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21 Reasons Why The Naughties Were The Worst Decade Ever

Reason #21

Freedom Fries







Reason # 20

The Metrosexual

You might be "metrosexual" if:
1. You just can't walk past a Banana Republic store without making a purchase.

2. You own 20 pairs of shoes, half a dozen pairs of sunglasses, just as many watches and you carry a man-purse.

3. You see a stylist instead of a barber, because barbers don't do highlights.

4. You can make her lamb shanks and risotto for dinner and Eggs Benedict for breakfast... all from scratch.

5. You only wear Calvin Klein boxer-briefs.

6. You shave more than just your face. You also exfoliate and moisturize.

7. You would never, ever own a pickup truck.

8. You can't imagine a day without hair styling products.

9. You'd rather drink wine than beer... but you'll find out what estate and vintage first.

10. Despite being flattered (even proud) that gay guys hit on you, you still find the thought of actually getting intimate with another man truly repulsive.




Reason #19

The Superbowl halftime show

After Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" in 2004 no other act, not the Rolling Stones, not Bruce Springsteen, not Paul McCartney nor anyone else has produced one minute of entertainment during these corporate halftime extravaganzas that has come close to destracting my attention from the chip and dip table.




Reason #18

The Axis of Evil of Hair styles

Kim Jong Il, Donald Trump and the faux hawk placed the Naughties as the worst decade in hair fashion since the 1980s...




Reason #17

The Death of the Record Store and the Rise of Nu Metal and Disney Rock

The transition from CDs to digital downloads shrunk the record industry throughout the decade, leading to mass layoffs, and artist-roster cuts at major labels. CD sales dropped 48.9 percent since 2000. Approximately 2,680 record stores closed in the U.S. between 2005 and early 2009. In the UK, all the national specialist music retailers collapsed except for HMV, as has Woolworths, a variety retailer that was once the UK's largest music retailer.

Meanwhile monster-Rock pop artists Evanescence, Linkin Park, System of a Down, Staind, Papa Roach, and Disturbed littered the radio waves with some of the least creative and most annoying sounds since Gangsta Rap polluted the radio waves in the 1990s.


The only thing worst was the oversaturation of Disney Rock. High School Musical, Hannah Montana, The Jonas Brothers and The Cheetah Girls, etc. Both High School Musical and Hannah Montana albums were among the best-sellers of 2006 and 2007 and reached the number 1 position.

Another result of the corporate trend of targeting

tweens was Guitar Hero and Rock Band. In fact Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock has became the first single video game EVER to surpass $1 billion in sales.




Reason #16

The Great False Hope: The Campaign And Election Of Barrack Obama



Obama talked the talk starting in 2002 when he came out against the Bush/Cheney/Rove march toward war in Iraq. Then in his historic 2008 campaign for President he preached about the evils of corporate lobbyists running Washington. He also talked about the need for Americans to take responsibility for themselves and be held accountable for their own actions. America bought Obama's snake oil and in January of 2009 he was inaugurated. But as of New Years eve 2009 Obama has not walked the walk. Instead he has escalated the U.S. presence in Afghanistan with no clear cut objective other than to appease moderates whose votes he is courting for 2012. He's also filled his administration with corporate lobbyists and has made sure to leave no CEO behind by sponsoring huge corporate bail-outs.




Reason #15

The Snuggie

The 90s had more wasted potential than any other decade, both pop cultural and political.

True, but they were a lot of fun.

tell that to a child whose father was killed in Iraq...

Iraq War
9/11
Sarah Palin
Blago

On the plus side, Barack Obama, the SOMB, file sharing.

Every decade you are in is the worst decade ever when youre in it.

wtf???
That is a very pessimistic statement. Are you a Republican or something? I never thought the decade I was in sucked. Not until this decade.

Pretty much every decade prior since the beginning of the world was worse, is my opinion of that. Seriously. This is based almost solely on my unnatural love of High Definition Television and the TV show LOST.

Yeah, who cares about the atrocities that happened in Iraq or Afghanistan or Darfur, just as long as Pong can watch a formulaic tv show in high definiton tv...

You are going to have to learn to take nothing I write on message boards seriously.

The best time to be alive at any given point, is right now.

The nature of progress is linear such that all things become easier and better. I would much rather have been able to drive a car instead of riding a horse about. Would much rather get from NYC to London in 8 hours then sail for weeks. Color television was better than B&W, HD better than color. Processors are faster today than they were last year. The Kindle 2 is an improvement on the first Kindle. And so on, and so on.

Tomorrow there will be a better automobile, a faster jet, a more vibrant television, faster processors and new ways of thinking & living in the world.

Yesterday fucking sucked. Today was better.

Death of the English language
Twitter
Chicago Bulls basketball
Howard Stern leaving free radio

Pretty awful decade, but internet porn alone makes it a great decade. The kid whose dad dies in Iraq has countless hours of free porn that will act as an anti-depressant

I take nothing anyone writes on a message board seriously. Its all just talk, isnt it?

Actually I think most people would put internet porn in the column of things that made the naughties more terrible.

I think the only thing that could save this decade now would be a cruel and unusual death to Michael Jackson.



tell that to the kid who had a father yesterday who died in Iraq today...

Until Homo Sapiens are usurped in a laboratory and space travel commences.

I prefer chess over message boarding.

Plastic surgery is something where I think younger people who fucked up their faces now are really going to regret it in about 15 years when people are just able to grow new skin for their faces in a laboratory.

the Iraq was is over brah, what r u talking about?

You really think that will be able to happen in just 15 years? I'll be 55 then, probablly all wrinkly and shlt. So that would be good timing for me

Somebody in Iraq probably died today. It's a big country. Maybe even someone's father. Who had a kid. Use your brain, Chrono, plz.

War has been present in all decades. Doesn't make this one worse. In fact it's better.

The advances in combat are such that fewer soldiers die per conflict in gruesome ways. You need less troops on the ground to engage in a conflict as well. Less bodies, decreased personal exposure to war per trooper. The survival rate of a soldier is much higher today than it ever has been. The capacity to dominate a theater of conflict w/ fewer resources has also decreased.

War, as an event, has improved dramatically over the years. Would much rather be in Afghanistan now than a solider on an American Rev War era battlefield.

Some things have moved forwards, others backwords:



This map is also an indicator of "roadless areas".

Depends on perspective. An increase in the number of humans and life expectancy has necessitated a larger use of the resources available. As technology advances, the ability to synthesize materials and harvest the resources we have more efficiently will also grow. Which we have done already. Were it not for our tech, we would have spread those resources much less further than we did and do now.

Our tech is a joke. It's not even at the end of a type 0 civilization. Technologically advanced civilizations do not deplete 95% of their old growth forests in order to move on. Nor do they spew things into the atmosphere that reduce life spans and reduce quality habitat on the planet for all species. On some levels we are moving forward, on many levels we are not. A smart race doesn't overpopulate it's planet or push out other species (or watch Nascar). Wil we even make it to a type 1? Who knows. But the odds aren't that great.

- The growing misery of a high percentage of kids and teenagers
- Days spent staring at computer screens instead of doing...other things
- People famous for being famous

Wow, there have been a lot of decades, haven't there?

I don't believe a Kardashev scale applies to what I was talking about. And by that standard, of course we haven't yet mastered our resources. But civilizations don't go from type 0 to 1 overnight. They get there gradually. Since the only judge we have of civilization are the ones created by humans, imagined by humans and speculated on by humans- we have no real fucking clue how long to get to a type 3. Or the social, economic, environmental, etc forces that facilitate such advancement.

ACE ACE ACE ACE.

You are so fucking old and lame. I hate you.

otmfm

Bush was more a 90s phenomenon. The Chemicals Between Us doesn't really count.

i had a promising career until i entered this decade. now it's shit and i'm making a living in a field that i don't give a shit about other that it's making me money that i wouldn't see in my field unless i lucked out. fuck this life.

Worst decade ever? You stupid cunt. For starters, if text messaging is one of your signs about how bad this decade is, you're a fucking idiot.

Better choices for worst decade ever:

A.D. 31-40: Death of Jesus
Any decade where America openly condoned slavery.
1861-1870: The Civil War
1941-1950: WWII, concentration camps, etc.

...and the list goes on.

world war iv will only last five days but i think being the owner of a telepathic dog is going to be fun.

BEST DECADE EVAH GUYYZ

As a Christian the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ would be cause for this decade to be considered the best ever, not the worst.

Yes, that does seem odd. Jesus' death absolved ancient man of all original sin. Only JC's corporeal form "died". He was an immortal.

This is assuming you accept the standard definition of Christ as outlined by The RC Church and eventually accepted as the only understanding of his life and its meaning. Gnostic Christians didn't and don't accept this, nor did the Gospel of Luke.

Well, gnosticism is sorta based on the idea of an immortal soul. Even if the later beliefs deviated from the Catholicism, the central idea of an immortal soul remains.

Depending on the specific ideology of one Gnostic Christian set from another, they may not regard JC as the end point messiah. But many do accept the idea of JC being an emissary of the divine. Which everyone is to one degree or another if we consider gnosticism strictly. But that is neither here nor there w/r/t this conversation.

Though it may be tragic, JC's death is not necessarily awful. A great deal of good comes from his corporeal destruction. Depending on your view of the following, um..decades.

You'll need to explain yourself about Luke.

The deal with the Gnostics is that they don't believe in a physical resurrection, right? What I don't get about the hullaballoo is that I never envisioned it as physical either when I conceptualized it with no other input. In other words, when I was told the story as a kid, I assumed Jesus was a spirit upon being risen, and his body just "disappeared". The notion that he stood up and flew away is kind of foreign to me. When the women see him in the tomb: I never saw that as an actual physical body.

As an aside, I always thought that the transfiguration displayed just as much power and nobody really ever talks about it. Jesus basically transfigures himself to his celestial being, holds council with the Hebrew elders (Moses and Elijah), and then re-transforms himself into a human. So, if you believe in the transfiguration (mt. Olives?), and are willing to suspend our understanding of physics for that: then the resurrection isn't really that much of a leap.

Then, you have Lazarus. Where again, if you believe this: displays more power than the Resurrectio. Or at least equal.

Yet: everybody focuses on that one aspect of the Scriptures.

Because his resurrection is the final proof, if you will. The transcendence over earthly death utterly and completely.

And they stole a bunch of shit from other religions when coming up with the JC fairy tale, natch.

But to get back on point- 31-40 A.D., certainly better decades than ~30 A.D.

If you're going to post on a message board, you'd better be able to articulate what you're saying. I'm sick of these dipshit whipper snappers who don't know how to read or write.

Probably a conflation of ideas on my part. Luke, or maybe Mark - as a nonbeliever I get things mixed up - doesn't posit Christ's crucifixion as death for our sins; he posits it as THE sin which mankind, or at leat the nation of Israel, had to atone for to earn God's forgiveness. In Luke/Mark's Gospel, Jesus is an innocent man whose death is an unjust act. Which doesn't really speak to what you and Damo are talking about, though it does speak to the idea that not all Christians accept the standard "Jesus died for our sins" cant.

Stole? No. But, yes, much of the Gospels borrow from contemporary tales. As do all the books of the Bible. That's why the most egregious error is to read the books out of context.

Whenever I tell Christians (and I am a practicing Catholic, but fairly educated on the subject) that Paul wrote his letters 30 years before the Gospels were written (in some cases more); they usually give me a blank stare and then proceed to tell me that I am wrong for the next ten minutes.

But, this fairy tale that you speak of is still a little bit more complex than you allow.

I get it. But, it doesn't change what I said.

All of the Gospels agree that Jesus died to absolve sin. In all of the Gospels Jesus is free of sin and therefore his death is always an unjust act.

I am not following you.

Sure. But that's just as big (bigger actually) for people as all the other stuff you mention. Its just that you think the other stuff is 'neater'. The comfort of succeeding after mortal death is a huge draw of religion. Makes the hardships of living in a complex world a little more bearable for those so inclined.

Amen! (eventhougth I'm an agnostic...)


The death of Jesus and the civil war were good things actually.
And as for WW2, its on par with the atrocities that have taken place in Darfur and other African nations. Besides the 40s gave us the golden age of cinema, the end of the Great Depression, the start of the great highway system, nuclear energy AND some great blues music.

You are quite incorrect on this point.

^^ Probably. And, I have read quite a bit about. Complex subject matter that is highly charged and can be interpreted different ways.

tell that to a kid who's dad killed a few iraqi's today.

This is not really the case. Matthew and Mark were both written between 45-50 AD. I Thessalonians, Paul's first letter, was written around 52 AD. Luke is dated at 63 AD, and John is usually dated between 85-90 AD.

Now, if you wish to say that Paul's letters were written 30 years before John, I have no argument.

I read a book a while back that said they were all written after Jerusalem burned as a reactionary measure (in the 70s). I think your dates on Matthew and Mark are off from everything I have encountered. It's all post 70+ with John being around 100.

Guess nobody knows, eh?