Zeroed out

It was a Balloon Boy kind of decade.

Shiny, full of hot air, played out endlessly on TV and the Internet and, ultimately, empty and anti-climatic.

As 2009 draws to a close, it’s natural to want to stop and take stock, not just of the last 12 months, but also the last 10 years. It seems like just moments ago that we were still freaking out over the impending Y2K doom, practicing our target shooting while hoarding Duraflames, canned beans and giant barrels of water.

Now, some 3,650-odd days later, it’s hard to believe it’s already time to say goodbye to the 2000s.

Couldn’t happen soon enough.

The 2000s were so dismal, so lackluster and so devoid of great accomplishment that we couldn’t even come up with something decent to call them. The Zeros? The Aughts? The Aughties? The Noughties? Really, the Noughties?

Epic fail.

We started the 2000s on a relative high. As Y2K fears quickly dissipated, the Internet-fueled stock market was booming, unemployment was low and we still believed Britney Spears was a virgin.

But the comfort and contentment were short-lived, and in the end, the 2000s were a period bookended by two major moments and two key emotions: fear and hope.

First came the attacks of September 11, 2001, and then, on November 4, 2008, the election of our first African-American president.

Although I still retain a glimmer of optimism about the latter event, I believe it’s the former’s stamp that will forever demarcate the first decade of the 21st century as an era marked by war, bankruptcy, indecision, tragedy, text messages, Twitter and reality television.

The dot-com bust. Bush vs. Gore. Hurricane Katrina. So You Think You Can Dance. Bernie Madoff. Michael Jackson’s death.

This was a decade punctuated by an obsessive devotion to celebrity and all its banal accouterments. There was unapologetic self-absorption (Kanye West, Paris Hilton), deluded and oft-dangerous self-promotion (the Balloon Boy’s father Richard Heene, the White House-crashing Salahis and, again, Paris Hilton), noisy, hateful stupidity (Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Carrie Prejean) and outrageously meaningless famemongering (Paris, Paris, Paris).

The 2000s were also a decade distinguished by the spread of digitized sharing and social networking, and yet even with YouTube, Wikipedia and Facebook, it seems that we feel more bereft of meaning and connection than ever. All the forwarded kitten videos in the world can’t replace an old-fashioned blood-and-flesh peer-to-peer network.

Of course, there were amazing moments, too.

In addition to Barack Obama’s historical inauguration, we also witnessed the important—if frustratingly slow baby steps—toward the legalization of gay marriage. Al Gore and the Prius heralded the mainstreaming of the green movement, NASA discovered water on the moon and the Red Sox finally won the World Series.

And yet all we can seem to manage is a collective shrug. It’s as though this decade’s seemingly endless onslaught of turbulence has shellshocked us into cultural and political apathy.

Now we stand at the dawn of 2010, pausing for the most micro of nanoseconds before we continue this hurtle toward the abyss. What will this century’s adolescent decade bring? More of the same? Or, in true teenage fashion, growth, realized potential and fulfillment?

Hope to see you on the other side.