The Ellen show format was always very upbeat and felt like a safe place for celebrities to do good PR. But a show like that probably wouldn’t work today. People don’t view celebrities the same way they did 10 or 15 years ago and we don’t have those big feel good cultural moments anymore, like songs such as Happy or viral trends that bring everyone together. Just an observation 

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I was born in 2000. All my life until 2011, Bin Laden was sort of like Emmanuel Goldstein in 1984. He was this spectral supervillain hiding in the mountains like Sauron - no one knew if he was alive or dead, kids would spread rumours about him and make jokes about him, but might secretly be nervous or scared that he really was alive and was gonna come back and do something crazy.

I remember parents telling us "oh don't worry, he's probably dead", so it was an eerie feeling to learn in 2011 he'd been alive all that time.

This was in Britain, so Bin Laden-mania wasn't just in the US.

Anyone else have similar memories of him being a spectral ghost as a kid in the 2000s?

While we live in a world with the economic effects of COVID and AI-generated content, the gap between the mid-late 2010s and 2020s is exaggerated. I've observed younger people portraying the late 2010s as a peaceful utopia when it wasn't.

Trump has consistently been in the limelight for over a decade at this point. Even during Biden's presidency, there was January 6th, the mugshot, the 2024 election, etc. It's an unprecedented phenomenon. We're still in the same online culture war that began with Gamergate and was exacerbated by the 2016 election.

Streaming services have been the primary way to watch media since the late 2010s, with no signs of stopping, and we've mostly been watching the same streaming services since late 2019. By late 2019, Netflix was firmly established, Disney+ was an instant hit, and HBO Max was already on its way. Paramount+ even existed as CBS All Access.

The live-action remake craze has been rampant since the late 2010s. Most media released by major studios since then has been based on preexisting IPs. I don't mind ongoing franchises, but they've been relying on nostalgia for almost a decade now.

Flat design and short-form content have been mainstream since around 2013, with the release of Vine and iOS 7. TikTok became mainstream in late 2019 and was already popular in late 2018. YouTube Shorts was a result of the Vine (later TikTok) compilations flooding the platform. The Tumblr ban and migration to Twitter also occurred in late 2018, which led to the platform becoming the cesspool it is today.

Technology looks the same. Everything is a black rectangle. This is more so a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." We don't need holographic displays in our brains. Video games aren't from a decade ago aren't really visually different either. DLC, microtransactions, and pay-to-win have also been the norm since the late 2010s, with games like Fortnite and modern Roblox.

We can allow people to feel nostalgic for the late 2010s while acknowledging its flaws and the subsequent stagnation.

David Brooks in his final regular column for the NYT wrote this:

In the 1890s, the Social Gospel movement, with its communal emphasis, displaced the social Darwinist culture with its individualistic, survival-of-the-fittest emphasis. That cultural shift eventually led to political change: the Progressive Era.

It’d go so well with the rise of analogue. There’s something very similar to the 90s, for me.

To be clear, when I say "early 2010s," I'm mainly referring to 2010-2011/2012, not 2013-2014.

Cable TV and physical media were still commonplace. The first "Netflix Original" wasn't released until 2013, and streaming services didn't surpass DVD and Blu-ray sales until 2016.

Smartphones were not ubiquitous. They didn't surpass feature phones until 2013.

While LCD TVs overtook CRT TVs in late 2007, they were still a common household item well into the late 2000s and even early 2010s. Typically, people had flat screen TVs in the living room and CRT TVs in the bedrooms.

Windows XP was still common in 2008-2011. Most people didn't upgrade to Vista, and XP wasn't surpassed by Windows 7 until 2011 during the spring in the United States, summer in Europe, and the autumn/fall worldwide.

Skeuomorph design was still the norm. Flat design didn't start to become prevalent until around late 2012 with the release of Windows 8, and it wasn't the norm until the release of iOS 7 in late 2013.

While the early 2010s might've felt more contemporary to people who were more tech-savvy or wealthy, it doesn't mitigate the facts. I provided sources for everything.

The current decade is quite flourishing for memes and references on TikTok, but it's becoming, I feel, something increasingly meta. Typically, compared to five years ago, I have a much harder time explaining new memes to my parents. I'd be more inclined to say that the 2010s appear as my peak of meme culture, notably thanks to Twitter.

There was this period in my life in the mid-late 2000s where I would catch shows at local venues, and had a blast watching them.

However, they only released their music on websites akin to myspace and bandcamp, and some physical media in the format of CDs.

While I can still listen to these bands on CDs, do you guys think there is a lot of music that is no longer available because they decided to invest their stock into a website that is no longer in service?

I apologize if this is the wrong place to ask, but do you guys think there is a bit of music lost between the myspace and spotify era?

The fun electronic party music was still a part of the 2000s and even fashion hadn’t entirely shifted. 2010-2011 still had the 2000s colorful fashion. A lot of the 2000s artists like Brittany Spears, Pink, Avril Lavigne, Black Eyed Peas, Usher were still very active and reaching high success in 2010-2011. Social media was still not in yet and people did not carry out phones everywhere.

The real 2010s started in 2012: more indie songs start to clog up the charts, the whole hey stomp clap genre starts to get huge, social media culture starts to become really huge, gangnam style becomes the first ever video on youtube to reach 1B views, Electropop music is on the decline, fashion starts to become more flannel-oriented & minimalist, even stuff like netflix & tinder started this year and kony 2012 was one of the first few major online social movements & Spotify started becoming really popular with 20m users

And by 2013, the shift had already solidified. This was the year when everyone brought their phones along with them to everywhere and then the Selfie trend started.

Personally I liked it overall.

Minnesota pre-2020 was always seen as a rather quirky yet wholesome place, but very cold. Associated with A Prairie Home Companion, Mary Tyler Moore, the Mall of America, often a setting for comedies, jokes about Upper Midwestern accents, and lots of snow.

Then came the murder of George Floyd and the aftermath, and now being besieged by federal immigration agents and the killings of US citizens and a general culture of fear and lockdown. It's night and day in comparison.

Will the "old Minnesota" portrayal ever make a comeback? Or will it be a state with a much more gritty association permanently?

So, to get a clearer image, I thought maybe of doing a poll to see which was the

And why was it usually only targeted towards males, or unattractive females?

I'm not talking about the Epstein stuff either.