simpsons pic on here, can we talk about this:
http://www.facebook.com/2012lisasimpson
wtf
are they serious about that logo?
yes, yes they are. unfortunately. when it was ‘unveiled’ everyone was like wtf and also they had to stop running the adverts on tv with it animated as it was giving epileptic people seizures. its fucking terrible.
oh my god
I don’t really remember any other decades, as I was 7 when this one started (so disappointed when I walked out the door 01/01/2000 and there were NO spaceships), but me and the 00s are cool.
I do, however, feel the disapproving looks the future is sending us. Where it goes from here is up to us. Do we keep living like we’re worth more, deserve more, than the rest of the world? Do we turn it around, figure out how to run this place? Society is made up of people, individuals. Governments are given power by us, and even those people are human. At least I hope so.
(I’m 17… I’m aloud to be an idealist with faith in humanity for a few more years)
This Mike Penner thing makes me feel so sad. That’s a weird comment.
The 00’s were alright. (Late 2000’s I mean when that monster Bush got out of office). I feel this decade has been the “look at me” decade where everyone was just focused on themselves and trying to be the next big thing and just get attention. Everything has been just so materialistic. The technology was the saving grace. I love the internet fro news and my iphone and wouldn’t trade it for the world. Music is finally slowly getting away from that rap garbage. 2009 has been a good year (minus H1N1) and i feel the 10’s will be pretty good if we can just get back to focus on values
I WRITE POETRY AND HAVE FEELINGS AND SIDE BANGS AM I EMO?
Uncanny, I’m watching Sasha Grey in The Girlfriend Experience, ahora. She’s uber cute, but the dudes creep me out… epic fail (just like that 2012 Olympics logo o_0)
“She’s uber cute, but the dudes creep me out.” STORY OF MY LIFE
I think the best part of the 00s was the celebration leading up to it – people partying like it’s 1999.
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Does anybody remember “ABC 2000 Today” with Peter Jennings? I remember spending a good part of the day watching that.
Oh…. HAPPY DECEMBER, you guys. You can’t tell right now, but I’m flashing you.
Uh-oh, I was unaware this decade was awful! I’ve gone from 6 to 16 this decade so it’s been (and will be, there are a few happy days left yet) my best decade anyway. But then I didn’t know what politics was when I was 6 and Facebook has made be literally good at high school at the appropriate time. And I can’t compare it to any other era.
Oh and kudos for the Mean Girls pic. :D
The beginning of 2000 started out pretty bad with all of the holy rollers going, “Y2K! Y2K!” thinking the world was coming to an end and we did get attacked by terrorists on 9/11/01, Hurricane Katrina slammed New Orleans in ’05, the list goes on.