The New Tens / Tropes A to M

Tropes #-G

• '50s Hair: Elegantly-coiffed "Teddy Boy" hairstyles styled with retro products like pomade (themselves based on late 19th/early 20th century styles) made a comeback among men in reaction to the unkempt "skater look" of the late 1990s and 2000s.
• The '70s: The final years of the decade see a revival of wood and earth-tone palettes, although with a sleeker look. Many of the garish malls and shopping centers of The '90s get more earthy and subdued makeovers during this decade. Crystal glass and mirrors find their way back into interior design.
• '70s Hair: Returned to popularity among men both at the beginning and the end of the decade. The shaggy haircuts of Justin Bieber and One Direction and other carryovers from the aughts were popular among teenagers during the early 2010s. Longer hairstyles got a boost later in the decade as the "New Wave" undercuts became associated with the alt-right and white nationalists. The hipster subculture also made beards and mustaches fashionable again.
• The '80s: The nostalgia craze of the mid-2000s turned into a full-fledged revival early in the decade, getting to the point of blurring any considerable differences between both decades. Shows set in the 1980s like Stranger Things and The Goldbergs as well as movies (such as Kung Fury and Turbo Kid) and video games (Undertale and Hotline Miami) with an undeniable 80s inspired aesthetic have become popular with certain crowds. The '80s aesthetic is also quite popular, nicknamed as "Outrun" after the video game of the same name, as well as inspiring its own musical genre, Synthwave, which is heavily inspired by the Electronic Music, Synth-Pop and New Wave Music sounds so popular in the decade. Even though it has begun being supplanted by '90s/early '00s nostalgia in the second half of the decade, there's still an undeniable sense of '80s nostalgia nonetheless.
• '80s Hair: Returned with a vengeance by 2013-14, after being the Butt-Monkey of hairdos for many years. Most prominently big hair and New Wave undercuts^note It is quite debatable if Jon Snow wears a mullet or not; you were still very unlikely to see mullets on someone who's not a middle aged biker, a Butch Lesbian, or both, but the hairstyle has found popularity among trans women. Big curly bangs/fringes have yet to make a comeback, and while mini side ponies came back, tying all hair on one side of the head did not. Scrunchies made a comeback late into the decade.
• The '90s: The 1990s were no longer regarded as the latte-overdosed downbeat years everyone thought of in the 2000s, and the decade itself had a very vocal fanbase on the net (mainly consisting of those whose formative childhood years were spent in that decade), the late 90s being particularly remembered as a more peaceful and prosperous time before 9/11, The War on Terror, and the Great Recession. Grunge saw a resurgence among the "indie" subculture, "Golden Age" urban music was rediscovered by shows like Fresh Off the Boat and the film Dope, and the Lighter and Softer "Cool Britannia" regained some of its coolness. Not to mention that some furry toys caused a holiday craze once in 2013. '90s TV shows like Friends and Seinfeld were popular on streaming services.
  • Disney once more became extremely trendy after having Regrown The Beard near the end of the previous decade. The fact that many of the new movies hearkened back to the style of movies they created in the '90s (or the 70s, even the '50s) wasn't missed.
  • The '90s practically came back for Eastern Europe and Central Asia - specifically Russia, essentially all other post-Soviet states except perhaps the Baltic states and most especially the former Yugoslavia - except for the fact that this decade was anything but a fun time for them. And while Russia seemed determined to climb back to the status of the former USSR by any and all means (and did quite well, for good or ill), the Baltic states and former Warsaw Pact states such as Poland and the Czech Republic did comparatively well after the EU enlargement and the Balkans somewhat recovered... but for Ukraine, Moldova and especially the former Soviet republics of Central Asia (with the exception of Kazakhstan), things only got worse and worse.
• '90s Hair:
  • For older women, the infamous "Karen" haircut gained an infamous memetic reputation.
  • For younger women, sleek Rachel bobs, sideparts, and high fountain ponytails became vogue by the second half of the decade.
• Action Girl: Though bonafide female action heroes had been around for a few decades, with the likes of The Avengers' (the British TV series) Emma Peel, Aliens' Ripley, Tomb Raider's Lara Croft or Metroid's Samus Aran, these generally were considered to be little more than dudes with added sex appeal (and skimpy clothes), while attempts to have feminine action heroes ended as quickly as they began in the 2000s with the failures of Catwoman (2004) and Elektra, and it was thought that the best a woman could hope for was to be the love interest with a Designated Girl Fight. Then the 2010s saw a sudden wave of female-led action films such as Snow White & the Huntsman (2012), The Hunger Games (2012-15), Divergent, and Lucy (both 2014) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), all of which not only became huge hits, but pretty much flattened the notion that Feminist Fantasy and butt-kicking (if not outright bone-crunching, steel-shattering, over-the-top extreme action) were mutually exclusive genres. The Star Wars sequel trilogy made its lead protagonist a woman, while female characters (outside General Leia) became more prominent instead of being satellite characters. On television, the likes of Once Upon a Time, Jessica Jones (2015), Agent Carter, The Legend of Korra, and Supergirl (2015) all were very female-driven and enjoyed success. In the realm of video games, the Tomb Raider reboot, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Alien: Isolation featured female protagonists that greatly downplayed any fanservice while emphasizing their skills and character arcs. This culminated in the Wonder Woman movie finally leaving Development Hell and being released to widespread acclaim in 2017.
  • In professional wrestling, this was also more pronounced. After years of being held back or suffering Chickification, WWE's women were allowed to finally wrestle properly — enjoying more time, high profile feuds and more exposure than ever before. Even before WWE got in on the trend, independent promotions like SHIMMER and WSU enjoyed a boom with the rise of the internet — allowing them to reach a wider audience that did want to see serious women's wrestling.
• Adorkable: Shy, intensely idealistic, overly emotional, and borderline sissy (or downright asexual) intellectuals (known as "softboys" to their fans and "soy boys" to their detractors) became the unlikely attractiveness standard for males during the first half of the decade, while overtly masculine archetypes were either mocked or denounced with often exaggerated examples. The users of Tumblr had a knack for gathering all of their idols' adorkable character traits into a nine or ten-piece photoset to share with other fans around the world. The term "sapiosexual" (attraction towards intellectualism) was also coined during the decade. It evolved into the "dark academia" aesthetic of the following decade.
• Affluent Ascetic: The rampant consumerism of the 2000s gave way to frugalism in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, with younger generations in particular ditching name brands in favor of generic "private-label" products. Trends in the property market shifted from the palace-like "McMansions" in the suburbs to more functional, efficiency-driven inner-city "smart-homes".
• All-CGI Cartoon: Major animation studios still preferred these to traditionally animated films. Disney was the key exception post-2009, but neither The Princess and the Frog or Winnie the Pooh (2011) were as popular as all-CGI films, and their original plans to release a 2D film every other year died when Frozen (2013) was switched from 2D to CGI. Digital animation resulted in pastel colors being the norm in many cartoons, such as Star vs. the Forces of Evil and Steven Universe. At the same time, it sometimes led to Off-Model animation errors such as those seen in The Powerpuff Girls (2016). Ironically, however, studios began working to create CG technology that would accurately produce a traditional 2D appearance. The Paperman short for instance is a combination of CG and 2D animation. It also was a critically-acclaimed short that won multiple awards.
• Ambiguous Gender: Gender conventions became heavily questioned in the mainstream, with many openly defying them, most notably by the rise of dyeing and makeup among men and women shaving their heads partially or fully. Fashion designers also put "gender-neutral" outfits on the runways. By the end of the decade, the decidedly androgynous look of "e-boys" and "e-girls" jumped into the mainstream.
• Anti-Hero: Mean-spirited (if not totally evil) leads became more prominent in TV thanks to the popularity of Walter White, Tyrion Lannister, Rick Grimes, Don Draper, Frank Underwood, and Nucky Thompson among others. Sadly, James Gandolfini, the actor behind TV's first big anti-hero, passed away in 2013. This trope became more popular in anime as well thanks to characters like Accelerator and Lelouch. The late years of the decade saw the rise of female anti-heroes, although mostly in the more traditional sense of the word (sympathetic characters going through a lot of troubles and existential doubts) with shows such as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Fleabag.
• Archive Binge: invoked The popularity of online streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu actually led to shows regaining a second life. In fact, several shows became exclusive to online avenues, with some even getting Un-Cancelled. This effect gave Breaking Bad a huge surge in popularity before its final season, going from cult hit to cultural juggernaut. All the existing episodes were available on Netflix when it swept the Emmys meanwhile the final season was being filmed, so people who heard about it could check out the first episodes, get hooked, watch all the episodes, tell some friends to watch it and then tell all their friends to do the same...
• Ascended Meme: Considering how much closer creators and fandom were now (primarily on web-based content), this became common.
  • In terms of how deaths in the 2010s affected future works: Heath Ledger's death in 2008 prevented his Joker from reappearing in 2012's The Dark Knight Rises, Leonard Nimoy's in 2015 forced rewrites for Star Trek Beyond that would allow them to write around his absence^note Nimoy as Old Spock was given a proper death and sendoff at the beginning of the film; both received memoriams in the credits, and while Carrie Fisher's death did not affect The Last Jedi (as all her parts were already filmed), it affected Episode IX, as she was planned to be the main "original trio" that the film focused on ^note following Han in The Force Awakens and Luke in The Last Jedi.
• Axes at School: School shootings (and mass shootings in general) made more and more international headlines in this decade, as well as increasing the debate over gun control, making it an even bigger discussion topic in the US. The Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas one in 2018 were among the most notorious. In the music industry, Foster the People had it as the theme of their 2010 hit "Pumped Up Kicks".
  • In Brazil, two such incidents also happened in this decade. They were the Tasso da Silveira Municipal School shooting in 2011 and the Professor Raul Brasil State School one in 2019. Notorious also for being the first of this kind in the country.
• Basement-Dweller: Many works showed young people being forced to move back with their parents (either playing this trope straight or subverting it), unable to go ahead in a post-Great Recession economy. The trope name was also used as an online slur.
• Big, Fat Future: The obesity epidemic hitting developed countries truly began to take hold; plentiful, high-calorie food made everyone go up a few pant sizes and stories portraying futures full of overweight people began to emerge because of this.
  • In urban areas of the United States, the reverse happened, as many people became more health and fitness conscious (especially with regard to diet) as a result of the above.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: For the first time since the '80s, thick eyebrows were fashionable for people of all genders. Many women tried to obtain fuller, darker brows opposed to tweezing. Unlike in the '80s however, the ideal eyebrows had to be highly groomed and sculpted to an angular shape, similar to a common '60s look. Popular sex symbol Cara Delevingne had a significant influence on this trend. Well-groomed thick eyebrows were even given a slang in the African-American community: "on fleek" became a relatively widely-used idiom.
• Bishōnen: This trope, along with sports anime and manga, got more popular among North American anime fans thanks to tsuritama, Free!, K, and Haikyuu!!.
• Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce: Asian hot sauces—which are known for being quite a bit spicier than their North American counterparts—become noticeably more popular in the United States and Europe. In particular, sriracha (a traditional Thai chili sauce introduced to the U.S. by way of Vietnam) becomes the subject of a major American craze after the California-based company Huy Fong Foods introduced their own brand of it. It eventually became ubiquitous enough that Scrabble formally added the word "sriracha" to their dictionary in 2018.
• Boy Band: They came baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! But unlike the late-'90s wave, only One Direction became notoriously successful; the rest of this new generation of boy bands was generally minimally popular, like The Wanted and Big Time Rush. The only other boy band besides 1D to have any reasonable success this decade were the Australian pop-rock group 5 Seconds of Summer, their opening act on their second and third world tours and whose status as a boy band is highly disputed. At least, until Kpop boy bands, especially BTS, became extremely popular in the West in the last few years of the decade.
• Boyish Short Hair: In the West, 60s-inspired hairstyles became popular early in the decade (in particular the "pixie" variety), while partially- or fully-shaven heads gradually became mainstream throughout the decade, first among the African-American community before extending to women of all ethnicities.
• Breakaway Pop Hit: After the soundtrack hit had become irrelevant since the late 1990s, it made a huge comeback in 2012 with "(The Theme From) Skyfall" (joined by the positive reception "Cups" and "Suddenly" got that same year)^note To add context, there were just two nominees for the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2011, while 2012 saw five participants for the first time since 2004, helped by rule changes.. By the middle of the decade, these became increasingly ubiquitous, with "Happy", "Let It Go", "Boom Clap", "The Hanging Tree", "Love Me Like You Do", "Earned It", "See You Again", "Can't Stop The Feeling", "Remember Me" and "This Is Me" among others becoming very successful since then.
• British Brevity: Cable and streaming series shunned the traditional 22-to-26-episodes-a-year "American season" in favor of the more flexible "British system" of 6 to 13 episodes, seasons not necessarily adjusting to a yearly schedule, making it easier to "binge-watch". By the tail end of the decade, The CW became the first American free-to-air network to adopt this scheme by having its series air "events" (lasting from 4 to 8 weeks) throughout the year^note Take in mind that, The CW is much smaller than the other four "majors" and focuses more on younger audiences.
• Buffy Speak: The use of surreal language for humorous effect became quite popular in the later years of the decade, especially among younger people. Notable examples included "Because reasons" (i.e. "For reasons I don't feel like explaining"), "Because fuck you, that's why" (i.e. "For illogical reasons"), and most notoriously, "That's a thing" (i.e. "That exists" or "That's a recognized phenomenon").
• Bury Your Gays: This trope became mostly discredited in fiction after the avalanche of LGBT characters being killed off sparked a major backlash in 2015/2016. While it still popped up on occasion, straight uses in widespread (and especially internet-popular) media were much more likely to attract criticism and controversy.
• Capitalism Is Bad: The creation of publications that openly denounced capitalism, such as the Jacobin and Current Affairs magazines and podcasts such as Chapo Trap House that blended humor with left-wing politics, accompanied the resurgence of socialism in the Anglosphere in the wake of the Great Recession. At the same time, science-fiction and dystopian media, such as Black Mirror and Sorry to Bother You, increasingly critiqued what was known as "Late Stage Capitalism" and its impact on society, and various genre films by the end of the decade like Joker, Parasite, Ready or Not, and Knives Out sent up the rich and portrayed the bad effects of their wealth and the excesses of capitalism on others, which continued into the following years with works like Squid Game. This was almost certainly a reflection of the growing population of creators and young adults who came of age in the immediate aftermath of the disastrous Great Recession of 2008.
• Career Versus Family: Between having entered the job market during the Great Recession and being forced into part-time or minimum-wage jobs which did not allow for the sense of stability that would encourage starting a family and penchant for academic excellence and searching for "meaningful" work justifying said excellence, younger generations began delaying the prospects of forming families, if not reconsidering them altogether. Both the "new left" and nationalist right attacked capitalism for this, although the left was less interested in preserving traditional families so much as they were opposed to what they saw as capitalism dehumanizing workers to be soulless drones, while the nationalist right loathed the degradation of traditional society in favor of "get-rich individualism". ^note Couples who simply chose to be child free had more social acceptance than previous decades, making it less necessary for them to use this trope as a rationale for those who puzzle at their choice. On the other hand, part of that increased social acceptance was due to this trope.
• Cassette Futurism: Vinyl records and cassette tapes made a comeback in this decade even alongside digital technology.
• Continuity Reboot: Several franchises saw remakes and reboots during this decade. Some were successful, but many others were critical and commercial failures, especially those of which only had their last installment less than a decade previously. Many called this trend a sign that Hollywood had run out of ideas.
• Continuity Lockout: With the trend toward long-running story arcs and the expectation that new fans would be able to catch up on earlier seasons on streaming services, this became the rule rather than the exception for dramatic television.
• Cool Big Sis: This trope was increasingly popular in pop culture media alongside with Plucky Girl. Specifically in the anime medium where the Little Sister Heroine character archetype got a lot of backlash which led to criticism of this trope from top anime directors and producers (i.e. Yoshiyuki Tomino), which led to a meme of "Age of Onee-san."
• Cosmic Horror Story:
  • H. P. Lovecraft enjoyed a renewed popularity during the decade, with the Library of America compiling a large anthology featuring much of his work (more or less announcing that Lovecraft, and horror fiction by extension, was now part of the canon of great literature). Likewise, a number of Lovecraft-inspired fiction and horror seeped into mainstream works. Ridley Scott's Prometheus and Alien: Covenant made the cosmic horror subtext of the original Alien series into text.
  • The first season of the highly popular True Detective drew inspiration from Film Noir as well as New Weird works by Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti to articulate a pessimistic cosmic view of the universe, as a random mistake that is not comprehensible to human imagination. The popular Dark Souls games as well as Bloodborne and the sci-fi franchise Mass Effect also drew heavily on Lovecraftian concepts to articulate a less heroic and more terrifying approach to the RPG genre.
  • Lovecraft Lite tropes that lean heavily on cosmic horror also became popular, with the highly popular [adult swim] series, Rick and Morty more or less submitting Back to the Future and Doctor Who style optimistic sci-fi adventure to a Deconstructive Parody by showing that a Mad Scientist Eccentric Mentor with physics-rewriting abilities would more or less have Blue-and-Orange Morality as a result of daily confronting mindbending threats from outer space every week or so.
• Creative Sterility: The need for cost-cutting in the wake of the Great Recession (and scriveners becoming more expensive after the WGA strike) ultimately led to a general sense that originality is in its way out in the mainstream for the sake of economic efficiency. This is often cited as one of the reasons for the success of subscriber-based and web-original content.
• Creepypasta: While the origins of the genre itself are nebulous and difficult to pin down, with disputing sources putting the title of "first creepypasta" anywhere from the chain emails of the early 90s to Ted the Caver in 2001, the art form saw its greatest point of saturation and widespread public knowledge in the early years of this decade, with The Slender Man Mythos, inarguably the most influential example kicking off a massive wave of "fake urban legends" that eventually became more-or-less part of the actual cultural canon. Subsequent years would see occasional spikes in popularity as particularly well-received or infamous pastas floated to the top of the pile (1999, Candle Cove, NES Godzilla Creepypasta, and so on), while later years would see the growth of the SCP Foundation, which started out as this but later evolved into something more multifaceted and hard to nail down. This decade would also see the first examples of creepypastas adapted into the mainstream media, with the results ranging from mediocre (Slender Man) to well-recieved (Channel Zero).
• Critical Dissonance: This decade saw audiences actively rebelling against critics, the general consensus being that critics were too unreliable and biased against anything popular. This opinion shifted between 2016 and 2019, with critics now being seen as too influenced by current fads and too moralistic.
• Dance Sensation:
  • Every year had one:
    • The "Dougie" of 2010;
    • The Party Rock "Shuffle" of 2011;
    • The Gangnam Style of 2012;
    • The Harlem Shake and later twerking of 2013;
    • For 2014, we saw the Jive Turkey-influenced "Happy Walk", the Real Women Have Curves empowered "All About That Bass", and the Shmoney Dance;
    • For 2015, we watched Silentó (Whip/Nae Nae), iHeartMemphis (Hit the Quan), and Drake bopping the Hotline Bling;
    • For 2016, we saw the "Running Man Challenge", The Trumpets Dance, "Juju On That Beat", and the "Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen" (and the "Black Beatles" Mannequin Challenge, though it's not exactly a dance).
    • In 2017, we saw n a craze over Latin dancing (Despacito) and "Beep Beep, Imma Sheep."
    • In 2018, we saw Momoland singing "Bboom Bboom", and Drake expressing "In My Feelings" outside his running car, a dancing alien in El Chombo's Dame tu Cosita, and the Fortnite dances.
    • In 2019, we saw TikTok videos of people tuning in to "Bitch Lasagna", "Old Town Road" and "Bad Guy"
  • Although it's considered a dance fitness program, Zumba, with its upbeat and spicy choreography influencing from street dancing, hip-hop and Latin ballroom dance, spread explosively to every gym throughout the world.
• The Dandy: Mixed with Hipster tendencies. The man sharply dressed with tight clothes, bright pastel colors (with a pair of Nerd Glasses) revived throughout the decade.
• Darker and Edgier: A popular trend with many media reboots, and many works aimed at younger audiences featured teen heroes in dystopian societies. The trend may have been kicked off by The Dark Knight Trilogy, Christopher Nolan’s mature and dark take on the Batman franchise.
• Deep South: With a new cultural focus on racial issues, a number of pro-Reconstruction historiography castigating the Lost Cause entered the mainstream, as in the case of films like Lincoln, 12 Years a Slave and also Django Unchained, all taking place in a more negative version of this setting.
• Deliberate VHS Quality: No one before the 2010s would have romanticized the grainy, tracking line-ridden quality of an overused VHS tape, but due to the '80s nostalgia wave of this decade many in visual media used analog filming techniques such as this for stylistic reasons; standing in direct opposition to ever higher quality flat screen smart televisions on the market. This trope especially appeared in (but was certainly not limited to) music videos, and was a fixture in Synthwave music.
• Disaster Movie: After falling out of favor for almost a decade (because of September 11th and Katrina), the genre saw a significant revival. Movies of the genre also tended to overlap strongly with Survival Horror. The genre also saw multiple parodies, most notably with Sharknado, which fully embraced its cheese factor with a ridiculous premise too absurd to take seriously.
• Dogged Nice Guy: Use of this trope in fiction shifted towards deconstructions and subversions. You could expect any stereotypical example (or any character who repeats the once-accepted wisdom that "girls only like assholes, not nice guys like us") to be portrayed as an emotionally-abusive, misogynistic creep with entitlement issues who isn't nearly as nice as he claims to be.
• Dramedy: The genre saw a surge in popularity throughout the decade, with basically every comedy handling serious issues in a regular basis instead of the occasional Very Special Episode (except for most works indulging on Cringe Comedy).
• Dye Hard: Dyeing one's hair in unorthodox colors (most notably gray, blue, and pink) became an interesting and extremely popular trend during the decade, especially among millennial women. Trends included ombre hair, "galaxy" hair, and "mermaid" hair. It caught on among older people too, as Helen Mirren decided to dye her hair pink on a whim - inspiring quite a few more as noted here.
• Dystopia: The first half of the decade was full of teen-oriented works featuring dystopian settings with young protagonists rebelling against oppressive regimes.
• Eat the Rich: Mixed with Capitalism Is Bad. 2019 alone saw four films (Knives Out, Parasite (2019), Ready or Not and Joker (2019)) about poor/working class protagonists facing off against wealthy snobs, and all four connected strongly with moviegoers.
• The End of the World as We Know It: A radio host predicted The Rapture was going to happen on May 21, 2011, which obviously did not happen. There were also predictions that the world could end on December 21, 2012 due to changes in the Mayan calendar, and that did not happen either. And with North America's brutal 2013-14 winter (not to mention the following one as well), there were whispers of Ragnarok.
• Environmental Narrative Game: This subgenre of Adventure Games first emerged in the previous decade, but exploded in popularity in this one with the release of critically-acclaimed and commercially-successful independent titles like Dear Esther, Gone Home and The Stanley Parable.
• Everything Is an iPod in the Future: The aesthetics of this decade tended to be more eye-catching without the Design Student's Orgasm and Wall of Text coming around. The skeuomorphism of the late 90s and early 2000s morphed into a futuristic, yet still glossy interface following the success of Apple's candylike icons and Windows 7's Aero in 2007-2009, then shifted to a more crisp and dual/triple-toned minimalist interface around 2012-2013 with Microsoft's Metro UI and iOS 7 inspiring simplistic yet informational looks. Even Google modified its iconic logo, "flattening" it (in 2013) and stripping its serifs (in 2015) for a cleaner look.
• FairyTale/Fractured Fairy Tale: TV shows such as Grimm and Once Upon a Time as well as many Darker and Edgier film adaptions of classic Grimm fairy were prevalent through out the New 10s. Disney's Alice in Wonderland (2010) would even kick of the trend of live action remakes of classic films, most of them already based on fairy tales.
• Feminist Fantasy: This decade saw an emphasis on female protagonists being portrayed as strong, something previously limited to "unwomanly" characters. Television was a real promised land for this subgenre — Once Upon a Time, iZombie, Jessica Jones (2015), Agent Carter, Orphan Black and Supergirl (2015) all proving to be popular hits. Film caught on eventually, Disney especially introducing really strong feminist themes into Frozen (2013), Maleficent and Moana. Strong female heroes including Furiosa, Rey, Jyn Erso, Wonder Woman, Valkyrie, and Shuri and Nakia absolutely dominated science fiction, fantasy, and superhero films, all of which had long been criticized for male-heavy casts. The website The Mary Sue was even established to cover all these types of things.
• First Installment Wins: Despite its problems of its own, the first part of the decade, particularly the first four years (2010-2013), are widely considered to be its best due to being benevolent in comparison to the turbulent second half.
• For Happiness: The millennial and "Zoomer" generations were noted for their near-obsessive pursuit for perpetual bliss (or at least self-gratification), especially considering Gen-Xers' well-known dourness. While many considered that this was quite justified, there was also criticism regarding potential issues (even psychological) that this might bring sooner or later, especially among Zoomers. On the other hand, this was inverted late in the decade as it became popular to claim having depression or other mental conditions, which met divided reactions over either this helping awareness of those issues or just making them harder to take seriously.
• Food Porn: People flooded social media with pictures of what they were eating. This caused restaurants to emphasize presentation.
• Foreign Culture Fetish:
  • British culture (primarily music, fashion, literature and TV shows like Doctor Who, Sherlock and Downton Abbey) once again became popular around the world during David Cameron's premiership, particularly among young Americans (with quintessentially British words such as "posh" and "queue" briefly entering the American lexicon during the early-middle years of the decade), although this seemed to vanish as Britain's general fortunes tanked after the 2016 Brexit referendum.
  • During the second half of the decade, Canada became the Anglosphere's cultural center. Already popular because of two fellows called Justin (Bieber and Trudeau), two called Ryan (Gosling and Reynolds), and one called Drake, the contentious 2016 US election led many Americans to seriously ponder a move north of the border (although none of the celebs pledging such a decision in the event of Donald Trump's election did so) with Prime Minister Trudeau being looked up to by Americans as the antithesis to Trump (being even more popular than in his home country), while Brits began looking up to their Canuck cousins as they began to sour on Brexit.
  • While not as prominent in the mainstream as it was in the previous decade, German and Scandinavian culture still enjoysed a loyal following not limited to metalheads—Nordic minimalism (particularly the "hygge" current) defined the lifestyle trends of the decade.
  • In regards to Eastern culture, Japan saw in South Korea a credible contender in the battle for gaining the favor of Western audiences as "doramas" and the urban-inspired K-pop genre exploded in popularity, as well as in electronics, as Samsung and LG are headquartered there. The Land of the Rising Sun still had the upper hand when it came to video games, manga, and anime. The cuisine of both countries was considered sophisticated.
  • The mutual admiration between Hispanic and black culture intensified during the decade, while a "Latin craze" surfaced across the US beginning in 2016-17 as a pushback against growing anti-immigration sentiment in the country, with Mexican cuisine gaining popularity and Spanish-language songs and acts becoming successful in the mainstream charts.
  • After Emmanuel Macron was elected President of France in 2017, French culture reached popularity levels amongst Americans and Brits not seen since before the Iraq War, who saw him as a contrast to President Trump and the pro-Brexit forces of the British right. Before that, anti-French sentiment (most notably among conservatives during the previous decade) was seen in poor taste in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo, the November 2015 and Nice terrorist attacks, as well as the 2019 Notre Dame fire and subsequent outpourings of worldwide sympathy. It wasn't just Americans and Brits, France took over both countries in the soft power index as a result of Macron's victory.
• Fountain of Memes: The decade was notorious for having gazillions of internet jokes.
• Friending Network: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter skyrocketed in popularity during the decade, even as the original social network Myspace began to fall out of favor. Social networks founded during this time catered more to specific interests such as Snapchat, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Vine, among many others.
• Full Motion Video: After being considered dead for a decade, the genre made a small scale comeback in the middle of the decade with titles such as Her Story, Tex Murphy: Tesla Effect and The Bunker.
• Gaming and Sports Anime & Manga: While sports-related anime and manga has historically sold poorly in America, the popularity of several series throughout the decade such as Haikyuu!!, Kuroko's Basketball, Free! and Yuri!!! on Ice helped revived the interest in sports anime and manga again among the American fanbase.
• The Generation Gap: The second half of the decade saw a deepening chasm between conservative "baby boomers" and succeeding generations notoriously more liberal in social issues (in an Ironic Echo of the generation gap between the boomers and their parents who came of age during The Great Depression and World War II eras). The "OK, Boomer" meme in particular was a popular product for younger generations to use as a retort against older generations they felt were out of touch with the issues they were facing. Some works acknowledged the gap, yet these often also pointed out that "boomers" weren't always that conservative, and younger people are liable to abandon liberalism once they grow up.^note There is a slight fallacy with this argument: It overstates the role of boomers in the counterculture movements of The '60s and The '70s and provides a Theme Park Version of the generation. Also, many Gen X'ers felt that Millennials had actually taken a step back on certain issues (seeing them as more progressive on economics and several social issues yet finding their perceived prudishness unsettling). Last but not least, people with higher quality education generally tend to be comparatively more liberal (or at least, more tolerant of different opinions) than those who do not have higher education, and this decade also saw a bit of an education gap
  • Middle Child Syndrome: Boomers largely refused to pass the torch on to Generation X like the "Silent Generation" ^note Born between 1930 and 1945, during both the Great Depression and WWII did for Boomers in The '80s. This led to a generational Mêlée à Trois between Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials, with X'ers being divided between the more conservative ones born during the mid-late 60s (which made up part of the "yuppie generation") and the more liberal ones born during the 70s (informally known as "X'ennials"). As a result, the former faced a backlash from Millennials, while the latter were still being called "slackers" by Boomers. As media outlets saw Gen X as too small a cohort to actually focus on, favoring the "Boomers vs. Millennials" angle, members of that generation felt like they had been skipped over. This was exacerbated with the post-2008 job market in the case of younger X'ers: Many Boomers refused to retire at the ages their parents did, so many X'ers and Millennials found themselves competing for low-paying entry-level jobs which were NOT competitive with cost of living expenses, leaving them with a ridiculously high amount of student loan debt for pursuing degrees that no longer helped them find a good paying job.
• Genre Anthology: Became popular again thanks to American Horror Story. It was quickly followed by shows like True Detective, Black Mirror, and Fargo.
• Genre Throwback:
  • Music of the decade was primarily influenced by 1980s-era music, as well as 90s-era R&B (hip-hop, urban pop) and 60s-era pop and "mod" music. Actually, "sunshine pop" (a generic term for upbeat, lighter pop) consisted in borrowing from musical styles from other eras, such as its 1960s-era namesake genre as well as funk and even disco.
  • YA literature from the middle of the decade was noted for hearkening back to 1980s-era "teen films", some of them being adapted for the screen.
• Girliness Upgrade: After two decades of highly sexualized, borderline-uncouth women, embodied in the 2000s by such trends as pop punk, rockabilly, emo, crunk and "dirty south" hip hop, hard Eurodance, funk-rock, spray tans, earthy "bohemian-chic" and low-rise campy fashions, hard-partying socialites and hot pink, this decade saw a return towards more traditionally-feminine archetypes (although now shown as liberated, rather than vulnerable) symbolized by empowered "sex symbols" and role models, the "Instagram generation" of supermodels and influencers, rosy pink, matte, vintage glamour, sophisticated electronic music, titillating trap songs, red lipstick, and so on. Its close relationship with fourth-wave feminism and the fact it was impossible to achieve realistically eventually made it the focus of a backlash into more bohemian or androgynous fashions by the end of the decade.
• Girls vs. Boys Plot: The second half of the decade saw discussions in both fictional and non-fiction pieces of media about the increasingly tense relations between men and women in general amid wide-reaching social and economic shifts.
• Golden Mean Fallacy: As media became more politicized during the 2010s, straight uses of this trope decreased, often being subverted, parodied or defied.
  • Bioshock Infinite provoked much criticism for its in-game dialogue arguing that Daisy Fitzroy, who is both a black former slave and a quasi-anarchist rebel, isn't so different from the dictatorial Zachary Comstock who runs Columbia, a white-supremacist city in the skies that runs on exploitation and apartheid levels of segregation. This was slammed by multiple critics such as {Errant Signal} and the backlash was bad enough that developers had to put in a Retcon in the DLC that made Fitzroy a sympathetic character.
  • Comics writer Nick Spencer got into much trouble for his online comments and his satirical reflections in his Secret Empire and other works, for using this trope as a kind of allegory for real-world political baggage.
• Granola Girl:
  • Health-consciousness entered the mainstream after being a popular niche pursuit during the 90s and 00s, with people under 40 mostly eschewing processed foods in favor of healthier eating habits. As a result, food companies and restaurant chains began touting healthier products and organic ingredients. Vegetarianism and veganism went mainstream, with restaurants offering more meatless options. Beverages saw the most radical changes as bottled water, tea, and milk alternatives (soy, almond, coconut, and rice milks) have given soda, coffee, and dairy a run for their money.
  • "Fad diets" became immensely popular during the second half of the decade, foods with components seen as "de-energizing" such as sugar, gluten, lactose, caffeine and white flour among others became no longer acceptable by many people, while erstwhile "exotic" foods such as avocado, quinoa and kale became popular. The "food-fad" trend was not without its critics, as testified by the success of the blog The Angry Chef, which even spawned a best-selling book.
  • On a non-food related note, the 2010s were marked by an increasing awareness of environmental issues in contrast to the rampant consumerism of the 2000s, while the second half of the decade saw a resurgence of new-age beliefs, primarily astrology as well as the rise of the flowing "hippie-chic" and "Boho" fashion styles inspired by Eastern designs, leading to a increasing prominence of hippie-like archetypes in both fiction and real life. On the other hand, Measles outbreaks and the coronavirus pandemic which began in the final months of the decade led to a backlash against the anti-vaccination movement, which began to be more associated with the right wing.
• Gray-and-Grey Morality: Rakish anti-heroes and not-that-evil antagonists became particularly prominent during the decade (in case the protagonists were not as mean-spirited) as the classic set-up of stainless heroes and heartless villains became passé.

Tropes H-N

• Harem Genre: Ironically, this genre increasingly became the formula for anime, and was widely applied to other genres as well.
• #HashtagForLaughs: The rise of social media during the decade took advantage over this significant feature, along with #EngineeredHashtag, all over the Internet.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Many works from the middle of the decade and onwards featured the more "idealistic" characters (to put it that way) being forced to do rueful choices just to get going.
• Hipsters: They were everywhere during this decade (especially the first half), from cafes to music festivals and tech events to being the butt of jokes about "Hipsters are dead" (mainly because of pop culture appropriating their lifestyles). Heck, even the Neo-Nazis jumped into the bandwagon (a viral video featured a group of "Nipsters" dancing to the tune of "Harlem Shake"... in 2014).
• History Repeats: Many have compared this decade to many other eras, including:
  • Victorian Britain: The rise of nationalist and socialist movements only linked by their opposition to the establishment and a prim-and-proper austerity replacing the previous "devil-may-care" mindset amid a backdrop of technologic change mirror the first few years of Queen Vicky's long reign. The Arab Spring has been compared to the 1848 revolutionary movements as both attempted to topple autocrats, but ultimately made very few changes.
  • Antebellum America: The uproar over U.S. immigration authorities removing migrant children from their parents has been compared to the separation of slave families, one of the issues that turned public opinion against slavery in the run-up to the Civil War. Progressives decry a Supreme Court decision on racial issues.
  • The American Civil War: An election heavily focused on race relations has the Democratic party falling in shambles due to growing divides, only unified in their belief that the Republican had to be stopped from winning at all costs. This divide ultimately costs them the election, and the Republican's rise to power practically breaks the nation in half due to mass political polarization, with much of the country unwilling to extend support to the new president, his mandate questioned due to an unspectacular popular vote performance, and several Democratic congressmen boycotting his inauguration. Subverted as there is no physical Civil War (although there have been several instances of politically and racially-motivated violence) nor has there been any secession (across from very fringe minor secession movements in California and Texas which barely get any mainstream support) while those representing the "old order" are this time the ones in charge at Washington.
    • People often compare Obama to Lincoln, as both were from Illinois (although born elsewhere), were seen as champions of civil rights, oversaw eras of heavy racial divisions, and their presidencies became sandwiched between two opposite-party presidents who are much less liked than him (a predecessor seen as inept and a successor seen as badly prejudiced). In both cases the successor is generally the more hated of the two, as both successors came into power in a very controversial manner, have been accused of white supremacist sympathies, and is impeached but ultimately acquitted by the senate. It helps that Obama was inaugurated about a few weeks before Lincoln’s 200th birthday anniversary.
  • The Gilded Age: A Republican candidate wins the Presidency in a controversial fashion, losing the popular vote to a Hudson Valley native, and succeeding an Illinois-based (but not Illinois-born) man known for enforcing civil rights. Economists Paul Krugman and Thomas Piketty have drawn comparisons between the late 19th century and the 2010s, citing the overwhelming power of big businesses and income inequality generating social tensions and the rise of "anti-establishment" politicians. Women's fashions favor a big-bottomed silhouette that are emphasized through artificial means while several works are set around themes of female empowerment and emancipation.
  • The Roaring '20s: The political activism and efforts for global integration of previous years becomes rejected by voters, with conservative politicians being elected en masse leaving liberal and left-wing parties struggling to cope with this new reality. The younger generations are quite cynical about the future and look up to European culture. The aesthetics of the era either call for crisp, geometric designs with bold, solid colors, or for trashy, nonsensical images that scream irony and senselessness. Hollywood is hit by a sex scandal embodied (literally) by a notoriously rotund man. A devastating hurricane hits Florida. The United States establishes a strong protectionist economic policy and imposed harsh tariffs on close U.S. allies. There is concern about media not concentrating on facts and becoming too sensationalist.
    • The rise of "white nationalism" has been compared to the 1920s-era revival of the K.K.K., its infamous 1925 march in Washington, D.C. being paralleled with the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.
  • The '30s: The decade begins with worldwide economic troubles and the resultant political extremism leads to a more austere worldview after a fast-paced, hedonistic decade. Authoritarianism (both nationalist and socialist currents) becomes popular and strongman leaders are elected into power in several countries, with many analysts showing deep concern about the future of liberal democracy. A British royal marries an American divorcée.
  • The '40s: A man widely expected to lose a Presidential election comes out on top. There's a film about ballet that revolves around the dark side of the art. Driven by the sociopolitical situation, there is a huge affection for Latin American music.
  • The '50s: A somewhat popular actor becomes immortalized after a fatal car crash in a Porsche. A Canadian teen idol takes the world by storm. A Democratic president is succeeded by a Republican candidate of German ancestry without a political background for the White House^note Even though Ike had extensive military experience, unlike Donald, and there was much more post-Election optimism and unity for Eisenhower than for Trump in a climate of great distrust. A progressive senator from the Northeast becomes widely popular. Russia is suspected of infiltrating the U.S. government. The entertainment industry faces a crossroads with new technologies. Hollywood focuses on big-budget epics while facing competition from TV. The entertainment and academic industries come under great scrutiny from Republicans suspecting of them being outspoken proponents of left-wing thought. A Hollywood actress marries a foreign prince. A murdered black teen in the South galvanizes the civil rights movement.
  • The '60s:
    • Politics: Racial tensions surge after a series of highly-publicized cases of police abuse. The White House has a young Democrat succeeding a moderate Republican in office at the beginning of the decade ^note Obama has been compared to both JFK and LBJ as time passed: Until 2011-12, he was perceived as being a youthful, telegenic President while after the debt ceiling crises (2011-13) and his re-election in 2012 he re-invented himself as a calmer, more reassuring figure at the same time he became increasingly seen as a divisive leader willing to push his agenda to the point of risking his political legacy. Once their respective successors came into power, widespread antipathy towards the Republicans made people long for the Democrat back in office although some began pointing at them as the catalyst for what happened next., contending with a hard Republican inbetween^note The 1964 elections were compared to the ones in 2012 as both Barry Goldwater and Mitt Romney were perceived to be too conservative and too hostile to foreign allies, while the Democratic administration managed to paint the previous (moderate) Republican administration as conservative by linking them to the standard-bearers. In 2016, Donald Trump was compared to Goldwater, as both were branded as extremists (both supported "states' rights", campaigned for a massive slash on the federal government and had controversial policies towards foreign nations, with Goldwater seen as being too hard on Russia, while Trump was seen as too soft and thus "mentally unfit" for the Oval Office (regarding Trump, many psychologists broke a rule enacted after the 1964 campaign that prevented them from speaking about public figures they didn't personally examine), not to mention that in spite of their popular appeal, many prominent moderate Republicans expressed their distrust of their standard-bearer, which would ultimately have an important impact on the GOP. The great difference was that while Goldwater lost by one of the largest margins in American electoral history, Trump won the Electoral College, although he ended up losing the popular vote to great controversy., and ending with a Republican who is, at best, very polarizing.^note The 1968 and 2016 elections were eerily similar: The year was marked by social turmoil and crippling political polarization. The Republican Party candidate, campaigning for "law and order", is nominated by letting his primary rivals implode or cannibalize themselves while the Democrats attempt to show an image of unity amid very visible cracks that end up breaking at the very worst moment (In 2016 however, "convention violence" was mostly concentrated outside the GOP convention). There is more scorn than enthusiasm for the main candidates among the general public and the GOP candidate controversially wins this particularly uncertain "unpopularity contest" by appealing to disenchanted blue-collar voters and invoking the Supreme Court by pledging to appoint more conservative Justices. People become infatuated by a Canadian PM with the surname Trudeau, even though he's not as popular in his homeland. British politics are affected by a sex scandal, leading to the downfall of a Government minister. Amidst a climate of hostility against a nearby communist nation, Brazil turns to strongmen to govern the country. The tense political climates lead to a huge wave of protests from the political left, and subsequently the entertainment industry becomes increasingly politically outspoken. A prominent black athlete is ostracized by American conservatives for protesting against inequality. France is hit by a massive protest movement in the "8" year of the decade fueled by anger at the political establishment.
    • Culture: A Dance Sensation or two pops up each year, particularly in the first half, through the influence of black music gaining mainstream through a wider audience that is broadcast by and proliferated by new media. There is a craze over British culture spearheaded by a particularly popular boy band, also bolstered by the presence of a telegenic, easy-going Prime Minister, but the country ends the decade as the "sick man of Europe". There's a frenzy for all things "modern" while traditions and conventions are eschewed. An aging Memphis-born pop star returns to the music world after spending most of the decade in the movies. Comic book superheroes become immensely popular among all audiences. Minimalist shapes and soft colors mark the "look" of the decade. Facing increased competition from newer media, Hollywood spends most of the decade doing lavish epics but shifts to more "realistic" fare during the final years of the decade. The later years of the decade see a wide generation gap between an idealistic, liberal cohort of young people and their more conservative elders making many younger people resentful of the establishment. Mainstream pop music is heavily influenced by R&B, to the point where the two are practically synonymous.
  • The '70s:
    • Politics: There are major social changes; a long, grueling war ends with Uncle Sam losing, the economy is underperforming and the government is embroiled in an espionage scandal. The president tries to undermine said scandal by firing the person investigating him, only to have it backfire on him by intensifying it. ^note While the Watergate and NSA cases initially drew a big deal of comparisons, their aftermaths were drastically different: Watergate led to the resignation of Nixon and the whistle-blowers were hailed as heroes (or at least they were considered to have done it in the name of a greater good). Meanwhile, while Obama was briefly hit by the NSA scandal, its long-term impact was mostly negligible; in contrast, the whistle-blowers were ultimately branded as traitors (no less because many attempted to sell data to/seek refuge in countries openly hostile to the U.S. such as Russia and China). The U.S. government begins the decade warming up to China, while the second half of the decade has Washington trying to mend bridges with Moscow. The car industry suffers from quality control problems. A Republican president tries to improve relations with an East Asian communist country. A sitting president becomes mired in scandal over the conduct of his presidential campaign. Anti-racist protesters are murdered by white nationalists in the South during a political rally toward the end of the decade, in which right-wing politicians are widely criticized for emphasizing the presence of far-left communists and downplaying far-right racism in their responses.
    • Culture: A natural disaster indirectly leads to the death of a young celebrity in a transportation accident during the midst of relief efforts. A redheaded British singer-songwriter whose name begins with an "E" becomes a global superstar. Disney produces a film about anthropomorphic animals whose plot and themes somewhat fit with the issues of the time. Viewers are glued to their screens about a celebrity of Armenian descent and her publicity stunts and antics. An onscreen adaptation of Wonder Woman starring a former beauty queen becomes a worldwide phenomenon. An onscreen adaptation of Shazam! becomes an Ensemble Dark Horse. A brooding female singer-songwriter becomes a sensation seemingly out of nowhere near the end of the decade.
  • The '80s:
    • Politics: An older conservative celebrity vowing to "make America great again" becomes President following a controversial and widely unpopular Republican and a "dark horse" Democrat known for his strident idealism; he eventually proposes an ambitious space-based national defense project, which is widely lampooned by his detractors for sounding like something out of a science-fiction film. He also gets a reputation for staffing his cabinet with ideologues with occasionally questionable qualifications. The left is split between "hard left" and more moderate political positions^note Unlike with Reagan, the left did not take Trump's election very well. A Tory woman known for her steely demeanor is the U.K. Prime Minister. A magnitude 7 earthquake hits Mexico. There are protests brewing in China in the middle of the "9" year. A Supreme Court nominee in the later part of the decade faces a challenge to his nomination over his conservative views and his actions in the past.^note Though Brett Kavanaugh's nomination was successful, in contrast to Robert Bork. A period of economic decline in Latin America leads to a wave of social unrest.
    • Culture: A popular memetic song about phone numbers by an artist commonly seen as a One-Hit Wonder hits the charts in the middle of the "2" year. There is a move towards moral conservatism after years of hedonistic attitudes. A royal wedding is viewed by millions around the world at the "1" year. Electronic Music becomes the soundtrack of the decade. A musician of Italian-American descent becomes the talk of the town through her outrageous outfits and her stance with the LGBT Fanbase but becomes a public enemy to Moral Guardians. Viewers are struck with horror by a terrifying entity named "Freddy" making its debut on the "4" year. A nonwhite R&B-pop singer-songwriter becomes a consistent hitmaker thanks to his exploration of diverse musical genres. Big-budget films dominate Hollywood. New technology transforms television viewing and music listening habits. A small East Asian country becomes an economic and technological powerhouse.
  • The '90s:
    • Politics: Police brutality flares up racial tensions, leading to violent riots in some cases. A respected African-American celebrity sees his reputation go down the toilet in a highly publicized criminal trial. A powerful Category 5 hurricane strikes Florida. A deadly school shooting shocks the nation, and brings demand for gun control. A conservative Supreme Court nominee faces accusations of sexual assault/harassment before being ultimately confirmed but galvanizing the feminist movement and hurting Republican politicians in elections^note Although while the public overwhelmingly sided with Clarence Thomas, they were far less sympathetic to Brett Kavanaugh. A well-known professional wrestler is elected to an executive political office. A magnitude 7 earthquake hits California.
    • Culture: A small nation, that used to be colonized by a neighboring island nation, becomes a tiger economy and a cultural powerhouse. Disney begins a huge Renaissance following a slump, with their biggest hit of the period being a film based on a Danish story. A popular Dance Sensation to a song not sung in English takes over the world. A powerhouse female vocalist and an alternative-R&B male vocalist, one from the UK and the other from Canada, both become hugely successful due to her universal appeal and his very unique style, and each scores a big hit from a movie soundtrack. One of the most beloved leading men in Hollywood is a television star from the previous decade who gets a second chance at life after overcoming a major drug problem. A white Canadian reggae-fusion musical act unexpectedly scores an global smash hit known for its Narm factor near the middle of the decade and are instantly relegated to One-Hit Wonder status. A Canadian niche former teen star reinvents themselves as a mature act and becomes one of the biggest musical stars of the decade. Woody Allen is mired in scandal over his family. A well-respected and beloved comedian-slash-actor born in The '50s tragically passes away unexpectedly during the "4" year, months before a film posthumously starring said comedian-slash-actor is released later that same "4" year. A cartoon that was intended for the 6-11 female demographic, becomes a massive hit among the adult male demographic thanks to the talents of Lauren Faust and Tara Strong, helping establish a fledgling new network as a major player. The other franchise, meanwhile, has a much more poorly received show in the other decade. A very popular sitcom from the previous decade finally concludes, but its Grand Finale is universally panned for both negating the Character Development of the cast and revealing that the protagonist's spouse is really Dead All Along. An African-American musician/actor gradually rises in prominence during the decade after starring in a popular sitcom and records one of the most iconic rap songs of the decade. A song sung almost entirely in Spanish by a veteran Latin music act becomes the biggest hit of the summer near the end of the decade. A Latin-American actress and singer who first got noticed on a popular sitcom rises in prominence towards the end of the decade. An aspiring young singer is shot by a Loony Fan, followed by a deadly terrorist attack at a nearby large city beginning with an "O" days later. A member of a hugely popular British quintet abruptly leaves the group, forcing them into hiatus and the remaining ones to go on solo side projects in the meantime. Raves become major gatherings among the youth. Godzilla gets a big-budget American remake headlined by an actor who got his start during the previous decade in comedic fare, but transitioned to more serious material by playing the lead role in one of the decade's biggest hits. The murders of two prominent rappers in the second half of the decade hailing from opposite U.S. coasts within months of each other shocks the hip-hop community. A song inspired by a celebrity who died in a car crash tops the Billboard Hot 100 for more than ten weeks. A cowboy-themed rap song dominates the charts at the end of the decade. The biggest new pop star of the end of the decade is an 18-year old female singer whose name begins with a "B". A British rock star most popular in the '70s has a massive revival of interest after his untimely death from an illness.
    • Professional Wrestling: The WWF/E face a renaissance at the end of the decade after a lackluster start as the career of their long-time superhero babyface started to wind down, and the antithesis to said face that many thought would save the company would instead see his momentum cut off by executives before he unceremoniously departed the company. The Royal Rumble event crowned several multi-time winners^note Hulk Hogan (1990 and 1991), Shawn Michaels (1995 and 1996), "Stone Cold" Steve Austin (1997, 1998, and 2001), John Cena (2008 and 2013), Batista (2005 and 2014), Triple H (2002 and 2016), and Randy Orton (2009 and 2017). A future/past D-Generation X member wins his second Royal Rumble in the “6” year. A future/past Evolution member wins the WWF/E Championship in a Royal Rumble match in which a widely-hated superhuman face with an Alliterative Name finishes in third place. A play-by-play babyface commentator controversially turns heel and becomes one of the most hated men in the company. An iconic wrestling match is held at a pay-per-view in Chicago where the fans support the rebellious heel over the goody-two-shoes veteran babyface, leading to the former making a Heel–Face Turn. A member of the Laurinaitis family is prominently featured on WWF/E television at the beginning of the decade. A member of the Rotunda family is a top heel in the middle of the decade. Around the early to middle parts of the decade, the company faces fan outcry for constantly pushing their preferred powerhouse main event-er with an Alliterative Name who was more popular as an on-screen bad guy anyway, over a fan-favorite technical wrestler (who only had a brief stint in the main event scene prior) who was seen by the company as a second-tier star. WWF/E execute a Face/Heel Double-Turn at the Allstate Arena in Chicago, where the then-face is booed for brutally attacking his opponent and the then-heel gets fan sympathy for his courage and reseliency. The decade also saw them compete with a red-hot rival promotion with a hugely popular black-and-white clad Heel stable. The WWF/E also saw the rise of a Mr. Fanservice Long-Haired Pretty Boy with an all-around yet high-risk style of wrestling, only for him to become controversial due to his backstage antics. WWF/E's biggest defector from their dying rival promotion, who is also a Mr. Fanservice Long-Haired Pretty Boy, makes a memorable debut in the company when a member of the Anoa'i family was in the ring. A wrestler from Florida adopts a mysterious character based on Max Cady for the WWF/E. A member of the Anoa'i family wins his first World Title in a Tournament Arc held in Survivor Series by defeating a beloved Psychopathic Manchild Garbage Wrestler with a Double-Arm DDT finisher (who himself will make an unexpected yet well-received rise into the WWF/E main event scene). Taking advantage of a bitter global conflict, WWE has one of its heels declare allegiance to a foreign adversary of the United States. The wrestling world is surged with wrestlers having supernatural gimmicks. A son of Dusty Rhodes becomes a popular midcard star in WWE. A wrestler clad in red and black with a demon-themed gimmick who was born in Europe had their WWF/E World Title run cut short after only a day and struggles to chase the title since. A newcomer with an Olympic medal and a legitimate combat sport background had an impressive rookie year in the WWF/E. An all-black faction named "The N... D..." that feature a WWE veteran who originally played a Caribbean character, a star who first made his name on other promotions, and a promising singlet-wearing powerhouse, take WWF/E by storm. An iconic winning streak is shockingly ended by a highly polarizing wrestler at the company’s premiere event. A legitimate beef between two wrestlers with a storied on-screen rivalry (one known for their on-screen vanity, sex-appeal, and high risk wrestling style, the other for their submission Finishing Move and pink Color Motif while wearing Cool Shades and leather jacket during their entrance) became known to the public. A boisterous and very opinionated wrestler mostly dressed in black also became their Breakout Character towards the end of the decade, helping to popularize a previously fringe movement within the business^note adult-oriented and women’s wrestling, respectively and forcing WWF/E to turn the wrestler face while simultaneously turning their current rival heel. As the Breakout Characters rise in popularity, they made adversaries from two different Wrestling Families, either for getting in their way or for injuring them, while simultaneously feuding with a combat sport athlete outside of wrestling. The breakout star would win the Royal Rumble by taking advantage of a loophole (avoiding elimination because of distracted referees or subbing for an injured competition). The Breakout wrestler's Championship reign during their rise in popularity was also ended by an enigmatic yet popular foreign-born masked wrestler with Only One Name, who defeated them in a non-traditional match. The final year of the decade saw the release of a highly acclaimed wrestling movie involving The Rock, and also Chris Jericho defecting to a rival promotion. However, WWF/E come under fire for a pay-per-view event in relation to someone’s death.
  • Turn of the Millennium:
    • Politics: The perceived lackluster Democratic Presidential candidate associated with the very popular outgoing president wins the popular vote but loses the electoral vote to the Republican candidate. There is a chaotic aftermath, with one president-elect seeing his victory in a month-long legal dispute and the other being denied the traditional "honeymoon" period from his opponents. There were terror attacks at a major European capital city during the "5" year. A major tragedy in a Virginia college town during the "7" year leads to widespread political controversy. A major hurricane catastrophically floods a Gulf Coast city. An outbreak of disease that started with pigs occured in the "9" year. A Republican President comes under intense criticism for his response to a deadly hurricane, with many saying the slow response was related to the fact the hurricane hit a largely nonwhite area.
    • Culture: An obnoxiously catchy tune starring a cute animal becomes an internet sensation at the beginning of the decade. A very popular Canadian musical act is the butt of pop culture jokes. A Disney-bred starlet hailing from The Deep South becomes an international pop sensation starting at the end of the previous decade only to be mired in numerous scandals at the middle of the decade before undergoing a Career Resurrection by the end of the decade. A relatively obscure high-fantasy novel series by a man with "R.R." in his name blasts into the mainstream in the second year of the decade with a massively popular screen adaptation starring Sean Bean. The inaugural film of a Spider-Man movie series is released in the "2" year. Two years after the final entry of their film series, the Spider-Man actor gets universal acclaim for starring in a military drama film in which his character's closest male relative is played by an actor who at one point played a Marvel supervillain. A white rapper known for his witty humor becomes a phenomenon, and has a huge end-of-year Breakaway Pop Hit from a movie. The Batman film series gets a Continuity Reboot in the middle of the decade. A young blond actor who first became famous in a 1999 teen comedy adaptation of a classic play alongside Gabrielle Union dies at a shockingly young age and posthumously stars in the most successful movie of his career. Quite similarly to the former case, a rising young famous celebrity with direct ties to Eminem dies also at such a shockingly young age just as the decade is coming to a close in the December of the "9" year, only shortly after their respective birthday (the former having died one month and ten days after her 32nd birthday, and the latter just only six days after his 21st), and whilst said celebrity's death was never officially ruled as such, an overdose of drugs was at least a contributing factor in their unexpected passing at such a tragically young age. A very popular sitcom about True Companions that started during the middle of the previous decade concluded its run on the middle of the "4" year. A biopic sitcom about the childhood of a non-Caucasian celebrity becomes a hit during the middle of the decade, which also served as a Star-Making Role for the actor(s) playing the parent(s). A groundbreaking Marvel film is released in the "2" year. A movie adaptation of the Fantastic Four is released in the "5" year. Disney Channel has a huge cartoon hit that launches in June of the "2" year. A comic writer gets infamy and scorn for separating a popular couple from the comics in a comic-based adaptation. A show based on DC Comics that began earlier in the decade gradually becomes mocked as the decade goes on due to a Spotlight-Stealing Squad female character who is blatantly loved by the show's creators. A highly-acclaimed movie about a black-clad superhero headlined by an actor who died tragically young is released in the second to last year of the decade. A purple-themed supervillain from a high-grossing movie in the "8" year becomes a cultural phenomenon. A film featuring The Joker takes the world by storm towards the end of the decade. The Oscars face criticism for awarding "Best Picture" to a controversial film about race relations that's widely derided for being preachy and simplistic, snubbing multiple other films that are widely seen as much more daring and relevant. Professional baseball becomes mired in a cheating scandal toward the end of the decade. The death of a prominent African-American singer most successful in the 1980s from a prescription drug overdose prompts worldwide mourning.
    • Professional Wrestling: A highly regarded former WWF/E midcarder and ex-Intercontinental Champion coming from a Wrestling Family builds his own promotion and gains their biggest acquisition in an ex-WWE star nobody could ever envision working in another major promotion. The "1" and "2" years featured several big name wrestlers and personalities return to the WWF/E after nearly a decade of absence. WWF/E's "2" year saw Brock Lesnar making his presence felt during the Raw after WrestleMania, along with the debut of several wrestlers who will dominate the company's main event scene for much of the decade starting the middle part, many of whom would first get noticed together in a stable; a midcard staple and tag team star would also be called up that year. A wrestler with an Olympic background ascended to the WWF/E main event scene earlier in the decade by winning the World Title from a decorated third generation member of a Wrestling Family. A veteran Canadian wrestler finally wins the WWE's Big Gold Belt but eventually loses it to Randy Orton. Two World Titles within the WWF/E is unified at the end of the year during the first half of the decade, with the Big Gold Belt along with its lineage being the one ultimately dropped. A beloved small-built wrestler came out of retirement from a seemingly Career-Ending Injury. A former member of a popular heel tag team wins the Money in the Bank ladder match and the WWE title and sees his reign ended by John Cena, but remains a fixture of WWE programming afterwards and revitalizes himself after a slump. Meanwhile, his former tag team partner, despite a strong start, struggles to make it in WWE and leaves for TNA/Impact, where he wins the world title, and returns to WWE at the end of the decade. A former WWE midcarer, after spending many years in the shadow of his more-popular tag team partner, enjoys a Career Resurrection in TNA. A Long-Haired Pretty Boy Heel wins a Money in the Bank ladder match to win the WWE title during the middle of the decade, while a former tag-team partner jumps ship to the top rival promotion where he is once again known by his pre-WWE ring name. A celebrated Tall, Dark, and Handsome non-Caucasian wrestler with mixed ancestry strives in Hollywood. A four-man Power Stable led by a Top Heel Long-Haired Pretty Boy wins all the male championships in a WWE brand. WWE's chosen top guy wins his first World Title in the middle of the decade, only for him to lose it to a non-U.S born Money in the Bank winner. A newcomer unexpectedly becomes a Breakout Character on SmackDown, only to see their popularity take a massive dent once they transfer to Raw due to Hype Backlash, their unique gimmick being stripped from them, a widely panned feud that derailed the career of the other wrestler, and putting a stranglehold on the top title. The child of a WWE Hall of Famer breaks out of a popular stable only to see their popularity plummet as their exposure grows. A second generation member of a Wrestling Family who freshly lost his Tag Team Championship wins the WWE Championship in a SmackDown-exclusive February PPV, while a relative of them who is younger by three years struggles to become relevant. A smaller, technical wrestler with a facelock finisher defeated two former allies in the main event of WrestleMania and would face off against Triple H during the "4" year. A beloved underdog wrestler wins WWE's Big Gold Belt at WrestleMania in a triple-threat match involving Randy Orton. A plucky underdog wrestler from Quebec who made his name outside WWE the previous decade would later become a star there. A world-renowned European technician flounders in the midcard of WWE despite fan demand for him to be at the top of the company. An Eastern European Slavic wrestler becomes a Fake Russian monster heel. A big name wrestler wins the WWF/E World Title after only a few months despite being away for several years, only to lose it a month later. A beloved Anti-Hero controversially walks out of the WWF/E due to backstage issues. In the WWE's women's division, a dark-haired female wrestler with a spider Animal Motif and a crazy gimmick dominated it during the earlier parts of the decade, a former NBA cheerleader with Only One Name becomes a major player towards the end, but the division will ultimately be defined by the rivalry of a blonde and a redhead. A popular WWE female wrestler with Only One Name and an edgy rocker gimmick becomes controversial after issues surrounding her love/sex life is made public. An Indian wrestler wins the top World Title of SmackDown during the "7" year but his reign, mostly spent feuding with an ex-member of Evolution, is widely panned. Someone who won a WWE reality show competed in Survivor towards the end of the decade. A newcomer with a legitimate combat sport background, who at some point in the career were in UFC, had an impressive rookie year in the WWF/E. A beloved 38-year old veteran finally wins the WWE Championship and becomes a Grand Slam Champion. An Irish redhead becomes a megastar at the end of the decade. CM Punk make headlines at the final year of the decade.
  • There are similarities between the beginning of Barack Obama's and Donald Trump's presidencies:
  • The president's party unexpectedly loses a U.S. Senate seat in a state the president won by over 20 points, but wins it back during the president's re-election campaign.
    • 2010 vs.2018 midterms: The president's party loses control of the U.S. House of Representatives but holds onto of the Senate. Republicans win Democratic-held Senate seats in Indiana and North Dakota. Andrew Cuomo wins the New York gubernatorial election. A very close race in Florida ends in Rick Scott narrowly winning. An incumbent midwestern governor of the president's party in a state that favors said party, having ascended to office from the lieutenant governorship two years as an indirect result of the president's election, narrowly wins a full term despite polls generally predicting their loss. A moderate Democratic female senator in a deep red state loses by a landslide margin to a bespectacled Republican congressman. The incumbent governor of Florida runs for U.S. Senate seat. The new Congress's breakout star for the party that gained is someone who beat an incumbent congressman in a safe district, while a newly elected and very young Republican senator would also go on to becomes a national star.
  • Some historians argue that the world is returning to the status quo before the rise of the USSR after World War I, they note that many of the tensions in the Middle East, especially in Syria stem from the Sykes-Picot agreement, the dividing up of the Middle East after the downfall of the Ottoman Empire, with a "Belle Epoque" of America as the world's dominant superpower giving way to the emergence of a multi-polar world of various entities (America, EU, China, Russia, and potentially India). An early advocate of this view was historian Eric Hobsbawm who argued that the "Short Twentieth Century" of 70 years comprising the rise and fall of the USSR was an "Age of Extremes" and rapid change, but there has been growing agreement that the period of vertiginous change that marked the 19th and 20th centuries was unusual and would be followed by an era of more static development.
  • Many also consider that the fact the U.S. and U.K. are turning inwards is a signal that the English-speaking dominance of world politics that emerged after the Napoleonic Wars is withering, curiously replaced by the previously dominant Franco-German order that has revived as a revamped European Union regained traction after Brexit.
  • The Democratic Presidential Primary of 2016 turned out to have many rather striking parallels with the Presidential Election of 1824. One candidate was a former Secretary of State and an immediate relative of a former President, and was known for having an intimate knowledge of statecraft but also criticized for a perceived lack of popular appeal; the other was a fiery populist organizer known for his distrust of banks, his warnings about America's financial institutions growing too powerful, and his avid support for grassroots popular democracy over caucuses dominated by party insiders; the primary also became a source of controversy after the former Secretary of State won the nomination from the fiery populist, leading to a few allegations that the nomination was "stolen". By this point, the populist's supporters were less concerned about the Secretary of State winning than the fact that it could lead to someone they were far more afraid of taking power. Decide for yourself: are we talking about John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson (featuring Henry Clay), or about Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders (featuring Donald Trump)?
  • President's Barack Obama's warming of U.S.-Cuban diplomatic relations with the "Cuban Thaw" is comparable to the warming to diplomatic relations between United States and China with Richard Nixon where the U.S. tries to normalize diplomatic relations with a communist country that was historically hostile to the U.S. Ironically, Donald Trump not only has been less keen on it (eventually holding back on further policies), but his phone call to the Taiwanese president ^note The U.S. official stance in the China-Taiwan issue is very ambiguous. The U.S. government recognizes the Chinese government over the Taiwanese government. At the same time, the U.S. does not recognize the former's sovereignty over the latter, and is willing to militarily back Taiwan should China attempt an invasion to claim sovereignty over the island, thus potentially starting World War III. (in addition to his tweets blasting the Chinese government) is seen as an attempt to reverse Nixon's legacy on China, while the love-hate relationship with North Korea during his administration only have added to the confusion.
  • The souring of U.S.-Russian diplomatic relations under President Obama^note The U.S. and Russia supporting opposing sides on the Syrian Civil War, and the massively-decried Russian invasion of Crimea. was seen by many critics as the potential start of a 2nd Cold War. During Trump's campaign and early on in his presidency, this possibility now seemed highly unlikely, as Trump and Putin praised each other. Inversely, many were worried about the U.S. entering a Cold War-style conflict with China, a country Trump labeled as a "currency manipulator". In the end, worries were reversed. Trump reversed his outlook on China, which eventually shut down fears of conflict. On Russia was confirmed to have influenced the 2016 election cycle, and also hacked the DNC and RNC, leaking emails of the former to the public. This caused the American public to grow more suspicious of Putin. However, it was double subverted, with the trade war between United States and China after President Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese goods; combined with the North Korean nuclear missile crisis in 2017 and the South China Sea territorial disputes this led to souring of diplomatic relations between United States and China. Conversely, the Trump administration established warmer relations with Russia while souring diplomatic relations with key U.S. allies with imposition of tariffs.
• Hotter and Sexier: While this decade's pop culture and fashion could be considered to be far Tamer and Chaster than in the previous two decades, as the "Sex Sells" philosophy became discredited as blatant sexism, under other lens sex became more present than ever, although with a female POV, focusing on titillation (with S&M and kink culture reaching the mainstream with works such as Fifty Shades of Grey) and consent (leading to higher public condemnation of rape and sexual abuse, culminating with the #MeToo movement in 2017-18) with the argument that sex in media was vulgarized mainly as the result of the increased objectification of women during the latter half of the 20th century. On the other hand, pop culture takes on sex began shifting back to the coarser mood of the late 90s and 2000s during 2019.
  • Pop music became more open about sexuality with the rise of EDM, while the second half of the decade saw the rise of trap music, with explicit descriptions of sex being a common theme. Female pop musicians being promoted through sexually-charged imagery was hardly a new phenomenon, but after Miley Cyrus "reimagined" herself (in a particularly raunchy example, although she would radically change her image again later in the decade) it became common for pop divas "outshock" themselves.
• Hover Bike: This decade saw the construction of the first working prototypes of "flying cars".
• Hummer Dinger: SUVs returned to popularity after the high fuel prices and the financial crisis of the late 2000s. The better gas mileage, low fuel costs, and the fallout from the Toyota hybrid accelerator problems were possible factors.
• Idol Genre: During the late 2000s and the early 2010s, the number of Idol Singers debuting in East Asian countries like Japan and South Korea began increasing exponentially. Media even called the phenomenon the "Warring Period of Idols" (Aidoru Sengoku-jidai). Anime industries began cashing in on this, creating Cash Cow Franchises based on fictional idols.
• The Illuminati: Although the status of this organization remained elusive, the early years of the decade saw almost every single public figure and piece of pop culture being accused of being associated with them (often overlapping with Reptilian Conspiracy) on the 'net, eventually leading to a resurgence of conspiracy theories in general among the wider public. And somehow, the "Illuminati symbol" gained meme status among the MLG^note Major League Gaming community by the middle of the decade (often paired with Doritos and Mountain Dew).
• The Internet Is for Porn: While this trope is as old as the Internet itself, the rise of free porn sites in the previous decade, coupled with the advent of the smart phone, effectively killed off the "lads mag" market by the middle of the decade.
• The Internet Is Serious Business: Social media was scrutinized for causing the deep political divisions seen in the later part of the decade. How bad could it be? In 2016, a bot was designed to depict views on Twitter. Almost immediately, the bot began to "tweet" misogynistic and white supremacist thoughts and was put down after a few hours. Moreover, the allegations of Russian hackers meddling in elections in America and elsewhere made cybersecurity a growing concern with both politicians and the public.
• Iyashikei: This genre became incredibly popular in many seinen magazines, with Manga Time Kirara being a popular manga magazine for this genre.
• Job-Stealing Robot: Automation was a major cause for concern. It was the key reason for the disappearance of manufacturing jobs and it was a major cause for concern among politicians and economists, because it would not only lead to lower growth (as a service-based economy is far less productive than an industrial economy) and large-scale unemployment, but make the rich even more richer and the shrinking job market even more scarce, leading to calls for permanent universal income and other forms of social democracy to correct this situation.
• Kid Com: Nickelodeon and Disney Channel started to air more kid comedies at the expense of animated shows. Cartoon Network attempted to follow suit numerous times, but all efforts for the most part failed.
• Lens Flare: Started somewhere in the late 2000s, early 2010s visual media couldn't seem to go without a horizontal lens flare, probably popularized by the film, Star Trek (2009).
• Lighter and Softer: Aesthetically and culturally, the 2010s took this route compared to previous decades. Grunge-inspired music genres like Nu Metal faded from relevance and made way for Electronic Dance Music. The often ultra-violent sci-fi action flicks of the 90s and 2000s, complete with a '90s Anti-Hero, took a backseat to more lighthearted Post-Cyberpunk and superhero movies. Aesthetically, the sleek, clean 'Everything Is An I Pod In The Future' look replaced the gritty cyberpunk-inspired or hip-hop inspired looks of the 2000s. Politically, the 2010s were far less contentious than they were during the early years of The War on Terror.
• Little Sister Heroine: This trope got a lot of backlash among western anime fans thanks to the controversial ending of Oreimo (the said little sister also happened to be a Tsundere, a character archetype that was incredibly loathed by the western anime fanbase). Several anime works tried to remedy this featuring characters of this trope with a Nice Girl personality with a much younger age, but many works such as Black Bullet, Ro-Kyu-Bu, Here Comes the Three Angels, and Eromanga Sensei got fierce criticism for various Unfortunate Implications involving underaged girls and many see them as a Lolicon fetish.
• Live-Action Adaptation: Comic-book film adaptations became immensely popular during this decade: Marvel solidified its position with the continuing X-Men Film Series along with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which became fully established by TheAvengers in 2012, while lesser-known properties such as Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man and Deadpool became successful. DC Comics followed suit with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Wonder Woman leading to a future saga of Justice League films. Even Disney joined the bandwagon with their take on revamping its animated classics such as Maleficent, Cinderella, The Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast.
• Long Runner: Most popular TV shows from the first half of the decade actually began during the 2000s. It got to the point in which a show could be seen as pretty short-lived if it didn't last five seasons^note The average run of most primetime shows until the early 90s. The "long miniseries" format that became popular in cable and streaming could be seen as a reaction against the trope.
• Loot Boxes: After mostly being the domain of mobile or Allegedly Free Games in the 2000s, this form of microtransaction proliferated into the gaming mainstream during this decade and became a hotly criticized practice in the latter half. Publishers began implementing increasingly predatory and game-affecting lootbox systems into full-priced AAA-industry games, until the bubble burst dramatically with the release of Star Wars Battlefront II (2017); the backlash against which was so loud^note (Among other things, a Reddit comment made by Electronic Arts to defend the game's use of lootboxes became the most downvoted comment in Reddit's history) that mainstream media and government officials took notice. The Belgium Gambling Commission officially ruled in April 2018 that loot boxes were a form of gambling prohibited under Belgian law, prompting numerous other countries to perform similar investigations.
• Malicious Misnaming: "Deadnaming" was an increasingly big issue among transgender individuals, especially when done intentionally by conservatives and far-right individuals to discredit their gender identity. Some states even do this in legal documents on transgender individuals.
• Manchild: Immature protagonists struggling to grow up were frequent comedy protagonists, particularly in works associated with Judd Apatow. Lena Dunham’s Girls proved that this wasn’t restricted to men. These uses of this trope fed media controversy, as newswriters writing about The Generation Gap tended to stereotype the Millennial generation as immature narcissists and Millennials in turn stereotyped Baby Boomers as immature narcissists.
• Medieval European Fantasy: The success of Game of Thrones showed that this setting was still very popular. Games such as The Witcher 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim were some of the most acclaimed of the decade with the latter being ported to a wide variety of systems.
• Merchandise-Driven: This was still fairly common, particularly with the "Bayformers" trilogy and shows on The Hub.
• Mini Series: Returned as a credible genre after two decades. This revival also sparked a trend for longer miniseries, some of them lasting an entire season (often dubbed as "limited series"). This in turn created a slew of anthology series such as True Crime, American Horror Story and Fargo.
• Moe: While it was all the rage in the East and became a more popular concept in the West, reception of newer anime series that feature this (most notably in the West) tended to be treated with either indifference or outright disgust due to either being generic adaptations of Harem or Romantic Comedy, or put in an inappropriate setting. It also didn't help to note that this trope was constantly being applied to females and was sometimes seen as sexist among the Western fanbase. My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic was extremely popular not only with its intended audience, but also with a large periphery demographic of older males and its Moe appeal was commented on; the show was popular enough to have been exported back to Japan, and it was cited as an example of rising interest in Moe in the West, albeit in its own style.
• Moe Anthropomorphism: An increasingly common gimmick in seinen anime was shows featuring moe girls that are actually something like horses (Uma Musume) or battleships (KanColle), allowing the Bishoujo Series to cross over with different genres.
• Monster Clown: Fall 2016 was marked by a number of so-called "clown sightings" in Europe and the U.S., where people would take to wandering the streets at night dressed as clowns. On the innocent end, most were just pranksters. On the sinister end, this led to several reported attacks, as well as reported "clown-hunting" vigilantism. Movies featuring clowns with themes that covered topics such as paranoia, mental health, and the ills of society were also hits later in the decade such as the 2017 remake of It and Joker in 2019.
• Moral Guardians: Resurfaced early in the decade from both the left and the right in response to the perceived debauchery present in contemporary times, with "Blurred Lines" and double-standards becoming the most controversial cases. This increased lobbying power in part contributed to the increased popularity and expansion of web-originated contents.
• Movie Superheroes Wear Black: Defied and discredited in this decade, thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe bringing back color (albeit in muted tones) to costumes.
• The Multiverse: Became popular thanks to works like Fringe, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, the Arrowverse, (particularly The Flash), Injustice: Gods Among Us, Rick and Morty, The Man in the High Castle, Counterpart (2018), and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
• Must Have Caffeine: The 1990s/2000s-era fascination for coffee continued with the "third wave" coffeehouse movement popularizing cold brew and reviving the manual drip pour-over and the French press methods popular during the 90s. During the decade, consumption patterns shifted, as energy drinks (the non-athletic kinds hitherto stigmatized as drug-level deleterious) and some varieties of tea replaced "good ol' java" as the quintessential pick-me-up, spelling severe trouble for traditional brands such as Nescafe, Folgers and Maxwell House, while more gourmet-driven brands such as Starbucks and Nespresso have thrived.
• Music of the 2010s: If the music trends of the 2000s catered to practically every kind of taste, this decade was marked by the near-monolithic dominance of Electronic Music, which exploded in popularity in early 2012. Urban music, its only credible contender (having surpassed rock as America's most popular music genre in the mid-2010s) incorporated electronic aspects to catch up, often crossing over as "featured artists" on pop songs. By the final years of the decade, hip-hop eclipsed EDM's cultural presence as most "pop divas" faced professional and personal travails.
  • Auto-Tune: Began in The Turn of the Millennium, but hit its stride in 2010 with the "Bed Intruder" song, and made into an art form—seriously—by the likes of Bon Iver and Kanye West. Unfortunately for the music industry, such devices caused many musicians to lose interest in the mainstream... for the most part, with British Indie Rock being the main exception. Its excessive use actually caused a bit of a backlash, with further usage being more for enhancement (and making fun of it in the web) rather for effects per se, although it would return to prominence later in the decade by its frequent use by trap artists.
  • Country Music: The "country-pop" scene of the late 2000s remained popular in the mainstream, although it was briefly eclipsed by the rap-infused "bro-country" movement. However, bro-country fell as quickly as it rose, and the genre was soon considered Condemned by History among most country fans.invoked
  • Dubstep: The focus of a pop music craze following 2011's "Party Rock Anthem". DJs such as Skrillex and hits like "I Can't Stop" and "I Knew You Were Trouble" increased its staying power throughout the middle of the decade.
  • House Music: Various styles of it took turns at the forefront of EDM's mainstream boom. Electro House and progressive house were there at the start, then big room house showed up for 2013, and in 2014, the commercial success of Disclosure brought deep house into the mix.
  • K-Pop: Went global this decade, beginning with PSY's "Gangnam Style" becoming a hit worldwide. The second half of the 2010s saw the genre lead a wave of interest over Korean culture in a number of countries.
  • New Sound Album: Many artists switched to electronic music beginning in 2013-14, some of them being known for having starkly different styles.
  • Rock Music: Except for a few alternative songs, rock struggled to cross over into the mainstream. Alternative radio began to play more Indie Pop and folk, whereas mainstream rock became focused on classic rock hits and some newer songs. Namely, lo-fi rock, hard rock, and heavy metal.
  • Synthpop: Returned to the mainstream with a minimalist New Wave-esque style taking over.
  • Trance: While not quite as commercially big as dubstep, house, or trap, trance nevertheless experienced a massive Newbie Boom in the States and by the end of the decade continued to maintain a very dedicated fandom all over the globe.
  • Trap Music: After being written off in The '90s as a hardcore variation of Hip-Hop, it saw a massive boom in popularity this decade when artists like Diplo, DJ Snake, Yellow Claw, Flosstradamus, Baauer, and Keys n Krates combined it with EDM. Despite having little in common with the original style of trap by borrowing from Latin genres, it was completely transformed into a form of mainstream music.
• My Country Tis of Thee That I Sting: Criticism of one's country became more prevalent in media during this decade, most notably in the USA, where this had previously been almost totally restricted to satirical and/or politically-charged works. This became especially prevalent in works made during the second half of the decade, as its opposite arose in the real world.

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