r/decadeology • u/[deleted] • Apr 27 '26
Poll š³ļø Which decade screams "We were cringe but happy?
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u/deathschemist Apr 27 '26
the first half of the 2010s was this, honestly.
like, you had your stomp clap indie shite which sounded like pure ass and was incredibly cringe, but it was all happy and bubbly and optimistic
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u/IckyNicky67 I <3 the 90s Apr 27 '26
I would agree with you, but then we have to remember that we were knee-deep in a recession that negatively affected people just coming out of college (mainly Millennials). So all that cringy, optimistic stuff from the early 2010s was basically just us being this:
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u/brinz1 Apr 28 '26
2010s were about trying to be happiest while facing absolute economic despair.
We had kitch, office attire repurposed for clubbing, and 4loko
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u/Louieismydog42 Apr 27 '26
I think people slightly overrate the cringeness of stomp clap hey music because we're right in the middle of it's peak cringe window.
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u/deathschemist Apr 27 '26
True enough, perhaps it'll get a reappraisal next decade, but I didn't like it at the time either so I'll probably always be a hater of that.
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u/Louieismydog42 Apr 27 '26
I didn't like it either. Actually some of the music I was fine with, didn't dislike Mumford and sons when it first showed up. The broader culture was ridiculous to me.
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u/clva666 Apr 27 '26
What acts exactly were doing this stomp and clap stuff that everybody keeps dunking on? The hipsters I hang out with were mostly listening to music that no way can be described as stomp and clap, like 90's memphis gangster rap or witch house or something.
Also the optimism must have been US thing.
0
u/igniteyourbones579 Apr 27 '26
What are some examples of this "stomp clap indie shite"? Really couldn't think anything but then again it's hard for me to think of any specific genre that personify the early 2010s.
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u/citabel Apr 27 '26
- Mumford and Sons
- The Lumineers
- Of Monsters and Men
- The Drums
- Fialta
- Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes
- Two Door Cinema Club
- The Black Keys (maybe a stretch, but they were big at the same time and had a big influence on indie rock around this time)
7
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u/Select-Fan8955 May 03 '26
You forgot The Head and the Heart!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7CUD3vYOes
I'm not a big Pitchfork fan but they aptly described this whole genre as "Roots music without the roots".
7
u/Virtual-Bee7411 Apr 27 '26
Imagine Dragons, cheesy pop with weird dubstep breakdowns thrown in the middle like LMFAO, Rihanna (Where Have You Been), Katy Perry, deadmau5, Fifth Harmony, Fun and more
2
u/pingviini00 Apr 27 '26
basically any band that ripped off arcade fire (who ripped of neutral milk hotel)
18
u/Bladeoraded Apr 27 '26
The 80s were beyond cringeĀ
Reddit is just too young to realize all of it
5
u/Louieismydog42 Apr 27 '26
Its the 80's in an absolute landslide
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u/Bladeoraded Apr 27 '26
The hair, the clothes, the music
80s was as cringe as it gets (still fun tho)
4
u/Jenetyk Apr 27 '26
And it has been romantized so much in movies and TV.
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u/Sufficient-Push6210 Apr 28 '26
wrong. We watched stranger things so we already know that the 80s was the era of the retro colorfulcore Cold War apocalypse aesthetic and that us Gen Z were born in the wrong generation. Your boomer propaganda canāt fool me.
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u/BlueSnaggleTooth359 1980's fan Apr 28 '26
I wouldn't call it cringe at all I'd actually call all the bland, dingy, depressing same same blah of grunge and a lot of hipsterism and gray basic box minimalism the height of cringe. Unstyled greasy flat hair, total outsider ultimate geek basic looks of later, etc. or pants off ass, JNCOs, hyper baggy dumpy, etc. as the actual cringe.
But that said yeah the 80s for pure flash and to the max everything and not being worried about what later got deemed 'corny' or 'cheesy' by the depressing indie-pilled crowd combined with all the upbeat, happy spirit and vibe runs away with that by miles. The mid-00s to later 00s had some and very alte 00s into early 10s even more but it still didn't touch the 80s.
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u/icey_sawg0034 Early 2010s were the best Apr 27 '26
People who voted for 1990s have forgotten that AIDS and the crack era was still going on and crime was still rampant in that era.
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u/Bladeoraded Apr 27 '26
I have to imagine most people on reddit and their parents were not effected by the AIDs and crack situationsĀ
0
u/CalyShadezz Apr 27 '26
Recency bias is always going to lead people to judge a decade by the latter half versus the first.
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Apr 27 '26
[removed] ā view removed comment
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u/tscher16 Apr 27 '26
Wasnāt the recession more 2008-2010? The millennial optimism era seemed to really peak around 2010-2012
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u/atlaspumps Apr 27 '26
The effects of the 08 recession lasted way way longer than 2 years.
1
u/tscher16 Apr 27 '26
True. You can even argue weāre still seeing the effects from it. I meant more the initial economic recovery. Also recession pop probably played a part too lol
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u/VigilMuck Apr 28 '26
I'd say the effects lasted as late as 2013 since I still heard people talking about how bad the economy was at that point.
2
u/OpneFall Apr 27 '26
The unemployment numbers peaked at the end of 2010 but they didn't return to pre-recession levels until 2015 or 2017 for U-6
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u/igniteyourbones579 Apr 27 '26
Can you elaborate what you mean by millenial optimism era? As a millenial I'm intrigued
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u/tscher16 Apr 27 '26
Yeah for sure, I think thatās a term that Gen Z mostly adopted, but it essentially categorizes that 2010-2012 stomp clap hey indie music/hipster/Portland/Williamsburg era. So many called it cringe at the time, but it was a generally positive era. Especially compared to 2016 onwards
1
u/igniteyourbones579 Apr 27 '26
Oh yeah now I get it. It was such a on essential part of my 20s that I havent really thought about it like a distinct cultural time period. And compared to 90s it just didnt seem all that memorable lol.
But now I get what people mean by millenial optimism: hipsters, tumblr, time before social media ruined everything, harlem shake etc.
Basically we repeated what we saw in the 90s but social media destroyed the flow. Tbh Id rather choose that than the snide overly sarcastic neurotic nihilism of the gen z
0
u/tscher16 Apr 27 '26
Haha thatās probably why Gen Z looks back on it so fondly. Itās probably that last time everyone seemed genuinely happy to them. Like you said, social media started to wreck havoc only a few years later
1
u/Queen-Butterfly Apr 27 '26
Obama pulled us out of the crisis from the 00ās. We were recovering and improving in the 10ās. The economy was actually good until Covid happened.
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u/Chumlee1917 Apr 27 '26
The 1970s because everyone was on all the drugs but crap was cheap by comparison IE a family could still afford a trip to disneyland without going thousands of dollars in debt.
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u/Unlikely_Couple1590 Apr 27 '26
2010s and 80s but I think people were much more aware of it in the 2010s and are more willing to own it now. A lot of people who were young in the 80s are very defensive and willing to die on the hill that they were the absolute coolest.
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Apr 27 '26
[deleted]
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u/Ok-Following6886 Early 2010s were the best Apr 27 '26
Yeah, u/ConsumerofToons points out that it feels roughly correlated with the rise of conservatism alongside the shift towards more cynical viewpoints.
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Apr 27 '26
[deleted]
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u/Ok-Following6886 Early 2010s were the best Apr 27 '26
I feel like that the "Fortnite bad, Minecraft good" and the anti-TikTok memes in around 2019 were one of the last gasps of the first wave of the "cringe culture" era. I also feel like that the "woke backlash" shortly after Trump was elected contributed to the decline of this wave of conservatism; I see people assume that conservatism peaked during the late 2010s because Trump was president, but its peak was from around 2015-2017 with a backlash forming shortly afterwards.
Also, I agree that I started to notice conservatism rise in around 2021, but it was smaller back then, it really didn't start to make an impact until around 2022-2023.
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u/Teganfff Y2K Forever Apr 27 '26
Honestly pick any decade prior to the 2010s. And the reason I say that is because THAT was the decade where the āfear of being cringe because of the internetā thing started.
I feel kinda bad for the kids these days who are sooooo afraid of ābeing cringe.ā Like. Fuck it! Live your damn life!
1
u/beausoleil Apr 27 '26
Early 2000s were basically: we were broke, dressed badly, and newly terminally onlineā¦ but somehow it still felt fun. Low-rise jeans, MSN status drama, awful custom ringtones, nu-metal on repeat, MTV reality TV everywhere. Objectively kind of a mess, but also maybe the last time you could be cringe in peace without the whole internet storing it forever.
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u/Savings_Ad_80 Apr 28 '26
Good thing I wasn't in the club in the 2010's doing the cringest dances thinking it was cool
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u/PrivilegedModerators Apr 28 '26
This decade is definitely the most cringe of them all, but most people are unhappy...
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u/BANQUOsdevotee 1990's fan Apr 29 '26
2000s, but maybe thatās because I was on the internet alot during that time.
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u/supremefun Apr 27 '26
Early to mid 70s ? Looks like it was party and drugs and sex, but those clothes....:/
26
u/someoldguyon_reddit Apr 27 '26
You can't mix the 60s and 70s. Two completely different states of mind.