Growing up in the 2000s fucked my brain hard. The sexism, homophobia and racism coupled with the free-range parenting that was simultaneously neglectful while gaslighting everyone into thinking that it was too coddling, and an internet that simply did not give a fuck who it traumatized. All topped off with a resurgence of Western jingoism from the “war in terror”.
The only good thing about that period was some of the videogames were okay I guess but only if you avoid ANYTHING remotely military flavoured. A lot of shit outside of Nintendo was afraid of colour and everything was that washed out brown. Just a miserable time. Everyone was so uncreative and the world had some fucked up Southpark brainworms.
Apparently the washed-out brown thing in games of that era was a way for developers to get around the graphics limitations of the hardware with “grittiness”.
Definitely agree that the War on Terror both destroyed political discourse for a decade and just fucked culture. Outside of a handful of anti-war protest songs (and some of that veered into lib territory), there was this general sense of avoiding anything spicy due to the War on Terror and “remembering 9/11.” Politically, we’re still dealing with the fallout of that as this belief of Dems that running candidates that are former military and/or CIA will win over swing voters is them learning all the wrong lessons from the Bush-Kerry race.
However, I don’t think free-range parenting was that pervasive, that seemed like more of a minority backlash to the more common helicopter parenting. What I would say happened then was the start of the “mommy wars” and the weaponizing of the “right” way to rear kids as a cultural/political football; that’s when the whining over “participation trophies” became a talking point. Which was toxic and hinted at how future online culture war slop would play out.