Point of this doc is to situate myself, feel more grounded… It’s going to be a substack post
Game of Thrones decade, 2011-2019
Louis CK
Jan 2010 was the first time in ~15-16 years that I didn’t have to go to school. I had an unknown number of months of free time before I had to enlist in the military (found out in Feb that I was enlisting in April), and it felt like paradise. The most free phase of my life
I worked in marketing for a software company. We used to use the phrase “digital marketing” then, and now it seems quaint and dated – what marketing doesn’t have a digital component now that everyone has a smartphone?
music
Art
News
Apps
Quora
Married
Army
Got a job
Left my job
Decade began with a global financial crisis, I didn’t really feel it because I was in the military at the time
Arab spring
Digital music sales topped CD sales in 2012
50 shades best selling book of the decade
Age of streaming
2010 – inception + social network
Inception was the big movie that launched the decade with the bwongs that now come in every movie trailer. The Social Network also came out that year, and black swan, megamind, easy A, tangled, love and other drugs, httyd, despicable me, 127 hrs, eat pray love,
mass effect 2, god of war 3, bioshock 2,
iPad released
(wrote this in 2020) I don’t want to wade too deep into this, but I wanna say that 2011 was a different world. Gay marriage was still not fully legal in the US until 2015, and even in 2014 I didn’t think it would happen for 10-20 years. I don’t think I understood “internalized racism” until ~2016
In 2012, The Office aired an episode with blackface in it. They’ve since edited out those scenes and apologised for them. I’m not sure if they should be edited out, but I do think it’s good of them apologise for them in retrospect. Still, my point is…
It’s not quite fair to single out individual utterances of racism from the past and frame it as though the person who uttered it was a singularly terrible person for having ever said it. All manner of bigotry – racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia – was in the *cultural ether*
I’m not looking to defend or protect anyone. I’m trying to be fair in my assessments. Here’s a thread about how I remember literally everyone in my life around me laughing at gayness and transness. It was set up that way in the media we all consumed
I can tell you what I’d do if someone say, found a video of me and my friends laughing in 2004 saying “that’s so gay” “u f*ggot”, “what a r*tard” and so on. I’d apologise. Sincerely, I never meant to hurt anybody with any of those utterances. I didn’t know then. I know better now
I remember when my friends and I – guys and girls both – watched these scenes, we didn’t think twice about it. It seemed funny at the time, and harmless. Maybe the girls had a different perspective they didn’t share with the guys bc they couldn’t trust us
Yea to be clear I’m not saying we should simply overlook and/or easily forgive past mistakes simply because they were in the past. I think it’s important for us to acknowledge our mistakes. A lot of the social grace required here is hard to codify
This would’ve been around… 2006? It makes me *extremely* uncomfortable to remember. I remember there was venom in my voice. Where did that come from!?! I must have learned it from somewhere.
Like, recently when that Yoho guy called AOC that? Whatever produced that utterance, I had some version of that programming in me too. It would be disingenuous of me to pretend otherwise. It takes time and effort to uninstall the venomous bloatware that society saddles us with
There’s an eternal tension here between the concept of individuals and the concept of community. And this goes to the heart of some of the oldest questions about responsibility. It’s neither simple nor easy to resolve. We just have to keep trying our best
But it gets more complicated when we talk about groups of people.
There are always fresh new people to commit abuse, and each new abuser comes equipped with the plausible claim that they didn’t know better.
The people receiving the abuse, on the other hand, remain the same. (thinking about apologies thread)
Oceans: Where Feet May Fall Billboard ranked it as the No. 1 Christian song of the 2010s decade.
2011 – occupy wall street, steve jobs died
2011 movies: in time, sucker punch, moneyball, men first class, fast five, bridesmaids, kungfupanda2,
uncharted 3, skyrim, arkham city, dead space, infamous 2,
Slutwalk was extremely 2011. It wouldn’t have happened in 2001 or 2021. It repeated annually in some places, seems like there was one in Tel Aviv in 2018, but nobody really cares anymore afaict, not at the zeitgeist level
David Deutsch published The Beginning of Infinity
Adam Gopnik, the information, David Graeber (RIP) published Debt
OkCupid “mathematics of beauty” blogpost
2012 – avengers
2012, life of pi, wallflower, dark knight rises, avengers,
Tinder founded
Lance armstrong disgraced
2013 – gta v, Snowden leaks
2013 great gatsby, her, man of steel, elysium, snow piercer, the internship, jobs, ender’s game, pacific rim, frozen
gta v, and the ad
Breaking bad finished, rick and morty, attack on titan
2014 –
2014 interstellar, boyhood, divergent, lucy, fault in our stars, whiplash, ex machine, edge of tomorrow, american sniper, gone girl, kinsman, robocop remake, john wick,
Bojack horseman
chris rock interview. joke about cosby
in November 2014, I went nuclear on all my social media platforms – unfriended and unfollowed everybody on all fronts. what’s surprising when I reread this is to see that it was a direct consequence of me watching Everything Is A Remix
2015
2015 big short, martian, creed, 50 shades, the intern, jupiter ascending, inside out, mad max,bajirao mastani, force awakens
Discord released, Apple Watch
2016 – pokemon go
2016 la la land, arrival, zootopia, hidden figures, moana, moonlight
History of japan
“sometimes i see a really well-manicured woman giving 2016 lifestyle influencer vibes on tiktok and it’s like what is this bitch doing here. swipe no thanks please give me another person rambling in their car while drinking that panera meth drink” (Chelsea)
2017 – #metoo
2017 Get Out, greatest showman, wonder woman
History of entire world
cosby goes to trial
2018 – tiktok
2018 black panther, crazy rich asians, star is born, vikander tomb raider,
Tiktok goes global
2019
2019 endgame, captain marvel, parasite, joker
2011 – rebecca black’s friday, egg’s platform rant, steve jobs died in october, occupy wall street
Marvel decade – iron man was 2007
Gay marriage being legalised federally in the US came as a surprise in 2015. I remember even in 2014 I didn’t think it would happen for another 10-20 years. Gay people were still a punchline in the 2000s. Ms congeniality had a lesbian. Representations of gay people in popular media is an interesting Q.
2010 I started a Facebook group that was named “\(n_n)/“, pronounced “enn”, like the letter n.
2011 Quora was compelling
2012 buzzfeed was taking off, CEO Jonah Peretti was saying things like “if people become the distribution network, that should be something good for media, good for reporting, and good for journalism”
Kony 2012 what was up with that
50 shades of gray was released on feb 13, 2015
LKY died 2015
Elizabeth Holmes is on Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people, her profile written by Henry Kissinger who describes her as “somewhat ethereal”
hamilton off-broadway premier
Me too happened in 2017, that was a reckoning.
Slutwalk 2012? A decade later protests in Iran
When exactly did gamergate happen? Feels like 2014ish? Anita sarkeesian?
Trump 2016. Instructive how loads of people acted like it was impossible for him to win. And lots of people even kinda liked him when he was a celebrity until he became a candidate
Cancel Colbert, suey park
Personal history, I left my job 2018, started patreon 2019?
late 2019: dave Chappell sticks n stones, joker movie incel, blizzard banned blitzchung, adobe venezuela, emma watson self-partnered, emotional labor, cybertruck, ok boomer, away eco,
Yang gang 2020