FEATURE
Was Y2K Really A-OK?
by Anthony Aycock
In her new book, Year 2000: The Inside Story of Y2K Panic and the Greatest Cooperative Effort Ever, risk management expert Nancy P. James writes, “Year 2000, like COVID-19, was a completely new problem requiring enormous resources for discovery and remediation.” Unlike the novel coronavirus, Y2K ended up being less of a bang than a whimper. But there is no denying that it was a uniquely terrifying prospect.
Those of us who lived through it may have thought the lack of disaster was the result of widespread hysteria, but James demonstrates instead that it was due to “the greatest cooperative effort ever undertaken by humanity on the face of the earth,” which is confirmation that we can work across divides to get something done.
Nowadays, Y2K-era nostalgia has set in big time, with clothing, music, and other elements of the period being brought back or emulated, such as the A24 horror comedy Y2K that hit theaters in December 2024. January 2025 is the 25th anniversary of the End of All Things that never began. Here are some resources to take you back.
HISTORY AND ANALYSIS
‘Apocalypse Then: When Y2K Didn’t Lead to the End of Civilization’
Maybe you don’t get what was so scary about the year 2000. Maybe you’re too young to remember, or it’s been so long that you’ve put it out of your mind. A Forbes magazine article called “Apocalypse Then: When Y2K Didn’t Lead to the End of Civilization” by Frederick E. Allen offers a great primer: “[Computer] software thought of years as two digits. When the year 99 gave way to the year 00, data would behave as if it were about the year 1900 … and system upon system in an almost infinite chain of dominoes would fail.” It expertly details what it was like living in those not-so-final days, when doomsday scenarios were as common as memes.
‘20 Years Later, the Y2K Bug Seems Like a Joke—Because Those Behind the Scenes Took It Seriously’
And why didn’t those horrifying possibilities come to pass? How was the Y2K problem averted? Who saved the world? TIME ’s “20 Years Later, the Y2K Bug Seems Like a Joke—Because Those Behind the Scenes Took It Seriously” by disaster assistance specialist Francine Uenuma begins in the waning hours of Dec. 31, 1999, telling the story of John Koskinen, President Bill Clinton’s “Y2K czar,” and his efforts.
Executive Order 13073—Year 2000 Conversion
On Feb. 4, 1998, President Clinton issued Executive Order 13073, which established the President’s Council on the Year 2000 Conversion, whose job was to coordinate the efforts of the federal government to prevent digital disaster. Part of that effort was the Y2K Information Coordination Center at y2k.gov, a now-defunct website full of advice and information for the public.
‘The Y2K Attitude Era—A Cultural Middle Finger’
Ah, the 1990s. It was a “unified period of cultural rebelliousness that started with The Simpsons [in 1989] and kept getting crazier until it peaked in 1999/2000,” according to “The Y2K Attitude Era—A Cultural Middle Finger,” a short but fascinating documentary on YouTube that does a masterful job of capturing that turn-of-the-century ethos.
‘The Contingency Contingent: My Fake Job in Y2K Preparedness’
An essay by City University of New York professor Leigh Claire La Berge called “The Contingency Contingent” details her time spent in a “fake job” at the accounting firm Arthur Andersen in 1998 and 1999. The job: getting companies ready for Y2K. The essay has a Liar’s Poker feel, full of artful details and delivered in a voice that is ironic but not jaded.
RELIGION AND PSYCHOLOGY
Millennialism
Though having nothing to do with computers, millennialism—the belief that Jesus Christ will someday return to earth to reign for 1,000 years—shares with Y2K a focus on the end times. It is a cornerstone of evangelical Christianity, but it’s also more than that: It’s “a cross-cultural concept grounded in the expectation of a time of supernatural peace and abundance on earth,” according to the word’s entry in Britannica, which traces the philosophy from just after the death of Jesus up to the modern era.
‘Ten Notable Apocalypses That (Obviously) Didn’t Happen’
Throughout history, of course, there have been thousands of predictions of the world’s end that didn’t come to pass, maybe millions. Smithsonian magazine’s “Ten Notable Apocalypses That (Obviously) Didn’t Happen” by Mark Strauss zeroes in on 10, one of which is Y2K. Others are more obscure, such as the 1910 appearance of Halley’s Comet, whose gaseous tail was thought to be a world-ender and led to people purchasing gas masks and “comet pills”—the hydroxychloroquine of its day.
Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University
Though it now exists as a digital ghost haunting the Wayback Machine, Boston University’s Center for Millennial Studies was once “the world’s largest academic research center dedicated to millennial studies.” In this case, “millennial” doesn’t refer to a generational group but to millennialism. The article links still work on this site, enabling modern readers to know what pre-2000 scholars thought of these issues.
‘Y2K Paranoia: Extremists Confront the Millennium’
In 1999, the New York-based Anti-Defamation League published the “Y2K Paranoia: Extremists Confront the Millennium” report, which discusses millennial beliefs in the context of the then-growing Y2K concerns. In particular, it focuses on violent extremist groups such as the National Socialist White Revolutionary Party, which claimed that Russia would “take advantage of the civil and military chaos caused by the Y2K computer bug” to launch nuclear, chemical, and biological attacks on the U.S. Some things never change.
‘When Y2K Sent Us Into a Digital Depression’
“As New Year’s Eve 2000 approached,” writes Jake Rossen in the excellent Mental Floss article “When Y2K Sent Us Into a Digital Depression,” “it became clear that Y2K had evolved beyond a software hiccup. Outside of war and natural disasters, it represented one of the few times society seemed poised for a dystopian future.” Once you’ve mastered the technical details and religious implications of Y2K, this article is a good place to turn for the social impact.
‘Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next’
What do you call people who were born in the years leading up to Y2K? Millennials, of course. Some think lumping people into generational groups (Boomers, Gen X, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, etc.) is futile, but there is plenty of science behind it, as the 2010 Pew Research Center report “Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next” makes clear. After covering Millennial demographics, the report turns to topics such as identity, work and education, social media habits, family values, lifestyle, civic engagement, and religious beliefs. It provides a nice antidote to the stereotypes that abound on the internet of Millennials as selfish, disengaged commitment-phobes.
ART AND LITERATURE
‘The Weird, Wonderful World of Y2K Survival Guides: A Look Back’
Time Bomb 2000 . Millennium Meltdown . Y2K Survival Guide and Cookbook . These are a few of the nonfiction books surveyed in a 2019 article from Fast Company called “The Weird, Wonderful World of Y2K Survival Guides: A Look Back.” It also links to a video called “Y2K Family Survival Guide,” hosted by an out-of-place-looking Leonard Nimoy.
‘10 Books to Fuel Your Y2K Nostalgia’
Celadon Books published “10 Books to Fuel Your Y2K Nostalgia” by Brandon Miller. Though none of these novels has to do with the Y2K bug, they are all set in the late 1990s/early 2000s and are sure to get you nostalgic for the era. My favorite is The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix, a book that isn’t laugh-out-loud funny but does put a sly turn-of-the-century spin on an age-old topic: how to kill the undead.
‘Y2K Aesthetics Are So Hot Right Now—And So Is the Era’s Existential Dread’
Part of CNN’s The Past Is Now series, “Y2K Aesthetics Are So Hot Right Now —And So Is the Era’s Existential Dread” by AJ Willingham looks back at the era’s zeitgeist and connects it to what’s happening in the 2020s. This quote by researcher Froyo Tam says it best: “We still see an uneasy relationship with technology, especially advances in artificial intelligence and technologies that change our day-to-day routines. That is the kind of future we imagined decades ago. And now that it’s here, it causes the same unease that earlier technologies did then.”
‘Art Trends: The Y2K Aesthetic Revisits the Fun, Trashy Futurism of the 2000s’
Another article proclaiming that “the 2000s are back,” not in politics or technological outlook but in fashion, art, and pop culture, is “Art Trends: The Y2K Aesthetic Revisits the Fun, Trashy Futurism of the 2000s” by Rafael Velez for the Creative Resources platform. Don’t believe it? Check out a July 4, 2024, USA TODAY article about the resurgence of—wait for it—flip phones.
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