Colette Shade — Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything - with Rachel Vorona Cote

The early 2000s conjures images of inflatable furniture, flip phones, and low-rise jeans. It was a new millennium and the future looked bright, promising prosperity for all. The internet had arrived, and technology was shiny and fun. For many, it felt like the end of history: no more wars, racism, or sexism. But then history kept happening. Twenty-five years after the ball dropped on December 31st, 1999, we are still living in the shadows of the Y2K Era.In Y2K, one of our most brilliant young critics Colette Shade offers a darkly funny meditation on everything from the pop culture to the political economy of the period. By close reading Y2K artifacts like the Hummer H2, Smash Mouth's "All Star," body glitter, AOL chatrooms, Total Request Live, and early internet porn, Shade produces an affectionate yet searing critique of a decade that started with a boom and ended with a crash.In one essay Colette unpacks how hearing Ludacris's hit song "What's Your Fantasy" shaped a generation's sexual awakening; in another she interrogates how her eating disorder developed as rail-thin models from the collapsed USSR flooded the pages of Vogue; in another she reveals how the McMansion became an ominous symbol of the housing collapse.Perfect for fans of Jia Tolentino and Chuck Klosterman, Y2K is the first book to fully reckon with the mixed legacy of the Y2K Era--a perfectly timed collection that holds a startling mirror to our past, present, and future.PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063333949?ic_referral=Rj5iYs8MjMgaD36N2PY4vLcDcxEUShiteqhI_IPxxMYwM267U-7fH-jQYxv7dSC8gSLVNUhtI_UDLiT89uBohphbD1nz3lakCego62VayvoRTeq1bq6KwRNkoCAh7DfAbQnhJQColette Shade's work has appeared in The New Republic, The Baffler, Interview Magazine, The Nation, and Gawker. Y2K is her first book.Shade is in conversation with Rachel Vorona Cote. Cote is the author of TOO MUCH: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Women Today. She has written essays and criticism for The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, The Atlantic, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Poetry Foundation, Lapham's Quarterly, and The Washington Post, and a number of other publications. In a past life, she was ABD at the University of Maryland, where she studied Victorian literature. She lives in Takoma Park, Maryland.*recorded 2/1/2025