It is hard to believe today, but the decade of the 2010s began 15 years ago. 2010 doesn’t really feel like the distant past. But when you take the time to think about it, you realize that there have been significant advances in technology, television, music and fashion.
That doesn’t mean people can’t be nostalgic about an era that wasn’t all that long ago. 2010 was sort of a simpler time before so many of the dramatic moments of the last ten years. Below are nine examples of things from the era that people miss very much.
1. Blackberry Phones
Today, while shopping for cell phones, you pretty much have two choices: an iPhone or an Android. It wasn’t always that way. The iPhone has been dominant since the start, but it once had to compete with companies like Nokia, Palm, and Motorola. And the biggest competitor to Apple’s supremacy was Blackberry.
Blackberry phones had a small screen but a large keypad for typing. Perhaps the best feature of the phone was BBM, which is still better than text messaging. While there have been some attempts to bring the phone back, they haven’t been successful.
2. Wondering How Lost Was Going to End
The television show Lost, created by Jeffrey Lieber, J.J. Abrams, and Damon Lindelof premiered on ABC in September of 2004. The series, about an airplane that crashed onto a desert island, was an immediate hit both for its mystery and the chemistry between the main characters.
The show was wrapping up in 2010 and viewers who had watched for six seasons were very excited about having some of their biggest questions answered. The ending was regarded well by critics, but fans were upset about the lack of answers. But still, plenty of us miss the excitement of tuning in for each new episode.
3. Silly Bandz
Created by the Japanese company Passkey Designs in 2002, Silly Bandz were brightly colored bracelets that were shaped like animals or other objects. It took them almost a decade to come over to the United States, but once they did, they rapidly became a hot item.
The bands were sold at stores like Learning Express before working their way into the malls. Kids loved taking part in the trend and parents were happy to buy them something that wasn’t a video game or app. Just like any other fad, they slowly disappeared.
4. Dadwear
Girls may love and adore their fathers and grandfathers, but you wouldn’t think that they would want to dress like them. That idea was turned on its head in the 2010s when the Dadwear trend began to take over the fashion world.
The clothes from the Dadwear trend are exactly what you think they would be. Girls walked around wearing very baggy sweatshirts and polo shirts and rocked the kind of hats usually seen on men in their 50s. While the trend was fun and cute, it is now gone in the sands of time.
5. The Planking Trend
Planks are a popular exercise at nearly any gym as the simple movement backs a lot of punch especially if you can do one for a long time. For some reason, egged on by social media, people began to plank randomly in public and take pictures so they could publish them on their feeds.
Again, thanks to social media, planking was a global fad rather than an American one and was just as popular in England and Australia. Eventually there was some controversy related to the fad and at least one reported death and it slowly faded away.
6. Jeggings
The idea behind Jeggings wasn’t all that difficult. They were pants that provided the comfort of leggings while looking like jeans. A large enough group of women decided that the pants were fashionable, and they quickly became a fad, with everyone from celebrities to soccer Moms taking part.
Jeggings aren’t really around anymore for multiple reasons. First, the athleisure look is totally in and people can just wear leggings from a company like Lululemon that don’t look like jeans. The technology behind jeans has also grown, with stretch fabric making them nearly as comfortable as a pair of sweatpants.
7. Vine
Many prominent websites and apps debuted in the 2010s, but few were more popular than Vine. The site allowed users to post 6-second clips to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. The short video period led to some incredibly creative videos that became big hits all over the internet.
Vine had a rapid rise and was purchased by Twitter just four months after its founding. But in 2017, Twitter announced it would be shutting the website down for good. While Vine is gone, it has had a clear influence on the internet, with TikTok coming out shortly afterwards and features like Reels on Instagram.
8. Dystopian Fiction
Literature in the 2000s was all about wizards and witches, but the 2010s were all about people living in a horrible future. Two of the most famous examples of dystopian fiction are The Hunger Games and the Divergent Series.
In addition to being best-selling books, the two series would become hit films with multiple sequels. Thanks to their success on both the best-seller lists and the box office, they would continue to inspire more of the same kinds of films. Today, dystopian fiction still exists, but it is nowhere near as popular.
9. Katy Perry’s A-List Status
There was a time when Katy Perry was a titan of the pop music scene along with Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga. She released hit song after hit song and had the ability to sell out arenas anywhere around the world.
Perry’s star has fallen dramatically since her time at the top of the charts. While she has continued to act as a host on American Idol, her last album was a commercial and critical flop, and she was heavily criticized for her voyage on the Blue Origin spacecraft.