The New Tens / Tropes N to Z

Tropes N-S

• Nerd Glasses: No longer associated with social-awkwardness and/or ugliness, specs were actually considered sexy in this decade.
• Nerds Are Sexy: As intellectualism rose in popularity, good-looking characters with good knowledge became more common in media for most of the decade, while the ditzy types popular during the 2000s were likely to be frowned upon.
• Network Decay: Persisted during this era, although some networks started to return to their roots. Other networks either shut down or re-branded entirely so at least their new themes fit.
• New-Age Retro Hippie: The final years of the decade saw a transition between the retro fashions of hipsters to more bohemian styles, particularly regarding female fashion, as the elegant outfits associated with "girl bosses" became supplanted by the hippie-inspired aesthetic of VSCO girls.
• New Media Are Evil: Whereas in the 2000s, films, rock music, glam rap, video games and Messenger/chatrooms were the main targets of moral outrage, this decade saw them turning their outrage on cable TV/streaming series and social media, although movies returned to the fold later in the decade for many of them.
• New Technology Is Evil: During the second half of the decade, the humongous tech corporations drew fire from many fields because of their direct role on the plight of whole industries (Amazon over retail, Facebook over journalism, Netflix over television, Google over everything else, etc.). While they had been attacked by conservatives for years over the progressive politics of their leading figures and their heavy crackdowns on and deplatforming of right-wing content, it would be a series of scandals (Facebook personal data was allegedly used by an analysis firm to influence elections in the UK and the US; Amazon's hunt for new headquarters became universally reviled; Google attempted to play into the Chinese government's hands in order to gain permission to operate in the country; Elon Musk's erratic behavior on social media; Netflix dropping movies and TV shows just to keep Friends in their catalog) that would ultimately harm the left’s public perception of the men that were seen as "the heroes of the digital age" at the beginning of the decade, being now seen as the modern equivalent to the "trusts" of the late 19th century.
• Nice Guy: After being portrayed as "wide-eyed fools" for most of the 90s and 2000s, many works began to see this kind of character in a more sympathetic light, especially in works made during the first half of the decade. The Dogged Nice Guy, meanwhile, got quite a bit of deconstruction and subversion.
• Nintendo Hard: After the difficulty drop in video games over the previous two decades, games with more of a challenge, such as Dark Souls, gained a following.
• No Dub for You: Became more prevalent as fewer English dubs were produced for anime (though Funimation still produced English dubs for almost all of their licensed shows).
  • However this trope seemed to be getting less prevalent with Sentai Filmworks producing even more dubs than Funimation annually, Viz Media licensing and dubbing a larger variety of shows, Saban being back in the game, Aniplex USA dubbing a healthy portion of their shows, and the Japanese companies producing a few dubs themselves. Heck, even Media Blasters still dubbed, despite being in financial ruin, and NIS America entered the game as well in 2014 with their English dub of Toradora!. 2009-2011 were somewhat dark years for the medium. The revival of Toonami and the introduction of the Neon Alley streaming service indicated there was some demand for English dubbed anime for a few select titles and this trope was often applied to more niche titles (i.e. Slice of Life Schoolgirl Series or Otaku-pandering anime).
• Nostalgia Filter:
  • Nostalgia for the 1980s not only led to a slew of reboots from successful icons and period pieces set in the era, but it also brought a return of more conservative yet colorful fashions, as well as a renewed interest for punk-inspired outfits.
  • There was also a wave of Victorian/Edwardian revivalism that no one expected, primarily for its aesthetic values and societal attitudes, becoming romanticized as an era devoid of the ills of modernity that came upon the Great War^note not taking into account that most people did not live pastoral and pleasant lives as often thought, but more like in a tale of Dickens. But its most notorious manifestation waas the hipster-led revival of trades that had been eccentric pursuits for almost a century like butchers, barbers and brewers.
• Nothing Is Scarier: After the critically-derided era of "torture porn" that dominated Hollywood horror movies in the 2000s, the pendulum now largely swung back in the other direction. The 2010s saw a major resurgence in somber, minimalistic, slow-burn horror, kicked off by Insidious and The Conjuring, with glacial nerve-shredders like The VVitch, It Follows, A Quiet Place, and Hereditary achieving success with critics and audiences alike. The strategy of "Don't show the monster" in the grand tradition of Jaws and Alien made a major comeback in style, with even the 2014 Godzilla reboot holding back on its titular beast to build suspense^note although in that case, it was primarily following in the footsteps of the original, which was a slow-moving, ominous, and haunting horror/drama film and reached into multiple different genres, in video games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Five Nights at Freddy's, Slender and others, and even occasionally on television, with the massive popularity of Stranger Things and The Haunting of Hill House (2018).
• Nouveau Riche:
  • An aspiration that was thoroughly expressed by Travie Mc Coy and Bruno Mars' "Billionaire". Through tech startups, through social media, and/or through mining cryptocurrency, anyone would have dreamed to strike it rich and famous through unconventional and unorthodox means in the likes of Trump, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, and the Kardashian-Jenner clan, who started to become the most influential billionaires in this decade. According to Forbes, there were 1,001 billionaires in 2010, and had more than doubled by 2019.
  • Unlike Western Millennials whose aim was to be as frugal as possible, Chinese Millennials, born under the country's transition towards a capitalist market and born under the One Child Policy, were entrepreneurial and tech-savvy at the positive side, and were conspicuous consumers and obnoxious tourists at the negative side. The Crazy Rich Asians series and its 2018 film adaptation was a commentary of the lifestyles of the newly rich Mainlanders clashing with the Old Money Overseas Chinese.
• Obsessed with Food: Millennials were noted for their pursuit of gourmet foods as well as the tendency to post pictures of what they're eating on social media.
• One-Hit Wonder: There were many over the course of the decade, but particularly decade-defining examples included Baauer, Ylvis, Gotye, Willow Smith, Foster The People, Cali Swag District, AWOLNATION, Icona Pop, A Great Big World, Passenger, Bastille, MAGIC!, Nico & Vinz, The Wanted, Mark Ronson, Elle King, OMI, James Newton Howard and Jennifer Lawrence, Hozier, and Silento^note these include five artists whose one hit topped the charts (Gotye, Baauer, MAGIC!, Ronson, and OMI); in the case of the latter four, it extended to being their only entry on the Hot 100, period (although a song Ronson was featured on scraped the bottom of the Hot 100 for a week, and OMI had another song "bubble under"). If the more liberal definition is applied, then Carly Rae Jepsen, Robin Thicke, Hot Chelle Rae, Far East Movement, Avicii, Rachel Platten, (who all technically had more than one hit) Kreayshawn, PSY and Rebecca Black (who didn't even chart on Billboard's Hot 100) are often cited. The Chainsmokers are often cited as an example of a miraculous escape from the status.
• Painted-On Pants: Fashion in the first half of the decade placed a major emphasis on form-fitting clothing, as seen in the popularity of leggings for females and skinny jeans for both genders, a trend that might be permanent with the rise of "activewear" and other technologically-developed clothing. In the business world, slim-fit "Italian Look" suits also saw a revival in reaction to the large suits worn by pre-2008 Wall St. bankers or members of the Bush administration (for instance, the double-breasted blazer basically went extinct after 2010, returning in a small scale by the second half of the decade, same for ties over two inches wide).
• Parents as People: This decade began to see media explore the themes of bad parenting, the negative effects of expecting parents to be perfect and on constant alert, and young people even questioned why they should automatically have kids just because they are fertile. Media even explored "bad parents" from their point of view: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Mad Men, GLOW (2017), Stranger Things, Bad Moms, etc. often starred such flawed parents, explored ambivalent parenting, rebellious parenting, parenting practices in past decades (decades where the now elder Boomers, middle-aged Gen Xers, and young adult Millenials were growing up in) with an examination of how the Babies Ever After philosophy led to miserable parents who lashed out or neglected their children, were absent, resented having to Stay in the Kitchen, or had children before considering they were ready or even desired children.
• Patriotic Fervor: Nationalist politics became more mainstream in Europe, the United States, and South America in the second half of the decade. Ironically, a lot of this was a reaction to the capitalist right liberalizing its social views to get cozy with more progressive international institutions while leftist parties toned down economic populism in order to promote social change within the same institutions. The void of leftist populism and the perceived failure of the mainstream right to protect the traditional common man led to this rise in nationalism.
• Periphery Demographic: Several well known examples emerged in popular culture during this decade. The most well-known example was the "bronies", adult male fans of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, which aired during this decade (2011-2019). In general, there were adult fans of shows meant for children and other things that were considered outside of their demographic. It was a general offshoot the "New Sincerity Movement", which was about works that focused on the idealist end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism, and genuinely enjoying them for their own merits instead of ironically.
• Perma-Stubble: Some younger men went as far as implanting hair to have one of these (full-grown beards and mustaches were equally fashionable as well).
• Playing Both Sides: Russian trolls in the later half of the decade used social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to create fake "alt-right", neo-Nazi, and white nationalists accounts to discredit leftist celebrities and politicians or to damage their reputations. At the same time, the same Russian trolls were also responsible for creating fake social media accounts to manipulate the Black Lives Matter movement in order to exacerbate the already fragile racial tensions in United States^note Although this part wasn't the first time the Russians tried to use America's racial tensions as a tool against United States, the Soviet Union created socialist propaganda during the Cold War aimed for black Americans in regards to racial segregation in order to win support within the black community. The Mueller report released on March 2019 confirmed the Russian government used disinformation during the 2016 presidential campaign to get Donald Trump elected.
• Plucky Girl: As the result of greater diversity behind the scenes and a more liberalized societal view, female protagonists with strong, assertive personalities became popular in many works of fiction, as evident with the commercial success and critical acclaim of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and Wonder Woman (2017) (the latter being directed by a female film director also helped as well). The popularity of this trope also caught on within the anime fandom as well, as many of Toonami's growing female audience can be attributed to anime featuring female protagonists of this character type (i.e. Attack on Titan, Michiko & Hatchin, and Kill la Kill). Coincidentally, this trope was part of the reason why there was also a backlash against many popular anime female character archetypes in the West (see Tsundere and Token Mini-Moe entries in this page) along with massive backlash on otome games.
• Podcast: This medium originated slightly before the decade, but really rose into prominence during this decade, with works such as Welcome To Nightvale gaining a massive following.
• Police Brutality: Growing attention to this topic led to more portrayals of police brutality in fiction, including several Ripped from the Headlines films such as Fruitvale Station.
• Popularity Polynomial: Many trends of past decades became popular again, particularly from The '80s, mostly because many artists were children during this time.
  • Aside from Synthpop, a few songs hearkened back to other styles of the decade with considerable success: Meghan Trainor's debut single "All About that Bass" shot up to #1 (although the song has some 50s pop styles as well). Not long afterwards another throwback hit #1, "Uptown Funk!".
  • The Hipster craze also led a rediscovery of pre-hippie 60s culture, with "Mod" styles becoming popular. Smoking and social drinking also became fashionable once again thanks to Mad Men (actually placating steep consumption declines), which in turn led to a resurgence of the conservative mid-century social attitudes in general (although this really was not what the show's creators wanted) with some important changes nonetheless, and the rather libertine demeanor of the 1990s and 2000s was now frowned upon.
• Pop-Up Texting: With the use of mobile technology and smartphones having increased dramatically, this was a popular trope for realistically showing the commonality of text conversations in 2010s day-to-day life.
• Pounds Are Animal Prisons: The 2010s saw this trope become increasingly discredited as the Adopt Don't Shop movement gained popularity. As the plight of animal shelters and their inhabitants became more well-known, their depictions in media became more positive, often being an animal version of the Orphanage of Love.
• Power Tattoo: Tattoos became even more popular, bolstered by the decade's trends for self-expression, with TV shows such as Ink Masters and LA Ink becoming hugely influential. By the mid-to-late 2010s, polls showed that around a majority of young adults in several Western countries (including the U.S.) either had at least one tattoo (47 per cent as of 2018), or planned to have one eventually. The fact that many high-profile celebrities began to openly sport tattoos pretty much killed their long-standing association with disreputable characters.
• Postmodernism: Criticisms and exploration of the tropes we enjoy in media and real life came around a lot in this decade, especially as postmodernism replaced Marxism in terms of being an emancipatory lens to analyze things. The idea that we are govenrned by well, ideas, grew more popular as people expressed criticism of the domestic and global regimes we have set up to regulate our world. Traditional leftists weren't too thrilled with postmodernism, seeing it only as criticism without a tangible solution that took the focus away from the traditional Marxist emphasis on class consciousness while rightists loathed what they saw as an annoying desire to take apart everything for political reasons. Regardless, this trope remained popular to the point where playing something completely straight might have actually been more subversive.
• Pretty Fly for a White Guy: The decade saw a continued dissemination of black urban culture into the mainstream. Ironically, black students were reportedly barred from a "wigger"^note "white nigger" party held at a California high school.
• Princess Protagonist: Disney Princesses came back, baby! Though they were absent for the previous decade, and subject to quite a few Deconstructive Parodies in the meantime, they made a triumphant return with The Princess and the Frog, Tangled and Frozen (2013). While Frog ultimately failed to save Disney's traditional 2D-animated movies, Tangled sparked a huge resurgence of interest in their "Princess" franchise, and the phenomenal success of Frozen proved that the franchise was here to stay. The critical and commercial success of Moana - which did not downplay the princess or female-led aspect of the film solidified it.
• Produce Pelting: Egging and "milkshaking" emerged as protest tactics against the far right.
• Pronoun Trouble:
  • Though still not completely accepted in the general public, the concept of the non-binary gender spectrum ^note  Simply put: the idea that there are near-infinite genders other than "male" and "female", and that people can be neither gender, or several genders at once, or completely gender-less. A good example of this trope is South Asia's hijra, which is similar to concept of transgender. gained much more attention, with its proponents becoming something of a Vocal Minority. The most hardline supporters of the idea came to support (among other things) the idea that the world's languages should add gender-neutral pronouns, that genders are assigned to children at birth in a practice which parents should stop, that it's a form of bigotry to refer to strangers by gender-specific pronouns, and that biological sex is a myth.
  • Another issue that came up in this decade was changing the appropriate gender marker in the legal documents (i.e. passports, birth certificates, driver licenses, photo IDs) for transgender individuals after transitioning. Some states in United States require transgender individuals to undergo expensive Sex reassignment surgery, or will not alter the gender marker in legal documents at all ^note As of this date, only three states: Kansas, Ohio, and Tennessee, do not alter the gender marker in legal documents for transgender individuals such as birth certificates, thus making transgender identity in these states technically illegal.
• Protection from Editors:
  • A lot of the appeal of premium cable and streaming services like Netflix and Hulu to both creators and viewers was the greater creative freedom compared to network and basic cable television.
  • Subverted with YouTube as after the Wall Street Journal published an article claiming popular vlogger PewDiePie made hate speech jokes about Jews, advertisers and "corporate partners" began turning away from the site. YT then enacted a secret rating system not different from American network/basic cable TV.
• Protest Song: A number of mainstream Hip-Hop and pop artists became outspoken about politics in this decade.
  • Beyoncé transformed her career from pop idol to "Black feminist icon" with the release of "Formation" in 2016 with its anti-police and Black Panther imagery. Kendrick Lamar's "Alright" was considered the anthem of the Black Lives Matter movement, as it was heard at a number of protests. And of course, there was Childish Gambino's "This Is America", a #1 hit with a shocking critique of how Black Americans are treated.
  • Earlier in the decade, artists such as Lady Gaga and Katy Perry came out with songs affirming LGBT youth and urging them to Be Yourself that were adopted by LGBT advocates.
• Quirky Household: Many sitcoms of the decade featured oddball, yet genuinely caring families as opposed to the more disputatious clans that dominated comedy for the previous two decades as greater awareness of psychological abuse made these less appealing.
• Quirky Ukulele: Ukes became ubiquitous on softer pop songs of the decade (as well as in the background of countless internet videos), no longer being seen as esoteric instruments.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Gradually came back into style as a beauty standard during the early part of the decade, in contrast to the previous decade's fondness for Golden Hair and Bronze Skin. New sex symbols like Zooey Deschanel, Dita Von Teese and Katy Perry helped resurrect the old "Bettie Page" look. The Korean wave throughout the decade also intensified the popularity of dark hair and pale skin through the rapid marketing of Korean beauty products worldwide. By the middle of the decade, raven hair had competition with ombre hair and icy blonde hair following the popularity of Frozen (2013) and Vikings.
• Reality TV: Kicked off in popularity during the Turn of the Millennium and, in the first half of the 2010s, grew to become all the rage among television audiences when it came to both ratings and media buzz during the decade, with American Idol, The Bachelor, The X Factor, The Voice, Jersey Shore, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Duck Dynasty, and RuPaul's Drag Race, among other titles leading the way. Although, barely counting competition-based reality shows, shows such as the "day in the life" ones were targets of snark and controversy due to them being catered to the Lowest Common Denominator. With the advent of Youtube and streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, Reality TV faced an "innovate or die" situation with some shows and their stars thriving and others losing viewership and relevancy.
• Real Women Have Curves: Due to the success of celebrities like Adele, Meghan Trainor (whose song "All About That Bass" touched on the topic), Jennifer Lawrence, Sofía Vergara, Kim Kardashian and Christina Hendricks, as well the rising rates of eating disorders from Hollywood's warped perceptions, the dominant pressure of The '90s and the Turn of the Millennium to be skinny steadily got replaced with pressure to be curvy (often of the Impossible Hourglass Figure flavor).
  • On the flip side, many plus size models and celebrities like Ashley Graham, Barbie Ferriera, Shannon Purser, Lizzo held large followings in this decade.
• Reconstruction: Many works put in a lot of effort to do this after about 15-20 years of Darker and Edgier deconstructions.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Publicly shaming people accused of bigoted opinions on social media became part of a "call-out culture" that surged during the latter part of the decade.
• Retraux: "Retro-ironic" aesthetics became very popular during the decade, partly as a result of the success of video games emphasizing this kind of imagery, such as the Fallout series.
• Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: Due to the massification of the internet, the visibility of the alt-right became notoriously significant during most of this decade, especially due to issues related to immigration and conspiracy theories.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: The second half of the decade was notable for having prominent celebrities' reputations ruined overnight if they weren't dying, most often through sexual abuse and harassment scandals or other unsavory behavior.
• Romanticism Versus Enlightenment: Dominant cultural attitudes of the decade were out-and-out for Team Enlightenment, although a Romantic-leaning backlash was anything but small.
• Saved from Development Hell: invoked Among the silver-linings, a number of long-gestating projects finally made it to the finish line:
  • The Last Guardian by Team Ico was dismissed by many as a cancelled title until Sony announced the title in 2015, and the game finally released in December 2016 to everyone's relief and surprise.
  • Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, formerly considered the most cursed production ever, went into production and completed shooting in time for a 2018 release. Likewise, Martin Scorsese's Silence which was 26 years in the making, finally released in 2016. Kicked off by the Star Wars sequel trilogy finally being made, two of the longest-gestating sequels to a science fiction Cult Classic finally made it to theaters with Mad Max: Fury Road and Blade Runner 2049 receiving overwhelming and nearly unanimous acclaim from critics and fans alike to a degree that hardly anyone saw coming, especially considering the nearly impossible expectations that few believed they could live up to. David Lynch managed to reunite most of the cast for Twin Peaks for an acclaimed third season that satisfyingly resolved a lot of the subplots of the second season and while it provided more unanswered questions, ending on a Gainax Ending that most fans considered to be a fitting conclusion for a landmark TV show.
  • The king of this, is Orson Welles' The Other Side of the Wind. The film was shot in The '70s and was finally set for release four decades later, and over three decades after Welles' death, on Netflix, with many joking that Orson Welles is the only director to still put out new films after his death, and that Netflix is possibly the best producer Welles ever had.
  • After spending years languishing in development hell due to fears of the Girl-Show Ghetto and Minority Show Ghetto, the Wonder Woman and Black Panther movies were finally made and released in this decade and were smash hits.
  • On the videogame front, Duke Nukem Forever, which had been in development for over a decade, finally released in 2011 to disappointing reviews.
  • OMORI was first announced in 2014, and spent the remainder of the decade in Development Hell until it was released on Christmas Day 2020 to positive reviews.
• The Scapegoat: The Millennial generation was held responsible for "killing" numerous industries and traditions ad nauseum (it would be easier to list those that were not endangered). Boomers were also accused by younger generations of milking the welfare state dry by essentially dismantling it (especially in the US) and of developing a laissez-faire "got mine, get yours" attitude.
  • Many people on both sides of the political spectrum also tended to blame many of the world's problems on the actions, legacy and/or ideas of the opposite side and claim that their way was the only way to keep order and save their nation/region/civilization from collapsing.
• Science Is Good: Whereas in the previous decades science was only the interest of nerdy children, much of Western media adopted this trope. It was used both idealistically (such as in Black Panther) or cynically such as in Rick and Morty. In real life, academia and mainstream media tried to be encouraging of studying science, as well as explicitly advertising it to various demographics. However, there was something of a fight between actual scientists, who had funds cut, and anti-science politicians and activists, who saw pure science as having failed in its promise to innovate and improve society.
• Sequel Gap:
  • Due in part to Hollywood's growing aversion to untested properties, sequels to movies from previous decades became common. Examples include Toy Story 3 being released 11 years after the second one, Men in Black 3 10 years after the second, TRON: Legacy a whopping 28 years after TRON, and Mad Max: Fury Road twenty-nine years after Thunderdome. In addition, Monsters, Inc. got a prequel 12 years after the original release. And then there's Twin Peaks by David Lynch which was more or less written off by Lynch as finished in the 2000s but was revived in a successful and critically acclaimed third season that has a Time Skip echoing the whopping 25-year gap. Finding Dory and Incredibles 2 are two more examples of film sequels with large gaps in time in between with 13 years for the former and 14 years for the latter.
  • It happened with a number of video game franchises as well, with Wasteland 2 being a notable example with a gap of 26 years.
• Serious Business: Popular entertainment increasingly reflected contemporary social issues in the wake of Trump's election, primarily for him being seen as a threat to civil liberties and multiculturalism, but also the fact many voted for Donald as a way of "flipping the bird" at a seemingly progressive cultural establishment.
  • Late night comedy got more political, and went from nonpartisan to explicitly pro-Democratic, as evidenced by the anti-Trump stance of Saturday Night Live which garnered its best ratings in over 20 years (it also began to be broadcast live coast-to-coast in summer 2017 instead of being transcribed for the West Coast), and the politically-themed The Late Show with Stephen Colbert overtaking Jimmy Fallon's largely apolitical The Tonight Show in the ratings in early 2017, being accused of "humanizing" Mr. Trump by tussling his hair during a show, leading Fallon to issue an on-air apology. Fallon occasionally spoke out on watershed political events like Charlottesville and Parkland, although he was still considered weaker in that regard than his peers. The cancellation of the hit sitcom Last Man Standing was also perceived to have been brought about because of star Tim Allen's conservative politics.^note Notably, Allen frequently criticized Trump even after his election and in fact endorsed the moderate John Kasich during the Republican primary.
  • Awards ceremonies got more politically charged, beginning with the 2015 Latin Grammys (awarded a few weeks after Trump launched his campaign attacking Mexican immigrants) and accelerated after Trump's election, to the point of presenting works as "political protests" in order to win awards. Even youth-oriented awards shows like the Teen Choice Awards (whose 2017 ceremony was held the day after the violent protests in Charlottesville) and the Kids Choice Awards (whose 2018 ceremony took place the day of the March For Our Lives protest) got in on the act. In addition, the 2017-18 awards season was marked by the sex scandals that hit the film, television and music industries. Many celebrities, who previously tried to be very quiet about their politics beyond showing support for some associations linked to either party, were more explicit about those beliefs than before.
  • The 30-year-old tradition of sports champions visiting the White House was broken when a handful of players for the New England Patriots refused to visit Trump, while the Golden State Warriors decided to boycott the President altogether (although he had withdrawn his invitation beforehand), a move supported by the NBA.
  • Most magazines, from Vogue to Men's Health to Seventeen to Sports Illustrated and Popular Mechanics, rarely did political commentary before 2015-16, much less reporting. Afterwards, their coverage of Washington became as comprehensive and in-depth as that done by fully-fledged political periodicals such as Time, Newsweek and The Atlantic. Condé Nast publications became notorious for their political posturing, especially in the case of teenVogue.
  • Even video games as a medium weren't immune to politics, as many video games such as Far Cry 5, the later Call of Duty games, Mass Effect, Persona 5, Fallout, and Bethesda's Wolfenstein games had several political undertones or explored incredibly controversial political themes. The only entertainment medium that mostly avoided politics was anime and manga, but this was mainly because Japanese society is far less politicized than in the West—while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is quite polarizing by Japanese standards, he's far less divisive than any Western leader, and anime and manga that explores political themes is incredibly rare (with Subbing Versus Dubbing and piracy are the only Serious Business topics within the anime fandom).
  • Even the traditionally-conservative country music industry was rocked hard by Hollywood's "progressive awakening". During the early 2010s, country music increasingly made inroads in "blue America" thanks to popular "countrypolitan"/pop crossover acts like Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood, while the GOP's alleged embrace of sexist, anti-gay, and anti-immigrant politics led some of the genre's youngest (especially female) fans in "red states" to lean more like their "city cousins". The rise of Trump, the growing frequency of mass shootings (one of which was actually at a country music festival), the post-Parkland shooting student activism, the violent rally in Charlottesville, #MeToo, and the 2018 migrant crisis contributed to the de-emphasizing of the "jingoistic, gun-toting, 'Dixie flag'-draped white male country singer" while the Dixie Chicks and the Guthries had their prestige restored after spending the 2000s in the "country blacklist" for their left-wing politics. Leading the charge for this trend tended to be alt-country acts and many of the women in the industry, with the conservative, more traditional acts becoming increasingly quiet about their political views (the exception being the artists who solely appealed to older audiences). This was largely cited as the reason as to why Swift was mostly silent on politics. Although she later endorsed a number of Democratic candidates in her home of Tennessee, which seemed to restore her reputation with liberal pop fans.
• Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: This decade saw a discrediting of the trope within the rock genre due to numerous factors, including: 1) The decline of rock as a mainstream genre; 2) the backlash against the "macho" aura often associated with the genre (which might have contributed to the first point); and 3) younger "indie" artists deliberately adopting a goodie-two-shoes, "square demeanour" (most of them being either British or coached by a Brit, inverting the British Rock Star trope) contrasting the "guitar hero sex god" stance of hard rock (actually a mild exaggeration). The trope may have applied to pop and urban (the "trap" genre becoming known for its sexually-charged lyrics and has caught fire for its perceived glorification of crime, while hip-hop/R&B artist The Weeknd became noted for his veiled allusions to drugs), although the greater demographic diversity between both performers and audiences compared to rock (which is now almost exclusively seen as "white trash guy" music) made the trope less relevant for said genres.
• Shaking the Rump: "Twerking" became more viral in the hip hop culture, and was added to the Oxford Dictionary Online. Newfound popularity on social media sites like Vine and Miley Cyrus' infamous performance at the 2013 VMAs helped turn "twerk" into a household word.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Along with She Cleans Up Nicely; the decade's fashion statements tried to bring back the elegance lost with the 90s and 00s, evoking the styles from The '80s, or the "Italian Look" styles of the late 1950s and the 1960s.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: The plight of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan lacking proper mental health support got a lot of attention.
• Shoulders of Doom: Shoulder made a wide comeback, bolstered by an urge to look as streamlined as possible.
• Smoking Is Cool:
  • The legalization of marijuana in many parts of the world led to some glorification of weed smokers, such as rappers either bragging or normalising it in their songs (one of the biggest hits of 2011 was Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa's "Young, Wild and Free", which even had "So what [if] we smoke weed?" in the chorus).
  • While cigarettes gradually became a symbol of social suicide during the decade, vape sticks (ironically devised as a way to stop smoking) became popular, even among teenagers, which eventually caused a widespread health panic by the end of the decade after dozens of consumers developed lung problems.
• Silly Rabbit, Cynicism Is for Losers!: Much of the social attitudes of the early part of this decade can be summed to this, mostly as a reaction to the hardcore cynicism prevalent in the 2000s, spearheaded by the New Sincerity movement, leading to a higher climate of tolerance (or intolerance disguised as tolerance, even tolerance defended through intolerance—this depending on one's judgement and thorough avoidance of politically-incorrect, morally-questionable actions or otherwise upsetting behavior.
• Simple, yet Opulent:
  • As a result of the crisis, most of the fashion trends of the decade became a lot more conservative compared to the statements of the last decade.
  • While Windows Metro caused a mixed reception when it was released in 2013; graphic artists, programmers, and web designers got hooked to the smooth, crisp, über-simplistic interface, paving way for Apple and Google to revamp their future UIs, and it led to the integration of the "Flat Design" style.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Works tended toward the cynical side during this time, with a surge in dystopian and After the End works. The rise of Hipster culture was accompanied by media emphasizing Irony, making idealism uncool. At the same time, cynicism didn’t quite reach the level of '90s Anti-Hero, as most works still featured characters that were on some level relatable.
• Sliding Scale of Libertarianism and Authoritarianism: Many works made during the decade depicted oppressive governments firmly set at the "authoritarian" end of the scale, mostly (but not only) in dystopian tales.
• Slobs Versus Snobs: This emerged as the main dividing line in politics on both sides of The Pond, with rural, working class people moving to the right and urban cosmopolitan people moving to the left.
• Solar Punk: The trope name was coined in 2014, and this utopian futurism emerged from exciting developments in renewable energy technology and online interest in older and non-Western art. Some works with utopian elements, such as Black Panther, began to incorporate this aesthetic.
• Soul-Sucking Retail Job: With the disappearance of manufacturing jobs in the developed world, the standard "blue-collar" job became some kind of fast-food or service position in retail or hospitality with lower pay and fewer opportunities for advancement compared to factory jobs.
• Steampunk: Regained popularity in the States after a decade of dieselpunk/decopunk, cyberpunk and atompunk dominating the Speculative Fiction and Alternate History scenes. Unlike in the 1990s however, steampunk also became popular in the mainstream.
• Strawman U: Colleges were increasingly perceived as being extremely hostile to conservatives.
• Stylistic Suck: An essential element of a lot of online content, especially memes. This may have started as a parody of unintentionally bad online content (poorly-written forum posts, Fan Fiction, or amateurish Web Comics), and its rise coincided with the surge of Irony in pop culture. The ubiquitous "LOLCats" meme, the anecdotal Rage Comics, and the intentionally confusing "YouTube Poops" were prominent early examples of this, while later in the decade, "shitposting", or deliberately stupid/poorly executed content, became a prominent source of Surreal Humor, and pages like Young Thugga La Meme, Niggaz Be WILIN, and Thot Patrol served as Trope Codifiers for the more surreal and arcane side of 2010s meme culture.
• Subbing Versus Dubbing: This trope became Serious Business in the early decade when many anime licensors such as Bandai Entertainment and Geneon closed their doors and English dubs became less prevalent early in the decade due to the stagnating market. This trope become more of a Discredited Trope in the later decade, as there was some revival of English dubs thanks to the revival of Toonami, introduction to simuldubs in the later half of the decade (which was an initiative started by Funimation), and improved dubbing quality in the later half of the decade when compared to the previous two decades.
• Supernatural Soap Opera: The genre became dominated by Young Adult Paranormal Romances and Urban Fantasy early in the decade before becoming more eclectic as in the 1990s. The genre's most successful examples were Teen Wolf, Shadowhunters, Riverdale, Hemlock Grove, American Horror Story, The Shannara Chronicles, Once Upon a Time and True Blood.
• Surreal Humor: Became popular this decade, with Tim & Eric, Rick and Morty, "Weird Twitter", and "shitposting" among others.
• Survival Horror: Received a resurgence early in the decade, thanks to video games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Slender, and Outlast.
• Survival Sandbox: After the success of Minecraft and DayZ, we saw many games coming out in their ilk in the early-mid Tens, like State of Decay, Rust, Don't Starve, and H1Z1.

Tropes T-Z

• Take That, Audience!: Critics and even show creators notoriously gave chastising remarks towards audiences for liking or not liking certain elements or/and formulas in their (preferred) works. This became the impetus for the audience-critics war towards the final years of the decade.
• Take That, Critics!: Related to Critical Dissonance above, the audience-critics war in 2019 got to the point where audiences actively rallied for the films the critics were against out of spite. The most notable cases were Dave Chappelle's comedy show Sticks and Stones and Joker (2019), both of which were seen as too disturbing by critics.
• Tamer and Chaster: The general tone of pop culture during the decade took a turn away from the raunchiness that marked the late 1990s and 2000s. Driven partially by an increased strength of feminism among the younger generation, and the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment, visual works especially showed a significant drop in gratuitous Male Gaze and implausibly Stripperiffic costumes. Sex scenes have become virtually extinct in mainstream film, and even premium cable and made-for-streaming content has shifted away from them (most infamously later series of Game of Thrones).
• Teen Idol: Male teen idols saw a massive resurgence in the 2010s, although many groups formed in the 2000s. However, instead of the competitive scene of the 90s and 00s, only Justin Bieber and One Direction (and the group's solo careers) reached a massive level of popularity. Austin Mahone, Shawn Mendes, and 5 Seconds of Summer had some moderate success, but not at the same level as the former two. For female teen idols, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, Ariana Grande, Fifth Harmony, and Little Mix led the way.
• Thin-Line Animation: Animated shows of the period were noted for using this aesthetic instead of the 1950s-based Thick-Line Animation style that dominated in the late 1990s and 2000s.
• Token Mini-Moe: This character archetype was still relatively popular in Japan, but much like the tsundere archetype, this got massive backlash among western anime fans and even some of the top anime producers in Japan itself due to the Little Sister Heroine fetish and Unfortunate Implications involved.
• Tokyo Rose: It turned out that Russian trolls and bots had been planting social media posts intended to influence American votes in the 2016 elections.
• Totally Radical: Pressure to keep relevant led many companies to shoehorn internet slang and memes in their advertising to appeal to the youth. Needless to say, it fell flat on its face.
  "Marketing targeted at today's youth is so strange because like, they've picked up on certain things, but they can't quite string the parts together in a cohesive way. It's like one of those shitpost generators. I mean, yeah, they understand that reaction gifs are a thing, and they understand that emojis are a thing, and they understand that tyler oakley (sic) is a thing. but they can't drive the point home. that is not a proper reaction to finding the right emoji. it doesn't make sense, and not even in a funny way. they're trying, really hard, but the nuances of internet youth culture still manage to escape their corporate grasp."
• Trademark Favorite Food:
  • When discussing the economic status of Millennials, you could expect avocado toast, Nutella, and/or Starbucks to be brought up.
  • In the 'net, conversations weren't completely full without mentioning bacon in every thread despite health food going mainstream this decade, to the point that This Very Wiki used to have a trope page about bacon.
• Trapped in Another World: The Isekai genre became very popular in Light Novels and thus seinen anime during this decade, with Sword Art Online being one of the most influential examples. The typical isekai story saw a typical everyman being taken to a fantasy world, usually with RPG Elements as part of the world in which they were taken.
• True Companions: It has always been around, but a lot of work in this decade had bonds and friendships as its Central Theme, and Heterosexual Life-Partners started to become increasingly prominent. Even in real life, friendship was now more cherished by a lot of people around this time.
• Tsundere: The concept was still strong, but it gained a bit of a backlash in this decade, mostly due to the combination of oversaturation, poor writing and Flanderization of the Tsun-Tsun traits for comedy's sake. The combination of the trope with Tiny Tyrannical Girl underwent a similar criticism for a few of the same reasons. Ironically, male tsunderes didn't receive much backlash like female tsunderes did, though this may have had something to do with the fact that most male tsunderes are rarely abusive towards their love interest as much as their female counterparts.
• Tuxedo and Martini: The Daniel Craig era of James Bond films not only gave the genre a previously-denied critical acceptance, but also revitalized it following a post-Cold War slump, with Kingsman spawning a successful film franchise (other attempts, such as Spy and the film adaptation of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., didn't have such fate). Hipsters also revived this aesthetic in real life with craft cocktail bars.
• Twice-Told Tale: Exploded in popularity in this period, in the wake of 2009's novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in literature and 2010s film Alice in Wonderland (2010). The former launched the Literary Mash-Ups genre, and the latter a raft of Fairy Tale retellings.
• Two Decades Behind: In spite of being a seemingly more difficult time than the 1990s and 2000s, the 2010s were remarkably similar to the previous two decades in many sociocultural terms.
• The 'Verse: This decade is where the aspect of several related having a Shared Universe came to a head. For films, the most prominent one was the Marvel Cinematic Universe; for TV it was the Arrowverse.
• Viewers Are Geniuses: After the heavy anti-intellectualism that marked pop culture in the 2000s, many of the works of this decade made extensive use of cultural references, some of them quite obscure.
• Western Animation of the 2010s: The decade may as well be called the "Second-Wave" Renaissance due to a resurgence of good-quality animation after mostly spending the second half of the decade in a slump, especially for Disney with the release of highly-successful films; Pixar reaching its artistic zenith, falling into a rut and redeeming itself in the space of five years, before doing it all over again over two years; and Cartoon Network phasing out the Canadian imports and live-action shows it introduced in the late 2000s, replacing them with cartoons aimed at a young adult audience like Regular Show and Adventure Time.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Cartoon Network's shows of the first half of the decade like Regular Show and Adventure Time became notable for their prominent use of adult situations to the point these saw important edits for overseas broadcast. By the mid-to-late 2010s, the use of this trope by films aimed to families (to the point Deadpool made it very clear that it was an R-rated film) became used as a counterpoint to claims that Hollywood has become "infantilized" during the decade.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Both amateur and professional critics loved to read sociopolitical significance into everything: movies, TV shows, video games, music videos and internet memes, given the growth of social consciousness and the increasing politicizing of fiction that had been building throughout the decade but accelerating in the wake of Brexit and Trump's inauguration (see "Serious Business" above). The only entertainment medium that mostly avoided this trope was anime and manga, which was mainly because the politicization of pop culture is mostly more noticeable in the West than in Japan.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: Became increasingly common during this decade following the rise of social media. There were several incidents of angry fans harassing people who worked on the show or franchise they followed off of social media, causing them to limit interactions with fans and even affecting the work they were developing, with fans' dissatisfaction often tied with a work being too politicized, not politicized enough or taking what they considered the "wrong" side.
• Wine Is Classy: "Wine Moms", older women who liked to sip wine and post about it on social media, became a meme this decade.
• Women Are Delicate: Constantly defied as empowered, yet still lady-like female characters sprang up.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Very popular, especially during the first half of the decade, thanks to countless video games as well as films and shows like Zombieland, The Walking Dead (2010), 28 Weeks Later, among others.

---