Ten years ago, I wrote what would become the first article on this here website, a list of 25 signs you grew up in the nineties. I thought it fitting that I’d now tackle the next decade, so please find below my personal “Teen of the Aughts” list. You know you were a teenager in the aughts when…
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You think Britney Spear is talented.
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You think vampires are for girls.
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When your elders tell you that MTV used to play music videos, you laugh and exclaim, “Why didn’t people just go on YouTube?”
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You get your news from The Daily Show (which sadly puts you ahead of those who get theirs from Fox News).
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You believe “summer blockbuster” is code for “grown men in tights winging about having super-powers, boo-hoo”. Also, you think every sequel to a successful blockbuster should be accompanied by a third perfunctory entry that consists of roughly five hours of fighting to melodramatic choir music.
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You think pop singers are defined by their synthetic robot voices.
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For you, sitcoms involve people staring at the camera while they share their innermost thoughts, but no laugh track. That’s unrealistic.
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You view Darth Vader as stilted, fey, and a bit of a whiner.
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You think the term “practical effect” in movies refers to CGI that practically looks real.
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You think love is when someone changes his or her Facebook status to “In a Relationship”.
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Your first breakup was on Twitter.
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You view Indiana Jones as an old fart fighting communists while searching for alien artifacts rather than as a badass fighting Nazis while searching for historical artifacts. Also, you wonder why he bothers with these things when he should be mowing down terrorists like any proper action hero.
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You think Batman has laryngitis.
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You don’t think Justin Bieber is an ironic name.
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Your father won’t shut up about The Wire.
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You think Kevin James is funnier than Eddie Murphy (and, let’s face it, at this point, you may be right).
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You believe the Transformers are racist.
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“Reality”, for you, means entitled twenty-something-year-olds behaving like animals in front of a camera.
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You associate “52” with DC Comics rather than the number of weeks in a year.
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You think every horror flick should feature at least one rape and torture sequence.
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You don’t understand why people used to buy their downloaded music on brittle, disk-shaped pieces of petrol.
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You know Kevin Smith as a professional blowhard rather than a filmmaker.
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You think John McLane is lame.
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You believe that, when celebrities die, they go to Dancing with the Stars rather than Hollywood Squares.
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You’ve bullied at least one person in your life. Her name was Rebecca Black.
