Growing up in the 2000s fucked my brain hard. The sexism, homophobia and racism coupled with the free-range parenting that was simultaneously neglectful while gaslighting everyone into thinking that it was too coddling, and an internet that simply did not give a fuck who it traumatized. All topped off with a resurgence of Western jingoism from the “war in terror”.
The only good thing about that period was some of the videogames were okay I guess but only if you avoid ANYTHING remotely military flavoured. A lot of shit outside of Nintendo was afraid of colour and everything was that washed out brown. Just a miserable time. Everyone was so uncreative and the world had some fucked up Southpark brainworms.
I just want to appreciate that in the span of two years we have:
Y2K - Not a real threat but I was young and it felt like it could be real
9/11
Post 9/11 Anthrax
If you really want to be technical:
By 2004 we have the War on Terror. By 2007 we have Virginia Tech and the financial crisis. 2000-2010 was one hell of a decade.
That’s not listing all the other stuff. Creationism in schools, Katrina, The Tsunami, Covid Part 1, Dotcom bubble, Enron, Columbia Shuttle Explosion. It just fucking goes on and on. It was a decade where decades happened. There was no social media to get a sense of 'The discourse" either. You just went off cable news, online news papers, blogs, and whatever shit your classmates/coworkers and parents were talking.
Don’t forget Trump had a reality TV show where contestants had to win business mini games. It aired on the exact same network as Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing.
Not to detract from your point but Y2K was a very real threat - albeit likely not to things like nuclear weapons or planes as was often reported, but to every day software that was beginning to run the world - and it was only not a problem bc thousands of engineers worked like hell to fix it ahead of time. I only like to mention it because it’s somewhat hopeful, like dealing with the ozone layer. We can in fact take collective action to fix problems.
Anyway Google “2038 problem” if you wanna get in on the ground floor of grifting for the next one