Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything
An interview with Colette Shade 💿
Pop culture is often inaccurately synonymized with entertainment, but it’s an amalgam of the entertainment, fashion, technology, politics, consumer behavior, and cultural memory that defines the zeitgeist of a particular time.
I write and talk a lot about nostalgia, nowstalgia, neostalgia, cyclical trends & aesthetics, hyper-accelerated trend cycles, The Diffusion of Innovations and returns from obsolescence, et al., but “Y2K” is a loaded word in this context. It’s without a doubt the most distorted, conflated, misreferenced, overanalyzed aesthetic of them all. Talking about a simpler time got so complicated.
Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything (Essays on the Future That Never Was), is a book by my friend Colette Shade that I simply couldn’t put down. I was excited to ask her some more questions about the book. Enjoy!
Nicstalgia is a reader-supported publication. Huge thank you to the people who go above and beyond to support my work: Janine, Marie, Liv, CY, Chet, and Jack! À la Jessica Simpson, I’m gonna love you forever 💐💐💐 If you enjoy Nicstalgia, please consider an upgrade so I can continue writing the most fun newsletter about offbeat, obscure, and niche pop culture.
Introduction
Nicole Tremaglio: The introduction of your book includes the incredible letter you’d written for an elementary school time capsule in 1999, imagining where you’d be in 2008. After rediscovering this letter in 2018, you realized you hadn’t felt the same kind of jubilant, anticipatory optimism or hope for the future in years. À la the recent ‘Met my younger self for coffee’ TikTok trend, what would 2025 Colette say at brunch to 1999, 2008, and 2018 Colette’s?
Colette Shade: Oh, man! I would hate to go back to 1999 and tell my 11-year-old self that most of the 21st century was going to suck. Maybe I could give myself some investment tips – liquidate your college fund and buy waterfront real estate in Williamsburg – something like that. I would definitely tell myself that I was going to grow up and write a book, which I spent my entire childhood dreaming about. As a kid, I had all these books I was always trying to write on ClarisWorks. I was always writing short stories for my elementary school’s literary magazine (Write On). I would have been so excited to know that dream was going to come true.
In 2008, I’d hand myself a list of men to avoid during the next decade. I would also tell myself that, yes, you’ll write a book eventually. On my 20th birthday I cried because I hadn't published a book yet, which in hindsight is so ridiculous. I was jealous because Nick McDonell published Twelve when he was in high school, but of course his father was very well-connected in the publishing world.
In 2018, I’d tell myself that even though my life felt like it was in the toilet, it would get a lot better pretty soon. I’d get to do a fellowship in Japan for a year, I’d go to grad school, I’d get married, I’d get a book deal, and I’d go on book tour all across the country. I’d get interviewed on All Things Considered and reviewed by the New York Times. Even when it seems like things are only getting worse, they can turn around in an instant.
Only Shooting Stars Break The Mold
Nicole Tremaglio: I love this Smash Mouth lyric chapter title, and I’m convinced it’s about the construct of meritocracy – if you “work hard” enough and make the “right” decisions, you’ll be rewarded with material and immaterial success. Your uncle who got rich in the dot-com bubble absolutely broke the mold. Who would you consider a “shooting star” in 2025?
Colette Shade: I’d say Taylor Swift or Beyonce. They’re extremely talented and hard working, but there are also a lot of other talented and hardworking entertainers who will never get to that level -- even if some of them may be just as talented and just as hard-working. Twenty years ago, you could have a reasonably successful career as an entertainer without being a billionaire global superstar. Now, there’s no middle in that industry. The same goes for other sectors. You used to be able to run a business with modest profits, and now that's no longer enough. You have to have huge profit margins quarter-on-quarter. I think there is this tendency to look at someone like Taylor or Beyonce and think that their success is “deserved.” Which, in a sense it is. But others might deserve a little success, too.
Global Village, Crying Eagle
Nicole Tremaglio: You are well-versed in politics, and it was so interesting to read about the Y2K era’s political circumstances that I was too young to understand at the time. This chapter filled in some of my historic cultural blind spots. I’m always fascinated hearing peoples’ 9/11 stories, and growing up 100 miles outside of New York City, it felt far away but also incredibly close.
Encouraging people to go shopping after the attacks is the most American thing ever, but I had no idea that George W. Bush said to “get down to Disney World”. We actually had planned a family vacation there, and my parents asked if we still wanted to go. Obviously not clocking the gravitas of the situation, my reaction was, “Why would I not want to go to Disney World?” So my first time on an airplane was to Disney World, less than two weeks after 9/11.
Colette Shade: Wow! So you actually did the thing George W. Bush told us to do. We were never allowed to go to Disney World. As a kid I was always jealous of families who went. I wanted to meet Belle and Ariel.
My first trip after 9/11 was actually to New York in December 2001. We took the train up from DC. I don’t remember being especially scared, even though I was generally a very anxious kid. I think I assumed that the increased security everywhere would prevent any terrorist attacks. We didn’t visit Ground Zero, though. We stayed uptown and went to museums and saw family.
My first plane trip after 9/11 was to see my uncle in Florida, in March 2002. We flew from National Airport to Sarasota Bradenton. My mom was anxious, but I was mostly excited. My uncle had this enormous house he bought during the dot com boom. It looked like something out of MTV Cribs, with this huge hexagonal foyer, a home theater, the works. I write about it in the book, but it had a pool that was right on the water. I bought my first-ever bikini for that trip. It was a coral-colored string bikini with a floral print, from American Eagle. But I ended up getting horribly sunburned and being in pain the whole week. Even my scalp was peeling.
Get Naked
Nicole Tremaglio: Another current viral trend, ‘My favorite song when I looked like this’, shows a picture of a young you paired with a wildly kid-inappropriate song. Your book mentioned “What's Your Fantasy” by Ludacris, “Butterfly” by Crazy Town, “Peaches & Cream” by 112, “One Minute Man” by Missy Elliott featuring Ludacris and Trina, “Get Naked” by Methods of Mayhem, and “Lady Marmalade” featuring Mya, P!nk, Lil' Kim, Christina Aguilera, and Missy Elliott.² Were there any songs you didn't know were inappropriate until you listened to the lyrics later? “Too Close” by Next is the one that comes to mind for me.³
Colette Shade: “Too Close,” absolutely! I remember listening to the lyrics once when it came on the radio, and I was like, “I feel a little poke coming through”?! Is he saying what I think he's saying?!
Editor’s note: Yes, he is saying what you think he’s saying.
Larry Summers Caused My Eating Disorder
Nicole Tremaglio: When recalling her “Come On Over Baby (All I Want Is You)” music video in the Get Naked chapter, you state that, “Christina Aguilera's pussy is a portal to another dimension.” (This is my favorite line in the book.) While she’s mentioned in the ‘inappropriate lyrics’ chapter and not the ‘eating disorders’ chapter, that's where my mind went. Since the Y2K era, Christina Aguilera’s evolving image has mirrored shifting beauty standards: a waifish, barely-legal debut; raw, hypersexual, rebellious Stripped; traditionally glamorous Back to Basics; futuristic Bionic; and most recently, shocking thinness due to weight loss drugs everyone denies taking. As someone who’s experienced eating disorders firsthand – at the end of the Y2K era – I’m really happy you addressed the underlying systemic issues that continue to cause eating disorders, which are anything but surface-level.
Colette Shade: Thank you. The eating disorders essay was actually the first one I wrote, and it got me the book deal with Dey Street. I think one of the big problems with the way eating disorders are talked about is that the discussion is only about body standards in media, and not the financial incentives around weight loss. Or, to take it even broader, the messages we get around “personal responsibility” and “self-restraint” in general. That's what I talk about in the essay. I was just taking these messages to their logical conclusion, acting them out on my own body.
Emmaline Cline (who I listened to on a podcast recently) does a good job talking about how eating disorders are actually rational to have in our society. Thin people – especially thin women – get rewarded, not just in terms of attention but in terms of career advancement. I think if we want to address the problem of eating disorders, we have to start being honest about the bigger context around them. And instead of seeing them as individual problems, seeing them as a collective problem we can solve by creating a less competitive society, as well as a less sexist society.
They Misunderestimated Me
Nicole Tremaglio: Pop culture is political, whether people want to admit it or not. I’ll never forget, I was on vacation with my best friend's family in the summer of 2004. We saw magnets and t-shirts in a gift shop in Provincetown, MA – obviously a highly-liberal enclave – making fun of President George W. Bush. She, raised by Unitarian hippies, laughed, and I, raised Italian Catholic, was confused. He’s the President of our country, isn’t it bad to be making fun of him? But also, he did say those silly things...aren’t Presidents supposed to be smart? ⁴ Now, through deep-fried memes rather than gift shop magnets, those on the right are the ones having the last laugh. In an era of social media echo chambers, rampant rage bait, and ‘everyone must be an activist’ virtue signaling, what is the most important political message you’d tell someone who's apolitical, politically avoidant, or primarily interested in the entertainment aspect of pop culture?
Colette Shade: Thinking about politics and pop culture isn't about putting things into categories based on whether they have “good” or “bad” politics, or only consuming culture that has a clear politics you agree with. It’s more about asking questions and thinking critically about the broader context surrounding the culture. I find this actually increases my appreciation of things. Ultimately, pop culture itself isn't politics, but it can give us an understanding of what might be going on politically.
Also, I'm loling at your Unitarian friend. I also grew up Unitarian, and all the cars in the church parking lot would be covered with anti-Bush stickers like “SOMEWHERE IN TEXAS A VILLAGE IS MISSING ITS IDIOT.”
[Remix]
Nicole Tremaglio: I loved the exploration of the Bling Era’s materialism and conspicuous consumption as a mark of the neoliberal turn. Black and Hip Hop culture's merge with mainstream [white] popular culture is a critical sociopolitical aspect of the Y2K era. Do you have a favorite episode of MTV’s Cribs?
Colette Shade: I think my favorite Cribs episode is from 2002, where we see inside Mariah’s NYC condo. She had the biggest closet I had ever seen, and she takes a bath during the episode. It was the most glamorous thing I’d ever seen at age 13.
Nicole Tremaglio: What’s your favorite Hype Williams or inside-of-a-cheese-grater music video?
Colette Shade: My Favorite Hype Williams videos are “No Scrubs” by TLC (1999) and “Put it On Me” by Ja Rule feat. Lil Mo & Vita (2000). “No Scrubs” takes place on a silver space station, and the girls are wearing a series of futuristic outfits in silver, black, white, and blue. It is the distilled essence of Y2K futurism. “Put it on Me” takes place back on earth, and tells a story of Ja Rule getting arrested in his mansion and sent to jail, then writing home to his wife. I thought it was very romantic and emotional when I was 12. It was also the first time I thought about mass incarceration.
Nicole Tremaglio: Examples of the McBling aesthetic, a name coined by the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute, are prominent throughout this chapter. We are both big CARI-heads!! I mention Groovival, my favorite aesthetic, in many Nicstalgia episodes. What's your favorite aesthetic from the Y2K era, and what memory do you associate it with?
Colette Shade: The Y2K aesthetic. My strongest memory (which I talk about at the beginning of the book) was begging my mom to buy me this silver inflatable chair from Target in fall 1999. I thought that in the new millennium, everyone would have silver inflatable furniture. I was so grateful when she bought me that chair, because it made me feel like I lived in the future. I never had TLC's “No Scrubs” outfits, but this was close enough. Of course, just a few months later, that chair got a hole in it and had to be thrown away. Everyone I've talked to who had an inflatable chair in the Y2K era had that same experience. These were not products that were designed to last.
A strong runner-up for favorite aesthetic is groovival. In 1997, when I turned 9, I had a 60’s and 70’s themed birthday party. The guests tie dyed t-shirts in the backyard. We bought a lava lamp and had that going, then I put it in my room, where it lived for many years. We ordered this mega-pack of party favors from Oriental Trading Company that had jewelry and mini erasers with peace signs, yin-yang symbols, flowers, and alien heads. By the way, this is BEFORE American Girl magazine had a feature on how to throw a similar party. There was something in the air in the late 90’s. In 1999, our 5th grade class voted for our graduation dance theme to be “70’s disco.” I wore a rainbow tie dyed tank top, denim capris with rainbow peace signs down the side, and white platform sandals.
They're Just Like Us!
Nicole Tremaglio: In this chapter about pervasive celebrity tabloid culture, you mention the most iconic magazine cover of our generation: The July 2003 issue of Vanity Fair, featuring Amanda Bynes, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Mandy Moore, Hilary Duff, Alexis Bledel, Evan Rachel Wood, Raven-Symoné, and Lindsay Lohan. Obviously the democratization of ‘fame’ has evolved the meaning of ‘celebrity’, but if you were to recast the cover for 2025, who would you include?
Colette Shade: Okay, this is embarrassing, but I don’t know who the teen stars are anymore! When I think of the big up-and-coming stars of today, I think of people like Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Doechii, Margaret Qualley, Jenna Ortega, Sarah Squirm, Flo Milli. But they’re in their 20’s or very early 30’s. I'm sure there are a ton of teen stars that are huge, but if I heard their names, I'd be like, “who?” Because I’m old.
Stupid Ugly Vehicles
Nicole Tremaglio: After reading this chapter about climate change, ‘global warming’, environmentalism, the Rainforest Cafe, and the Weather Channel's smooth jazz CD, I thought about how Stupid Ugly Vehicles have evolved from gas-guzzling Hummers to self-driving Teslas. The Tesla Cybertruck seems like a present-day dystopian manifestation of the Californian Ideology, perpetuating meritocracy and neoliberal market-driven individualism and positing techno-solutionism versus actually addressing systemic infrastructural failures.
I was also moved by your realization of the horseshoe effect of religion and science – they are both belief systems that aren't as at-odds as people often think. Traditional organized religion is inextricably linked with Christian conservatives; what could reconnection with religion and faith-based community look like for progressives over the next few years?
Colette Shade: I love this question, and no one has asked it yet! I think we can look at places like the Episcopal Church (I've been involved with them before though I'm not currently). They are a mainline Christian denomination which has a very traditional worship style similar to the Catholic church, but women and LGBTQ people serve as clergy and are permitted to marry. For years the church has been deeply involved in social justice causes, but recently, there have been a number of younger clergy and congregants doing interesting things around economic and environmental justice.
There has also been a revival of progressive and socialist Catholicism among millennials. There are writers and podcasters like Matthew Sitman, Pete Davis and Elizabeth Bruenig. There is a strong tradition of this in the Catholic Church with people like Dorothy Day and Father Daniel Berrigan and Archbishop Oscar Romero, but it had kind of been forgotten. Now it's coming back. Pope Francis very much operates in this tradition, so I think he's had a role in renewing it, too.
My husband is Jewish, and over the past year he has been involved with Jewish advocacy for peace and justice in Palestine. If Not Now is a group of American Jews who talk about how their faith calls them to stop the genocide in Gaza. We are friends with a family whose daughter's involvement in the student protests this past year have prompted her to go to school to become a rabbi. Another friend -- secular for most of her adult life -- recently completed her conversion to Judaism after attending a progressive shul.
These are just a few examples of what progressive religious life could look like.
I think the problem with an exclusively secular understanding of the world is that it misses a lot. So much human behavior is foolish and irrational and hurtful, and I think only a religious framework can fully make sense of that. I mean, look at someone like Elon Musk! I think people also need frameworks that make demands of us and connect us to historical traditions and rituals. What I think progressive people are really connecting with is these very old, ornate forms of worship with strong intellectual traditions. They don't want to go to a megachurch or do new-age affirmations.
Currently, I’m trying to discern if I want to join my husband and convert to Judaism or go back to the Episcopal Church and convert there.
It's Definitely About Coffee, but It's About a Lot More Than Coffee
Nicole Tremaglio: I was devoted to Starbucks in high school and was devastated when they denied my job application!! This chapter was fascinating because the public perception of Starbucks at any given time truly does “tell us a lot about where we’ve been and where we're going, economically, politically, and culturally.” It perfectly explains about Boomers’ egregious ‘selling out’, commodifying countercultural institutions like the coffee shop, and how Starbucks is the complete antithesis of what it ideologically stood for.
Colette Shade: I'm sorry Starbucks didn't hire you. They didn't hire me either lol.
But yeah, I thought Starbucks was the perfect vehicle to tell a couple of different stories that are pretty dry and abstract otherwise. One of the things I tried to do in the book was use very concrete things to talk about ideas that are a little less concrete. I used Starbucks to tell the story of the boomer transition from the counterculture to the corporate boardroom, and how a lot of boomers actually saw a continuity there. Like, working for a multinational corporation like Starbucks or Apple could actually be a hippie thing.
By telling the story of Starbucks from its start in the 70’s to its present, I could also tell the story of how the U.S. economy shifted from manufacturing to service work, and the effects that had on people. And I could tell the story of how attitudes toward labor unions and workers have changed over time. In the 80’s, some Starbucks workers were actually in a union, but they chose to leave the union because they felt they didn't need it anymore. This was a common sentiment at the time. Then throughout the 90's and the Y2K era, there was no union (though in 2004 there was a small unionization effort). Then, in 2021, a Starbucks in Buffalo voted to unionize and it kicked off this huge national movement that has a lot of public support. That’s a huge contrast to the public attitude toward unions during the Y2K era, which was that people just didn't need unions anymore and that people in service jobs didn’t deserve good pay or benefits. I thought the essay would read better if I stuck to one specific story (of Starbucks) versus talking about these attitudes and changes in general terms.
Closing Time
Nicole Tremaglio: The ending of the book resonated with me, especially the distinction of Millennial nostalgia versus previous generations’ longing for the days of their youth. Despite aging, Boomers’ quality of lives – with growing stock portfolios, comfortable careers, relative housing equity, and unprecedented personal and societal progress – got better. This is not the case for most Millennials who – burdened by challenges like The Great Recession, student loan debt, the pandemic, the housing bubble, to name a few – are unable to reach sociocultural milestones their parents did at the same age.
You mention that, “Nostalgia is, in many ways, the opposite of politics.” For most people, it definitely is, but I had to chew on that one! For me personally, my engagement with the past – ‘examining the past through a contemporary lens’ as I call it – is a drive toward a fundamental understanding of the past, present, and future. I always say Nicstalgia is not about celebrities themselves, it’s about how culture, media, and technology shape individual and collective identity. Thank you for writing this book that engages with these subjects so thoughtfully!
Colette Shade: I feel like you intuitively understand the whole approach of my book, which is "critical nostalgia." I don't want people to stop being nostalgic at all! I want them to be nostalgic while also learning and asking questions. As you say, the goal is to challenge readers to have a better understanding of the past, present, and future. I'm so glad you enjoyed my book!
ttyl,
Colette (LilAlien2 on AIM)
More on Y2K:
👽 Y2K, Dirt
📈 My uncle got rich in the dot com bubble,
🌼 The Art of the Author’s Website, Debutiful⁷
🫧 ‘Y2K’ recalls an era when we dreamed of leaving history behind, Washington Post
Newsletter ☆ Instagram ⟡ Website ♡ Podcast Archive ☆
Fitness Schedule ⟡
¹ I made this collage a few weeks ago, prior to the passing of Michelle Trachtenberg, and she is a Y2K style icon.
² Please note that these links to music videos are for historical context and NOT an endorsement of the artists or content. Watch at your own risk!
³ I just watched the “Too Close” music video for the first time and immediately recognized one of the dancers. It’s a young Carmit Bachar from the Pussycat Dolls! I met her at a dance convention like 15 years ago and she was very nice.⁴
⁴ Yes I just footnoted a footnote. Unless you know the professional dance world, I really don’t think you understand how many iconic projects Carmit has been a part of. Pussycat Dolls is kinda the least interesting one, tbh. She was in music videos for “One Week” by Barenaked Ladies, “Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)” by The Offspring, “Take Me There” by Blackstreet and Mýa from The Rugrats Soundtrack, “Every Morning” by Sugar Ray, “All n My Grill” by Missy Elliott, “Bathwater” and “Hey Baby” by No Doubt, “Ain't It Funny” by JLo, “Rock the Boat” by Aaliyah, “Crazy In Love” and “Baby Boy” by Beyoncé, and “Shut Up” by The Black Eyed Peas, among others. She danced on tour for Ricky Martin, Janet Jackson, No Doubt, and Beyoncé at the peak of their careers in the early 2000s and performed in Janet Jackson’s 2004 Super Bowl half-time show.
⁵ When most people think about celebrity criticism of GWB they think of Dixie Chicks, but the 2001 Rolling Stone interview where Jennifer Aniston called him a “fucking idiot” shook me to my core.⁶ Then, no one wanted celebrities to talk about politics, and now celebrities with platforms, privilege, and power are shamed for not talking about politics. Problem with that is that people who benefit most from the current political structures (billionaires, big tech overlords, corporations, incumbent politicians, celebrities, the Kardashians starting a church to avoid paying taxes, etc.) are the best ones to perpetuate them…
⁶ Okay I’m footnoting a footnote again. In this article, she also mentions how she and Brad Pitt (who she was dating at the time) listened to Bran Van 3000’s debut album (Glee, 1997). I actually only know their second album (Discosis, 2001) because the song “Astounded” is on my Gilly Hicks playlist. It really always goes back to GH, doesn’t it?
⁷ I designed Colette’s website to match the look & feel of Y2K! Yay!!
I'm so excited for this book!! And LOL love the updated Vanity Fair cover