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The current decade. The word "New" is used to distinguish this from the 1910s, which is arguably unnecessary since there are few people alive who remember The Edwardian Era (the oldest living person was 14 when King Edward died). However, many sci-fi stories have used 2010 as a standard Twenty Minutes into the Future date, and so many of them take place in the year 2010 or one of the other 10's to be more original.

It can be argued as to whether or not, culturally speaking, we are living in a new decade. While some take the argument that the Turn of the Millennium ended in fall 2008 at the earliest, others maintain that we are still living in a continuation of that era. However, the beginning of the calendar decade is still reeling from the effects of the Great Recession, the end of the Bush Era and the beginning of the fledgling Obama Administration. The US and welfare states of Europe are mired in debt and doubt, China and India continue to spread their economic and political clout, and even the most optimistic predictions of the future are hedged.

Politically, The War on Terror goes on, even after the death of Osama bin Laden, but it seems to be letting up a little in its most intense theaters in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, so-called "homegrown terrorism" appears to be on the rise, reaching its ugliest manifestation in the 2011 murders of over 70 teenagers by a right-wing anti-Muslim extremist in Norway. War comes a-clanging to the Middle East with tensions around Iran, continuing from Turn of the Millennium, growing and escalating. One can argue that it is the newest near-miss for World War Three... if we are lucky.

Protests opposed to budget reform in favor of debt reduction sprouted up all over Europe, signaling an intensification of distrust in civil government that had been growing all through the previous decade. In the United States, healthcare reform was also pushed through intense controversy, but Americans' first concern remains the lackluster economy. This led to a rebuff of the Democrats, the arrival of the conservative/Libertarian Tea Party movement in 2009, the birth of the left-wing Occupy movement in 2011 (and the police's responses to it), seemingly endless deadlocks on seemingly every issue under the sun, and even deeply unpopular copyright bills which some fear could bring the feared 1984 Dystopia to life (see below for more). The net result of all this is even more hatred and distrust aimed at politicians.

China, Australia, and a handful of other countries managed to avoid recession, but China is beginning to feel the pressure from the largest real estate bubble in world history. In the Middle East, long-standing dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia were overturned by massive protests, sparking a wave of protests for democracy and/or Sharia*

Believe it or not, the two are quite compatible, especially considering that the latter is so damned slippery it might as well be meaningless

.]] across the region. Libya's Gadaffi was overthrown in a civil war, while Syria and Bahrain crushed the revolutionaries. There is also unrest in the U.S. with Occupy protests near Wall Street and cities across the nation, which in turn spread to several other countries. Time will tell how this all plays out.

Culturally, there was a boom in light, happy, or extravagant entertainment as the world looked for distraction; according to the Sekhmet Hypothesis, 2010 marks the beginning of the new "hippie" era in contrast to the dark and gloom of the previous decade. Internet memes now enjoy national exposure on every form of media. James Cameron overturned his own record with Avatar, and reignited the 3D craze which had lay fallow since the 1970's. Twilight became a household name. Glee harkens to days gone by while simultaneously capturing the enthusiasm and optimism of youth. But Darker and Edgier has also done well in the current environment; consider the progression of the Harry Potter films as per their source novels, the explosion of Young Adult Literature set in dystopian settings (i.e. The Hunger Games series), and zombies becoming a genre fiction mainstay almost as popular as vampires. In TV, the laugh track (currently associated with "campy" sitcoms targeted to younger audiences) went out of fashion, leading to an era of cynical and quirky humour.

Perhaps the strangest coincidence is that even in its infancy, this decade has witnessed a lot of blasts from the past. Hasbro has launched The Hub, a TV channel featuring updates of many iconic franchises from The Eighties, such as My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (which gain a major Peripheral Demographic fandom no one saw coming) and Transformers Prime. Starting in 2010, Cartoon Network started airing more TV-PG shows such as Adventure Time and Regular Show, both of which were enjoyed by not only older kids, but people who were kids in The Nineties (now in their college years and a bit beyond) and also people who were kids in The Eighties (now full-grown adults) due to their refrences to The Eighties and their slight similarity to cartoon shows from The Nineties such as Ren and Stimpy. The channel also began airing a 2011 reboot of ThunderCats. Retro Studios has revived the beloved Donkey Kong Country series from The Nineties for a new installment. The Kunio Kun series, too, looks to be on the verge of revival. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World has opened The Nineties up as the new nostalgic decade, a testament to how time has passed. Paul Reubens revived the Pee-Wee's Playhouse stage show and announced that he wants to do another Pee Wee movie, while The Muppets made a big-screen comeback bid after verging on Deader than Disco at the Turn of the Millennium. Two iconic franchises of The Sixties have also been revived on the big screen (Star Trek and Rise of the Planet of the Apes) after a long period of being misbegotten and left in the dust. Even Duke Nukem Forever has been released! (Cue the Flying Pigs!)

Science Fiction, however, is in bad shape, verging on dormant on U.S. television. In the span of just a couple of months, SyFy had cancelled many Science Fiction shows such as Stargate Universe, and ABC gave up on a V revival. Some blame this on trying to grab New Battlestar Galactica's fans, while other see it as a result of a waning interest in space.

This latter explanation is not surprising, given that manned exploration never ventured past Earth's orbit again since the Apollo program, the Columbia shuttle disintegrated after two decades of service and the whole shuttle program was recently retired with no evident replacement at sight, which leaves only the venerable Soyuz capsules, active since the late 60s, to manage an increasingly budget-shrinking International Space Station. The impression held in The Seventies that by the turn of the century mankind would be roaming at Mars' sands seems now dreadfully far, far away. On the other hand, commercial exploration of space has turned out to be a rather good investment for NASA, with no less than five separate manned capsules (NASA's Orion, SpaceX Dragon, Boeing CTS-100, Sierra Nevada Dream Catcher, and some unspecified capsule by Blue Origin) four human-rated launch vehicles (human-rated versions of the existing Delta IV and Atlas V; Falcon 9; and the Space Launch System), and two unmanned resupply vessels (the aforementioned Dragon in its cargo configuration, plus the Orbital Sciences Cygnus) under development for deployment some time between now and the early 2020s. Of these, Orion and Dragon are capable of going beyond Low Earth Orbit—and potentially to Mars—while the rest are to be LEO ferries. The era of commercial space transport can be fairly said to have begun some time in 2012, when the Dragon completed testing—including the all-important retrieval*

As Jon Stewart

said to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, (paraphrased): "There are four entities which have sent something into orbit and then retrieved it intact. These four are the Soviet Union/Russia, the United States, the People's Republic of China...and Elon Musk."]]—and began operations (first flight to the ISS: 7 May 2012, in cargo configuration).

Unmanned exploration seems even more promising, provided that the Dawn and New Horizons probes reach their targets, Ceres and Pluto, in 2015. But let's not mention the Russian Phobos-Grunt disaster.

All is not well in the land of the rising sun as much of the cultural stuff exported from the country is being treated with either indifference or outright disgust, though that depends considerably on which part of the world you're on. Newer anime series, with a few notable exceptions, received lukewarm receptions (due to either being generic adaptations of Harem or Romantic Comedy), with many Mecha series went into OVA status and the television format heavily laden with adaptation series of established franchises with little to no new original properties, although when they do crop up, they proved to be fairly competent at the very least. This could be in part due to the increasing availability of anime on the internet exposing audiences to more mediocre works, in contrast to the relative novelty that characterized its entry into the West during the 1990s-2000s, not to mention a total lack of reliable, professional critics' references - a result of inadequate and prejudiced public attention - which made the 10% of Sturgeon's Law in this medium almost indistinguishable to general audiences. The Dragon Ball franchise had a brief revival in the Re Cut series Dragon Ball Kai, but it was canceled before the final story arc after high ratings failed to translate to increased merchandise sales. The recent revival of Toonami, however, gives a a glimmer of hope for Anime in the west. In terms of games, the most recent offerings by Square Enix (Mindjack, Lord Of Arcana, etc.) failed to impress an already cynical Western gaming community, and Final Fantasy suffered its greatest failure to date with its fourteenth installment. While Idea Factory and Nippon Ichi Software have tried to pick up the slack, they were not well received by the gaming public, either (then again, it usually depends on who you ask). Coupled with one of the worst disasters of the New Tens — a devastating earthquake and tsunami — it can only be said that Japan has even more difficult times ahead of it. That said, for Visual Kei and Japanese metal bands, there seem to be some silver linings: X Japan, Buck Tick, Loudness, Luna Sea, and others have reunited and/or are actively touring. Fighting Games like BlazBlue (among others) remain particularly popular while anime retains warm receptions in Asia. The Female FIFA 2011 victory proved to be a sorely needed morale booster.

Speaking of video games, the New Tens became a source of cynicism and displeasure as the gaming community has become fractured over certain games and their companies. Despite Duke Nukem Forever coming out, (long after its pigs-might-fly release prospects had become a running joke in games culture), the community was divided over the nostalgic past and the current trend of gritty shooters saturating the market along with Postal III being universally panned and Saints Row's future being uncertain with THQ threatening the make light hearted shooters a memory of the past.. Bioware's Dragon Age II created a Broken Base among the Role-Playing Game fans and even Valve Software suffered a bit of base breaking when Portal 2 was released and Team Fortress 2 became Free to Play (And not to get started on the Metacritic bombs many games received). The cancellation of Megaman Legends 3 was just another sign of the growing animosity of the gaming community as many fans are left angry and bitter over the state of the industry. Because of this, sales of video games has dropped in the past couple of years. However, one electronic entertainment industry that continues to do well is the iPhone App Store, with hits such as Angry Birds leading the way. But it is Apple's very success with apps that has been the bane of the rest of the industry; customers have drifted toward the App Store at the expense of the traditional retail video games. Nintendo has even been pressured by investors to come up with something on the iPhone, a move which they have rejected. On the other hand, the success of games like Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3 and Skyrim, among others, have shown that the industry is not as down as some more cynical gamers make it out to be. However the release of Mass Effect 3 has only served to be a completely bitter reminder of how some believed the game industry has fallen to Game Journalism siding with Big Business who makes poor decisions at almost every turn

While the Role-Playing Game genre has suffered, the Fighting Game genre is another story. Due to the efforts and success made by both Street Fighter IV, Tekken 6 and BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger in the late 2009's, fighting games started to pick up the pace, with the announcements of... more IV expansions, Continuum Shift and its expansions, as well as other fighting series continued such as King Of Fighters XIII, Arcana Heart 3, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and the upcoming Soul Calibur V, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Dead or Alive 5 and a lot of new bloods such as Skullgirls or Daemon Bride or other-series based ones such as the Umineko fighting game and Persona 4 Arena, most of them widely accepted positively. Not to mention one of the most surprising crossovers to date: Street Fighter X Tekken. The most surprising, however, was the revival of the Mortal Kombat franchise with its newest installment/reboot winning back the fans disappointed with how it was hit hard with Polygon Ceiling and even makes it eligible for tournament plays. In a way, Fighting Games are seeing quite the revival in the early part of the New Tens. Arc System Works, the company behind BlazBlue has been picking up a lot of attention and continues to grow thanks to BlazBlue, with the possibility of becoming the next Fighting Game top company after fans became more cynical towards Capcom.

Despite the economic downturn, technology marches on. Facebook, Twitter, and the cellphone have revolutionized the social experience with commentators beginning to predict the end of privacy. But the Internet is proving to be even less hospitable to the preservation of media than the newspapers and filmreels of past decades, with once-well-known virtual media of the 2000s like Homestar Runner, Kid Radd, Bob and George and several different MMOs all lost or on their way to oblivion.

Internet piracy has quickly drawn the ire of the United States Congress, and Congress' attempts to curtail it have even more quickly drawn the Internet's ire:

• It began with the proposition of the SOPA and PIPA bills, which many said would grant government the power to shut down copyright infringing websites. The Internet exploded in massive protest, even including The Other Wiki blacking out in protest, and even Anonymous banding together with big website creators to protect the free Internet, all to make sure the bills did not pass. They didn't, but the US Senate, thus far, shows no signs of completely giving up.
• The situation worsened when, a day after The Other Wiki blacked out, it turned out that the FBI, before SOPA even passed, had taken measures to shut down popular filesharing site MegaUpload, which caused a chain reaction of filesharing sites like Fileserve, Filejungle and many others making their sites for private-uses only.
• And following behind SOPA is ACTA, rumored to be much worse, although many said the rumors tend to be exaggerated. With the backlash in Poland and elsewhere, it seems unlikely that it would be ratified, let alone implemented, in the foreseeable future.
• Now the fight is against PCIPA, the US equivalent of existing European data retention laws. However, given the internet previously rallying to defeat the far more imminent threats of SOPA and PIPA, and already rallying to delay and weaken the slow burning ACTA, we have more than a few months to prepare to take down PCIPA. On top of that, PCIPA is a remake of legislation that already failed to make it to a full vote. These factors, and the fact that the media actually denounced PCIPA/HR 1981 in 2011, make for a bill that, like previous US data retention bills, is doomed to an ignoble failure.
• Making matters worse, however, is the CISPA, a bill that attempts to fix cybersecurity problems, but ended up creating privacy problems. This went so far that the House passes it on, and it all now falls down to the Senate to decide whether it passes further or not, although Democratic sources are saying that the bill is dead on arrival in the Democrat-controlled senate thanks to its formally bipartisan support splintering among party lines. The crub of comfort here is that Barack Obama has promised to veto it, but time will tell whether he'll live up to the promise or not - he is far more likely to veto it than the NDAA, which was an annually-passed bill that just so happened to have a ansty set of riders attached. In addition, the bill has been improved - some of the privacy issues have been resolved through numerous amendments that make it so the government cannot mine data gleaned, and that they cannot condition ISPs to give up information, and other amendments have clarified that intellectual property is not something it can be used to protect. Now, according to the CDT, the big flaws that haven't been addressed (and are likely to be addressed by Senate Democrats - if they even give it the courtesy of a debate before scrubbing it) are the flow of information directly to the NSA, and the use of information for "national security." Also, the much-maligned Quayle amendment, which amended CISPA to be able to affect cases involving "the exploitation of children" and "threat of bodily harm or death to an individual," is, in fact dictated by existing laws, in which ISPs and other entities can (and already do) voluntarily give information related to these to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the US government, and law enforcement agencies. However, ISPs and the government may not search for such things under CISPA or current law - however, if information related to the exploitation of a minor or a threat of bodily harm is also found in cyberattack data, the Quayle amendment allows it to be used.

Alternative fuel sources continue to grow in availability, albeit slowly, and energy-efficient appliances are on the cusp of becoming the norm. They may have to hurry though, as the only workable alternative to fossil fuels at present, nuclear power, is under scrutiny due to the earthquake/tsunami combo critically damaging atomic energy plants in Japan, most notably the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. While not nearly as severe as Chernobyl*

both are category 7, but only because category 7 is a catch-all 'off the scale' rating - Chernobyl was at least ten times worse than Fukushima

, it has had a similar chilling effect, and the outcome of this could shape nuclear power policies for the rest of the decade as countries rethink their nuclear programs. Germany led the way on this one, with the government of Angela Merkel doing a 180 on nuclear policy, announcing plans to eliminate all nuclear power in Germany by 2020*

After previously having considered expanding the system

, shortly after the accident in a desperate attempt to keep voters on their side; while her CDU/CSU has taken a drubbing, her coalition partners, the libertarian FDP, has been wiped out or nearly so from at least two state legislatures, and the Greens have officially become a prospective party of government. On the other hand, France and (more significantly) India and Britain*

"More significantly," because France already relies on nuclear power for 75% of its electrical generation, and public opinion isn't about to be swayed by one accident in a faraway land

continue to press ahead in their plans to preserve and expand their nuclear power base, so the future remains extremely muddy on this one.

Yet after all this, the decade is still very young. Much remains up in the open, including what has already been said. Stay tuned for more. See Also: The Roaring Twenties, The Great Depression, The Forties, The Fifties, The Sixties, The Seventies, The Eighties, The Nineties, and Turn of the Millennium.

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Tropes associated with the 2010s:

Shake that.*

Everyday I'm shufflin'

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Examples of Media set in this decade:

Works made during the 2010s

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And may the odds be ever in your favor!

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The War on Terror

Hollywood History

Middle East Uprising 2011

The Oughts

Useful Notes

World War II