Remember the 2010s? We Do!!
From the We Remember Booklet Collection by Nostalgia, Inc., Published 2022
Q: What do manly strollers, misunderstood monsters, Viewpoint superstars, and Botswanan metal have in common?
A: They are all iconic of the 2010s!
Yes, today We Remember the 2010s! A decade that said, “Be you and be proud of it…unless you’re a toxic jerk.”
World Events:
The 2010s were a tumultuous decade where the world order painfully realigned itself into a multi-polar one of overlapping alliances and shifting diplomacy. The rise of China and India and political instability in the USR mixed with a bold attempt to reassert some level of independence from the US by France led to a “Little Entente” between Paris, Moscow, and New Delhi, even as France remained a part of NATO and the EU, fears of a “Frexit” proving unfounded. The Central European Free Trade Agreement, or CEFTA, formed its own military alliance in the Central European Treaty Organization, or CETO, straining relations between NATO and a resurgent and questionably democratic USR.
The USR violently put down a 2012 insurrection in the Russian Far East led by ethnic Han and Manchu people demanding more local autonomy or reunification with China. USR President Alexi Navalny openly accused China of supporting or stoking the insurrection, which Beijing categorically denied. Hardliners in China have been demanding a return of the region, which they call Outer Manchuria and which was seized by Russia in the 19th Century.
Russian Soldiers arrive in Vladivostok (Image source Alamy)
Increasingly globalized trade and increasingly linked global financial systems that have led to the offshoring of manufacturing jobs in the West led to a spike in nationalism and calls for protectionism, leading in turn to populist politicians making waves and making gains in many nations. In the US, the election of America’s first female and first Black President and Vice President, respectively, led to an angry backlash by the US right at a level not seen since the Gore years. The Conservative grassroots Take Back America or TBA Movement sprang up, calling for a return to traditional values and an end of “big government corruption”. Militant White Nationalist Organizations or MWNOs returned and expanded and diversified their ranks, blurring at times into this growing grassroots activist movement. Far left organizations like the People’s Front sprang up in response. While the violence level has so far been smaller than what was seen in the 1990s, limited to some clashes at protests and a few lone wolf attacks, so-called Militia Communities have begun springing up in rural areas of the US and chatter about a “new Civil War” has alarmed the FBI. Larger and less radical and less overtly racist grassroots conservative movements within the larger TBA like Patriot America and One Truth have sprung up as well, but remain content to use peaceful protest against the Sebelius and Obama administrations.
With global temperatures rising even as the Green Energy transition continues, storms including hurricanes and cyclones became more frequent and severe, with a deadly typhoon striking Bangladesh in 2014, causing massive flooding and death. Unrelated (probably) to climate change, a 2012 Tsunami in Japan caused massive damage and an earthquake in 2017 devastated Turkey and some surrounding countries.
(Image source US Embassy)
The Paris Agreement of 2015 was signed in response to the growing climate crisis, furthering international cooperation on climate change and further accelerating the implementation of Green Technologies. The UN dedicated the moment to the memory of former UK Prime Minister and UN Climate Envoy Margret Thatcher, an early voice in “Green Toryism” and major player in putting the agreement in place, who’d passed away in 2013.
A pandemic scare struck in 2017 due to SARS-CoV-2 or “NuSARS”, with a fast global response able to contain and prevent a larger outbreak[1]. The “near miss” spurred the Sebelius Administration, spearheaded by Vice President Obama, to further expand the Pandemic Task Force they’d set up in 2014 after the Ebola scare.
The decade saw the Tech Banking Crisis of 2014 spiral into a near crash, with President Sebelius’s controversial intervention/bailout lauded by some as a heroic effort that staved off disaster and attacked by others as a corporate giveaway or as a Big Government Intrusion[2].
(Image source GAO)
In less disastrous news, the International Space Station added modules from China and the USR and the US and Chinese and USR Space Programs launched a new Race to the Moon and Mars, with all three powers hoping to put humans on both celestial bodies by 2030 and 2040, respectively. Private space ventures like Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Rob Meyerson and Jim Cantrell’s[3] Ultimate Frontiers took advantage of the Commercial Cargo and Crew program of the Heinz presidency, launching a new private space race alongside the public one.
Check out more World Events in our Appendix!
Politics:
The 2010s were tumultuous times as LGBTQ+ people gained more rights, including marriage rights, while conservatives pushed back, particularly against Transgender rights, at the state and local level. Landmark legislation and court cases opened the door to same sex marriage in the Western World while many States and localities pushed back. The conservative social swing of the 2000s was countered with a progressive social swing in the 2010s as Millennium and Postmillennial generations increasingly reached voting age, ultimately outnumbering more conservative Baby Boomer and mixed conservative/progressive Gen-X voters in many nations.
The Decade began with President John Heinz still in the White House. This would change in 2012 when VP Jeb Bush and running mate Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire lost their race against Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas and Barack Obama of Illinois, who became America’s first female President and first Black Vice President, respectively. Sebelius would be reelected in 2016, beating Mitt Romney and Nikki Haley and Obama would be elected President in 2020 alongside VP Amy Klobuchar, beating Republicans Jim Gilmore of Virginia and Jan Brewer of Arizona.
President Kathleen Sebelius gives a speech as Vice President Barack Obama looks on (Image source CS Monitor)
Sebelius and Obama would tackle many controversial subjects, such as gun control and police reform and LGBTQ rights, the latter aided by a landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized same sex marriage. They would further expand Green Energy policy and pass a national minimum wage hike to $15 an hour. They would also controversially establish a surveillance and infiltration policy against MWNOs and some of their non-militant allied organizations, leaked documents revealed, exacerbating growing grassroots conservative anger.
The Millen-Gen and Postmillennial generations, meanwhile, are turning increasingly to the left, making any hope for a conservative renaissance seem unlikely in the near future unless the GOP changes their stances on wedge issues like climate policy, LGBTQ rights, and gun control. And this growing fear of getting “shut out” is only adding to the anger.
In the UK, Labour won another majority under Gordon Brown in 2010, but the 2015 election resulted in a minority government for Brown, who stepped down for David Miliband, who in turn formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Theresa May and the Conservative party took back Parliament in 2020 with her own minority government and Ed Miliband took over as Leader of the Opposition. Despite ongoing agitation for a “Brexit” from the EU, May’s government has so far resisted calls for a vote on the controversial proposal[4].
In France, Jean-Pierre Raffarin won re-election in 2012 by a reasonable margin, giving The Right another five years of power. In 2017, Alain Juppe edged out Nicolas Sarkozy for the UMP nominations and is elected President. Manuel Vallls and the Socialists were just elected to power this past year.
In Germany, Angela Merkel’s CDU had maintained a narrow plurality and coalition government since 2009. In 2013 the SPD lost voters for being in the coalition, but Merkel still needed the support for a “Grand Coalition”. In 2017 Merkel was backed by the FDP and would maintain power until 2021 when Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer was elected in another, Grand Coalition[5].
In Canada the death of Jack Layton led to the collapse of the NDP. Rona Ambrose took over the finally-united Conservative Party and was elected Prime Minister in 2015. She led the Conservatives to another (minority) victory in 2019, with the NDP bouncing back up to The Opposition under Singh. There will be an election this fall.[6]
In the Union of Sovereign States controversial President Boris Nemtsov stepped aside in 2010 for his protégé Alexei Navalny, who would be reelected in 2015. In a move that restored some hope of the USR remaining a meaningfully democratic nation, in 2020 Yabloko politician Emilia Slabunova was elected President, the first transfer of power in the USR since Boris Yeltsin replaced Mikhail Gorbachev. Remaining political suppression of the dissident Russian People’s Party continues to call into question how democratic the country really is.
In Japan, a tumultuous start to the decade would see a constant shifting of Prime Ministers. Yasuo Fukuda (LDP) would take over from Junichiro Koizumi as PM in 2010 only to be replaced in 2011 by Shintaro Ishihara (JRP), who lead an LDP government per an arrangement made with LDP party leaders following the sudden death of Fukuda's successor as LDP leader, Nobutaka Machimura, before he could become PM. Yukio Hatoyama (DPJ) would take over in 2012 to be in turn replaced by Katsuya Okada (DPJ) from 2014-2022 (DPJ/CDP). Okada ultimately became Japan's Longest Serving PM in 2022 before being replaced by Kenta Izumi (CDP).[7]
In China, Li Keqiang took over as Paramount Leader of China after his mentor Hu Qili stepped down in 2012. He was replaced as Paramount Leader just this year by his protégé Li Qiang. Li has continued Hu’s economic liberalizations while also helping dial down some of the revanchist rhetoric against the Russian Far East, a region that China calls Outer Manchuria.
And yet the most profound change to politics came from social media. The new era of interconnectedness led to the ability to share information to many people all at once This proved a mixed bag as on one hand it allowed for the organization of mass protests against authoritarian regimes, which resulted in democratic reforms in many nations, some of them sadly short lived. On the other hand, it allowed for the spread of dangerous disinformation and conspiracy theories that radicalized whole new generations to consider or commit violent actions in the name of politics and religion. Political debates online, untethered from any agreed-upon set of facts or even realities, devolved into arguments and anger that occasionally led to violence. It also allowed for the immediate “digital boycotts” of goods, persons, and companies based upon the political beliefs of the target, real or perceived. “Miss Inpho” became a prime culprit in this online vigilante warfare.
Please check out our tables on elections in the Appendix!
Arts & Entertainment:
And now for the fun stuff!
The Millen-Gen interest in authenticity that began in the 2000s evolved in the early 2010s into the so-called New Sincerity, a grassroots social movement that openly rejected the cynicism and bile-driven tribalism that had proliferated in online culture, seeking something more “real, authentic, and sincere”. This New Sincerity was adopted wholeheartedly by the Postmillennial generation, who took increasing interest in “Maker” culture, Do It Yourself, self-employment, follow-your-dreams living, and even by the end of the decade (as we discuss further in the Technology section) a growing interest in retro-technologies like Polaroid cameras.
This was followed by a New Progressivism that pushed back against the rightward social swing of the 2000s, in particular the rise of the more inclusive and “share the load” mentality of the True Manliness movement as a pushback against the Men’s Rights movement of the earlier decade. Marked by the appearance of more masculine child care items such as the so-called Man Prams and other “tactical baby gear” accessories and spearheaded by icons of True Manliness like Nick Offerman, Dave Bautista[8], and Terry Crews, True Manliness was often laced with self-aware irony that nonetheless acknowledged the responsibility to be yourself and to define yourself while always standing up for others. True Manhood soon became defined in much more inclusive, anti-toxic ways that increasingly included non-traditionally masculine men and LGBTQ men, including Trans Men like Chaz Bono.
“I have to push the Pramalot!” (Image source CNET)
Naturally, this cultural shift affected arts and entertainment. Reevaluations of the Gore and Gephardt administrations and the children of the 1980s and 1990s beginning to have families of their own led to a nostalgia for the Decades. ‘80s and ‘90s iconic IP like the
Jurassic Park,
Spider-Man,
Star Trek,
Star Wars,
Transformers,
My Little Pony,
Benny Bunny, and the Universal and Toho Monsters and Kaiju returned to the big and small screens [9]. Greater acceptance of diversity and better awareness of coded race and gender/sexuality in older entertainment led to a sudden interest in Monster Heroes[10], such as the return of Marvel’s
Gargoyles and a new series following DC’s
Manbat. Heroic or even comedic vampires, zombies, werewolves, and other macabre monsters became de rigueur, as epitomized by Taika Waititi’s remake of
Hawaiian Vamps, Disney’s Henson-inspired animated
Monstrous, and Judd Apatow’s long-awaited sequel to
An American Werewolf in America, 2013’s
A Canadian Werewolf in Seattle. This led in turn to Ironic juxtapositions of scary monsters with cute children, such as Craig McCracken’s
Fuzzy Wuzzy and Tim Burton’s
My Buddy Cthulhu[11]. More cerebral and deconstructive productions followed that tackled head-on Lovecraft’s and other classic authors’ overt racism or the implicit racism in some classic horror, such as Guillermo del Toro’s
Black Lagoon or Misha Green’s
R'lyeh North Carolina.
“Forget the other guy,
I am the Night!” (Image source Comics Beat)
Dark monsters and ‘80s/’90s nostalgia led to dark Fantasy and dark Sci-Fi productions, with Disney’s Fantasia Films and TV leading the charge, naturally. A dark remake of
Battlestar Galactica was followed by a J. Michael Straczynski led remake of
Blake’s 7[12] and a Jim Henson produced remake of
The Time Tunnel that was used to explore some of the more challenging aspects of history in an un-sanitized way, from slavery and colonialism to war and genocide. Guillermo del Toro launched a series based on Naomi Novik’s Temeraire[13] while Brett Eisner launched the series
Black Sun Rising, based on the C.S. Friedman dark fantasy novels.
Broadway broke out big time thanks to Lin Manuel Miranda’s
Il Duce and other revolutionary musicals. Following on from the popularity of the 2000s “Spectacle Age”, stage musicals became more mainstream and growing diversity in the actors and creators expanded the audience. Tupac Shakur made a Broadway version of
B.I.G. and Savion Glover debuted
Fated. And suddenly even Manly Men were unironically enjoying show tunes and paying top dollar for tickets to
Little Pink Ribbon.
And yet the biggest productions in terms of their watershed effects on the culture and economy of entertainment were ironically some of the smallest. New advances in affordable digital cameras and online distribution platforms led to the age of viral fame and “cottage production”. Suddenly “two dudes with a DigiStar and a dream” could produce documentaries, web series, or even feature films with shockingly high production values on a nano-budget capable of competing with multi-billion-dollar blockbusters. The various franchises of Whoopass Studios led the way by offering seed funding to would-be producers and directors totally removed from the Hollywood – or Bollywood or Daliwood or HoKollywood – systems. When Patrick H. Willems’ nano-budget
Authenticity beat
Venture for the 2017 Best Art Direction Oscar and nearly took Best Picture, the industry had a collective gasp.
Move over, Triad. It’s Tim from Toledo! (Image source Rev.com)
The Digital distribution and the Direct Viewing revolution likewise changed storytelling. “Binge viewing” allowed for long form TV and web series devoid of the “monster of the week” or other filler episodes needed to support the syndication and out-of-order broadcasting system that was the norm in the Network TV days. The “Democratization” of distribution and production also meant that new voices, often ones shunned by traditional media, could break out. Marginalized communities and subcultures were suddenly empowered to produce stories that would never have flown at most major production companies. Suddenly shows like
Desert Winds,
Middlesex, or
Mixed could break out with mainstream audiences and Indie films like
The Muffin Divas or
Down and Out on Fire Island could win Oscars.
The internet and social media also led to a boom in international music, with the so-called Asian Invasion leading the pack, Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, and even Philippine music competing for the most international clicks. Building off of Hip Pop, Euro-Hop had its day, with British Chap Hop[14] and the related lower-brow Chav Hop seeing a brief spike of international popularity. The surprise viral popularity of the Botswanan Death Metal scene[15] combined with growing popularity for the hardcore Japanese Post Goth band Death Kitty led to a Metal Renaissance, with the arrival of what the press naturally dubbed NüMetal. This included ‘70s/’80s Throwback Metal bands, Prog Metal, the seemingly ironic Christian-led Life Metal, lingering popularity for Hillcore, and of course Satirical Metal like the music of Scäry Ümläüts.
All of this would push aside the late 2000s/early 2010s love for NuFolk and NuGrass, though a lingering desire for “authentic and real” unprocessed music would lead to a mid-2010s boom in acapella and even, shockingly enough, things like Barbershop Quartets and Medieval Madrigals[16]. Meanwhile, similar cultural shifts led to a big boom in popularity for “Vintage Vinyl” tracks from the ‘60s through ‘90s which would return those Golden Oldies to the charts along with rebroadcasts of the late Casey Kasem, who passed away in 2014. Space Pop, Hip Pop and similarly processed music began a slide into irrelevance that continues to this day.
R&B, spearheaded by Divas like Beyonce, would keep evolving with the times, incorporating new technologies and making a large shift into music addressing complex social and political and economic factors, particularly those affecting people of color. However, the popularity (and increasing mainstream “whiteness”) of Hip Pop would result in a sharp split in the Hip Hop community that led to the self-proclaimed “KOR” or “Keepin’ Ours Real” Hip Hop movement that tried to return it to its urban, more hard-core roots while the more mainstream stuff fizzled out. KOR Hop (its members have angrily rejected attempts by the media to brand it NuHop) has grown more experimental and sophisticated and less “hit factory” in what music historians like to compare to the Bebop movement in Jazz, with many predicting that Hip Hop will, like Jazz, increasingly become a “for the art” genre with a dedicated core of followers. That said, the sudden spike in interest for the somewhat similar Funk- and House-influenced
Go-go music native to Washington DC may mark a shift in the euphemistically-called “urban” scene within mainstream music.
Go, go, Go-go! (Image source DCist)
And as for fashion, styles began with carryover from the more “retro” styles of the late 2000s, with hats and midcentury-inspired looks all the rage. As the mid-2010s came around and more Postmillennial people reached maturity, styles became more relaxed and informal, with looser-fitting clothing and less emphasis on brands or labels and more of a focus on original handmade creations acquired online from home knitters and stitchers, all a part of a larger move towards more “authentic” non-corporate, non-sweatshop, non-mass-produced creations, at least for those who could afford it or had something to trade on buy-and-barter sites like NetMarket. Vintage “consignment chic” added to what was an increasingly eclectic mix of styles and looks and eras.
In general, the 2010s saw a move towards finding “your look” rather than aping what magazines were showing or others were doing, which occasionally led to ironic cases of cliques of young people all dressing in exactly the same “different than everybody else” manner. Thus, regional “looks” started to return, as local artists and craftspeople sold similar styles to their local customers or sold online to certain “pods” of friends and acquaintances in a distant region.
As such, between online craft-creation clothing and nigh-unlimited online content choices, arts & entertainment entered into a new era of decentralization, where gone were the days when “everybody” wore the same labels and watched the same TV shows and listened to the same Top 40 hits and instead more and more subcultures grew in diverse locales, sometimes localized, often spread far geographically and linked via online communications.
Look for a list of Oscar and other award winners in the Appendix!
Technology:
The Nokia Intelephone and its competitors like the Apple SEED, Motorola Mobi, and Samsung Juba, ultimately called smart phones, I-phones, or increasingly (and with a touch of irony) Inphos, would become indispensable pieces of technology and social media would make people contradictorily more connected and informed yet more isolated and inundated with misinformation. As mentioned in the Politics section, this had profound global implications. “Miss Inpho” would become the stereotypical purveyor of such fact-free forwards.
Bow before your Master (Image source Shutterstock)
The proliferation of Direct Viewing would lead to a flood of on-demand content that would bring not just the end of the video store, but see the severe weakening of network and cable and satellite television, which face an uncertain future as government regulators continue to “sell off” bandwidth from broadcast TV and radio for use in broadband internet applications. The appearance of user-made content on platforms like Viewpoint and MeTV and Lilypad and later Blynk and Geist has led to the appearance of the self-produced Internet Star, with musicians such as Maddie K. and The Madcap Marauders becoming chart topping bands with content made in their basement. “Viral” phenomena have eclipsed Warhol’s predicted “15 minutes of fame” with something more on the scale of 15 seconds. Cheap movie quality digital cameras and growing memory capacity and the proliferation of high-speed internet have allowed for a growing “Cottage Film Industry” with shockingly high production values possible with nano-budget films, causing a burgeoning panic in the major studios.
Remember to Like and Subscribe (Image source Public Health Post)
Similarly, the advent of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence algorithms of increasing sophistication started causing a growing panic from writers and visual artists, along with growing “Skynet” fears of human replacement, that persists to this day.
Cheap drones would revolutionize several fields of industry and entertainment, including many are predicting warfare[17]. They’d also raise new safety, security, and privacy concerns. Early promises of “home drone delivery” ran into a practical wall of regulations and privacy and safety concerns, but emergent specialized industries like remote delivery and just-in-time delivery of critical specialty items including blood and organs are commercializing and scaling up as we write this.
Here’s looking at you, kid (Image source EASA)
The technology of additive manufacturing, a.k.a. 3-D Printing, led to a small revolution in customized manufacturing with reduced waste, but more importantly came with the promise of an emerging “cottage industry” for manufacturing, construction, and design where a garage could become an industrial-scale production site or “click and print purchasing” could replace shopping and home delivery of a wide variety of products. While none of this has yet come to pass as the technology is currently limited to prototyping and trinkets for the most part, the technology is getting cheaper, higher resolution, more precise, and more capable with each year and may soon achieve some level of “democratizing manufacturing”. Or perhaps “printed weapons” will bring a new age of home-grown terrorism. Or perhaps none of this will come to pass, time will tell!
The New Space Race, which has pitted the US, USR, EU, China, and Private Industry in various phases of cooperation and competition, has spawned a growing diversity in approaches to space travel and a proliferation of private satellites and even the first “space tourists”. President Obama is reportedly considering whether or not to launch a separate “Space Force”, though most Defense insiders consider such a specialized service premature.
Conversely, Postmillennials in spite of (or perhaps because of) growing up in this new hyperconnected technologically immersive age have become increasingly interested in “retro” technology[18], with once-obsolete devices like flip phones and even Polaroid and other film-based cameras making a comeback. Home upgrades to Retro computers, in particular “Rat Hack” upgrades of the venerable old MICKEY computers from the 1980s, have led to a proliferation of old-fashioned hardware chassis on desktops everywhere.
Guess who’s back! (Image source DI Reporter)
We suppose an unmodified Apple II or Commodore 64 with a 5 ¼” Floppy Drive and Dot Matrix printer is just around the corner?
Look for more devices invented this decade in the Appendix!
Sports:
The 2010 Winter Olympics were held in Pyeongchang, South Korea, narrowly beating out Canada, who would claim the 2014 Winter Olympics, primarily held at Banff, Alberta. Beijing would follow in 2018. The 2012 Summer Olympics were held at Leipzig, Germany, while the 2016 Summer Olympics went to Rio De Janeiro[19].
The 2010 World Cup would, in a controversial decision plagued by bribery accusations, go to Morocco before pivoting to second-place nation South Africa in 2014. A scandal-marred 2018 World Cup was held in Columbia amid claims of bribery and extortion.
As the economics and corruption of both major world events became more widely known, more and more cities and countries began to withdraw their names from consideration.
In the NFL, QB Tom Brady led the Los Angeles Rams to several Super Bowl victories, the Rams remaining the dominant team of the decade despite a suddenly rising rival, the St. Louis Stallions, who took advantage of first round draft picks to build a world class team, ultimately gaining their first Lombardy trophy in 2018. However, the coverage of the sport would increasingly be dominated by scandals related to the health of the players, with high-profile issues with painkiller addiction and traumatic brain injury ultimately resulting in much-needed changes to safety protocols. The partially fan-owned Rams would lead the charge, driven by a 2016 early onset Parkinson’s diagnosis for their popular “bad boy” defensive tackle Dwayne “Rock” Johnson, who became the lead spokesman for the cause.
The new face of justice for the NFL (Image source Biography.com)
MLB changed significantly under new commissioner Tim Brosnan, who replaced the outgoing George W. Bush in 2008. Brosnan became a controversial figure, promoting new efforts to stimulate flagging interest in America’s Pastime, such as interleague play and the pitch clock. The Houston Astros and Mexico City Aztecs would be premier teams along with the Phillies, the Anaheim Angels, and the Washington Nationals.
The Spurs would continue to dominate the NBA, but the Anaheim Clippers would start to cut into their dominance thanks to some major talent influxes as the House of Mouse made some investments, hoping to spin up attendance at the Anaheim Arena, which had fallen off as the Avengers went into a years-long slump.
The US National Women’s Soccer League would continue to dominate US Soccer, with the Orlando Venture FC and Portland Pride generally taking the trophy. The WMLS would end up working diligently to help the US Men’s MLS gain more exposure in a turnaround from the typical expectation. Even revelations about sexual harassment at Sports Century, the primary televised venue for WMLS, couldn’t dent the enthusiasm, but did help pave the way for the 2016 Equal Pay Agreement between the MLS, WMLS, and Player’s Unions.
Be sure to see our Appendix for a full listing of scores, rosters, and other fun facts about sports in the 2010s!
Conclusion; a Decade to Remember!
So, We Remember the 2010s. How about you? Were you an adult? A teen? A child? What World Events or sports moments or films or TV shows stood out for you? How did the technology affect you?
Shown: almost nothing that appears in This Timeline’s 2010s! (Image source Bill the Baker on Deviant Art)
Did you ever rock out in Bantu?
Did you upload a video of yourself doing so to Blynk?
Did you buy and restore a used MICKEY?
Be sure to tell us all about it at
www.WeRememberBooks.net/I-Remember.
[1] Disease experts had long predicted that China, specifically the Wuhan area (there’s a reason they placed the Institute of Virology there), would be the most likely source of a pandemic due to a combination of encroachment on nature to allow zoogenic transmission and extensive infrastructure to help spread it quickly and a government loathe to admit any problems are happening under their watch. Whether you blame the wet market or a lab leak, without the pandemic task force being disbanded and the CDC presence in China gutted in 2018 in our timeline to “save money”, there’s a much earlier detection by the West and a much better coordinated response than in our timeline when the inevitable virus makes its appearance (I chose 2017 arbitrarily). That and a lot more luck and a China less openly hostile to the West and more likely to actually accept outside help in those critical opening days than during the brewing Cold War of our timeline. Instead, this “COVID 17” will be a lot like the
SARS outbreak of 2002-04.
[2] With no Housing Bubble there is no 2008 Banking Crash, and thus no subsequent Dodd-Frank Banking Regulatory Reform, the sins of SVB and similar tech industry Venture Capital banks catch up to them sooner. Fast government action would prevent greater fallout, but still see a small NASDAQ crash and a small local recession in Silicon Valley that spurred tech growth in other areas, such as Silicon Holler.
[3] The
real heroes of private space flight, not Tech Bro narcissists who buy their way in.
[4] Note that Jeremey Corbyn and Boris Johnson are just back benchers in the party. Brexit has been discussed and there’s a notable grassroots movement for it, but it has not yet put up for a vote as of 2023.
[5] Kramp-Karrenbauer appears to be a centrist from a domestic policy perspective but incredibly hawkish when it comes to foreign policy. In our timeline her political career took a hit because she was gaffe prone and because of the rapid right-wing lurch going on within Germany that undermined her position. With the rise of CETO and rising tensions with the USR her hawkish foreign policy gains her a base of support on the right.
[6] Hat tip as always to
@jpj1421 for US & World Politics.
[7] Through Party Mergers, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) became the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) in 2017. Hat tip to
@ajm8888.
[8] With the disintegration of the WWE, Bautista went to the WCW where he was able to take advantage of the vacuum left by the fall of some big names before ultimately going into acting a little earlier than in our timeline.
[9] Hat tip to
@Nathanoraptor.
[10] Hat tip to
@Ogrebear.
[11] Hat tip to
@Ophois.
[12] Hat tip to
@Denliner.
[13] Hat tip to
@Migrant_Coconut.
[14] Hat tip to
@nick_crenshaw82.
[15] Hat tip to
@Plateosaurus.
[16] If our timeline can briefly make Sea Shanties popular, then this one can have Barbers and Bards.
[17] The lack of the War on Terror and the limited usefulness of drones in the tree-shrouded Congo have meant that the Rise of the Machines in modern warfare is less obviously apparent than in our timeline where even cheap home drones have been weaponized in Syria and The Ukraine.
[18] Seeing my early-twenties niece totally into polaroid cameras of the type popular when I was growing up was truly a delightful surprise (I still consider Polaroids magical, even though I now understand how they work). My wife asked for a picture of our niece’s cat, so she texted us a smart phone pic she took of a polaroid she took of the cat. The early 2020s in a single image!
[19] China and South America were likely hosts for the Olympics those years given global trends, and Rio seemed the most likely to meet various “stability” requirements, hence the second-order butterflies despite the changes earlier in the decade. I’ll leave the 2020 Summer and 2022 Winter Olympics up to any guest writers. Hat tip to
@jpj1421 for the Sports assist!