Previous Post Because that easily dwarfs the whole "Twilight" thing, and to be fair I think it's going to be looked back as a product of this decade more than the one before. I do remember now that someone wrote a Parodyverse version of Harry Potter and nobody at the board knew what it was back then, which would have been either 1999 or 2000. In any event, Happy New Year! to everyone at the board. May this decade be far less crappy than the last.

Though you're right that Harrymania is more a product of the " Noughties ", and should stand the test of time far better than Twilight.

As for my own opinions about the pop culture of this decade; I don't agree with CSFB!'s assessment that it was increasingly sterile and anti-intellectual. In fact, I think that the Noughties mark an increasing democratization of pop culture. With the internet revolutionizing distribution, and allowing a free form of publishing, there are more opportunities than ever for people to find an audience-- even if it's just a small niche. Webcomics are a good example; downloadable content to mobile devices is another, as are video websites like Youtube and Hulu. It's not a utopia for artists, but it does offer new possibilities of which we've only begun to scratch the surface.