I had a strange revelation the other day. I make no distinction whatsoever between the decade 2000-2009 and 2010-2015. To me all of the 2000s are just one long blur of continuation. Nothing much has really changed. The 90s are distinct. The 80s are really distinct and the 70s too. Those are the decades I remember the best. Prior to that, history has taught me about the turbulent 60s, the post-war 50s, the war-torn 40s and the Great Depression of the 30s. Who could leave out the roaring 20s?
But the 2000s? I had no idea we were in the second decade of the millennium. It’s all so 2000ish to me.
What made me think of this was listening to a group of students the other day. They were playing the most annoying (to an 80s kid) music – if you want to call it that. Over-dramatized beats and the most childish lyrics around that went something like “Baby. When I look at you, Baby. You make me want to look at you, Baby. Baby. You’re so hot, baby. Ohhh Ohhh.” You get the drift. So as song after song rolled off someone’s device, one girl spoke up and said, “Play something from this decade. These songs are all from 2009.” I almost choked. They were making such a big distinction between just six years. Trust me, pop music hasn’t improved since 2009. It’s just more of the nasty same stuff.
But not to them. For them somehow the beats were different. (though they sounded the same) Somehow the lyrics were more interesting. (though they still sounded asinine to me) Somehow music had matured from the dark ages of the 2000s to the new modern sound of the 2010s.
I now realize that the girl who said change the decade was only 12 in 2009. Since then, half her of her 2009 life has been lived. Only a fraction of my life has … (why do I even want to go there.)
So I guess I have to come to this conclusion: when you get to me my age, decades don’t mean much anymore. They are just brief glimpses of memory which brush over ones eyes like a quick sunrise and sunset. It’s all the same for me. It’s like time stopped in the year 2000 and everything after that is just a partial repeat of the year before.
Welcome to the 2000s. The longest decade of my life.
Author Mark W Sasse 
One response to “2000-2015: Just one long homogeneous decade for me”
In our defense, there is a pretty distinct difference between certain genres of music. I mean, think NSYNC versus One Direction. Both boy bands, but really different styles. It’s gradual, but stuff from the 2000-2009 decade has a different feel and different style than some of the more recent stuff. Probably because we don’t listen to a lot of other music, so the shift back is a lot more sudden than someone who became slowly accustomed to the newer music.
Ahem. There’s my two cents. You are right, though–the 2000s do run together in a lot of ways that aren’t even music-related. My childhood memories all have very similar events happening to today. Times haven’t changed very drastically.