Is the world of 2005 more like the year 1990 or the present day?

The rise of the Internet alone made the 1990s and 2000s feel very different. It made the world feel a lot smaller.

Still, if you compare any of those 2005 hits to what was going on in 1990, that's also a rather dramatic change. Try any of those against OMC, Haddaway, or Nirvana and it would be a shocking difference.

Yeah come to think of it, 2005 has a lot more in common with today, the internet itself makes 2005 more similar to 2020. Also by 2005, high speed internet/wi-fi was already very popular. I do still think people underrate the change in the past 15 years though.

A more interesting question though is whether 1995 is more like 1980 or 2010.

I understand the point you're making, but even strictly speaking in that context, I still think the difference between 2005 and 2020 is much larger. Rock has been culturally irrelevant for almost a decade and today's pop stars largely build their followings on music streaming sites such as SoundCloud. That's a huge contrast to 2005.


I don't get why people seem to think that social media became instantly popular the moment it had been invented. 2005 was still very much a pre-social media world. The general population wasn't using YouTube or Facebook, even if they were in existence at the time. It would be like saying the 1920s are more like the present day than the 1910s simply because the television was invented at the end of the decade. 2005 and 2020 are polar opposites in almost every regard. 

Besides the Arctic Monkeys, how many of those underground musicians became popular via Myspace in the year 2005 specifically? The influence of Myspace on popular culture was actually at it's most evident when the emo subculture peaked in popularity a couple of years later and after YouTube had been purchased by Google in 2006. That was when you truly started to see the effects of social media's influence on pop culture for the first time. If you were to look at the artists who held the Top-40 best-selling singles of 2005, you'll see that the majority of the artists did not have their beginnings on Myspace, that's despite the fact that Myspace had been in existence since August 2003. 

What I had meant in my earlier post was that rock was still a significant part of pop culture, much like it had been in 1990. I would even argue that rock still had the slight edge over hip-hop in terms of popularity back in 2005. Rock music in general was hugely influential across the board; baggy jeans and the "emo swoop" owe their popularity to rock, as did the Guitar Hero video game series. Many artists achieved their breakthrough into the mainstream by applying as contestants on reality-TV judging shows such as "American Idol", which again, is another example of how much of a contrast it is to the year 2020. Pop culture has simply become too fragmented in the years since for reality-TV show contestants to now be able to establish a footing and become popular among the masses. Quite a lot of the contestants who participated on those shows became successful by playing guitar-driven music, such as Kelly Clarkson and Daughtry.

Sure, the rock music of 2005 is stylistically different to the sub-genres of rock popular in 1990, but that comparison is insignificant when you consider the fact that rock as a genre is no longer culturally relevant whatsoever and hasn't been for quite some time. I mean, we're talking about a genre of music that was essentially still the cornerstone of pop-culture 15 years ago, to it now being relegated to nothing more than niche status. It's dead. There were teenagers back in the Mid-Late 2000s who took their own lives from participating in the emo sub-culture, a mainstream rock sub-culture. Fast forward 15 or so years later, teens don't listen to rock music, and if they do, it's probably only select bands from several decades ago such as Queen or Nirvana. Modern rock is no longer mainstream, whereas it was back in 2005 and 1990. Also, Green Day's American Idiot was a multi-platinum album, selling over 16 million copies worldwide. Would a rock album do that well on the mainstream charts in 2020? 


Sorry, but I would have to disagree. Social media had very little influence on the majority of people's day-to-day lives and it's effect on popular culture was minimal at best, even when compared to the influence it would have during the Late 2000s. In 2005, just 7% of American adults had used at least one social networking site, and according to this article, Myspace wasn't even the most popular social media site in the United States in 2005.

The technology was around of course for people if they went out of their way to use a social networking site, but social media itself was far from being mainstream. I think it's important to distinguish what was actually mainstream, and in essence 'commonplace', compared to what wasn't. People generally went about their lives much more similarly to how they did back in 1990. It's really no different to how the iPhone was around during the Late 2000s, yet smartphones wouldn't explode in popularity until around 2011. Social media was still very much in it's infancy back in 2005 and it hadn't yet become ingrained to the point where the general population at large were regularly using social media sites. As the statistics show, the majority of people didn't use social media at all.

Also, saying that the internet had made its mark in connecting the globe is different from describing how popular social media was at the time. I'm not disputing the fact that the internet was already well established by that point. I do agree with you on that. The consolidation of the internet sets 2005 apart from 1990, but the fact that social media wasn't really a "thing" yet makes it a totally different world to 2020. 

Maybe rock was more influential in your home county of Australia in 2005, but as I remember it, hip hop was absolutely the dominant force in popular music in America. In Europe, you had dance-pop as well. Regardless, it was very rare for rock acts to even make the Billboard Hot 100's top 40, and the bands that did were usually loathed groups such as Nickelback and Hinder. Bands like Green Day and Fall Out Boy were rare exceptions. Aside from the indie groups, whose influence is still felt today, rock's reputation was mostly treated as a complete joke. Even American Idiot-era Green Day were accused of being hollow sellouts by a large chunk of people.

I would also argue that by 2005, culture was already fragmented enough that the most popular fashion trends, such as emo and hair swoops, were only marginal at-best. The vast majority of people from 2005 could step into a time portal to 2020 and not look out of place at all, whereas someone from 1990 would be an immediate black sheep with their big perms, hairspray, mullets, hi-top fade, or denimy, neon-colored, less casual clothes. There was still a general monoculture prevalent in 1990, whereas emo was just a major niche in an era where most people preferred to just dress however they wanted.

Regardless of how much more mainstream social media is today compared to 2005, there's no way it was more changeful to society than connecting the entire world at the click of a button and unlocking a cultural exchange like nothing else before. People use social media to keep up with the news and their friends, things that were perfectly possible with 2005 Internet's features, albeit not as immediate.

Many of the Myspace artists didn't immediately become big mainstream hits, but I do know several that went on to become massively popular bands and musicians:

1. For starters, my former classmate Mike Posner
2. Anberlin (I actually talked with some of these guys!)
3. New Years Day
4. Owl City
5. Protest the Hero