Turn of the Millennium/Analysis

In some ways, The Oughts was much like The Nineties -- however, there were a few key differences that will be highlighted here.

Headlines & Daily Life:
 * In 2001, a certain event happened which made everyone paranoid to fly anywhere. If you really don't know what we're talking about, we mean the September 11 attacks, which occurred when several terrorists hijacked some planes and flew them into the two World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and... a field in Pennsylvania (that plane was probably meant to hit the US Congress, but the passengers banded together and forced it to the ground). If you're really too young to remember, it was a huge deal when it happened, on par with the Kennedy assassination. While terrorists hijacking planes was the official explanation for the incident, a few have different opinions.
 * In the same year, The Netherlands became the first nation in the world to allow same-sex marriages.
 * In 2002, the new decade saw a new country become a free, independent nation. East Timor broke free of Indonesia's oppressive rule and became the world's youngest Asian democracy.
 * In 2003, America lost its second Space Shuttle with the breakup of Columbia during reentry. This tragic event pretty much heralded the end of the US manned space program, although sporadic launches would still occur throughout the decade as it wrapped things up. However, thanks to SpaceShipOne and a desperate-for-cash Russian space program, space tourism and private space travel took their first faltering steps to being a reality... but only for the super-rich. Dennis Tito was the first tourist in space in 2000. By the end of the decade, this would fall from super-rich to merely really-rich (although the really rich would only make it to the edge of orbit and a few minutes of weightlessness.
 * In 2005, the Kyoto Protocol came into force (although the protocol itself was adopted earlier), and by now 191 states have signed and ratified the protocol. It is the most famous symbol of world-wide action with the stated aim of reducing climate change.
 * In 2008, Barack Obama was elected President of the United States and sworn in the following year, making him the first African-American to do so.
 * Moral Guardians were no less frantic than they were in the previous decade; video games (particularly Grand Theft Auto) remained a popular whipping boy, but the main crux of their efforts was meant to do something about this whole gay thing.
 * That, and the Muslims.
 * In spite of conservative opposition, however, the decade was a major tipping point regarding public views of homosexuality. Over the course of the Oughts, especially in more liberal areas and amongst young people, homophobia quickly became on a par with racism in terms of social taboos, and people who opposed gay rights tended to be viewed as religious weirdos. By the end of the decade, words like "fag" and similar epithets required N-Word Privileges to use, and same-sex marriage, considered unthinkable in the 20th century, was legalized in Washington DC (in 2009), five US states, Mexico City, and seven countries on three continents . This trend has continued into the 2010s.

At the same time, openly gay or bisexual entertainers, such as Neil Patrick Harris, Lady Gaga, Jane Lynch, Anna Paquin, John Barrowman and Ellen Degeneres (who hosted a highly successful daytime talk show, in what is traditionally viewed as a rather conservative TV timeslot), achieved substantial popularity when, in prior decades, they would have been shunned by the mainstream. The fact that, by the end of the decade, Lynch and Harris were able to appear on children's programs like I Carly and Sesame Street without anybody accusing them of "recruiting for the gay agenda!" is a major advancement over the prevailing wisdom just five years earlier, when SpongeBob and The Teletubbies were accused of the same.

Of course, a certain amount of backlash against gay marriage (though, notably, not against civil unions) still did occur, most notably in California, whose attempt to legalize gay marriage proved short-lived. It's also fair to say that more traditional attitudes still tended to prevail among certain groups, most notably some ethnic minorities and religious communities, even in otherwise liberal areas.
 * With news media reporting fast over the web, politics took something of a center stage in the American consciousness, though the divisive tactics of the era can be traced back to 1972.

Entertainment:

Television

 * The state of television was rocked very suddenly by the decreased cost of DVDs and Internet access. This time period has become thought of as a "Silver Age" of television.
 * The "Big Four" networks were constantly in a state of flux. While NBC held on at the beginning of the decade, after the end of Friends, they started to slip towards the bottom. CBS had a couple of hits in Everybody Loves Raymond, CSI and NCIS, which propelled them back to the top, where they remained for most of the decade. ABC languished in low ratings in the first half of the decade, then the premieres of Desperate Housewives and Lost gave them the footing they needed to claw their way out of the basement. Finally, FOX stumbled upon a little show named American Idol that would go on to launch several careers and would become the decade's highest-rated show (it could be expected to pull in about 30 million on a bad night). The other two broadcast networks (UPN and The WB) merged in the middle of the decade, but that didn't really help either of them.
 * Cable programming truly came into its own; HBO, backed by such hits as The Sopranos and Sex and The City, developed a reputation as the best producer of episodic television for quite a few years. Those two shows could usually be counted on to sweep the Emmys anytime they were nominated. Showtime would join them in prestige towards the end of the decade with hits like Nurse Jackie and Dexter. AMC and FX would also join in the original-programming game later on, with fantastic results. Additionally, the USA Network has put out a string of successful shows, most notably Monk, which gave star Tony Shalhoub eight Emmy nominations (and three wins). Added to that the success of shows such as White Collar and Burn Notice, and USA at times seems to be in better shape that its "parent" network, NBC.
 * Ratings were starting to become less of a be-all, end-all for programming. When Family Guy was cancelled by Fox, strong DVD sales and solid ratings on Adult Swim allowed it to return back to the airwaves with new episodes - and it's still running to this day, with more episodes post-cancellation than pre-cancellation. Firefly was also another show resurrected by DVD sales, and that got a movie in the form of Serenity.
 * Similarly, networks and studios began to recognize the importance of shows with a "cult audience." Low-rated but much loved shows such as Supernatural and Mad Men seem "safer" and have higher chances of renewal than previous cult favorites such as Firefly and Veronica Mars. The powers that be have begun to realize that a smaller but much more devoted audience can be just as good as a larger but much more passive audience who only are watching because they can't find anything else on.
 * The Star Trek franchise finally ran out of steam with the failure of Star Trek Enterprise and the movie Star Trek Nemesis. Four years after Enterprise, a reboot film series directed by JJ Abrams fared far better. By contrast, Battlestar Galactica is successfully remake from an 1970s Star Wars imitation into a savvy science fiction political fable while Stargate cemented itself as an SF franchise that defied all expectations for its robust lifespan.
 * In the UK, Doctor Who finally made a comeback in 2005, and for the first time it reached American shores on schedule. It spun off two shows featuring former companions of the Doctor as team leaders.
 * The fairly standard motoring show Top Gear was rebooted into its current magazine/challenge/three men goofing around format in 2002, giving us the team of James May, Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson. The show receives many accolades and 350 million viewers worldwide.
 * The "single camera, on-location, laugh track-free" sitcom becomes commonplace on both sides of the Atlantic thanks to the success of shows like Malcolm in The Middle, Strangers With Candy, Spaced and The Larry Sanders Show at the end of the last decade. These shows, including Arrested Development, The Office (both versions), 30 Rock, My Name Is Earl, Scrubs, Peep Show, Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Flight of the Conchords, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Modern Family, and Community (the last two, premiering in 2009, means this may last far into The New Tens) aren't all ratings hits, but they are often beloved by television critics and a small passionate fanbase. Some wind up being canceled by networks who weren't willing to give them a fighting chance, although many - despite their poor ratings - are as loved by the network as they are by their fanbase and are kept on long after a show with its ratings should have been canceled.
 * Increasing media globalization, the rise of TV on DVD, and the creation of BBC America led to what can be described as a British Telly Invasion of US airwaves in the latter half of the decade. For the first time, American viewers could get their Doctor Who, Torchwood, Skins, Being Human, Top Gear and other British Series almost day and date with their British counterparts rather than having to depend on unreliable PBS stations, allowing UK television to gain substantial popularity across The Pond. American networks took notice and remade some of the more successful British shows; the results ranged from the spectacular (The Office) to the... unremarkable (Coupling, Skins).
 * In Australia, there was a huge surge in home-made scripted satire. The meteoric rise to fame of the controversy-courting shows of Chris Lilley and The Chaser, the run of the subversive Pizza, and Kath and Kim's premiere and ascension to national icon status, all occurred in this decade. Most of these shows originated on The ABC.

Film

 * The Noughties were the age of the Comic Books movie. After a few successes and misfires in the two preceding decades, the smash success of Blade, X-Men and Spider-Man between 1998 and 2002 created a boom of summer blockbusters that were based on comic book/Superhero properties, such as Batman, the Fantastic Four, Daredevil and the Incredible Hulk. Eventually, Marvel Comics, after getting burned one too many times by lackluster adaptations, decided that they could do better and created their own film studio, setting up the Marvel Cinematic Universe. To this day, at least three comic book movies can be counted on in any given summer.
 * However, it should be noted that Marvel is doing much better in this regard than its counterpart DC is. Marvel has had great success with Spider-Man and the Avengers films. DC, on the other hand, has only really struck gold with the Batman films. Superman Returns slightly underperformed and got mixed reviews, necessitating a one-movie reboot Man of Steel. DC just seems to be having trouble getting into the Comic Movie groove.
 * The Lord of the Rings films also proved a massive draw, and made the world familiar with the mountains of New Zealand. This led to a brief revival of the epic Heroic Fantasy genre on the big screen. In 2004, history was made when The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King won eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, thus becoming both the first film sequel to win the top prize without its predecessor having already won it and the first "fairy-tale" epic movie to beat out more "serious" or "historical" works.
 * The Pirates of the Caribbean series was a surprise success and had the world asking "where has all the rum gone" and muttering "savvy?" at the slightest provocation.
 * This decade was the dark age of Disney's animation studios, who released film after unsuccessful film during this decade. In its place, a rivalry emerged; Pixar proved to be a powerhouse, matched only by Dreamworks Animation. Ask someone about the most memorable films of this decade, and they'll tell you movies like The Incredibles (2004), the Shrek Cash Cow Franchise (2001-2010), Kung Fu Panda (2008) and Up (2009). However, Disney got better by the end of the decade, going back to its Disney Renaissance roots with The Princess and The Frog (2009).

Literature

 * It was a bit of mournful decade for literature, with the 2000s seeing the deaths of Douglas Adams, David Gemmell, L Sprague De Camp and many others. In 2007, Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer's.
 * The Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys franchises both hit their 80th anniversaries in this decade, the Hardys in 2007, Nancy in 2010. Both original series were retired, and replaced with more contemporary updates. Nancy Drew: Girl Detective and Hardy Boys: Undercover Brothers were unveiled in 2004 and 2005, and have breathed new life into the characters. Nancy Drew has also been going on as a very successful PC game franchise, revealing its twenty-fourth title, The Captive Curse in 2011.
 * The Harry Potter series, while starting in the late '90s, reached the apex of its popularity in the early '00s. It proved so popular that in 2000, the New York Times bestseller list was split into adults' and children's sections due to how the first three Potter books were so thoroughly dominating the list. Starting in 2001, the film adaptations proved themselves to be solid bankable blockbusters for Warner Bros, becoming the highest-grossing film series in history. The books are often credited with nearly single-handedly restoring children's interest in reading at the dawn of the digital age, as well as both creating a boom in new fantasy and children's literature and renewed interest in older fantasy novels, such as The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia (both of which also received successful film adaptations).
 * Starting in 2005, the Twilight series became, in many ways, the Distaff Counterpart to Harry Potter. It turned into a pop culture sensation, especially once the movies started coming out late in the decade. Like Potter before it, it sparked interest in various literary genres, this time Young Adult novels and books based around paranormal creatures (vampires, werewolves, etc.). In addition, it took the romanticization of vampires that began with Anne Rice and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and brought it to new heights, leaving an impact on vampire lore almost as great as Dracula. For this reason (and many others), the series has proven to be very polarizing, with both an enormous fandom and an even larger Hatedom.
 * Though Harry Potter and Twilight dominated the scene, this decade was overall an excellent one for children and young adults' literature; in addition to the two above, Percy Jackson and The Olympians (2005), The Mortal Instruments (2007), Artemis Fowl (2001), The Hunger Games (2008) and more proved to be extremely popular franchises.

Sports

 * Professional Wrestling reached heights of popularity unknown since The Eighties, with the Darker and Edgier "Attitude Era" passing away and the WWE (the only wrestling promotion left in North America during the first half of this decade) once again starting to appeal primarily to family audiences and children in what became known as the "PG Era". John Cena (who made it officially cool to be Pretty Fly for A White Guy) was the wrestling star of the decade, becoming both the most recognizable pro wrestler since Hulk Hogan and the most controversial one since Stone Cold Steve Austin. Other ring luminaries of the Oughts included John "Bradshaw" Layfield, Brock Lesnar (who became the youngest WWE Champion in history before going on to equal success in Mixed Martial Arts), Batista, and "The Rated-R Superstar," Edge.
 * Speaking of Mixed Martial Arts, it too exploded in popularity during the Oughts, emerging as a serious competitor to pro wrestling and boxing. Having spent much of The Nineties being viewed as a real-life Blood Sport and banned in 36 states, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (the leading promoter of the sport) implemented new rules and safety regulations that made the sport more respectable in the eyes of its critics, leading to it growing in popularity across the country. By the end of the decade, UFC programming reached five continents, fighters like Randy Couture and Gina Carano had become celebrities in the non-sporting world, MMA clothing brands like Tapout and Affliction could be found in the wardrobes of millions of young men, and movies like Never Back Down and Warrior prominently featured the young sport.
 * If you had to sum up baseball in one word for the decade, that would be "steroids". If you were a top baseball player in The Oughts, odds are you had to dodge some accusations that you were juicing. Lots and lots of future first-ballot Hall of Famers (Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens, Mark Mc Gwire, Manny Ramirez, and others) at least got accused of steroid usage during the decade. Some of them were even found guilty.
 * In football news, the run-first game of yesteryear was more or less abandoned for a passing-friendly league. At the start of the decade, only the top one or two quarterbacks would break 4,000 yards. By the end of the decade, every quarterback in the top ten would break 4,000 yards.

Other

 * 2009 in particular saw the death of many well-known celebrities. Patrick Swayze, Farrah Fawcett, Natasha Richardson, Bea Arthur, John Hughes and Michael Jackson all passed away within several months of each other. Jackson's death crashed Twitter, caused Google to mistake the sudden surge in searches for his name as some kind of attack, and caused a global Internet-lag. Fawcett had the particular misfortune to die mere hours before Jackson did, thus getting short shrift in terms of media coverage.
 * The broadcast journalism world lost Walter Cronkite, the Most Trusted Man in America.
 * Anime continued to find even more of a fanbase throughout this decade, helped in no small part by the evolution of English dubbing. As for popular series, Pokémon declined (though still held steady ratings and survived the entire decade) and was soon joined by the likes of Naruto, Bleach, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Fullmetal Alchemist. Anime's popularity began to decline toward the end of the decade, however, for a number of reasons, ranging from an ever-greater focus in Japan on the Otaku market to generalized over-saturation. And traditional revenue continued to decline in the face of ever-more-popular internet options...
 * The original Dragonball (pre-Z) series aired an English dub in full this decade, after two previous failed attempts. At the end of the decade, a Re Cut of Dragon Ball Z, titled Dragon Ball Kai, started airing in Japan for the show's 20th anniversary.
 * An entire new villain was created in this decade. A lot of action-adventure and spy-fi shows and films had at least one young millionaire hacker who made his millions with dot-coms and "got out before the bubble burst" (that line is often repeated verbatim.) This allows them to hire a young, good-looking Hollywood Nerd (usually), yet still get all the visual tropes of a millionaire villain (travelling by jet to foreign locations, lots of debauchery, etc.) Expect Hollywood Hacking, generally acting like an Asshole Victim (or villain, depending on where their allegiances were), and living a life of wine, women and song.
 * In the US, Janet Jackson's "Wardrobe Malfunction" at the Super Bowl halftime show in 2004 led to a period of increased Moral Guardianship of TV and radio, especially with regards to sexual content. Howard Stern and Opie and Anthony were forced to move to satellite radio to continue broadcasting uncensored, other shock jocks saw their careers torpedoed, and for a few years it became much more difficult to broadcast risque material. Meanwhile, the rest of the world (as well as many Americans) laughed at the US for being so hung-up on sex. In hindsight, this may have been the Jump the Shark moment for America's Moral Guardians, showcasing the disconnect between them and a society that was becoming increasingly accepting of sexual content -- it's telling that, five years later, they proved to be impotent at putting up much of a challenge to MTV's Jersey Shore.
 * The All CGI Cartoon came to dominate feature-length animated filmmaking in this period, spearheaded by both Pixar moving from strength to strength which each new release and Dreamworks launching a blockbuster franchise with Shrek in 2001. The irreverent, Parental Bonus-heavy approach of the latter company was imitated thoroughly by others. Meanwhile, the Disney Animated Canon would enter a prolonged Dork Age with several expensive cel-animated flops and then CGI efforts that received mixed responses. (For more, see The Millennium Age of Animation.)

Fashion:
 * Ultra-low jeans for women were introduced in 1999 and became the norm by 2004. These were not your mother's hip-huggers. Popularized by emo teens, Britney Spears and one incredibly creepy commercial, they were meant to create the illusion of an elongated, uncurved figure, but for many women, they often led to "muffin tops", where some of the belly spilled over the top of the pants. It was especially pronounced for overweight women, but unless you had abs of steel or zero body fat, some level of muffin top was inevitable. It was also very difficult to sit down without either showing your underwear or flat-out exposing your butt crack. More traditional jeans resurfaced around 2008 and have been on the rise since.
 * Just as waistlines were going down, the hem line of many shirts started going up, creating an unavoidable gap. This could be a problem for any woman or girl living in a colder climate, and had the same problem for overweight women as the low-waistline jeans: they could make the "muffin top" effect even more obvious.
 * This style -- the hip-huggers with the midriff or halter tops -- had been popular in the late 1960s, but the cut of the pants was different, so that it was possible to have an attractive appearance even if you weren't a size 0.
 * Sweatpants in public became briefly acceptable (and still is acceptable in high schools), as well as other would-be fauxes pas like Ugg boots and Crocs.
 * If you were a teenage male, you wore ridiculously baggy pants that exposed the tops of your boxer shorts, the crotch dropped to mid-thigh or even lower. Until the second half of the decade, where you wore ridiculously tight pants... that also exposed the tops of your boxer shorts. Some guys took to wearing brightly colored boxer shorts and blousing them above the alleged waistline of their pants.
 * The low-slung baggy style was "gangsta" chic. Presumably the Afro-American and Hispanic urban thugs that white suburban kids were trying to copy wore baggy pants so that you could not see whether or not they were packing. Same as the 1920s, really, but they imagined they were doing something fresh.
 * Men's business attire shifted back from pastel and bright to dark -- gray, navy, and black were pretty much the only three accepted colors for business attire unless it was, say, a wacky tie day.
 * This decade was the apex of the Fun T-Shirt. Shirts like "Vote for Pedro" and "Three Wolf Moon" became the "Frankie Say Relax" of their time.
 * By the end of the decade, in the UK at least, Geek Chic was the look for guys due to the overwhelming hotness that was David Tennant.
 * America, too. That is, if you were already a geek.
 * For the first time, a visible bra strap could be seen as something fashionable rather than a fashion faux pas or a sign of sluttiness, and bras were sometimes made with rhinestones or other decoration on the straps. They were mostly worn by teenagers and trendy young women, and as a result many high schools banned tank tops.
 * For a short period around 2004-2005, the "skater" look came into style on the heels of Bam Margera's popularity. Baggy pants and shaggy hair grew more common but most notably was the popularity of skater-brand shoes like Etnies and Vans, including over-inflated tongues and tucked-in shoe laces (because shoe laces are so-not-cool). Thankfully, this all died out pretty fast.
 * Skinny jeans, or jeans that are skinny on the ankles, became popular around 2008 and continue to be popular now. They are mostly popular with young women, though there are guys that wear them, usually young men. For some reason they attracted a Hatedom when they first became popular, though that is dying down.
 * Plaid flannel shirts came back in style as well, especially with guys.

Food and Drink:
 * In a word: Organic. That one word more or less defined consumption habits for the better part of the decade. We had organic everything by decade's end -- to the hopeful, it meant that people were truly starting to care for the environment; for the cynical, it meant that any old schlub would pay a couple bucks extra for a cookie with a picture of a tree on it.
 * We also started getting really concerned about the origins of our food. Thanks in no small part to animal activism groups, we had to make sure that our chicken was free range, our beef was humanely raised, and our fish was fairly caught.
 * If you are in the UK then this concern launched the television careers of Jamie Oliver who had a veritable franchise of "healthy" food shows. Similarly there was also Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall whose warts and all approach to food raising from scratch (including foraging) were displayed to all in the River Cottage series.
 * Documentaries such as Super Size Me or Food Inc also contributed to such.
 * In Australia Japanese food, particularly sushi went from almost non existent to showing up in every food court and becoming the yuppie lunch of choice. Melbourne Coffee snobbery became an art form.

Music:
 * Garage Rock Revival arguably began with the release of Blur's self-titled album in 1997. The late nineties thus became an incubation period for successive bands, culminating in 2001 with the enormously successful debut of The Strokes. Rock and roll had literally become The New Rock and Roll. Other bands like The Hives, The Vines, The Von Bondies, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Libertines, Kings of Leon, and The White Stripes drew far more attention in the ensuing years, culminating in the runaway success of the Arctic Monkeys.
 * New Wave Revival came out of the aforementioned movement very quickly. Vancouver band Hot Hot Heat was one of the earliest successes, followed by loads and loads of (mostly British) artists. As websites like The A.V. Club and Pitchfork Media became the industry tastemakers instead of magazines like Spin and Rolling Stone, New Wave Revival became synonymous with smart, versatile music.
 * Post-Grunge continued to dominate modern rock radio, but quickly became the new Hair Metal. Grunge holdouts Pearl Jam somehow became the next Grateful Dead, and one of Post Grunge's few critical darlings, Foo Fighters, becomes one of the biggest pure rock bands in the world.
 * Starting around the midpoint of the decade, we stopped buying compact discs and started getting our music delivered to us online. While the forerunner to this idea was undoubtedly the illegal filesharing networks of the early decade, by the end, there were a plethora of legal music delivery options, including iTunes, YouTube, and for part of the decade, My Space. Online music meant that plenty of bands who wouldn't be heard on the radio (for various reasons) could enjoy unmeasured success. The aforementioned Arctic Monkeys were the first band to achieve mainstream success by giving away their songs for free.
 * As compact disc sales started to slip, sales of vinyl LPs began to sharply rise for many reasons: increased demand from music listeners who believed that LPs had superior sound than CDs, record buyers who were sick of the Loudness War and were willing to pay a premium to no longer deal with it, the increased popularity of indie rock (a genre which had always released music on vinyl, including exclusive tracks only available on vinyl releases), and the fact that record playing technology had quietly advanced (including experiments with digital playback instead of reliance on needles that wore out after time) since its phasing out as a major music platform. Major labels embraced the return of the format, as LPs are quite a sight more difficult to burn to a computer than a CD.
 * Speaking of digital distribution, Jonathan Coulton became the first artist to make a living solely from digital distribution, through a combination of iTunes-style "preview and pay for individual songs" model, nerd appeal, and tons of free advertising and publicity by said nerds.
 * And speaking of the Loudness War, it reached its apex/nadir in this decade (after kicking off late in the preceding one), with nearly every single major label release being brickwalled to the point where even the average, non-audiophile music listener started to notice it. People began to dread the rereleases of classic albums out of fear that their dynamics would be ruined in the name of MAXIMUM LOUDNESS.
 * The other major controversial application of computer technology to music in the Oughts was Auto-Tune, a pitch correction software first released in 1997 that spread like wildfire through the music industry. Use of Auto-Tune was mainly reserved for its intended purpose until 2005 (with a few exceptions, namely Cher's 1999 song "Believe,") when rapper T-Pain used the technology to distort his voice into a robotic, artificial sound. Countless rappers, pop stars and R&B singers followed suit, to the point where Auto-Tune distortion became the new normal in popular music -- and all the while, other musicians kept using it to remove any imperfections from their singing. Needless to say, both applications are very controversial -- the pitch correction for making every singer sound nearly identical, and the distortion for being unoriginal -- and mere mention of Auto-Tune can start a Flame War.
 * Pop-punk and Emo reached new heights of popularity, a boom that started in the late '90s with The Offspring, Jimmy Eat World, Weezer and Blink 182, and exploded in 2002 with Good Charlotte, Simple Plan, Dashboard Confessional and Avril Lavigne. With it came the stereotype of their fans as being wangsty teenagers wearing hoodies, dyed bangs and tight jeans who didn't know what "real" problems were like. The media would often treat emo as the latest threat to your children!, one that would make them depressed and suicidal, and emo kids would often find themselves subjected to violence. The backlash caused a lot of emo bands to vociferously deny that they were emo, out of fear of being hit with the stereotype.
 * Indie rock becomes a major viable genre, with some of the bands in the genre leaving for major labels, although many stayed independent. Many of the bands in the genre have Top 100 albums in the United States - where once that would have been unthinkable - due to the fact that most indie rock fans (as well as fans of other specialist genres, such as jazz and alternative hip-hop) actually still care about listening to a full album, instead of a few singles cherrypicked off of it like many fans of Top 40 radio.
 * Starting from 2001, Heavy Metal entered something of a second Golden Age. Nu Metal finally died an ugly death as new (or just newly-recognised) acts like Arch Enemy and Killswitch Engage completely outclassed them for talent, listenability and sheer heaviness. Killswitch went on to codify the Metalcore genre, which eventually became the new scrappy genre in turn. Young bands like Trivium took a page from prog’s book and made high-level musicianship cool again, with epic overblown guitar wankery becoming not just called for by fans, but furiously demanded. Dragon Force took this new attitude Up to Eleven and their song "Through The Fire And The Flames" became the second hardest song ever to appear in Guitar Hero (screw you, Buckethead).
 * Other tidbits from this busy little decade: Metallica checked into rehab and made an excruciating documentary. The once-mighty Pantera broke up, and guitarist Dimebag Darrell was subsequently murdered on-stage in late 2004. Opeth came out of the shadows and began to inspire something like religious awe among their smallish fanbase. Thanks to Evanescence, the vast symphonic compositions of Soprano and Gravel bands briefly took off before crashing again when Nightwish fired Tarja.
 * And of course, inspired by the younger bands, many old campaigners got their acts together and hit their second wind -– Slayer got Dave Lombardo back, Iron Maiden got Bruce Dickinson back, Dave Mustaine reformed Megadeth, and even Metallica found a bass player who wasn’t a fan Butt Monkey. Zakk Wylde and his Black Label Society came out of Ozzy’s shadow, even though Ozzy himself was still releasing albums and touring regularly. And best of all, the Moral Guardians left them all right the hell alone. Overall, the decade felt good, man.
 * Rap music, particularly Glam Rap, threw off its violent stigma and became mainstream in the Oughts, led by such artists as T-Pain, Lil Jon, Jay-Z and Pitbull. White people who listened to rap were no longer stereotyped as disaffected middle-class youth clinging to an alien subculture, but rather, were viewed in much the same way as fans of any other type of pop music -- possibly a bit conformist, but otherwise normal. Late in the decade, rap musicians were instrumental in the rise of the aforementioned Auto-Tune distortion technique... and also instrumental in the backlash against Auto-Tune. The rise of glam rap has caused a lot of consternation from hip-hop "purists" and older fans who feel that the genre has abandoned its roots in favor of commercialization, and that mainstream rappers are squeezing out the underground and making it harder for them to get recognition. A comparison can be made to the cycle that rock music went through in the '70s and '80s, with radio-friendly Progressive Rock and Hair Metal versus anti-commercial Punk Rock and Alternative Rock.
 * The dominant strains of popular music for much of the decade were Glam Rap (see above) and contemporary R&B (Beyonce and Rihanna being among the bigger names). Dance pop spent most of the Oughts out of the spotlight with an increasingly troubled Britney Spears carrying its torch, until around 2008-09, when Lady Gaga and Kesha (and a post-Career Resurrection Britney) revived the genre and put it back on the charts.
 * Proving that there is indeed somebody upstairs answering prayers, Led Zeppelin briefly reunited in late 2007. In fact, many bands popular in the 70s and 80s held reunions during this period.
 * Visual Kei began to grow in popularity. With the spread of the internet, bands new and old, ranging from Oshare pop-punk to dark Heavy Metal began to gain attention and respect among fans worldwide. (And as a result, non- Visual Kei Japanese Heavy Metal bands also began to gain fans outside of Japan -- note Loudness and Galneryus getting more attention) The genre actually began to decline somewhat in Japan itself along with Heavy Metal, but as the Naughts ended, old bands began to reunite and reform (X Japan and Luna Sea being two of the most well known) and both declared intentions toward success outside of Japan.
 * Radiohead followed up their 1997 masterwork OK Computer with 2000's weird, largely electronic, often guitarless Kid A. Although initially a Love It or Hate It album that caused a Broken Base, it became embraced by the band's fanbase almost entirely by decade's end. The band's next two albums, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief continued their acclaim streak. Then 2008, the band broke from EMI and released In Rainbows on their website. The day it was announced. For whatever price you pleased, including free. Whereas a sizable chunk of the downloads were indeed listed as $0.00, many fans chose to pay and others paid for a premium option that included exclusive music. Even after all this, when the record was actually physically released by indie label XL Records a few months later, it still debuted at #1 in both the US and UK.
 * Country Music entered a weird time during this decade. While country has been developing a pop feel since Garth Brooks in the early 90's, today's country, especially during the second half of the decade, had a pop flair that was much more organic (Previous country-pop acts such as Shania Twain and Faith Hill started much more traditionally, but developed pop leanings later.) The newest batch of country artists are under the age of thirty and grew up in the wake of the massive success of Madonna and Michael Jackson (as did everybody) and obviously have had this bleed over into their music. Taylor Swift is the most famous, but others such as Sugarland, Thompson Square, Lady Antebellum and Gloriana are right behind her. Of course, this is a MASSIVE Broken Base in country right now.

Social Concerns:

Technology

 * This was the age when geek culture invaded the mainstream, and society's love of technology reached levels not seen since the gee-whiz, "science!"-loving '50s. Between the proliferation of comic book movies, the rise of Anime and Manga in the West, the critical acclaim received by "genre" series like Lost and Battlestar Galactica, the growing mainstream acceptability of video games, and most importantly, the increasing reliance of modern society on computers and the internet, all of a sudden it was acceptable, if not even encouraged, for one to be a geek. Celebrities like Rosario Dawson, Vin Diesel and Kristen Bell won fans with their self-admitted nerdiness, video game and comics T-shirts were worn with pride, and of course, there's This Very Wiki. Even the President of the United States joined in on the action, with his geekiness, computer-savvy and ability to mobilize supporters on the internet playing a key role in his winning the 2008 election.
 * The Internet really started developing (that is, of course, if corporate assimilation and conglomeration are to be defined as progress) throughout this decade. Perhaps the biggest indicator of online growth was the consolidation of various websites. Whereas early on, you could conceivably find about 30 sites on which to shop for electronics or search for other sites, a few frontrunners started emerging from the pack. Amazon started swallowing up the e-tailers, Google was the predominant search engine, and Wikipedia slowly became the be-all end-all for information.
 * Friending networks were hugely popular throughout the decade; it would not be uncommon for people to do most of their interaction online by the late '00s. Blogs (particularly Live Journal) pioneered the idea of social networking, Friendster and later My Space refined it, and Face Book turned into a massive cash cow. Internet Relay Chat, an older, non-corporate, and decentralised text-based chatting system, was usurped by Twitter.
 * By the end of the decade, everything that could feasibly have Internet access did -- cell phones were the most obvious among these.
 * Even without Internet access in the traditioinal sense, a lot of things are wi-fi enabled for more simple reasons, including alarm clocks with wi-fi which automatically reset themselves in the event of a power outage.
 * Video sharing site YouTube was launched in 2005. Previously, video content on the internet was sporadic and limited to sites like AtomFilms and iFilm, and each one required a different plugin (like Windows Media, Quicktime, RealPlayer, and so on). However, YouTube utilized the widely-used Flash plugin, was very user-friendly, and didn't require subscription fees, making it an overnight sensation (and spawning a slew of similar video sharing sites). Unbeknownst to the technophobic mainstream, video files had also been traded on IRC for years before the advent of the monolithic, corporate Web sites.
 * With LCD technology ultimately surpassing Cathode Ray Tubes, monitors and television sets are typically slim instead of boxy. In addition technology typically has a slick appearance instead of a rough gloss. By the end of the decade, CRT tvs are largely phased out and even thought the size of LCD tvs would balloon, the technology was also were far easier on electricity and the upcoming LED technology was even better in that regard.
 * The concept of video games being child's play started to slowly change for a number of reasons. The big one was that many children who grew up playing video games were aging into teenagers and young adults, causing game developers to tailor their products accordingly. The Rated "M" for Money trope started proliferating as a result; most of the biggest-selling games of the decade, like Grand Theft Auto, Halo and Modern Warfare, were rated M. This, combined with the success of sports games like Madden NFL, caused a lot of young adults (particularly young men) who hadn't been gamers before to get into gaming. Later in the decade, the rise of the Nintendo Wii and casual video games expanded the market in completely new directions, bringing in legions of parents, women, old people, and others who weren't the traditional demographic for interactive entertainment.
 * While the first Massively Multiplayer Online Games showed up towards the end of the Nineties, 2004 saw the launch of the World of Warcraft, which would develop into a gaming juggernaut and define the concept of the MMOG, ultimately drawing in millions of players. Multiplayer gaming in general blossomed across most genres, with Counter-Strike becoming the definitive online First Person Shooter in 2000. Video games finally began turning into a social phenomenon as well as a source of entertainment, creating worldwide communities of gamers and fandoms.
 * Even as the reality of video games being an all-ages medium set in across the gaming and geek communities, many Moral Guardians remained stuck in the belief that they were only for kids, and that mature content would corrupt their minds. Florida lawyer and firebrand Jack Thompson, apparently having gotten bored attacking rap music, took up the anti-gaming crusade where Joe Lieberman had left off and then some, accusing gaming of just about every social ill affecting young people. Various states tried to pass anti-gaming legislation, and people as distinguished as Roger Ebert claimed that video games, by their very nature as interactive media, were incapable of achieving artistic merit. Even Thompson's very public humiliation and disbarment in 2009 didn't stop anti-game advocates from pressing for the censorship of games. It wouldn't be until 2011, when the Supreme Court ruled games to be protected speech under the First Amendment, that the legal teeth were taken out of the anti-gaming movement.
 * Thompson's Australian equivalent, South Australia Attorney-General Michael Atkinson, managed to successfully hold up the adoption of an R18+ rating for video games despite the fact that a majority of Australians supported one, causing many games that failed to meet the requirements of the MA15+ rating being Banned in Australia. Needless to say, he is probably one of the most hated figures in the country.
 * In August 2004, TV Tropes Wiki debuted on the internet and revolutionized the way in which millions of people viewed entertainment. Hey, who says we don't have a right to toot our own horn?

Education/School

 * America's slipping performance in education, especially with regards to math and science, became a major source of hand-wringing as the decade progressed. It was fear of falling behind the rest of the world (particularly China Takes Over the World) that led to such reform attempts as the No Child Left Behind Act (see below) and charter schools. The cause of this slide is hotly debated; some blame the Christian Right for smothering science education, others blame the growing focus on standardized testing for replacing critical thinking with rote memorization, others claim that it's the fault of the teachers' unions for allowing crappy teachers to keep their jobs, still others feel that bad parenting is the problem, others blame America's stubbornness to adapt to a universal year-round school system, making kids forget information during the summer and being forced to waste time to re-teach it come fall, and finally, there are those who feel that American schools are too obsessed with their sports programs at the expense of academics. Like all things political, this is a topic that you should wade into at your own risk.
 * Implementation of the hugely controversial No Child Left Behind Act had the ironic effect of sending dropout rates in poorer, especially urban, areas soaring. Arguments for and against it were and are quite heated, especially as a school's performance on the tests determines how much funding the school receives. You questioned a teacher about it at your own peril; saying you supported it was (and is) likely to earn a massive rant one way or the other.
 * Emphasis on college was just as pointed as it was in The Nineties, until a massive recession hit in 2008 and many people found it much more difficult to pay for college. Although at this point, most people are saying that in the next generation, everybody on every level of the job market is going to have a college degree (the phrase "a Bachelor's Degree is the new high school diploma" became popular in the US). College is still a necessity; unfortunately, due to the rising costs, it basically means that students are having to resort to student loans to pay for it. This has had the unfortunate side effect of college no longer being "a fun learning experience where you try new things and meet new people," and turning it into a calculated career move, where students scramble to find a synergy between good grades, extracurricular activities, and work experience to give them the best possible chance to find a job in an already shaky job market before they get slammed with massive debt.
 * This is when the much-ballyhooed gap in scholastic achievement between boys and girls began to really make itself known. In brief, girls not only erased the lag that they had previously had in education, but they surged ahead of the boys in the process, with much higher rates of grade school achievement and college enrollment. Where the boys did have a lead, it was in such dubious places as dropout rates and delinquency. It eventually got to the point where many co-ed colleges started implementing "reverse affirmative action" for male students to prevent their campuses from becoming more than 75% female. This resulted in much hand-wringing from media pundits worried that "boys were being left behind" by the new, post-industrial knowledge economy, or (more hysterically) that "radical feminists" were sabotaging boys' education.