[w______roy]

At the very beginning, it was about the subprime mortgage crisis, which cost a lot of people their homes, their retirements, their investments and created a great deal of disillusionment in our financial/political system. That led to Occupy, which (together with the right wing Tea Party Movement before it) fundamentally changed American politics.

The novelty of Reality TV wore off and it became a firmly established part of our media landscape. Video games stagnated for the first half, as did a lot of technology. Cryptocurrency blew up, which made a lot of people rich very quickly. "YouTubing" became a viable career path.

Tumblr took off like crazy and welcomed a new generation to the internet on very different terms than the MySpace/Facebook era before it. Dating apps blew up... Tinder, Grindr, etc. These things coalesced with a lot of young queer communities flourishing. That, together with the legalization of gay marriage, ushered in a new queer revolution that set the stage for the current culture war over drag shows/trans rights/etc.