Why was society more conformist and superficial in the 2000s?

[James35]

It seems like that society was more conformist, superficial, and materialistic during the early 2000s. Reality TV was all the rage. The most socially powerful people seemed obsessed with materialism and extreme dieting if they were women and excessive exercise if they were men.



Why were people during the 2000s more conformist?

 

[Pooky]

Compared to when? I think it's easy to oversimplify decades; by the very nature of a society most people are conformist to some degree, but there's always a fairly prominent counterculture, particularly among the young.

I suppose it does seem fairly true that materialism ruled the roost a bit in the 00s. Why? The economy was, until the last couple of years, relatively strong, and so people had more money to spend in a decade where consumer technology made great advances. DVDs went from expensive collector's items, to easily affordable omnipresent products that could pack in about 50 VHS tapes worth of content in a fraction of the space, and by the mid-point of the decade we had two new home video mediums in the wings hoping to supersede it. One company allowed you to rent DVDs from home, and by the end of the decade started the streaming revolution. Video Game Consoles went from Blocky Polygons, to the cel-shaded prettiness of The Wind Waker, to the HD realism of the Uncharted Games, while PSP allowed you to take full movies in your pocket and Nintendo added unprecedented but accessible innovations on the DS and Wii. Mobile music went from tape-chewing walkmans and bumpy portable CD players, to slender devices that stored thousands of songs at once. Mobile phones went from status symbols for the Gordon Gekkos and Cher Horowitzes of the world to something so common place that kids wanted for their 6th birthday. The internet went from a cumbersome dial up experience mostly beloved by "nerds", to something a grandmother would use to share photos of her food with hundreds of her friends and\or people she met one time within a few seconds on her smart phone.

Culturally, reality TV was a new phenomenon and captured a lot of people's imagination, and much of it had a a symbiotic relationship with the fashion industry, which also benefited from the high profile of glossy magazines. Glitz, glamour and "bling" were in.

There are a lot of parallels between the 00s and the 80s, a decade that was reviled for a long time for its gaudy excesses but ultimately canonised as one of the great decades on the strength of its pop cultural innovations. I don't think the cultural or geopolitical changes between the 00s and the 10s was necessarily as stark as the 80s to the 90s, at least not many differences for the better, so it doesn't seem to have ever become a "Hate Sink" the way the 80s were for a while, and seems to have skipped straight to the nostalgic rehabilitation phase. I suspect it won't ever be cannonised to the extent the 80s has been, but we'll see. For better or worse, it started a lot of the trends that are still with us or felt today ("The Golden Age of Television", Reboots ("gritty" or otherwise), the MCU and shared universes).

Are people really less conformist now? From my point of view I'd just turned 13 when the 00s started and 23 when the decade ended. I'll grant that people in that age group generally seem a little more socially conscious now, but I knew a lot of people then who were stridently against the mainstream and at the end of the day they mostly still lusted after the hottest phones and other mod cons like everyone else. I think a lot of people today are much the same, but with Social Media glory the prize.

 

[Red Arrow]

Well, certainly not more materialistic.

(Source: Bloomberg)

 

[Fone Bone]

This thread asserts a shaky premise entirely without evidence and demands we accept and explain things using that frame without asking our input. I'm not going to play by those rules. This thread is flawed from the ground up.

Also, I didn't STOP beating my wife, simply because I never started. Also, I don't have a wife.