The Bakersfield Californian welcomes 2010 by reflecting on the past decade:
Naming this decade — and we must, because we are Americans, and we name things — isn’t going be so easy. Some decades, at least in retrospect, are easy calls. The Gay Nineties. The Roaring Twenties. The Psychedelic Sixties. But naming the ’00s is a challenge best postponed, because nothing we’ve considered rings with authenticity.
So,
All we can do is look at the evidence that historians and sociologists not yet born will consider. And one thing, beyond the bookend disasters of 9/11 and the Great Recession, stands out: Technology reshaped who we are and how we interact. Social media took hold of America in the last few years of the ’00s, with 350 million users on Facebook, 100 million on MySpace, and 18 million using Twitter.
Sociologist Rhonda Dugan weighs in:
“I’d call it the Decade of Self-Importance,” she said. “Everyone is networking online, but they’re not doing it just to find jobs. They’re doing it to talk about themselves. The ‘Me Decade’ was all about me. Now it’s about me and telling everyone about it. I use Facebook myself. And now I’m asking myself, ‘Why am I posting that I ran a half-marathon?’ We’ve become more narcissistic, and social media has helped push it along.”
Retired sociologist Russell Travis also comments:
“I’d call it the PTSD — the Post-Traumatic Stress Decade,” he said. That name “reflects the cumulative stress from the aftermath of two ongoing wars and the many coming home afflicted with (real) PTSD; the aftermath of a seriously tanked economy; … and the aftermath of the 2001 bombing of the Twin Towers.”
Maybe this is how we’ve come to deal with events just too big and too profound to process — by blocking out the wider world and turning inward, going to our own, personal safe place where the mundane trumps the abstract, the ordinary blocks out the incomprehensible, and 140 characters (or less) just about covers it.
Comments 7
Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist — December 22, 2009
To me, I'll always call the 2000s "the post 9-11 era" because well, 9-11 defined the whole decade forever.
Jon Smajda — December 22, 2009
We’ve become more narcissistic, and social media has helped push it along
I don't buy this. We've always told the other people in our life about what we're up to: chatting with our neighbors in the yard, or with our friends on the phone or our coworkers around the water cooler. If a coworker told you they ran a marathon over the weekend would you think, "Sheesh, what a narcissist"? The change with social media is that we can now tell all of our friends we just ran a marathon all at once, because everyone's in the same place. That new place is much more public than previous places, which is the real change. More accurate labels for this trend, depending on your perspective, are either the end of privacy or the birth of a new public sphere. Moralizing about how self-centered we've become is an odd contribution for a sociologist when the social structural shift is so obvious and profound.
Woz — December 22, 2009
Jon, I totally agree on the narcissist thing. It smacks of generational misunderstanding -- you know, the damn kids these days and their funny interwebs. Why is taking 20 seconds out of your day to tell friends about your life narcissistic? I'd argue it's much, much less narcissistic than those lengthy Christmas letters some people send out telling people every single thing that happened to them in the previous year. Now that's narcissism, and I believe it significantly pre-dates facebook...
Jon Smajda — December 22, 2009
Glad we didn't send you one of our Christmas letters this year. :)
David — December 23, 2009
the zips!
gahl — December 24, 2009
I'd call it the "mediagasm" decade. Between the boom of the internet, Ipods, e-readers, smart-phones, twitter, text message, flickr, facebook, etc. people have had an overwhelming amount of media infused into their lives as both consumers and producers. I think the narcissm referenced to by Rhonda Dugan and less some sort of fundamental shift of human nature and more a temporary blindness to trivia because of the democratization of both access to the means of production of media (cheap digital cameras, videocameras, free blogs, tweets, and through social networks, celebrity itself. Anyone can be a youtube star, and any enterprising person can develop a virtual sphere of influence over hundreds if not thousand of people (remember Tila Tequila?). Beyond promoting local poetry readings and checking out birthdays I don't even use facebook, and I have close to 1, 100 friends. These networks, unlike those in the real world, are low maintenance (often more work to shut off than on), and there's no physical cost to putting out more posts/videoclips/pictures, whether those bits of information are trivial or profound, so its easy to see how we lose our grounding on what's important.
Although, looking at it another way, how often do you see someone say on their facebook profile, livejournal page, etc. that what they're saying is of particular import or should be read by the millions of people that may have access to it. Maybe it just amounts to people not recognizing the difference between the semi-permanence of a tweet or flickr album from the normally temporary information transmitted through say, a physical conversation or text message. People might just use these alternative form of communication so off-handedly, because they're out there, they're convenient, they're free, and they're (theoretically) unmonitored.
Ryan Guerra — December 25, 2009
Naming the Decade, Everyone's Right
After ten years, it seems like everyone is right on what we should call this decade. Who am I to argue the point or tell them they are wrong. Look, with the rise of social media, Twitter, blogs, Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, everyone has a chance to create a reason and a meaning for this decade. We are all right, by you reading my blog (www.theunies.com/blog) you give me a review, buzz, recommendation, or thumbs up to help valiadate my idea.
In 1999, I created a term and wrote a pamphlet titled, "Unification of the Unies." Who would have thought that in many ways I'm right. The Unies - the term created from a Latin prefix based on the numbers between 0 and 9 - not only answers the problem about pronouncing this decade, 00s but it also sums up the decade perfectly.
The years between 2000 and 2009 were about the world becoming unified. Social media sites have made people connected and brought the world together. Youtube has encouraged people to search and view funny videos throughout the world. Today, a family get together means logging on to Youtube to have your cousin show you all the recent funny videos he found. (This is true in my family because in the 90s; we made videos but we had no where to show them.)
We are more connected with iPhones, Palm Pilots, Blackberry's and other mobile communication devices. Today, when going on a date, we don't learn how to accept different ideas and arguments. Now, we quickly search to see who is right and who is wrong. Or we call someone who can help us remember a certain or forgotten memory.
We keep up with people's lives by reading blogs and Twittering about their daily events. Today, the people who comment on David Segal's article about the missing decade name are able to communicate with each other and read their opinions. It is amazing, we have a chance to be connected to other readers.
Even September 11, 2001 helped unify the world. More religions were brought together during the memorial services than at any other time in the world. We also logged in and uploaded our own reflections, experiences and thoughts about September 11th.
Then the Swine flu showed the world that we are more connected as we track the spread and outbreak happening in real-time across the globe. We always new the flu was contagious but nothing like the Swine flu.
The world and the people on it wanted to grow and connect through forums and communities. Look at Wikipedia, a site truly created by the entire world adding and documenting the facts. Imagine people working together for free in order to serve a greater good. This is a small example of a larger phenomenon, open source.
Although, Napster was started operating in June 1999 until July 2001, we saw how the world was ready to interact and share. It was an example of things to come. The Unification of the World.
The Euro was first introduced in 1999, it has unified the European monetary system.
There is a draw back to this crazy and unifying world. We see this with the collapse of the world economies. Not only is the world's finances unified but the reasons why are too. We are going through another revolution, the Information Revolution. The world's economies are changing rapidly since people are able and willing to work for free. Yes, I said the word free, but Chris Anderson wrote about it in his book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price.
The ramifications of the world being able to work together is about to hit a crisis. Imagine how many jobs were lost due to Wikipedia's growth. Imagine how much money Microsoft lost due to the Linux operating system. Imagine how many newspapers have folded due to Google's search engine along with Craiglist's free postings of classified ads.
Google's growth illustrates the Global marketplace or the unified marketplace. Today, a great website can acquire a global marketplace. No longer do you need to go to the local shoe store when you can purchase shoes from Zappos at unbelievable prices and 100% satisfaction policies.
We truly are more unified then ever before!!! The Unies was about unification. Even though every one is right, the Unification in the Unies is by far the greatest example and accomplishment the world has ever participated in.