Lately, we’re feeling nostalgic for the Y2K era. The glitter-slathered techno-optimism of the millennial moment continues to shape our darker present.
Lately, we’re feeling nostalgic for the Y2K era. The glitter-slathered techno-optimism of the millennial moment continues to shape our darker present.
Our guest, author Colette Shade, has written a 2000s nostalgia fest. Y2K: How the 2000’s Became Everything (Essays on the Future That Never Was) is a memoir and a cultural critique of an optimistic era that ended with a financial crash. She joins the show to talk about the end of history, inflatable furniture and chatroom usernames.
Also, Vass and Katrina wear butterfly clips and Ugg boots in the snow.
Subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where the Globe’s online culture reporter Samantha Edwards unpacks more of the latest in business and technology.
Find the transcript of today’s episode here.
We’d love to hear from you. Send your comments, questions or ideas to lately@globeandmail.com.
Vass Bednar: I'm Vass Bednar and I host this Globe and Mail podcast Lately.
Katrina Onstad: And I'm Katrina Onstad, the show's executive producer. Vass, should we time travel together.?
Vass Bednar: Let's do it.
BBC reporter: At the stroke of midnight. December the 31st, 1999 brings with it the threat of global chaos. If some experts are right, then there's the prospect of scenes where businesses cannot trade, essential public services cannot work, and life support systems in hospitals fail to function. Tonight, we examine why a simple computer programing error, which could easily have been avoided, could now mean massive upheaval in the industrialized world.
Katrina Onstad: God, bummer.
Vass Bednar: Chimes of doom! he's so sassy too "could have easily been avoided". So accusatory! Well my goodness, if it was easy to avoid, maybe we wouldn't have spent $600 billion trying to fix it. Anyway, I remember that night. I remember that whole year in fits and starts, right? I was 13, Just start in grade seven. Sometimes my mom would let me wear a tank top on top of my t shirt, and what I was worried about for 1999 was I had it in my head that at midnight, all of the bank machines might just shoot a bunch of money out, like really haywire. I think that was the weirdest thing I could conceive of, but there was like a peculiar, almost like mundane dread that kind of also brought us all together.
Katrina Onstad: Yeah. I mean, that BBC clip does remind us that people were genuinely worried about the Y2K bug, you know, that military systems were going to misfire. And. But what? Wait, what was the bug exactly? Like what was the problem?
Vass Bednar: Oh, that could have easily been avoided? Basically, a lot of digital systems were coded... the year was coded in the final two digits. So there was this worry that when we hit 1999 and went over to zero zero, computer systems, would read it as 1900 instead of 2000, and then that's when the money would start shooting out of the bank machine.
Katrina Onstad: Right? And potentially we all would die together. But that didn't happen. The bug was resolved by like 1201. Doo doo doo. Because organizations around the world identified the problem, work together, invested in solving it. And we were actually fine. Disaster was averted.
Vass Bednar: Yeah, there was a happy ending, right? For a second, we ushered in the new millennium, and things were about to get way better. Except they didn't. Ultimately, we were promised a much more connected and collaborative global economy. I am not sure we actually got what we wanted, but we looked cool, right? Like the fashion was actually pretty good.
Katrina Onstad: It was it. I mean, it's cool to you. It's like ironic because you were young and joyful then before the malaise set in of middle age. But yeah, that esthetic that you're describing, the Y2K esthetic, is suddenly a big thing right now with my kids love it. Right? And Better Homes and Gardens are celebrating lime green paint and beanbag chairs. And in fashion I'm saying, oh, God, oh no. The resurgence of just some of the worst moments. The Von Dutch hats, Uggs. I'm seeing Uggs in snow. No. And this stuff is not just happening on eBay. You can actually shop your Y2K looks at Walmart. It's weird that you know that. Where else am I going to get my hello Kitty crop tops? Honestly? So, you know, we're wondering why is this Y2K market suddenly emerging right now?
Vass Bednar: I don't know, maybe when things suck, it's kind of nice to look back, right? Better times in the rearview mirror. The turn of the millennium was really sold as this dawn of a better future, right? Maybe even a cyberpunk utopia. And the World wide Web as the internet,
Katrina Onstad: I think I like to call it the information superhighway.
Vass Bednar: But it was framed as a democratizing force, right? We'd have unlimited access to knowledge, which sort of came true. And a lot of people do point to the 90s as being the last good decade, because our lives still largely existed offline.
Katrina Onstad: Yeah, I think that's right. Like the 90s, Nostalgia is in large part feels like nostalgia for IRL. And as someone who came of age in analog times like, yes, I was there to bear witness to what it was like when life was lived externally. We had to come out of ourselves and out of our homes to be people. Like, if you wanted to play video game, you had to go to the arcade. If you wanted to meet people, you went outside, you went to bars, you went to parties, you talked to people. We paid in cash like we shopped in person.
Vass Bednar: Right? Writing with a quill.
Katrina Onstad: But you know, I'm Gen X and no one is really nostalgic for us or all black fashion sense. And we were a generation that didn't really greet this nascent technological age with open arms, so we were pretty suspicious of it. And all of the consumerism and the commodification that seemed adjacent to it.
Vass Bednar: Skeptical before it was cool. That does sound like you actually.
Katrina Onstad: Gen X, baby.
Vass Bednar: Today's tech optimism does feel like it's somewhat artificially pumped by venture capitalists and people in the tech sector. Sometimes, right? Can feel like AI is being kind of pushed onto us, even as adopters remain skeptical now. And the internet didn't really liberate like, its centralized power. And on top of that, instead of just wonderfully connecting people all over the world, it's also exacerbated loneliness. And in a lot of ways, what we've tried to take on through lately has been an ongoing examination of the benefits and limitations of this new economy.
Katrina Onstad: And so today, as we wind up season three, we are looking back at the broken promise of the Y2K era, not the apocalypse that never happened, but the vibe, the geopolitics, the tech, the fashion, the music, the more fun stuff that's having a resurgence. I did notice that you wore butterfly clips for this interview. I appreciated that gesture.
Vass Bednar: I never stopped wearing them. Katrina. Everything comes back if you're patient enough. Writer and cultural critic Colette Shade's new book of essays, Y2K How the 2000 Became Everything, unpacks what that era really meant beyond the butterfly clips and Juicy Couture Tour tracksuits. So was it a golden age or just a prelude to the hyper online chaos that we live in now? Maybe we've got rose tinted glasses on. Or do you remember those yellow ones?
Katrina Onstad: Kind of.
Vass Bednar: This is lately.
Vass Bednar: Hi, Colette.
Colette Shade: Hi. That's nice to be here.
Vass Bednar: Your book opens with this letter that you wrote to your future self back in 1999. What was happening in your life when you rediscovered that letter? Why were you drawn back to that moment in time?
Colette Shade: So this was in 2018, and I was going through boxes at my parents house, and I found a box of my old school things from elementary school, because this was an elementary school assignment that we had done in 1999, on the eve of the new millennium. It was for a time capsule where we had all been assigned to predict what different years in the new millennium might look like. So my own life in 2018 was going very badly. I had gone through some challenging personal circumstances and some really difficult professional circumstances. I was out of work and I was searching for what my next steps would look like in my career. And also, Trump had won the election and was setting about creating all sorts of chaos politically. And then at the same time, there were a series of very severe wildfires in the Bay area, exacerbated by climate change. And I had family in the Bay Area in California. So I was just feeling I was feeling a lot of hopelessness, both about my own personal life, but also about where the world seemed to be heading.
Vass Bednar: Can you tell us about what you predicted for the world and for yourself, what everything would be like in 2008?
Colette Shade: So I predicted that in the year 2008, we would come up with cures for both cancer and Aids, that there would be pills to help people stop smoking. That all of our movies would be watched over the computer. That popular music would have electronic production. And that "we would be starting to do something about our environment."
Vass Bednar: Pretty prescient for a young kid. Maybe we can define some terms for a second. When you mentioned the Y2K era. What kind of time bracket are you talking about and why was this frame useful to you?
Colette Shade: So I periodize this as 1997 through 2008. And I should explain that I think this is legible, particularly for younger listeners, people who are maybe teens or in their 20s who spend a lot of time on social media, where the phrase Y2K era has been appearing for going on a decade now. And so I wanted to kind of look at why are there so many social media accounts devoted to exploring the popular culture and fashion of this era? And the way I theorized it was this was that this Y2K era that everybody was talking about, it basically can be dated to the start of the .com bubble and the end of the housing bubble and the spectacular global financial crisis of 2008.
Vass Bednar: Times that are seared in our brains in a lot of ways
Colette Shade: Yes, yes. And actually, I found that this aligned really well with my own personal coming of age because this book. It's not just a history. It's kind of a fusion of history, criticism and memoir.
Vass Bednar: You've described this period as a, quote, dream state, and I wondered if you could expand on what you meant by that. Write like, was it a dream we were in, or one we were sold, or maybe a little bit of both?
Colette Shade: I would say a little bit of both. There was this general sense of optimism. So some listeners might be familiar with the phrase end of history, which came into popularity when Francis Fukuyama wrote a book in the early 90s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. And there's this idea that now that the Cold War had ended, and it seemed that American led global capitalism had won by being the better system, it seemed to people at the time that there was going to be a stable and prosperous and peaceful future that we could just have seemingly forever. And a corollary to that is that a lot of old fights that had occurred during the 20th century, whether they were ideological fights between communism versus capitalism or whether they were fights over racial justice and rights or gender justice, that these could all kind of be put to bed in the new millennium and we could all just live happily ever after. And simultaneously, there's this notion that the internet, this wonderful new technology that allows us to connect with people halfway across the world within a matter of minutes or seconds, that this technology will facilitate peace and prosperity, communication and creativity.
Vass Bednar: Did you feel that? Like, do you remember what it was like when the internet maybe first came into your home or your first time logging on, going online, surfing the web. Remember these phrases well? How did it make you feel?
Colette Shade: I mean to the first time I went online was in 1995, and I was a big Xena Warrior Princess fan. And so yeah, so I looked that up on Yahoo and I was like, wow, there are all these people from all over the world who have fan sites, and I can just think something in my head and then go to a search engine, look it up and it's right there. And then later, a few years later, like 1999, 2000, I'm going on Aim. I'm going into chat rooms and meeting people, chatting with friends from school.
Vass Bednar: That's when you were a little alien too.
Colette Shade: That's right. I was little alien to what was vast. What was your screen name?
Vass Bednar: I had to steno device because I thought I had a big nose, which the kids at school couldn't crack that code. So I went to Vaseline 55, actually. You're now speaking to Vaseline 55 right now. Amazing. I mean, reading your book was really bringing me back a lot because we're about the same age, and I just wanted to, like, smear glitter all over myself. And as millennials, we are a straddle generation when it comes to the internet, right? We kind of started off without it and matured alongside it. What do you think that did to us?
Colette Shade: Yeah. So I think that we we have a unique perspective because older cohorts, they had kind of fully developed into people, into adult people by the time the internet showed up. And then younger cohorts, they were born into it. For them, it was like the telephone was for us or electricity or flushing toilets. You can't imagine a world without it. And I think our unique perspective is that we sort of grew up as it grew up. So we actually have these memories of using the internet for the first time, or sometimes when I meet Gen Z or Alpha people, I'll say this to them to shock them, and it invariably does. I'll tell them. I remember where I was in 1998 when Google was invented.
Vass Bednar: Where were you?
Colette Shade: I was at home, and my mom told me that there is this amazing new search engine that had just come out of Stanford, and it uses these new algorithms, and it was created by these really young, I think basically college or graduate students there. Yeah, I just remember using it for school projects from then on.
Vass Bednar: I think a lot of what we remember from this era does revolve around stuff we bought, or stuff our parents bought for us. Right. Some of its yeah, iconic. Some of it's not right. Low rise jeans. Gross. Don't come back. See through electronics.
Colette Shade: Please come back.
Vass Bednar: Inflatable chairs. What does that consumerist focus reveal about the time?
Colette Shade: Yeah, I mean, this was a time when a certain type of consumer capitalism was at its peak, and there was just this idea that we lived in this wonderful consumer world, and you could fulfill yourself by choosing which color of iMac G3 you wanted, by choosing which eye shadow color you wanted. But yeah, there's just this idea, there's this triumphalism that woohoo! The Soviet Union was defeated, and now we can all just celebrate our freedom by buying stuff. Oh, and also we have these fat stock portfolio, so why not go out and buy a bunch of cool stuff? So like George W Bush, he told Americans after nine over 11 that basically the most patriotic thing we could do is go shopping or go to Disney World.
Vass Bednar: Yeah. Before the bubble bursts and the playlist of that time, right? Y2K pop culture felt both meticulously manufactured, like through boy bands and then increasingly, maybe open to cross-genre, cross-cultural influences. You write about a particular J.Lo video that I feel like I never actually truly watched before. Can you describe what was happening in that music video and why it might have resonated or seemed cool?
Colette Shade: There's a particular esthetic called the Y2K esthetic that describes the fashion and consumer products from basically 1997 through around 2003, and this is a very futuristic look. So white clothing, clear blobby electronics, silver eyeshadow, silver clothes, spiky colored hair. Basically, it's like everyone was saying, hey, on the eve of this wonderful new millennium. And with this wonderful technology of the internet, let's dress like we live in this cool future. And so tell me right now, in this video, J-Lo is wearing an outfit emblematic of that a series of flowing white outfits. She's got silver eyeshadow. I think she has a silver outfit. At one point she has a few outfit changes. She is recording herself for the internet, and you see people in different rooms logging onto their computers, logging on to the internet and then going to her website. And then the camera cuts back to show her performing in a again very futuristic white minimalist room for these people watching her online and a lot of music videos at that time, like 1997 through 2003, when the internet was really brand new and there's a lot of optimism around it. They show, they actually show people using different devices using computers going online. It's a big motif that kind of died out later.
Vass Bednar: Why do you think it died out?
Colette Shade: Of course, trends come and go and people also got habituated to the internet. It wasn't as new and exciting anymore, but I also really think that it died out because there just wasn't as much optimism. I mean, as the internet grew and developed, it became apparent that there were a lot of negatives to its growth and our increasing reliance on it.
Vass Bednar: You mentioned blobs?
Colette Shade: Yes.
Vass Bednar: I have to ask a little bit about the blob aesthetic and kind of why you think it's making a comeback, like what's driving its resurgence. Is it optimism or pessimism?
Colette Shade: Well, I guess I should define the blob esthetic. So this is this is aesthetic that is very much part of the Y2K esthetic. It's these interiors that have these flowing almost water drops like and liquid looking structures. And it's this design where things look like splattered mercury or something on a a font or a design element. And Karim Rashid, who is an industrial designer who really pioneered this style, he describes it as this undulating, boundless style that is extending forever into the future. And I think that that really sheds a lot of light on why it was so popular, because it's it's very much about this transcending of limits through cyberspace, through capitalism, and this idea that the future is going to be a place where we can just have this endless prosperity, endless peace. Everything will be very smooth. So that sort of fell out of fashion around 2003, partially because trends get stale, but I think that you can almost psychoanalytical read trends and see what they reflect about the broader economic and political currents in our society. And I think that this declined as this optimism and this belief that the 21st century was going to be this wonderful, peaceful new place, really, it declined after the global war on terror started, and it really declined after the 2008 crisis.
Vass Bednar: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what brought the blob back?
Colette Shade: Well, what brought the blob back? I think that people are feeling really hopeless. I mean, I'm certainly looking around at the political and ecological and technological situation and not feeling a lot of optimism. And I think that this look, it harkens back to a time when there was optimism. Right. Like it's it. It harkens back to a time when the internet could be fun and promote peace and creativity and connection instead of, you know, putting people out of work or making Elon Musk really rich and then having him take over the U.S. government.
Vass Bednar: Around that same time, in the late 90s, there was also this rising backlash against hyper consumerism, right? Movements against that corporate creep. I'm thinking of Naomi Klein's book No Logo taking aim at the brand bullies. It was huge. There were anti sweatshop protests. Why did those campaigns resonate and what happened to them?
Colette Shade: Yeah. So it's funny you brought up Naomi Klein because as soon as you said your question, I was like, well, I, of course have to mention the wonderful Canadian Naomi Klein. But yeah. So I think there was a lot of dissatisfaction with this end of history narrative because there were people who were saying, hey, actually, there still are a lot of social problems, and not only do they just still exist, but they're actually increasing due to some of these trends. So like the anti sweatshop movement came about because apparel and again this is something that Klein talks about. No logo but apparel used to in the mid-twentieth century be produced largely by unionized factories in developed countries like the US and Canada and parts of Western Europe. And then in the 80s and then especially in the 90s, this trend that was called globalization. But I think that that obscures kind of the details of what was actually happening, basically made it so that companies were more easily able to outsource their jobs from these unionized factories with lots of labor and environmental protections, and put them in countries like China, like in Tunisia, like Vietnam, that had less enforced protections for their workers and for the environment. And the reason was, you know, it wasn't because these companies were like evil, it was just because it was cheaper. Right? And people were saying, hey, this narrative because the way it was talked about in the press was globalization is all about us trading and sharing. And that's all well and good. But people were saying, but actually it's producing these effects that are not really that. And here's how. Maybe we can have an alternative to that. And then the crescendo of this anti sweatshop movement and this backlash against the quote unquote end of history occurred in 1999 with the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. And there is this enormous protest where tens of thousands of people from all over the world showed up, and they actually shut down the protest for a little while, and then they obstructed streets. And then things really got chaotic. There were some people who went off and smashed windows. The police were firing tear gas at protesters and mass arresting protesters. There were some fires that were set and this was global news because nothing like this had ever happened before. So this movement was really going and kind of feeling itself for better or for worse. And then 9/11 happened. And what happened with that was that the left basically had to just go completely throw all its resources into opposing the war in Iraq and opposing in the US attacks on civil liberties domestically. And there just was no stomach, I think, among the general populace at that time for any kind of movement that critiqued the U.S. government, or especially its economic policies.
Vass Bednar: And looking back at that time, I think a lot of people would identify 911 as this major hinge moment in recent history. But you make the point that it's maybe not as important as the financial crash of 2008. Why not? What was it about that year that's so generation defining for us?
Colette Shade: Yeah. So I mean, I think the reason that 911 just wasn't as important is because unless you had close ties to the military or you were among the immigrant groups and religious groups that were being persecuted by the US government, you could largely live your life normally and were in fact encouraged to. And the thing about 2008 was that that was no longer the case, because this was such a massive disruption of daily life that they were almost forced to pay attention. So, I mean, millions of American families lost their homes to foreclosure. Globally, pension funds lost a third of their value. Millions of people saw their families lose their savings. You know, lose their businesses, lose their homes. You had this massive unemployment rate. And then, of course, the gig economy kind of comes out of that. And it ripped the fabric of American life and global life as well. Right.
Vass Bednar: You also write about how globalization was being reflected in fashion. You mentioned Euro Club, where I'm thinking of like Chinese characters that were used decoratively on clothing. Globalization was sort of seen as inevitable. Supply chains were stretching around the world. Trade barriers were coming down. But then right now, everything is flipped. Like here in Canada, we are freaking out at the threat of Trump's tariffs. Were scrambling to figure out how to substitute American made stuff for alternatives, preferably made in Canada. Why do you think the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction?
Colette Shade: So if you look at the Y2K era, there were major problems with what was being called globalization. And I'm just going to focus on the U.S. right now. Industrial communities were getting hollowed out. I mean, if you take all of the good paying jobs out of a community that's going to create social chaos and immiseration as well as huge resentment, then, of course, in 2008, there's this massive fraying of even that social fabric. And then those problems were not fully addressed. So there's just this massive resentment across the U.S. that most people have seen their quality of life decline. And so much of this tariff stuff is an angry backlash to both the initial wave of globalization that was happening in the 80s, 90s, 2000, and then also to the failures of either party to provide adequately for the citizenry in the wake of the catastrophic financial crisis of 2008.
Vass Bednar: We're in a moment where nostalgia cycles are getting like faster and faster and faster. You noted Y2K nostalgia is already back. Gen Z seems obsessed with the 2000. Do you think that today's teenagers will be nostalgic for 2025? Or are we in an era where nostalgia itself is just another trend?
Colette Shade: Consumer nostalgia specifically runs on 20 to 30 year cycles, so if you look at the 1970s, there is this profusion of nostalgia for the 1950s, which was 20 years before. Now remember that we're in 2025. The year 2000 was 25 years ago. So that's not any faster. That's just that's right on time. And so you look at something in the 1970s, like the show Happy Days, which was a sitcom set in the 1950s, and it was all about basically how wonderful the 1950s were. So this is fairly predictable to me. The reason it runs on these 20 to 30 year cycles is because that's how long it takes for people who came of age with this pop culture the first time around, to then be in positions where they're making the culture, but also be in the positions where they have disposable income so that they can be like, ooh, butterfly hair clips. Hey, remember when I had those in middle school? I'd like to buy some.
Vass Bednar: I would like to buy some.
Colette Shade: Yeah, you showed me you have some. That's cool. But yeah, I mean, I think I'm skeptical that, you know, I've heard a lot about the end of nostalgia. There's this idea that because culture is now this mash up on TikTok that, like you said, it does get recycled faster and faster. Where I've seen people being nostalgic for stuff that's five years ago and it's like, that's strange. You know, so I think that things are getting a bit mashed up. But I do think that, yeah, in 20 years there probably will be a trend of 2020s nostalgia.
Vass Bednar: It'll be like, remember when those terrorists were coming? That was fun. Colette, if you made a time capsule today, what would you put in it?
Colette Shade: The problem is, it's like all of the stuff that I think of as being of the time. It's it's all online.
Vass Bednar: It's hard to capture in a bottle.
Colette Shade: Randy.
Vass Bednar: Let's do it together. Let's think. Yeah.
Colette Shade: Let's do it together. Okay.
Vass Bednar: Look around you. Or if you. Are you in your apartment?
Colette Shade: I'm in my apartment, in my living room, so I would definitely have my phone. And it would have a bunch of podcasts queued up on it.
Vass Bednar: Nice.
Colette Shade: I would have my computer and it would have zoom in Riverside and like five different video meetings open. That's like all I do now. What else would be in there? I guess I'm wearing something direct to consumer because DTC is very popular. I'm wearing pants. So maybe I would put a quince, my quince blouse.
Vass Bednar: And then what about music? Is there something you're listening to?
Colette Shade: Okay.
Vass Bednar: Like the anthem for you right now?
Colette Shade: Oh, my God, the anthem for me. No, you know what it would be? I. I really like Sabrina. And so I would say espresso just because it came on while I was at my exercise class last night and I audibly said yes. I mean, because it kind of it brought me back to that current like chapel feel like they really are going back to that late 90s period.
Vass Bednar: I love it, I look forward to rediscovering it on the 25 to 30 year cycle. Colette, thanks so much for chatting with us.
Colette Shade: Thanks for having me, Vass.
Vass Bednar: Hi everyone. It's Vass. I just wanted to say this is our 32nd episode, which is pretty incredible. It's our final episode of the season. We've really enjoyed sharing these stories with you. Thank you for joining us. We know in a busy attention economy that your time matters, and we love that we were able to spend some of it together. Hope you enjoyed the other 31 episodes. Goodbye for now. You've been listening to lately a Globe and Mail podcast. Our executive producer is Katrina Onstad. The show is produced by Jay Cockburn and our sound designer is Cameron McIvor. And I'm your host, Vass Bednar. In our show notes, you can subscribe to the Lately newsletter, where the Globe's online culture reporter Samantha Edwards unpacks more of the latest in business and technology.