The Word of the Decade

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Fig

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So, it'S been a full decade since the Y2K freakout, and to all practical purpose, a decade since we hit the twenty-first century (yes, technically the first decade of the XXIst was 2001-2010, but everyone celebrated the new century and millenia in 2000, so...)

It's been an incredible decade in many ways. Things that should never have happened, did; and things that should have happened a long time ago, finally did. Revolutions that no one could have seen coming came out of the blue, and revolutions that everyone expected never happened.

But if you were to find a single word that, to you, best summarize the past decade, what would it be? Terrorism, for 9-11 and the ensuing War on Terror? Bush, for the way his presidency and its after-effects dominated American politics? Religion, for the way fanatical religious believes have shaped politics the world over? Or something else entirely?

(I have my own word, which isn't above, I'm just not sharing it yet).
 
Some justification would be appreciated, guys :p.

Mine is probably more obvious, but I think it's the word that best define how the world has changed in the past ten years.

True, the word is a little older than ten years. A lot older, in fact, but ten years ago, it was a novelty, a cute toy for geeks, and something nobody paid much attention to.

Now, ten years later, it's where people turn naturally for just about any imaginable piece of information. It's where they go for news. It's in no small part where political campaigns are fought and won, and where donations for worthy causes are gathered. It's where people purchase their books and games, and where they play those games. It's where they watch their videos, where they reconnect with old friends and acquaintances. It's the tool that make it possible for people in California to have friends in Russia, Japan and Argentina, and for amateur artists, writers and musicians to show the world what they can do (for good or for ill) to anyone.

As far as I'm concerned, the word of the decade is Internet.
 
I'd say the best word would be "naive". Whether it was naive optimism about the global financial system, naive optimism about the debt bubble that was building, naive optimism about "transforming" Afghanistan and Iraq, naivete on the part of two American commander-in-chiefs, naivete about the difficulties of managing a multipolar world... I think people got a little too crazy in the 90s and the early part of this decade and are now getting a massive wake-up call that the future is still pretty ugly. Unfortunately, it seems that too many people are still living in something of a fantasy world...
 
Test. World leaders and their people put to the test; some failed and others didn't.
 
As for me, I'm not too sure, although one candidate is fear. The decade started off with quite a scare when it came to Y2K (although I don't remember much of it though), and it seems to me that it ends in quite a scare too, with recent developments. It have certainly been a frightening decade, at least in some aspects.

Although naive and Internet are also good candidates.
 
Grief. So many things have happened like wars, natural disasters, and among smaller things like the West Nile Virus and Swine Flu outbreaks. There are more but I think grief would be an appropriate word to sum it up since so many people have died and so many things have happened where people were just sad, etc.
 
Change.

So much change has happened over this decade, it is truly amazing. America got their first black president, which is a huge step in the way of race equality. Also coming to presidency, Bush changed the look of the country quite a lot of well. He also changed much of the look and landscape of Afghanistan/Iraq/etc as well. Afghanistan has also changed its look as well, with 9/11. 9/11 changed a lot. A lot of peoples lives were changed, whether it be fatally or for their families, with grief. It changed the face of terror, to something a lot more bloody and violent. It changed the meaning of safety, for we thought that we would be safe on that day, but we weren't. Saftey is now..much more harder to use. The music industry has changed, with artists like Britney Spears, P!nk, Lady Gaga (recently, however) and especially Miley Cyrus influencing the radio today. Which in turn, has changed modern society itself. Society has changed to a 'live-action society' where everyone either hates it or loves it. With that, the internet has changed as well. It has evolved.

We have evolved.
Changed.
 
Convergence , Internet, And Change are some of the things that pop on my head.

Now when this decade started the United States was looked upon as the end point of modern society, but hey turns out a bunch of fanatical ultra-religious terrorist group can drag a whole country into bleeding itself financially.

Also this decade has seen some conventional view points shattered as our collective ostrich like reaction to the world's problems have gotten to the point that the Chickens have come home to roost. :|

I seriously hope the next decade will be better as I am going to lay the foundations of my life during this time. :O
 
I think "Change", "Naive" and the like are...too generic. There probably isn't a single decade that didn't see heavy change or grief, or where leaders were not tested (except, perhaps, the nineties), or where people didn't think things had gotten worse over the decade.

The internet revolution is something that's been pretty unique to the the first decade of the twenty-first century (although of course who knows what will happen via the internet in the next decade), which is why I think it fits best.
 
I would say: Convenient.

I've been watching, and all my life but especially in the past ten years, we have evolved into a lazy people and this truly is the age of convenience.

People text message each other from across the room. Forget actually sending out party invitations...just create a facebook group.

Yep. My word is convenient.
 
technology. Technology has really improved over these years.
 
Evil Figment said:
I think "Change", "Naive" and the like are...too generic. There probably isn't a single decade that didn't see heavy change or grief, or where leaders were not tested (except, perhaps, the nineties), or where people didn't think things had gotten worse over the decade.

The internet revolution is something that's been pretty unique to the the first decade of the twenty-first century (although of course who knows what will happen via the internet in the next decade), which is why I think it fits best.
Click to expand...

Part of the problem with this exercise is that we're essentially predicting what people will be saying about this decade 50 years from now, and trying to package it up in one word.
 
My vote is weapons of mass destruction as a phrase. =P It's what started it all, helped lead to Iraq in addition to Afganistan, and the terrorism that many countries currently face.

If not that, then my vote goes for my most hated word: Googling.
 
Hoew bout something like
Facebook verbTo search for a person on Facebook
or maybe
Vlog or Blog
 
The word that best describes this decade is simple. It defines what's happened in every single aspect of politics, peace and sincerity.

FAILURE.
 
Whoa

As in holy shit this decade has been one massive decade of dickfuckery going up and down tossing and turning us.
 
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