Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything (Essays on the Future That Never Was)

“Nothing I’ve read has cut to the heart of the ’00s like Y2K.” — Bustle

Perfect for fans of Jia Tolentino and Chuck Klosterman, Y2K is a delightfully nostalgic and bitingly told exploration of pop culture history about how the early 2000s forever changed us and the world we live in.

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 thanks to the dot-com bubble. 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 this landmark essay collection, Y2K, one of our most brilliant young critics Colette Shade offers a darkly funny meditation on everything from celebrity 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 the housing crisis.

Blending sharp social commentary with a millennial memoir voice, 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 work of cultural history that holds a startling mirror to our past, present, and future.

This brilliant and darkly funny collection explores the moments that defined a generation:

• A Boom and a Bust: From the techno-optimism of the dot-com bubble to the McMansions that foretold the housing crash, Shade connects the political economy of the era to its cultural artifacts.
• The Rise of the Internet: A deep dive into the days of AOL chatrooms, dial-up modems, and early internet porn, exploring how the web’s arrival reshaped everything from our social lives to our self-perception.
• Pop Culture Time Capsule: Searing and affectionate critiques of the decade’s most memorable artifacts, from Smash Mouth’s “All Star” and Ludacris’s sexual awakenings to body glitter and the Hummer H2.
• A Personal Reckoning: A fiercely honest account of coming of age in the Y2K era, linking the author’s own eating disorder to the impossible beauty standards set by fashion magazines and the collapse of the USSR.