10 pop culture trends that defined the decade

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The 2000s: THE DECADE IN POP CULTURE Everyone's a celebrity This was the decade when everyone became a celebrity. Well, almost everyone. The past 10 years didn't invent the concept of celebrity; they just broadened the definition of the term to a ridiculous extent. More people than ever have achieved some minor level of notoriety. As the film The Truman Show shrewdly predicted back in 1998, voyeurism and technology are the twin engines that propelled this shift. Just ask Richard Heene, now-famous (and infamous) father of the "balloon boy." His story — a twisted amalgam of reality TV, fame-whoring, all-news channel coverage and breathless tweets — couldn't have happened in quite the same way 10 years ago. The lines between entertainment, personal narrative and news have become irrevocably blurred. Here are 10 pop culture trends that shaped the decade. 1. Reality TV Before Y2K, we'd never seen fame-hungry nobodies devouring bugs or getting fired by a guy with a bad comb-over. So-called "reality programming" transformed TV and produced some of the decade's highest ratings. Compared with one-hour episodic dramas, these social experiments and glitzy talent competitions are dead cheap to make, so they won't go away anytime soon. Sneer if you will, but some of these shows (The Amazing Race, Dragon's Den, the first few seasons of Survivor) are as compelling as anything on the tube. Then again, the genre is also a cesspool of egotism, prurience and voyeurism. Exhibit A: A drunken Verne "Mini-Me" Troyer urinating on a living room carpet on The Surreal Life. Now there's a visual that's impossible to erase from your memory. 2. YouTube and the art of the viral video It's hard to believe that YouTube has only been around since November 2005, when three former PayPal employees in California created this video-sharing site. It was a quantum leap forward, making it remarkably easy to post footage online. The enterprise took off immediately; by the end of '05, several videos — including the SNL digital short Lazy Sunday — had accumulated millions of views and prompted the phrase "going viral" to, well, go viral. Now, of course, YouTube is a sublime repository for archival clips and the go-to URL for conspiracy theorists, scatological experts, pop culture commentators and unsigned musicians looking for their big break. Watching video online has become a central part of our culture. YouTube is the global town hall that helped make it happen, a star-making machine for micro-celebrities. 3. Celebrity gawking, 21st-century style Celebrity scandals have always attracted an audience, but during the past decade, many stars learned the hard way that the scrutiny had intensified, thanks largely to technology. Would Michael Richards's career have imploded if the website TMZ hadn't posted the cell phone video of his repugnant response to two black hecklers at a comedy club? Probably not. A whole new level of tedium became standard — digital cameras treated us to the endless spectacle of C-listers leaving restaurants, heading into their rides and zipping away. Thanks to Gawker, you could find out where Alec Baldwin was downing a latte in Manhattan, if you considered that to be essential information. Perez Hilton became the self-appointed judge and jury of the celebrity world — and, naturally, attained celebrity status himself. 4. The iPod killed the CD star The iPod was launched in 2001, and its massive success — over 220 million sold so far — helped turn the once-hip compact disc into a relic. The iPod's sleek design and even sleeker ad campaign became ubiquitous symbols of the decade. Of course, the birth of iTunes in 2003 and music downloading's runaway growth didn't help the CD, either — the latter format never elicited the affection that vinyl did, and the funeral march for "physical" music has been playing for several years. Digital music will continue to grow in the coming decade, while sales of CDs — no matter how many Beatles re-releases we see — will continue to plummet. 5. Newspapers in jeopardy At the dawn of the decade, employees at Denver's Rocky Mountain News were probably confident that their professional lives would be pretty much the same in 2010. After all, their paper had been around since 1859. But the Colorado daily shut down in February of this year, another victim of the mass audience migration to the internet. The Halifax Daily News, Baltimore Examiner and Cincinnati Post have also gone under, and in October, after almost 200 years of paid circulation, the London Evening Standard became a free handout. There are countless stories like this; the website Paper Cuts covers the devastation in the U.S. print industry. In the coming decade, surviving newspapers will have to figure out how they can remain relevant while achieving profitability — a tricky task, indeed. 6. Auto-Tune If one stylistic tick defined the decade in music, it was Auto-Tune, the audio-processing technology that can both correct a singer's pitch and/or make that person sound like a robot. It's the perfect sonic accoutrement for an era when image often trumps musical talent — in fact, Auto-Tune has the potential to take talent out of the equation altogether. The floodgates opened after it was featured on Cher's 1998 hit Believe; artists ranging from Britney Spears to country music act Rascal Flatts have reportedly embraced it, although, understandably, many artists don't exactly brag about it. Rapper T-Pain relies on Auto-Tune the way Bob Dylan relied on his acoustic guitar in the early 1960s, and it's become a central element of Kanye West's sound of late. Ironically, West recently contributed vocals to D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune), a track by Jay-Z that criticized over-reliance on the technology. 7. Twitter, Facebook and the explosion of social media Are Facebook (conceived in 2004) and Twitter (tweeting since 2006) valuable modes of communication, or just more evidence of a culture drunk on narcissism? Probably a bit of both. The 140-character limit restricts the depth of the message, but Twitter has become a valuable journalistic tool, especially when it comes to breaking news. This year's Hudson River crash, for example, saw countless pics and info transmitted via that social network. But do we really need up-to-the-second reports on Ashton Kutcher's fast food cravings? Both Twitter and Facebook experienced lightning-fast ascendance — the world of Web 2.0 is in constant flux, and given the relatively short reigns of Friendster and MySpace, it's clear that other forms of social media are on the horizon. 8. The rise of U.S. cable dramas Not all American TV this decade involved voting unpopular people off an island. In fact, the ingenuity and quality of many U.S. cable shows put the more established networks (CBS, NBC, ABC) — and even the movie industry — to shame. Take a look at AMC's Mad Men, FX's Damages, Showtime's Weeds or HBO's The Sopranos and The Wire — all beautifully acted, intricate shows that require attention spans longer than that of the average mosquito. Like reading a great novel, you can bathe in the complexities of these shows. (It's also acceptable simply to admire the genetic gifts of Mad Men's Don and Betty Draper.) 9. Guitar Hero/Rock Band The music industry doesn't shift as much product as it used to. The gaming industry, on the other hand, still has the power to create cultural phenomena. Since it debuted in 2005, Guitar Hero has sold more than 25 million units worldwide; Rock Band launched a couple of years later, and its sales now exceed 13 million. Both games are cleverly designed, and capitalize on a central truth: everybody wants to be a star, even if it's just in their rec room. 10. The rise of "fake news" News parodies stretch back almost to the dawn of television, but they've never been as popular as they were this decade. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report received tons of media coverage for their Bush-bashing; some fans even argued that these Comedy Central programs were more informative than CNN. Add to the mix Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" (which feasted on Sarah Palin last season), The Onion, The Rick Mercer Report and This Hour Has 22 Minutes — in which fake reporter Geri Hall was ushered out of a Stephen Harper press conference after professing her love for the PM — and it's clear that in these dire economic times, political satire is one industry that's thriving.

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My favorite comment reply to the article.

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Cascader wrote: Posted 2009/11/05 at 5:51 PM ET When we were kids we played with rocks and sticks and we liked it.

I think they did a good job on creating that list. Every time I try to think of what our decade will be known for my mind tries to think of fashion though, because every other decade has had a distinct fashion, and that's one of the main ways people distinguish between them. All I can think of for this decade is the rise of emo and scene clothing, but I wouldn't really consider that "pop culture..."

^^I'm glad that list does not involve vampires that sparkle

I am a huge fan of "fake news"

I wish that digital music won't reach the point where it will completely overshadow actual CDs.
I personally love the band photos, artwork, and lyrics that are included in CDs, and it would be awful if the majority of people didn't buy them anymore.
Plus, lesser-known bands would suffer because their music isn't "popular."

^^Actually, digital music is what allows lesser-known bands to put there music out there and become popular without the evil of a record label. Say, if you and I wanted to make some music but didn't have money for studio time or image pressing, or CD production, we could just sit at home and sing/play into our Mac and upload it to MySpace. I've found so many great artists via digital media that I never would have just browsing through Tower.

Plus, manufacturing CDs takes a huge toll on the environment.

What is all of this then? An Ipod? Auto-tune? Newspapers in jeopardy? Reality TV that is not a documentary? I am so far behind in the times.

^I may or may not be alone in this, but I buy CDs from bands I love- like Voltaire or The Raveonettes. But guilty pleasures... well let's just say I don't want to approach the counter in my favorite record store with Lady Gaga in hand.

Hmm I would agree with Celeb culture and facebook and utube but not most of the others... I'd pop the explosion of Emo and Scene on there.