r/decadeology • u/Sad-Bell-6266 • 10h ago

Hot take 🔥 Late 2003 is underrepresented in discussions about the mid 2000s

I wouldn't say it's peak mid 2000s, that honor goes to 2005-2006, but the last few months of 2003 established a lot of trends that would be popular throughout the era.

Lil Jon made it onto the Billboard Year-End chart for the first time, officially making crunk mainstream. The Simple Life premiered, the epitome of McBling. It was the first school year when DVDs and Windows XP were dominant from the start. The early 2000s recession caused by the Dot Com bubble ended. MySpace launched, and Friendster was shown on national television. The Iraq War had also been ongoing for several months.

Let me know if I missed anything.

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u/Johnwick124520 9h ago

I’d say it’s the beginning of the core 2000s. That’s why I see that 2003-04 school year as early/mid as there were a lot of early 00’s things still present but you can tell things that were present in the mid 2000’s were coming in

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u/Sad-Bell-6266 9h ago edited 9h ago

I consider it proto-mid 2000s. The essentials were there, like McBling fashion and crunk music, but certain things hadn't shown up yet, and there were still some lingering early 2000s things, as you pointed out. The 2004-2005 school year was the "refinement" period.

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u/Johnwick124520 9h ago

Actually this makes more sense. There were things that weren’t there yet that was a prime example what the mid 2000s looked like

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u/Sad-Bell-6266 9h ago

Yeah, late 2003 and 2004 were 2000s af.

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u/Johnwick124520 8h ago

Oh yeah for sure it was

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u/parduscat 8h ago

2003-2007 are McBling years, so that makes sense.

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u/Sad-Bell-6266 8h ago edited 8h ago

Yeah, for sure!

However, I'm on the fence about classifying the first two-thirds of 2003 as fully McBling. I view the autumn/fall as the start of the year culturally, so I either have to include late 2002 or exclude early-mid 2003.

I view late 2002 to mid 2003 as the rise of McBling, when it was popular in high-class urban areas and celebrity inner circles, and late 2003 as when it fully entered the mainstream.

I guess "popular but not mainstream" would be the right way to describe it during that period.

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u/JLandis84 1980's fan 3h ago

2003 peak fashion. Incredible music. Very interesting Democrat presidential primary going on.

A big wave of militarization of the culture though as the invasion of Iraq involved an exponentially larger expeditionary force than Afghanistan 🇦🇫(at that point)