Right now. Look around you. Whatever's going on this very minute.
If things seem to be a little more advanced than you remember them being, then you've probably shifted ahead to 20 Minutes into the Future. If things seem really different from how you remember them, you could be in the far future, in an Alternate History (in which case check if the Nazis are still around) or even Trapped in Another World. Adjust yourself to your surroundings accordingly. If you know the year but the technology is out-of-whack to your expectations, Zeerust is probably in effect.
The Present is also strangely important to time travelers. Even characters from the future recognize its importance, even if from their perspective it ought to be the past.
Compare and contrast The Gay '90s, The Edwardian Era, The Roaring '20s, The Great Depression, The '40s, The '50s, The '60s, The '70s, The '80s, The '90s, the Turn of the Millennium, The New '10s, and The New '20s. See also Real-Time Timeskip.
Popular tropes from this time period are:
- Gag Series
- Game Show
- News Broadcast
- Postmodernism
- Reality Show / Reality TV (not invented in this period, but they exploded in popularity around the Turn of the Millennium)
- Shallow Parody
- Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World
Series that are set in this time period are
- Every version of Death Note (live-action works included) is set in whatever time it first debuts (i.e. the manga begins in late 2003, anime begins in 2006, etc.) which likely helps to put emphasis on the realism in its use of Magic Realism. That said, the anime and manga also employ a Time Skip which later serve to subvert this trope and play the Bad Future Dystopia trope straight, and the distant sequel actually takes place in 2019, a year before its 2020 release.
- The Despicable Me films except Minions are set during the year of the release of each film.
- Shortbus has the New York City blackout of 2003 as a backdrop for the last third of the movie, and it also references 9/11, the current War On Terror, and in general captures the mood of this decade.
- Liv in the Future's first chapter takes place on June 20, 2019, a week before the story's release.
- 24 (even though it's actually 20 Minutes into the Future: everything from season five onwards is set in the next decade, whatever that's called.)
- The West Wing
- Arrested Development References to the Iraq War, George W. Bush, TV shows such as The O.C., and other things like the pervasiveness of cell phones and the Internet would definitely place this series in this decade if were watched by someone in the future.
- How I Met Your Mother consists of a series of Whole Episode Flashbacks with the flashbacker retelling the events in the year 2030, and the main plot taking place in The Present Day.
- Ghosts (US)
- Heroes
- Several Star Trek series return to the present. A 2004 episode of Star Trek: Enterprise took place in 2004 Detroit. The 1986 movie The Voyage Home took place largely in 1986 San Francisco.
- With the exception of SPD and presumably RPM, All Power Rangers seasons take place in the year they air. Power Rangers Time Force is technically set in the year 3000, but most of the action takes place in 2001.
- The shows of the CSI-verse have been known to take place during the actual week that the relevant episode aired.
- Similarly, the Doctor Who Season Fnarg season finale took place in the present day (more or less). It was broadcast on June 26, 2010 and took place partly on June 26, 2010, as well as 1996 and 102 A.D.
- The Bill.
- Community takes place not only in the present day... but in some episodes the exact airdate, or in the same week, much like CSI above.
- JAG
- Grand Theft Auto V. At the time of their releases, so too was Grand Theft Auto III (2001) and Grand Theft Auto IV (2008).
- DoDonPachi Dai-Fukkatsu was released in 2008. The plot revolves around Time Traveling back to 2008, making it the only game in the series to explicitly mention a date.
- Secret of Evermore takes place in 1995, and it was released in October of that year.
- The story of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) begins one day before its release on October 24, 2019.
- Babe Ruth: Man-Tank Gladiator, supposedly, though not as we'd recognize it.
