History AudienceAlienatingEra / RealLife

* Matthew Patrick's ''WebVideo/GameTheory'' has been accused of being in one, with the most commonly accepted start date being around 2015. Around that time, the theories (especially those related to lore instead of math or science) became increasingly flimsy and [[CowboyBebopAtHisComputer poorly-researched]], particularly the infamous ''[[VideoGame/{{Undertale}} Sans]] is [[VideoGame/EarthBound1994 Ness]]'', alongside relying more on speculation instead of hard evidence or WordOfGod and [[ItsTheSameNowItSucks an overabundance of videos]] dedicated to ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' and particularly ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys'' (which, admittedly, boosted his visibility large enough for [[TheCameo a cameo appearance]] in ''Film/FiveNightsAtFreddys2023''), especially considering that several videos were promoted as being his final theory on ''FNAF'', only for [[SeriesFauxnale MatPat to repeatedly go back on his word and make another video]]. While a shift towards acknowledging sources have managed to win back some disaffected viewers, with the videos speculating the plot of ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' being regarded as a major highlight, there is still criticism towards the over-exposure of ''FNAF'' and other MascotHorror games on the channel.
* Having enjoyed its heyday at the beginning of TheNewTens, the whole genre of ObjectShows is agreed to have entered one starting from the mid-2010s, with a wide range of factors being given: the decline of ''WesternAnimation/TotalDrama'', which the genre was born to spoof, the increasingly long ScheduleSlip of high-profile object shows (most notoriously, a whole decade between the release of successive episodes of ''WebAnimation/BattleForDreamIsland Again''), [[SturgeonsLaw a flood of low-quality object shows]] that soured potential viewers on the genre, several promising shows such as ''WebAnimation/ObjectOverload'' and ''WebAnimation/ObjectHavoc'' ending up in DevelopmentHell and/or being QuietlyCancelled, allegations of misconduct being made against creators (such as creator of ''WebAnimation/BattleForObjectDestination'' Maxwell Hall being accused of grooming a minor, and creator of ''WebAnimation/AfterSchooligans'' [=LorenTzel=] being accused of racism at the 2022 BFDI + II Meetup), and so on.

* {{Creepypasta}}s are widely agreed to have entered one shortly after their golden age at the start of TheNewTens, with the most common starting point being May 2014 -- the same month of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slender_Man_stabbing an attempted murder]] that was the first of a series of incidents that ultimately brought down one of the creepypasta scene's biggest mascots, [[Franchise/TheSlenderManMythos Slender Man]]. This was quickly followed up by the downfalls of the "[[TeensAreMonsters teenage murderer]]", "[[TheMostDangerousVideoGame evil video game]]" and "[[MissingEpisode disturbing lost episode]]" genres popularized by ''Literature/JeffTheKiller'', ''Fanfic/SonicEXE'' and ''Fanfic/SquidwardsSuicide'' respectively, due to [[FollowTheLeader a flood of imitators]] that were increasingly criticized for being thinly-veiled revenge fantasies, overusing the same tropes to the point that [[OnceOriginalNowCommon the original stories were indistinguishable from their derivatives]], and/or their gratuitous violent content [[ShockFatigue that eventually desensitized audiences]], all of which caused potential readers to instead turn towards more highbrow online horror stories. A few creepypastas are still being written, but the scene is far more niche than it used to be.

* In the early 1990s, UsefulNotes/LasVegas was facing stiff competition from not only [[{{Joisey}} Atlantic City]] drawing away gamblers on the East Coast (at its height, AC had over twice as many tourists as Vegas), but the looming threat of {{Native American casino}}s, legalized in 1988[[note]] Technically, Indian casinos had been legal since 1976, with the case of ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_v._Itasca_County Bryan v. Itasca County]]'' serving as the precedent for the first attempts at opening casinos in TheEighties, but the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 ended the legal grey area that it existed in[[/note]], drawing away gamblers from Middle America as well. As a survival mechanism, Las Vegas began its now-infamous attempt to expand its appeal to tourists by rebranding the city as a destination for ''family vacations''. Every Strip hotel built over 1990-93 had at least one theme park-esque attraction and theme, with the new MGM Grand boasting a full-blown theme park.\\

This backfired badly. Adult tourists who preferred to gamble and party among their own kind were upset, hotel-casino staffs trained to operate adult-oriented resorts [[CripplingOverspecialization couldn't handle the unique needs of families]], cases of parents rushing off to the gambling tables and leaving their kids to fend for themselves made the news -- one abandoned child ended up kidnapped and ''murdered'' -- and the theme parks turned out to be a bomb that closed in 2002. This era ended with the 1998 opening of the Bellagio, which was explicitly geared towards a very classy and very adult clientele with its fine art gallery, conservatory, resident Creator/CirqueDuSoleil show, and high-stakes poker tables. While the hotels that opened to serve families are still around, and Vegas still markets itself as being about more than just gambling, said hotels have been progressively de-themed and the city's entertainment mix now mostly excludes families.

* During the late 2000s and early 2010s, {{Website/Cracked}} was a very popular humor website, spun off from a failing knock-off of [[{{Magazine/MAD}} MAD Magazine]] in 2005 under editor-in-chief Jack O'Brien. It thrived on a mixture of community-submitted lists and articles and columns written by a small and often popular core of on-staff columnists with distinct styles, often combining [[UnconventionalLearningExperience genuinely interesting trivia and facts]] with [[SophisticatedAsHell an over-the-top, somewhat profane, and self-deprecating sense of humor]], most of which ended in recommendations for other such articles so [[WikiWalk it was easy to get sucked in after reading just one]]. By 2010, Cracked had drawn over a billion page views, and by 2012 it was the most-visited humor site in the world, even beating out ''Website/TheOnion''. They also began releasing video series like "Agents of Cracked" and "After Hours," which unfortunately sowed the seeds of the site's doom. It became a victim of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pivot_to_video pivot to video]], where Facebook's misrepresented statistics about online usage led many companies to prioritize video content, even though it's slower and more expensive to produce and more rapidly consumed. In 2016, Cracked was acquired by the E. W. Scripps Company, who fired most of the staff to cut costs in 2017, with others leaving to pursue other projects. This coincided with a dramatic reduction in the quality of the community-submitted list articles, which had been vetted for quality and humor before posting. By 2020, the last of the old guard had been fired, the site had been passed around like a hot potato by various corporate owners with a tiny skeleton crew of actual employees pumping out content as fast and as often as they can with little regard for quality control, the new list articles and captions are more designed to feature well on social media than anything else, and the only consistent viewers are [[JustHereForGodzilla only showing up to try to look up old articles they remember from the past]], many of which [[TechnologyMarchesOn are increasingly unreadable as format changes to the site leave their text jumbled, their images missing, and the new search features struggling to locate them anyway]]. Time will tell if this era ends Cracked forever.

* In general, the era of the "automotive city", with its barren concrete plazas, urban highways on stilts, and tearing down entire neighborhoods to make way for roads and parking, is now considered the worst of all architectural audience-alienating eras. Almost all other styles and epochs have their defenders and people who "revive" them today, but this one is so extremely derided, that it explains the bad rep of brutalism (which mostly happened in the same era) described above.

** While Hyundai and its corporate sibling Kia saw their reputation in the US improve in the 2010s, one particularly embarrassing problem [[https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkaq9z/us-cities-have-a-staggering-problem-of-kia-and-hyundai-thefts-this-data-shows-it emerged]] late in the decade. While every other automaker has engine immobilizers as standard equipment on every car they sell in the US (as does Hyundai in Canada and Europe due to local laws), they aren't technically required, and so Hyundai decided to [[CuttingCorners save money]] by not including them in cars made from 2011 through 2021. This meant that anyone with a screwdriver and a USB cord could easily steal a Hyundai or Kia,[[note]]If it uses an actual key - cars with push--button ignition don't have this problem, though a potential thief won't figure this out until he's already broken into your car[[/note]] and once criminals figured this out and shared the information on Platform/TikTok (where a subculture called the "Kia Boys" emerged), car theft rates skyrocketed, driven entirely by thefts of Hyundais and Kias. The problem got so bad that seventeen cities sued Hyundai over it, blaming them for a wave of car thefts, joyriding, and assorted crimes in which stolen cars were used as getaway vehicles, and it's generally acknowledged that driving a Hyundai or Kia from 2021 or earlier may as well be an invitation for somebody to steal it.

** While Hyundai and its corporate sibling Kia saw their reputation in the US improve in the 2010s, one particularly embarrassing problem [[https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkaq9z/us-cities-have-a-staggering-problem-of-kia-and-hyundai-thefts-this-data-shows-it emerged]] late in the decade. While every other automaker has engine immobilizers as standard equipment on every car they sell in the US (as does Hyundai in Canada and Europe due to local laws), they aren't technically required, and so Hyundai decided to [[CuttingCorners save money]] by not including them in cars made from 2011 through 2021. This meant that anyone with a screwdriver and a USB cord could easily steal a Hyundai or Kia, and once criminals figured this out and shared the information on Platform/TikTok (where a subculture called the "Kia Boys" emerged), car theft rates skyrocketed, driven entirely by thefts of Hyundais and Kias. The problem got so bad that seventeen cities sued Hyundai over it, blaming them for a wave of car thefts, joyriding, and assorted crimes in which stolen cars were used as getaway vehicles, and it's generally acknowledged that driving a Hyundai or Kia from 2021 or earlier may as well be an invitation for somebody to steal it.

* If you want to get a North American skier or snowboarder [[BerserkButton worked up into a fury]], bring up Vail Resorts within earshot. Starting in the 2010s, Vail, then the owner of four ski resorts in UsefulNotes/{{Colorado}} (including their namesake) and Heavenly Mountain Resort at Lake Tahoe in UsefulNotes/{{California}}, went on [[PredatoryBusiness a buying spree of ski resorts]] across the US and beyond, especially in the latter half of the decade, and many longtime skiers and riders would argue that they put every resort they bought into an AAE. Their signature innovation was the Epic Pass, a season pass that allowed entry at any Vail-owned ski resort in the world along with limited access to multiple partner resorts -- and because they were so cheap,[[note]]A full, unrestricted Epic Pass for the 2023/24 season [[https://www.onthesnow.com/news/epic-pass-buyers-guide/ cost $969 for adults and $494 for children]] before discounts (which are typically offered when buying them in the summer), and more limited passes cost less than that. When you remember that this pass works for ''every'' Vail-owned park, not just one as most season passes for theme parks and ski resorts are, and that it's fairly common for people to go skiing or snowboarding more than a dozen times in one season at parks where [[CrackIsCheaper lift tickets regularly start at well over $100]], you can see how it would be a bargain.[[/note]] many Vail-owned resorts were soon crawling with more guests than they knew what to do with, leading to not only long lines at chairlifts but also, more importantly, safety hazards from both overcrowding and large numbers of beginners. What's more, Vail's management often eliminated local control at the resorts it bought and centralized most decision making, and brought a wave of gentrification to many ski towns where they bought resorts, leading many to feel that their local mountains getting bought out by Vail stripped them of their identity and character. Skiers and riders on the East Coast especially grew to hate Vail, seeing the Colorado-based company as failing to understand the unique nature of skiing in the East[[labelnote:Short version...]]Out west, where Vail emerged from, snow is typically very powdery, especially up in the mountains. The East Coast, on the other hand, is often nicknamed the "Ice Coast" due to the lower elevations making for higher variability in temperature and, with it, much harder and icier snow. What's more, while resorts in the sparsely-populated Western United States are fairly geographically isolated and serve fairly small "local" communities, resorts in the East are located within a few hours' drive of multiple major cities, including UsefulNotes/{{Boston}}, UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}}, and UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity. As a result, resorts on the East Coast typically catered more to the locals, while resorts out west became the big destinations catering to tourists due to their more favorable conditions and a lack of local visitors to rely on.[[/labelnote]] and consequently accusing them of running many of the resorts they bought into the ground. On the other hand, Vail also has its defenders, who credit their Epic Passes with inspiring a NewbieBoom in skiing and snowboarding by making fairly expensive sports more accessible. The success of the Epic Pass, in fact, led many competing resorts to pool their resources into offering similar multi-mountain season passes, like the Ikon Pass and the Indy Pass.