The Top 10 Decades of the Century: How The 2000s Compared
Recently, Time named the 00s the worst decade ever. This is clearly ridiculous when you consider their comparison set includes decades featuring things like "The Atmosphere is Made of Pure Sulfur" and "Romans Fed My Hippie Flesh to a Fucking Lion." But what if we narrow the criteria to the last 100 years, instead: 1910-2009. How would the 00s stack up? Would the 20s kick its goofy ass? Could it travel back in time like Marty McFly and give the 50s a massive wedgie? We'll see, as we count down the top 10 decades of the century, in ascending order:
#10.
The 1930s
What Was Better Than the 00s?
The literature: The Hobbit, Of Mice and Men, The Big Sleep, all classics. Whereas the 00s have Twilight, The Da Vinci Code and He's Just Not That Into You. Politically, FDR kicked so much ass his legs stopped working, and he still rolled his way to three more terms, making him possibly the most beloved president ever. We, on the other hand, had this guy:
What Was Worse?
Well, there was that whole Great Depression, where millions of people ate bread made out of dirt and stabbed each other for an opportunity to pick peas 12-hours a day at 10 cents an hour. In the years immediately following 2001, everybody worried about some sort of economical apocalypse. Well, it pretty much happened in the 30s. And that's not even taking into account the dissolution of the League of Nations, the Rise of the Nazi Party and the appeasement of said party by Neville Chamberlain leading to WWII starting. From the starvation to the pre-cursor of the holocaust, the 1930s really buckled down and earned their place as the worst decade of the century. They even beat that decade with the hippies, so you know that's saying something. Speaking of...
#9.
The 1960s
What Was Better Than the 00s?
I'm sure a lot of you are up in arms right now. After all, the 60s saw the best house party in the world happen in upstate New York, while some of the biggest advancements in civil rights unfolded down South after interesting ideas regarding public seating proved to be successful. This one pastor gave a couple really cool speeches, including one about climbing mountains, and another about lucid dreaming. And women, inspired by all this social upheaval, asserted their rights by removing their bras and throwing them in the trash in the name of feminism, becoming the only public protest in the 60s where men with hoses would have actually improved the situation.
What Was Worse?
So what the fuck am I thinking, right? Well, let's look at what happened to all those beautiful dreams: A) They turned out to be wildly unrealistic because the world was still ass-backwards at the time and B) the dreamers got filled with bullets and bled out in front of a national audience. John and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and Medgar Evers: The 60s had a real boner for just up and shooting optimists. The 00s threw shoes and did walk-by smack talk. I'm pretty certain Dr. King would rather have dodged a Doc Marten (the official shoe of racism) or two than gotten shot to death.
And if Iraq was largely deemed an unjust action, Vietnam was a soul-rending clusterfuck of epic proportions. Trust in our government didn't just erode in the 60s, it completely imploded. And on top of all that, everyone assumed the Russians were going to melt our eyeballs out of our skulls with atomic rainfire at any minute. So what was the government's idea of reassurance? Telling us climb under a goddamn desk. The 00s gave birth to the meme "(insert name here) raped my childhood," but the 60s shoved a rocket launcher up the ass of innocence and pulled the trigger until it went "click."
#8.
The 1910s
What Was Better Than the 00s?
The art was pretty stunning. Picasso, Matisse and Duchamp got the world used to accepting hilarious pretension and babyish douchebaggery on a massive scale, just so long as the art was sufficiently mind-bending. And we couldn't even call these people mercurial fuckups with severe depressive disorders, because nobody knew what that was: Medicine was still in the stage where doctors prescribed a teener of coke for a toothache. So we just shrugged and said, "Sure, he's acting quite peculiar, but look! He drew the nose where the ear should go, and the eyes are on the chin... HE IS CLEARLY A GENIUS!"
What Was Worse?
The Great War isn't brought up much anymore, mostly because it's harder to mythologize than it's "Great" nephew. It was uglier, filthier and nastier than WWII and, in the end, it didn't even really fix anything. In fact, it acted more like the fuse on a timebomb set to go off in the mid-30s--a bomb that would eventually lead to the rise of Hitler. While the modern world pisses their pampers over the Swine Flu and its horrifying payload of "feeling uggy" and "slightly puky," the Spanish Flu killed up to 100-million people in two years. The October Revolution killed 20-million, deposed the Tsar and installed a communist dictatorship in its place that enjoyed a decades-long reign until Patrick Swayze and C. Thomas Howell punched it in the balls in Red Dawn, thus ending the Cold War forever (Thanks, Swayze!).
Also, a ship sank in the Atlantic. There's a movie about it, I guess.
#7.
The 2000s
What Was OK?
The overwhelming sense of unity and goodwill that most of the free world shared shortly after 9/11 was fantastic. Science got awesome again: We bombed the moon and found water, built a bunch of robots to fight wars for us and they haven't risen up to claim our flesh for their own (yet). We finally edged closer to the future the Jetsons have always promised us with hi-def TVs that hang on walls like paintings, touchscreen personal communication devices, electric (but not flying) cars and video games. Politically and socially, the 2000s made a couple leaps nobody expected: Barack Obama got elected. Whether you agree with the man's politics or not, virtually nobody expected a black man to make it into the White House for at least another 20 years. Also, gay people were allowed in some states to practice the soul-eroding, dispiriting and grueling tradition of marriage, which they somehow regarded as a huge win.
What Sucked Hard?
Terrorists suicide bombing the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, and the U.S. never catching the guy who paid for the attacks, even though the motherfucker lives in depleted cave rubble and is tied to a dialysis machine like Dr. Venture. The Earth also went apeshit and decided to go after the humans crawling its crust like a dog gnawing at a flea-bitten patch of mangy fur: Cyclones in Myanmar, The Boxing Day Tsunami and Hurricanes Katrina, Ike and Rita combined to turn New Orleans into a backed up toilet.
Other things that were mostly ruined include:
The Economy (Global Recession)
Comedy (Carlos Mencia, Larry the Cable Guy)
Star Wars (The Prequels)
Sex (Furries)
Italian-American culture (New Jersey)
Basic Communication (texting/comments sections/you're shits all retarded nd u talk like a fag)
#6.
The 1970s
What Was Better Than the 00s?
The Vietnam War finally ended, and ended definitively. The Movie Brats took over Hollywood and, with all respect to the 30s and 40s, were responsible for the single best decade in American movie history. Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola, Scorsese, Carpenter, Friedkin, De Palma and more took their film degrees and somehow conned Hollywood into handing a bunch of bearded nerds the keys to the kingdom. They made some of the most adventurous studio system films ever produced. And that's just at the high-minded end of the scale; in the gutters of low culture, the splatter-flick and exploitation cinema unapologetically wallowed in gore and zero social redemption, making people like Quentin Tarantino possible ... for whatever that's worth.
What Was Worse?
Goddamn we were ugly as hell. Everything about the decade was covered in an orangey/brown sheen, from RVs, to Station Wagons, Butterfly Collars and Paisley print Pants. The women all looked like Charlie Chaplin with an eagle molting on top of their heads, and the men were swarthy bags of chest hair barely contained in a periwinkle leisure suit. We roller-skated unironically, for the love of Christ.
The 70s were littered with psychotics: Jim Jones ruined Kool-Aid's sterling reputation in Jonestown; Idi Amin ate his enemies; Pinochet got a little help from the CIA to become dictator of Chile; Pol Pot inspired the Dead Kennedys to become impromptu travel agents; and Black September turned the '72 Olympics into a nightmare of anti-Israeli terrorism.
And then there was Nixon.
Nixon dragged his big-ass feet getting the troops out of Vietnam, and of course, famously quit due to Watergate, thus damaging America in a multitude of ways; detonating what shred of faith we had left in the government after the 60s, and guaranteeing that anytime any celebrity does ANYTHING wrong, our idiot media will tack the suffix "-gate" to the end of it.
Honestly, WHO GIVES A SHIT!?
Reply80s and 90s are the two best decades.
Replysome guy down here was right, if you had mentioned jazz i would've been 110% satisfied with this article.
ReplyDuran Duran made the world want to be American? That's cool, guys. You can have them. Britain wants you to have them. While you're at it, can you take Coldplay away as well? Thanks.
ReplyReally, I don't think you could rank the 40s as the best decade for anyone except America. However, this is an American site. On the other hand, they weren't the worst. Everybody always concentrates on the fighting of the first half, and forget that the 40s didn't end until December 31st 1949.
ReplyLet's not forget that WWII, while it was horrible, also forced us to become better people. Hitler and the Pacific War forced us to take a good hard look at ourselves, no matter where you were from. The Civil Rights Movement, the Jews, the anti-Colonial Movements, all got a boost from WWII when people were forced to say "this whole discrimination thing? We've gone too far". Nothing has advanced the cause of human rights as the utter horror of the Holocaust and WWII.
After that war, we created the goddamned United Nations. We declared that all humans have inalienable rights, no matter where they live or what color they are. We set up an international body, that everybody was a part of, dedicated to not f*****g each other up. That was, and still is, a f*****g huge step for mankind.
In the Marshall Plan and rebuilding of a shattered world, we proved that we could learn from the mistakes of WWI, and recover from the war through co-operation instead of being selfish dicks. We even helped the losers back onto their feet. At no other time in human history had that been done before the 40s.
In conclusion; sure, a lot of the 40s sucked hard, but humanity is better off for it. Maybe not the best decade, but in terms of consequences, definitely not one of the worst.
Yeah, London in the 1940s was no picnic. My Nan nearly got hit by a V1. Jeez!
London? Really? Of all the places directly affected by the war, Britain probably got off the easiest by far. Sure, they got bombed a couple of times, but that happened to everyone. Except America. -.-
Really, this is a quite good ranking of the decades, but saying one of the worst decades in human history is the best, because it made america cool? Even for a site that perpetually doesn't realize it has an international audience, this is really shallow.
Will Smith is wearing a Speed Racer shirt. Therefore, the 90's were the best.
ReplyNo mention of jazz music anywhere? Or the invention of the transistor? No offense, but try to do a bit more research before writing an article.
ReplyUhh WTF Cracked?
ReplyThe 90s were the best decade, the 40s (For anyone who was not an American) was the worst decade ever, so many people lived in fear of their lives starting in the 40s and ending in the 90s.
That is why the 90s are the best decade, and the 40s need to be behind the 80s.
Didn't the 90's kinda suck? I wasn't around for much of it...
ReplyWhere's my guitar so I can smash it over your head...
The 1940s sucked. The amount of human misery that occurred during that decade can scarcely be put into words. And even if the USA ended up a superpower after WW2, then so did the USSR, which went on to enslave Eastern Europe and challenge and cause major headaches for America for the next four decades.
ReplyOn the plus side, though, it did give us Chuck Norris AND Sam Waterston.
I haven't scrolled down to read the comments yet, but, I'm betting 20 bucks that the 9/11 Truthers will be out in force. Troll Power on Max.
ReplyThe overwhelming sense of unity and goodwill that most of the free world (who still uses this term?) shared shortly after 9/11 was fantastic. So fantastic that the "free world" had to kill a fuckilion more man than the 9/11 did.
ReplyI don't recall a great deal of 'unity' or 'goodwill' either. Did I miss that memo?
The 1940's winning best decade makes absolutely no sense. WWII is cool to read about, but would be absolutely miserable to live through.
ReplyIt's Zora Neale, not Nora Zeale.
ReplyI've been wrong before, but didn't the Okie bombing happen around 2000? Or was that Tim McVeigh's death sentencing?
ReplyHappened in 1995...
Googling it = substantially less effort than leaving this comment.
"WWII could apply for a patent on masculinity and it would be granted"
ReplyNo it couldn't, Teddy Roosevelt is the only one that could successfully apply for that patent.
That would be a betrayal of his principles. He wanted to close down the patent office since everything worthwhile had already been invented. Only now, 100 years later, with not a single technological advancement since then, can we see how right he was.
(Btw, I've totally got a T. Roosevelt boner anyways. My high school team was the Roughriders.)
My votes for best decades have always been:
Reply1970s-I personally love the fashions from back then.Well,maybe not mens fashions,but theres are reason why bo-ho chic is still going strong.Also,has to be the best decade for both music(disco music aside) and movies.Most importantly it seemed to be a buffer decade,right after the conservative 50s and early 60s, and before political correctness started to creep in in the 80s(I actually disagree about homophobia running rampant in the 80s,things were certainly better for gays than they had been 30 years before).Basically,everyone did what they felt like without having to worry about ofending prudes(like before) or pc nut jobs(like now).Also,it was the decade I was born(1979,but still).
The 20s are definetly up there too.Its ironic that the decade known for people really learning to party was the decade that theoretically should have been the most difficult to,with Prohibition and all.You have to thank the lawmakers for that one,if alcohol had been readily available,the 1920s would have probably been just another boring decade.Thanks to the rebellious streak in the human spirit,it was just the opposite.
The 50s also get a bad rep for being conservative and prudish,but that was just the mainstream.If you check out the books being written, and the movies being made,there was a HELL of alot going on right underneath the surface.The 60s liberal movement would not have happened if not for the seeds planted here.A sure fire sign of non conformity is people trying the hardest to get you to conform,and as hard as they tried,they still couldnt stop "Playboy" from being published,"A streetcar named desire" from premiering,Rock & roll from going mainstream or "Catcher in the Rye" from becoming a bestseller.Plus,Brando was really,really hot.
As far as the 40s and the 60s,they were both as incredibly fucked as they were great,which is why I consider them certainly the most important decades,though certainly not the best.A lot of s**t went on and lets leave it at that.
The 2000s have actually been pretty damn good, it's just that we now realise just how badly we're f*****g ourselves and that we're gonna pay for it in the 2010s, 2020s and so on.
ReplyBesides the 2000 election. And 9/11. And Afghanistan. And Iraq. And the Congolese civil war. And Darfur. And North Korean nukes. And Katrina. And the Myanmar floods. And the Australian drought. And the Nigerian famine. And the Euro riots. And the Bam earthquake. And the Boxing Day Tsunami. And the Kashmir quake. And the Euro heat wave. And the economic collapse. And the Patriot Act. And Gitmo. And Abu Ghraib. And Palin. And Obama. And Bush. And Cheney. And Rumsfeld. And Putin. And Lehman. And Bear Stearns. And high oil prices. And high unemployment.
But besides that, I totally agree.
hehe, Bam earthquake. Bam.
In a lot of the other decades, you mention good and bad stuff that happened in other countries and yet you name the 40's the best because WWII ended up being a good thing (I guess) for the USA? I guess all the other horrible s**t that happened in other countries doesn't really register. I get this is a comedy article, but come on, usually in Cracked there is both FACT and comedy, which is why I enjoy it.
ReplyI know there is a very large international audience that visits cracked, but under the banner it basically says that this website is going to focus on American things.... just putting that out there
I really wish you guys would cut the transphobia out. it makes me feel like I am not welcome here.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesI think you're reaching a bit. He only poked fun at Michael Bay once, and it wasn't even about transformers.
I don't see it as "phobia". It is snide and derisive, yes, but nowhere have I ever seen Cracked talk about how horrifying transgendered people are... they simply use them as a punchline, as they do with every race, gender, and other demographic out there.
You aren't. Get back behind the gym.
I really don't think I've seen them dare to make a similar joke about a Black, Latina, or Asian woman anywhere. I guess we just get used for the more derisive generalized punchlines by accident of fate.
Hey, I'm open-minded. I'm up for anything! Welcome!