10 years before the start of the 21st-century, the World Wide Web was born. And with it, both the ability to talk in real time with your grandma who lives an hour away and to argue with a random stranger halfway across the world about if cereal is soup.
Word of mouth mostly informed the masses about the creation of niche communities, sometimes resulting in the mainstream awareness of these outlets. Now if something is popularized, the idea definitely started on the internet, and as the diffusion of this information continues to increase, so does the production of microtrends and memes.
Meaning…it can be hard to remember all the hashtags, debates, and little videos from across the first quarter of this century. So, instead of taking the chance to doom scroll as an excuse to walk down memory lane, here’s an accessible list of 21st-century pop culture events you either probably forgot happened or didn’t know the cultural legacy of:
1. 2000: Jennifer Lopez’s Green Dress at the 42nd Grammys
Nominated for her first Grammy in the Best Dance/Electronic Recording category, Lopez donned the infamous green dress designed by fashion house Versace to the show. Its design stood out because of how the low cut neckline and high cut middle slit both extended so far they almost touched with a giant crystal brooch covering the meeting point. Although instantly recognizable as her dress, her stylist implored her not to wear it because of how it’d already been worn by others. But Lopez undeniably claimed it as her own as the search query of her in the dress became the most popular at the time, notifying the Google team of how people wanted an image search function on top of their text one.
2. 2002: Halle Berry Becomes the First Black Actress to win the Best Lead Actress Oscar
Some may argue the most iconic Oscar moment so far was when the 2017 Best Picture winner was accidentally declared “La La Land” (2017) over the real winner “Moonlight” (2017). Yet, this historic moment of when Halle Berry became the first Black actress to win the Best Lead Actress Oscar for her work in “Monster Ball” (2001) takes the cake. This was 39 years after Sidney Poitier was the first Black actor to win Best Lead Actor for his performance in “Lilies of the Field” (1963). The first Black person to win in any of the acting categories at the Oscars, though, was Hattie McDaniel for her supporting role in “Gone with the Wind” (1939). Since 2002, no Black actresses have been awarded the honor, a point of contention after the 2015 and 2016 acting categories failed to include any nominees of color.
3. 2003: MySpace is Founded
This century has seen the rise and fall of several social media platforms including, but not limited to, Friendster, Music.ly and Vine. In 2003, the most popular of all for the years 2005-2009 was released to the public as MySpace. In comparison to the previously most visited social network Friendster, MySpace was less restrictive and more customizable, drawing in a larger user base. However, the 2004 released Facebook eventually overtook MySpace in its number of unique US visitors in 2009 with this number steadily declining ever since.
4. 2004: Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake Super Bowl Halftime Performance
Alongside the various aforementioned social media platforms launched in the 2000s, YouTube was born. It has popularized the Cup Song from “Pitch Perfect” (2014), drawn attention to Fergie’s bastardized National Anthem and the death of Harambe – not to mention become a platform for competitions between its members such as Pewdiepie vs. T Series. Yet, not many know what incited its creation – Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake’s 2004 Super Bowl Halftime Performance. The incident of Timberlake ripping a piece of Jackson’s costume to unintentionally reveal her breast increased the public’s desire for a place to rewatch such moments.
5. 2007: Britney Spears Shaves Her Head
Britney Spears had arguably one of the biggest cultural impacts on the first quarter of this century because of the stereotypical Disney child star rebellious phase she underwent alongside others such as Lindsay Lohan at the time. Her attempts to distance herself from her childhood image spurred her iconic VMA performances where she danced with a python to “Slave 4 U” in 2001 and in 2003 made out on stage with Madonna and Christina Aguilera. But one of her most recognizable moments during this time period was when she shaved her head in 2007 as an attempt to push back against the judgemental media. However, in 2008 she was placed in a court-order conservatorship under her father and a lawyer who put an end to the new look. The malice nature of this mandate would come to light years later, resulting in the “Free Britney Movement,” ending in 2021 simultaneously with the actual conservatorship itself.
6. 2009: Kanye Interrupts Taylor Swift’s VMA acceptance speech for Best Female Video
Speaking of celebrities with profound cultural legacies in this century’s quarter – you can’t forget to talk about Taylor Swift. Nowadays, she’s known for being Spotify’s most played artist and breaking ticket websites for her concerts, but one of the most pivotal moments in her career came in 2009 when Kanye West interrupted her VMA acceptance speech for Best Female Video. This instance started the Kanye and Kim Kardashian vs. Taylor Swift rivalry and would be one of two celebrity feuds that inspired Swift’s 2017 song “Look What You Made Me Do.” Although clap back songs are quite common as seen with the Kendrick Lamar vs. Drake situation, the song represents one of the biggest feuds this century so far along with Paris Hilton vs. Lindsay Lohan and James Charles vs. Tati Westbrook.
7. 2012: End of the Mayan Calendar
2012 became the second year this century when people thought the world was going to end after the Y2K incident, where people predicted the world would enter a computer induced apocalypse due to computers’ inability to distinguish between dates in the 20th and 21st-centuries. This time the stressor was misinterpretations of the Mayan calendar. December 2012 marked the end of the final “b’ak’tun,” a time period that began before the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, and with it the emergence of a new enlightened age. But the press focused on the “end” aspect, which spurred conspiracies about solar flares and black holes as evidence for this doomsday, and eventually into a movie aptly called “2012.”
8. 2016: The Clown Epidemic
As seen with apes on horses walking around different cities across the U.S. to raise awareness for the 2024 film “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” movie marketing tactics can cross over into public spaces. And sometimes they can go too far in the cases of pretending three film students went missing for the “Blair Witch Project (1999)” or the various sightings of a clown named Gags for the initially short film entitled “Gags (2016).” Although “Gags” was inspired by reports of other clown encounters dating back to 2013, these instances started a chain of clown related incidents not just in the US, but in the UK, Canada and Australia as well.
9. 2018: Yanny vs. Laurel
Is it Yanny or Laurel? Despite the initial recording of opera singer Jay Aubrey Jones saying the word “laurel” for the pronunciation link on vocabulary.com, this debate polarized the internet in 2018. The reason for this disparity lies in science, as it’s been found that people hear Yanny at the higher frequency, usually younger people, and Laurel at the lower; similar to how science can explain the highly debated white and gold vs. blue and black dress from 2015. Our eyes’ ability to perceive fixed colors under different lighting conditions is called color constancy. Yet, we all have individual interpretations of color and the bad lighting in that particular photo can dictate whether the photo is perceived as under or overexposed.
10. 2023: Netflix Ends its DVD Subscription Service
Before Hulu, Disney+ and even Netflix’s own streaming service, there were VHS tape and DVD rental stores, most prominently Blockbuster and Hollywood Video. When Netflix launched in 1998, it promised an easier rental experience with the option to rent DVDs in the mail. In 2007, Netflix introduced the first video-on-demand streaming service, irrevocably changing the streaming landscape; they would shut down their own DVD rental service in 2023. This comes as part of the wider streaming service outbreak with seemingly every huge media company coming out with their own platform from Amazon Prime to HBO Max. Not to mention, how YouTubers are beginning to participate in this trend as of 2024 as seen with the Watcher and Try Guys channels, premiering “Watchertv” and “2nd Try” respectively.
As you can see, the birth of the web led to some distinct 21st-century pop culture events. I personally cannot wait to see what the next quarter century brings!