Y2K

A brilliantly provocative and entertaining essay collection about the Y2K era, the generation-defining period that birthed everything from AOL Instant Messenger, the Hummer H2, bling-era rap, and low-rise jeans, to McMansions, anti-Bush chain emails, Abu Ghraib, and the subprime mortgage crisis.  

The early 2000s conjures images of dial-up internet connections, inflatable furniture, and the feeling that the stock market would go up forever. The arrival of the new millennium was marked by a sense of both unbridled optimism and existential dread. For many it felt like the end of history; we solved all the big problems. No more wars, no more racism, no more sexism. But then history kept happening.

In Y2K, one of our most incisive young essayists Colette Shade offers a darkly funny meditation, unpacking everything from the pop culture to the political economy of the period. By zooming in on Y2K cultural artifacts like celebrity tabloids, Starbucks, TRL, and the rise of internet porn, Shade produces an affectionate yet searing critique of an era 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 the course of 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 explores how post-9/11 hysteria curdled into a kitschy patriotic consumerism that warps our politics to this day.

Perfect for fans of Joan Didion, Jia Tolentino, and Chuck Klosterman, Y2K is a perfectly timed and deeply personal exploration of the final days of millennial optimism.