00s
stuff I loved in the most directionless yet one of the most transformative decades of my life
I am a 90s woman through and through. In the most straight forward way possible really, I mean, all my most vivid and cherished memories are from this decade (the later half, to be fair) and I do the thing people like me do which is wander around mumbling under my breath about how much I wish we could go back to the pre-internet or at least pre-social media days (yet still spend a bunch of time falling down the Very Online rabbit hole when I become a victim of boredom). I have an unshakeable commitment to the notion of authenticity, a profound suspicion of corporate culture, a natural bent towards cynicism and a deep affection for the overwhelmed third wave feminist.
But my life and I changed the most in the 00s. This isn’t the post for that but instead I’m gonna shine some light on some things I found quite influential during this tasteless and (personally and otherwise) starved decade of my little life. I would be lying if I didn’t say a large portion of my hatred of the 00s has been found in hindsight, back then I was running around like an idiot most of the time. When I think of the noughties, I always think of the moment when my creepy neighbour, stood menacingly in his gross boxers smoking his cigarette under the sickly glow of a parking lot decided to give me a speech on why we should be calling fries “freedom fries” after spotting me bringing a greasy McDonald’s bag from my car. I think he was surprised I listened at all - I often end up in situations like this because I’m too soft (which isn’t necessarily the same as being a nice person). You’d think I’d know better by now - I don’t. He had two American flags propped up like giant antennas on his car. He acted and spoke like a vet but I don’t think he was one. He got kicked out of the apartment complex at some point but I don’t remember why - there was a lot of yelling. Nobody liked him and avoided him and his bizarre lectures as much as possible. I kind of felt sorry for the guy. He just seemed so miserable, I guess. Too miserable to hate. Old working class white guys in the part of SoCal I lived in at the time were usually pissed off and keen to let you know why. They were also mostly harmless. It’s their kids you had to watch out for. If you played your cards right, they’d usually just leave you alone. I know because they found me ideal to unleash on, in different ways. So I learned my exits.
Anyway, I’m not gonna do the tedious sociopolitical thing because guess what! There are much better Substack projects out there that spend a lot of time carving out all that specialized insight but it would be negligent not to mention that it was a pretty fucking traumatic decade. 9-11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bush, there was our desperate and genuinely exciting (at the time) embrace of Obama, Katrina, the global financial crisis, the big bailout. There was also Kim Kardashian and her old nose, the obsession with JLo’s ass and Lindsay Lohan’s growing breasts and the predatory consumption of all the other various “it girls” and celebrities alike, the rise of social media, hipsters/scene people and the nonprofessional blogger. I was obsessed with the internet. I spent so many quiet and lonely nights downloading music off Limewire or wherever. Chatting to sinewy weeb-y white guys from Boston and the Bay Area with great music taste. Everything feels so depressing to me now when I look back. I feel like there was a sort of quiet, dark nihilism following the 90s that crept up through our collective subconscious and played out in all the cultural avenues and, sometimes, there were the rare triumphant things that seemed to transcend it all, though what those things were, totally and obviously, is just my opinion, man.
So yeah, some influential 00s things that I can think of:
Nathan Barley. I feel hesitant to mention that Charlie Brooker was one of the writers of this series because of, well, the success of Black Mirror, so he’s at that point in his career where people like to talk shit about him. But I like his writing a lot, I relate to his deep-seated fear of the dark and invasive reach of tech. I can’t think of anyone else who does it like him, quite honestly. When I say “does it like him”, I think I mean has the skill to summarise his complex ideas into very digestible bits for a mainstream audience. Nathan Barley captures the really bankrupt parts of digital media so well…at least before the current offerings. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still trash out there but digital media has definitely become more sophisticated….better (?). Anyway, it’s so clearly about Vice, though I believe the writers deny it. I watched a couple of episodes recently and I found it amazing how much it still applies…almost 20 years later. It’s actually kind of amazing to me. This was first aired in 2005. I’d tell anyone who is interested in media to give it a chance. Warning: it is really, really British. And nauseatingly bitter.
That one Postal Service song. You know the one.
I feel like electronic music was the one thing that kept me alive for a long time. I very quickly went from listening to Jimmy Tamborello’s projects (I think I preferred Dntel over The Postal Service) to much more UK/Eurocentric electronic music like whatever was in Warp’s catalogue, Portishead, Tricky, Lali Puna and Boards of Canada but felt it was necessary to include the popular American influences, too. This reminds me so much of how utterly unhappy I was in the States. Actually, this song sucks so hard. But yeah, influential for me.
so while I’m at it, electroclash. And maybe still one of the coolest albums to this day, The Teaches of Peaches by Peaches.
I always associate electroclash with Berlin but apparently that’s not quite right. There were big labels in Berlin, but electroclash was pretty big in New York and London, too. Can’t tell you how many heads I turned listening to this in my car. It was my post night out album. Reserved for when you’re going home coming down, your hair smelling of fast food and smoke and nobody wants to talk anymore. Just spent. All I wanted to do was move to Berlin and hang out with all the dirty ravers. That idea sounds revolting to me now. I ended up moving to London and quickly developed my taste and cultural education in ways I could never repeat.
Breathless by Victoria’s Secret. Best Victoria’s Secret perfume, ever. It is discontinued these days, I mean of course it would be, these high street fragrances are meant to have short lives, both on the shelf and on your skin and often all smell vaguely similar. Cloying, mostly. That vacant fruity/floral drugstore/mall combo that smells like an equally vacant teenage girl’s bedroom. But this was different. Adult and less coquettish, a direct invitation. Warm and clean. A quiet Spanish holiday, not Ibiza or Majorca. Lots of citrus, but a gentler citrus, softened perhaps by a light musk. There’s something floral going on too, but I am too lazy to look it up. It surprised me and I still love it.
LiveJournal. I was a regular there and on DeadJournal with some cool women (and very few men), doing the woman-down hating capitalism thing without knowing it was a selling point, edgy photos, again, without knowing it was a selling point, writing like we were possessed in the endless chaos that we call human life. We just wanted to connect across the wild internet plains and find each other. I don’t know, that was it. It was beautiful and brief. Julie, I miss you and I don’t know where you are or if you’re even alive. Every time I listen to Go with the Flow by Queens of The Stone Age which you said was for me, I feel sad in a way I’ll never be able to put into words. You were so utterly cool and I wanted to be just like you.
American Apparel adverts. Apparently at its early, pre-Helvetica and direct flash photography days, it was ran by “Two Koreans and a Jew”, who were just “making t-shirts”. These weirdly tasteful but totally soft porn adverts were super controversial (even sued by Woody Allen apparently) and sexy in that very potent way that Americans really get off on, like, ex-Catholic school girl gone wild stuff. I thought it was clever and fucking obnoxious. The holy altar of white girl magic. Hi Melissa. You know you got us. Take all our money.
Interpol. The albums that apparently made them really successful did nothing for me. I loved Turn On The Bright Lights. They coloured my drives down the 405, accompanying friends to auditions they fucked up on, to trashy apartments in North Hollywood, trashy bars in Silverlake, wishing I could live a life that had the mood of this album. I’d imagine living in New York City, with Leif Erikson playing on my headphones, riding the subway with everyone else, leading a life much more rooted in a kind of sobering anonymity and urban reality that Los Angeles could never really offer. I always found the lyrical content oddly moving, even without the kind of writerly poetics I prefer.
Ana Voog. I mean technically she set up her live streaming in the late 90s but I really only paid attention a few years later. She was basically one of the first webcam girls. The coolest one at the time to my young self. There’s a dizzying interview with her and Tori Amos sleeping in a corner of the web somewhere and I remember liking watching my favourite exhibitionists collide and uncomfortably orbit one another.
David Mack’s Kabuki. Not a huge “comic book” person but I was browsing the artwork at a bookstore one day, when I came across these graphic novels. I remember the writing feeling cloaked and internal. The story was centered around a Japanese woman, an assassin in the clutches of a shady government organisation - it basically feels like it owns space in the cyberpunk universe. But the appeal really was the artwork. I think it actually was the catalyst for my interest in painting.
You know, this list could go on because I’m having too much fun. But I’ll leave it here for now because I’ve got a Y2K headache. Apparently Y2K is back but I dunno where it was born and currently lives, ready to die and come back again any day now, probably some “chaotic” Dimes Square shit. I’m confused, old and genuinely uninspired though I’m trying to be, by all this…..culture.
Enjoy. Peace out! Britney face.