Pete Doherty Clones (and Other Hipster Subspecies)

Brit rocker (and Kate Moss consort) Pete Doherty’s skinny jeans, propensity for fedoras, and hung-over glare set the tone for a generation of pretentious twentysomethings. Vice magazine was their lexicon, American Apparel their official uniform, and the Misshapes their house D.J. This P.B.R.-sipping, Parliament-smoking in-crowd spawned endless subspecies: the early adopters (Millennium White Belt Hipster), the blue-collar kitsch revivalists (Trucker Hat Hipster), the folksy foodies (Urban Farmer Hipster), and, by decade’s end, the prohibition-style mustachioed mixologists (Handlebar Hipster). They were all irritating for various reasons but all present ample future costume possibilities!

Oversharing

The 00s were one big Overshare. The rise of mobile phones turned the world into your psychiatrist’s office, while Facebook status updates, celebrity Twitter feeds, and mommy blogs enabled the relentless broadcasting of personal minutia, from the mundane (“Buying fresh fennel at Whole Foods”) to the shocking (“Just got DNA results. Jason’s the daddy!”). Another source of oversharing? Blog commenters, especially those of the hyper-religious or staunchly partisan ilk, who so often felt compelled to air the most vitriolic, illogical, and hostile opinions under the virtual cloak of “SoccerSue” or “Jimbo01.”

Text-Message Breakups

Breaking up has been historically hard to do, but in the aughties it was terrifyingly easy. Just have a few drinks and text, “Sorry. Not n2u.” Voilà! No drawn-out conversations about closure and emotional needs unmet—just a few keystrokes and it’s over. Also popular: the I.M. breakup, the Skype breakup, and the Google Wave breakup (currently in beta). And we’re betting somewhere, someone has broken up via emoticon.

Losing Your Job to the Internet

The decade began with the-Internet-as-ultimate-jackpot. Venture capital abounded and 22-year-olds in the Bay Area were making $85K a year as “key-worders” or “platform consultants.” But by decade’s end, the thing we thought would make us all rich was chomping away at profits in journalism, the record business, and beyond. If what you produce could be reduced to 1s and 0s (articles, songs, movies, best-sellers), you got royally screwed. Bleep bloop, enjoy that severance!

TV Shows That Are Better Than Any Movie Ever Made

Mainstream film did not exactly enter a new golden age in the early 2000s. In fact, most high-grossing blockbusters were C.G.I.-glutted behemoths of recycled ideas. The last people anyone expected to step into the quality-entertainment breach were the nation’s television producers, but—somehow—they did just that. Whether you were into the gritty urban realism of The Wire, the hypnotic narratives of Mad Men, or the epic Jersey saga of The Sopranos, it was a fantastic decade for TV—and for AMC, FX, and Showtime, networks previously known for little-seen Tommy Lee Jones films or last-resort soft-core late-night porn.

Gamer Culture

Behold the emergence of Red Bull–quaffing World of Warcraft players, shut-in Second Lifers, and Halo die-hards. The sheer unbridled geekery of gamer culture, where sophisticated graphics and motion-capture interfaces created a dazzling alternative to boring ol’ human existence, matured into a nationwide obsession, hastened by user-friendly innovations such as Wii Bowling or Guitar Hero, the latter of which allowed a generation of tipsy Uncle Bobs to unleash their inner Jimmy Page, to the quiet discomfort of all.

Celebutards

In the past, you usually had to do something significant to become famous, like act or sing or play a professional sport. But this decade, thanks to TMZ and US Weekly, the barrier to entry became absurdly low, as witnessed by the glut of “celebutards”: the young, wealthy, spray-tanned, multiple-D.U.I-receiving, brawling-outside-L.A.-nightclubs, underwear-shunning set. The world changed the day we all clicked to view Lindsey Lohan’s lady business with our morning coffee, and not, one suspects, for the better.