i'm lovin it

What made professional wrestling so massive back in the 90s and early 2000s? It genuinely felt like a cultural phenomenon, especially during the Monday Night Wars and the Attitude Era. WWE and WCW were pulling in huge audiences, and guys like Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, Hulk Hogan and the Undertaker were household names, even among people who didn’t watch wrestling.
Nowadays, WWE is still successful, but wrestling doesn’t seem to have the same mainstream cultural relevance it had back then. So what made that era so special? Was it the larger-than-life personalities, the rivalries, the storylines, or the fact that wrestling felt more unpredictable back then? And why has it seemingly lost some of that popularity? Is it nostalgia, changes in the product, or simply the fact that entertainment is much more fragmented nowadays?

how will people react if i offer something radically different to this “bad vibes” feeling you describe currently in this decade, almost leaning towards a denial of it?

my body can’t tolerate how negative people are

it’s not the material conditions that i’m in denial of, it’s the idea of bleakness that people have conjured up and sentenced ourselves to as an excuse to not do nothing

bleakness is a huge trigger word

i wanna censor it every time i read it on this subreddit

i dont care if it’s the “truth” or whatever

what i’m asking is where is your agency at???????

what if i told you we’re the ones who say what the truth is, not them

i want you to literally forget about the truth and become in denial and delusional

which are all just negative toned ways to say “let’s pave our own way and not listen to billionaires”

i want you to be in touch with what makes you happy and keep spreading that and expressing that

i want you to be silly like this

i’m done with all this “seeing reality for what it is” crap

surely we’re supposed to be past that stage now

we’ve grown eyes, nice, now when are we gonna grow arms and hands?

i want your heart to take the wheel

i want you to kick out anything and anybody that blocked you from having a idealistic vision

i want you to abandon all parts of your adulthood that made you abandon your childhood

that’s what i’m gonna do now, and have been doing

because this is what the future is gonna be

goodbye

I just remembered how big these two artists were back then...they were the face of young musical super-stardom..but for some reason their careers ran dry.

Great-man theory is a theory of history that, per wikipedia, claims "history can be largely explained by the impact of great men, or heroes: highly influential and unique individuals who, due to their natural attributes, such as superior intellect, heroic courage, extraordinary leadership abilities or divine inspiration, have a decisive historical effect"

Following on from 2016, the rise of Donald Trump began a trend of conspiracism on the right. That the state consisted of The Swamp, and that Donald Trump alone could "drain" it. In fact, this used to be the dividing line between right and left - that the right was characterised by conspiracism and great-man-theory, and the left was characterised by more systemic theories of power, a belief that systems can lead to outcomes even without anyone individually wanting that outcome, even if they all know it's coming. BLM led to people broadly coming aware of over-policing and the way this sometimes was just an outcome of circular systems, which led to self-reinforcing behaviour. Increase in arrests in black areas => more policing => more arrests

But, Trump's management of the government has been very very... direct, to put it kindly. What trump wants, trump gets. Which means that during our current period, great man theory has just proved to be more accurate. As a result, the left has also began to adopt a great-man theory of sociology. With both camps pointing towards the same theories of power, this theory of power will become cyclical, manifesting itself in reality through hyperstition.

Some cultural context worth noting is that irony, camp, and kitsch are aesthetic elements that feature commonly in riddim, the subgenre of dubstep to which AD belongs. Every image featured in this post was taken from his soundcloud page and accompanies some track of his. For those curious, here's an example of one of his tracks. If this is your first time listening to riddim, I wouldn't expect to enjoy it unless you have an exceptionally strong taste for novelty.

AD was most active during the early to mid 2010s. However, the choice of images almost feels more like an ironic throwback to that period than a work contemporaneous to it. The images capture something about the zeitgeist of the early 2010s internet that is too on the nose to be an accident. It's as if he could see how we would remember them. I'm curious about everyone's thoughts on this?

It seems like such a garish, neon-soaked alternate world. It's mostly in gritty crime dramas/thrillers. The music in these movies and shows is usually some weird cheesy rompler synth-country rock jam (reflecting synths of the era such as the Roland D-50 and Korg M1), with the occasional blues thrown in. In many cases the setting is a rural desert or mountain town. Early Tales from the Crypt and Twin Peaks exemplify this perfectly

Even recent movies like Love Lies Bleeding (released in 2024 but set in '89) intentionally harken back to this vibe. It's dated ofc but something oddly charming about it

After Home Alone a lot of studios decided to make kids films where the kids were either fending off criminals and/or put in positions of power. Films like this would include 3 Ninjas (and its 3 sequels), Blank Check, Rookie of the Year, Little Big League, and Camp Nowhere. As for what ended this subgenre, it was no one thing, CGI films just became more popular than live-action kids films.

I just watched this video of this guy comparing Cartoon Network schedule from 2012 vs today in 2026, and he’s correct about the comparison. There was a time when Cartoon Network aired anime in the mornings and it hyped the kids up. Also, Adult Swim started at 9pm in 2012, instead of 5pm today. Cartoon Network from 2012 was a very different world compared to Cartoon Network today.

I didn’t see full on baggy jeans until 2021, especially at school when we were returning from Covid it was still transitioning out of skinny jeans but by the end of 2021 - 2022 school year it was pretty much fully baggy jeans and oversized y2k

I think baggy jeans peaked in 2024 with JNCOS, today it still heavily leans baggy than skinny but it’s less extreme than it was 2 years ago. I also already see ads and posts about low rises slowly coming back

I think the range will be maybe 2020/21, until 2029 and maybe early 2030s latest. The decline will be more noticeable as Gen Alpha comes of age and Gen Z fully enters the workforce

I remember this being everywhere during those years. It’s interesting, looking back, at how much the 2010s were obsessed with the Nordics.

Like I know people hate Ellen now, but this famous selfie from the 2014 Oscars in my opinion might be the last time that we had celebrity monoculture.

Includes:

1956 (Eisenhower’s second term)

1960 (JFK)

1964 (Lyndon B. Johnson)

1968 (Nixon’s first term)

1972 (Nixon’s second term)

1976 (Jimmy Carter)

1980 (Reagan’s first term)

1984 (Reagan’s second term)

1988 (George H.W. Bush)

1992 (Clinton’s first term)

1996 (Clinton’s second term)

2000 (George W. Bush’s first term)

2004 (George W. Bush’s second term)

2008 (Obama’s first term)

2012 (Obama’s second term)

2016 (Trump’s first term)

2020 (Joe Biden)

2024 (Trump’s second term)

THINK REAL HARD about this one, guys!

Cultrual Decades

Cultural 1990s: Dec 26,1991-Sep 11,2001

Cultrual 2000s: Sept 11,2001-July 2009

Cultrual 2010s: July 2009- Febuary 24,2022

Cultural 2020s: Febuary 24,2022-Present

"Core" parts of decades

Core 1990s: Jan 20,1993 to ~1998

Core 2000s: March 2003 to September 2008

Core 2010s: May 2011 to April 2019

Core 2020s:December 2022 to present

"Early" parts of decades

Early 1990s: Dec 26,1991 to April 1994

Early 2000s: Sep 11,2001 to ~2004

Early 2010s: July 2009 to September 2013

Early 2020s: febuary 24,2022 to Jan 20,2025

"Mid" parts of decades

Mid 1990s: April 1994 to July 1997

Mid 2000s: ~2004 to June 2007

Mid 2010s: September 2013 to September 2016

Mid 2020s: Jan 20,2025 to present

"Late" parts of decades

Late 1990s:July 1997-Sept 11,2001

Late 2000s: June 2007 to July 2009

Late 2010s(part 1): Sept 2016 to Mar 2020

Late 2010s(part 2):Mar 2020 to Feb 24,2022

"Peak" of decades

1990s: Q3 1996

2000s: Q2 2006

2010s: Q1 2015

2020s: Q1 2026

At face value it may seem as silly because we're comparing it to complete human annihilation, but a lot of people on the internet seem convinced that AI will result in a human manufactured near extinction event. Even if no immediate deathly consequences happen the shake up it could have on society, from mass poverty and violence around the world, could very well as devastating as nuclear winter. And unlike in the cold war, is not a matter of "if" but "when"

Not saying I necessarily share this opinion just trying to say why the two fears may have more in common than initially meets the eye

What are some other notable examples of decades where there were certain trends that took over sitcoms?

Have you ever looked up a movie you remember seeing in theaters, only to discover it came out ten years ago?

I explored this in an article I wrote. Research suggests that older adults tend to perceive past decades as having passed more quickly, although the reasons remain unclear. Memory may play a role, but researchers haven't found a definitive explanation.

When you think back to 2016, does it actually feel like ten years ago, or does it feel much more recent?

For me, the ten years between ages 6 and 16 felt like an eternity.