9 Things Writers Should Know About Y2K

The Y2K Era took place between 1997 and 2008. 

I wanted to write Y2K as a “decades book,” like Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties or David Halberstam’s The Fifties. Except when I saw people talking about “the Y2K era” on social media, they were talking about both the late 90s and the early 2000s, and sometimes even the mid-2000s. 

(Things Writers Should Know.)

I decided to do what historians call “periodization,” which just means coming up with a name for a time period and deciding exactly when you think it begins and ends. I did this partially based on vibes, but also on actual events — specifically, the dot-com bubble and the housing bubble, with the midpoint being 9/11. However, if you disagree with me on this, I’m willing to at least hear you out. Historians argue about periodization all the time.

Y2K started with the dot-com bubble. 

It’s been largley memoryholed now, but the dot-com bubble was huge: culturally, economically, and in my own life story (the dot-com bubble helped me pay for college, which I explain in more detail in the book). In 1995, a company called Netscape had an incredibly successful initial public offering on the stock market. This showed people that the internet wasn’t just a new invention that allowed you to talk about Xena Warrior Princess with strangers. It was a new frontier where you could get really, really rich.

All of a sudden, there was a huge influx of money into the internet sector. By the late 90s—1997, 1998, 1999—people were striking it rich left and right, often very quickly. The stock market was constantly setting new record highs. There was a sense that, in the coming new millennium, we could all connect peacefully on the internet and we could all get rich as well. 

In 1997, the cover of WIRED magazine predicted that the following 25 years would be characterized by “prosperity, freedom, and a better environment for the whole world.” In 1998, an economist at MIT said, “The US economy likely won’t see a recession for years to come. This expansion will run forever.” This quote sounds crazy now, but that’s how people really thought back then.

Millennials grew up WITH the internet. 

I was born in 1988, which puts me squarely in the center of the millennial cohort (roughly 1982-1996). The first website went live in 1991, when I was three. I saw the internet change and develop. 

In Y2K, I write about the very first time I logged onto the internet, in 1995 when I was seven. In that year, just over a third of Americans even had computers in their homes. I remember where I was when I first used Google, in 1998. Google was one of many search engines, and was not yet the monopoly it is today. 

During middle and high school—from 1999 through around 2004—I spent a lot of time talking to friends on AIM. By the late Y2K Era—when I was finishing high school and going away to college—we were shifting into the era of social media, with MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. And even then, the internet had not been fully integrated into everyone’s daily life through smartphones (the first iPhone went on sale in 2007 and took a few years to become ubiquitous). 

Millennials were the last generation to know a world before the internet, and I think it gives us a unique perspective, especially as technology changes faster and faster.

The Y2K aesthetic isn’t McBling. 

Around 1997 (the year of that WIRED magazine cover), the aesthetics of fashion, consumer goods, and music videos started being influenced by the rise of the internet. Take TLC’s album FanMail. This is an entire CD centered around email and going online! On the cover, the group is photographed in silver body paint so they look like cyborgs, and the album art is decorated with binary code. In the “No Scrubs” video, they’re on a space station in silver outfits and silver eyeshadow. Or look at J. Lo’s video for “If You Had My Love.” She’s being watched on a webcam by users around the world, and she’s in a little white room wearing only sleek white clothing. You also had the popularity of the iMac G3, inflatable furniture, and the Volkswagen New Beetle.

All of these things fall under the general umbrella of “Y2K aesthetic,” which was popular from around 1997-2003. The Y2K aesthetic is futuristic, optimistic, and sleek. It’s been a nostalgia trend for a couple years now, and celebrities like Dua Lipa, Megan Thee Stallion, and Sydney Sweeney have worn Y2K-inspired looks.

Then there’s the McBling aesthetic, which is more 2004-2008. Think Juicy Couture sweatsuits, Von Dutch trucker hats, fake tans, and Louis Vuitton logo bags. It’s very over the top and kind of tacky, but fun. Vogue has noted that this aesthetic has recently started trending as well, with celebrities like Bella Hadid and Ice Spice wearing McBling looks.

Personally, I’m a Y2K girlie, but I love all of it.

TRL was everything. 

It’s hard to imagine in today’s fractured media landscape, but teens across America would gather daily after school to turn on MTV and vote on the top music videos of the day. And because YouTube didn’t exist yet, you couldn’t just watch any music video whenever you felt like it. 

Music videos play a big role in my book, because I love them, and I spent a lot of time watching them in middle and high school. And they taught me a lot about sex, gender, money, fashion, and race. My parents always told me I was rotting my brain with that stuff, but I actually think I learned a lot (and now I wrote a book about it).

It was a horrible time for body image. 

In general, the Y2K Era was extremely anti-feminist. Perhaps the most concrete example of this is the way women and their bodies were treated in the media. Fashion magazines depicted emaciated models without apology. Tabloids routinely mocked celebrities like Nicole Richie and Mariah Carey when they weren’t stick-skinny. All kinds of publications and TV shows promoted diets that were basically starvation diets. 

When body positivity got popular in the 2010s, it was explicitly pushing against these norms that told women they had to harm themselves to be allowed in public. Media—pushed by consumers and by feminist publications like Jezebel—got the message and changed how they talked about women’s bodies. In Y2K, I write about struggling with anorexia and bulimia, and how my disordered eating was a logical response to the larger climate around body image. 

Right now, we seem to be in a revanchist period where “thin is in” again, and I hope my book can stand as a refusal of that. I refuse to go back, and I want to do whatever I can to let other people experiencing eating disorders know that they’re not alone, and that together we can challenge this toxic culture.

The War on terror shaped millennial political consciousness. 

I saw 9/11 happen live on CNN in my 8th grade civics class. Perhaps more importantly, I saw American culture and politics change overnight. Suddenly, torture was a nuanced political issue, and Rage Against the Machine was too controversial for the radio. The Dixie Chicks had their CDs run over by a tractor when they made a mildly critical comment about the invasion of Iraq. I was apolitical at the time, but I found this change shocking. 

A few years later, the Abu Ghraib photos came out. Like a lot of American millennials, I’m still traumatized by those images, and I’m still angry that the acts depicted in them were done, supposedly, in my name.

Archivists made my work possible. 

I couldn’t have written this book without the work of social media archivists like Serena Morris of @shes__underrated, Shaina of @imstuckin.1999, the person behind @flyandfamousblackgirls, the person behind @discontinuedmakeup, the YouTuber VenusStadt, and the entire team behind the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute. 

Unlike traditional archivists who work within libraries or universities, these archivists do this important and time-consuming work without institutional support. I encourage everyone to financially support their work where possible. Without this work, we can’t have more books like Y2K.

The Y2K era ended with the Great Recession in 2008. 

The Y2K era was characterized by the idea that the 21st century would mean prosperity for all. Politics were over, and we were all just supposed to focus on shopping and pop culture. The Great Recession put a swift end to that. 

Millions of Americans lost their homes, jobs, businesses, and savings. At one point, the national unemployment rate was as high as 10%. Suddenly—for the first time in years—people started asking big questions about politics, and specifically about the economy. The recession and its aftermath set the stage for all kinds of upstart political movements, from Bernie to Trump. Now, everyone talks about capitalism. 

In the Y2K Era, no one even acknowledged that it existed. It was just the world. It was like that David Foster Wallace speech about water.

Check out Colette Shade’s Y2K here:

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