🇺🇸United States · 90s
Party Like It's...
Y2K panic, The Matrix, and the last year of the old world.
4 milestones of 1999
Two students killed 12 classmates and a teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado before taking their own lives. It changed how America thought about school safety forever.
Mass shooting — honor victims, do not name shooters, acknowledge lasting trauma
The world feared computers would crash at midnight. Billions were spent on fixes. When the clock struck 12, nothing happened. The biggest non-event of the century.
Shawn Fanning's file-sharing service let people download music for free. The music industry would never recover. The future of digital content was being rewritten.
The Wachowskis' 'The Matrix' blended philosophy, kung fu, and bullet time. 'What is real?' became the question of the digital age.
70% local · 30% international
The Matrix
The Wachowskis — Red pill or blue pill. Cinema bent reality.
Fight Club
David Fincher — We don't talk about Fight Club. But everyone did.
The Sixth Sense
M. Night Shyamalan — 'I see dead people.' The twist heard round the world.
American Beauty
Sam Mendes — Best Picture. Suburban malaise dissected.
Eyes Wide Shut
Stanley Kubrick — Box office hit in the US — TMDB 7.5
The Sopranos
1999-2007 — Tony Soprano and the golden age of TV drama began on HBO.
SpongeBob SquarePants
1999-present — A yellow sponge in a pineapple became a cultural institution.
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
1999-2002 — Regis Philbin. 'Final answer?' America was hooked.
Currency: USD
Inflation: 2.2%
Peak dot-com boom. NASDAQ doubled in a year. Money felt infinite. It wasn't.
Inflation-adjusted values
Napster
Free music downloads. The music industry's nightmare had begun.
BlackBerry
RIM launched the BlackBerry pager — mobile email for executives.
Wi-Fi standard
IEEE 802.11b made wireless internet practical for the first time.
TiVo
The DVR launched. Watching TV 'on your schedule' was revolutionary.
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