Pop culture. What fashions (in clothes, hairstyles, facial hair and jewelry) are currently popular among babies? Older children? Girls/young women? Boys/young men? Middle-aged women? Middle-aged men? What colors are in? Are piercings and tattoos popular? What are the new designer brand names? What underwear and sleepwear do people of different genders and ages wear? Are clothes androgynous or more gender-divided? What are the common subcultures/cliques among the youth at the time? Are there any new subcultures, and if so, what do they wear, what kind of sports do they play, and what kind of music do they listen to? Who are the hot artists in pop/rock? In hip-hop? In R&B? In reggae? In dance/trance/house/techno? In country music? In Latin and world music? In new-age music? In jazz and blues? What musicals are big? What music is most popular with the different generations? What new musical genres have evolved, what do they sound like, where did they originate, and who are the biggest artists in each of them? What movies are playing at the theaters? Are particular genres (fantasy, horror, gross-out, superhero, etc.) particularly salient in the movies of the time? What TV shows are big? What franchises appeal to children (the equivalent of today’s Barney, Power Rangers and Dora the Explorer)? What are the biggest video game franchises? Do Nintendo, Sega, PlayStation, etc. still dominate the video game industry? Who controls the production of pop culture? Are there giant franchises and bands that are huge, or are these things produced at a more grass-roots level (e.g. through YouTube) and spread virally? What are the hot cellphone games? What novels and novelists are popular? What are kids reading? Is virtual reality popular? What hobbies (skateboarding, poker, marbles, etc.) are popular? Are there any new hobbies (such as hoverboarding)? What Internet memes are popular? What are the faddish foods that have become newly popular? Is being healthy and physically fit in, or are people couch potatoes?
Angels are a popular brand of tennis shoe. Some people have System of a Down beards. There is still body piercing.
One genre of music is grank. A popular pop singer is Jenée. Artists include the Shrine Kneelers (whose albums include Hypnagogic), Straight Off Gibraltar, Plasma, Purple Kohlrabi (who do the song “The Perfect Storm”), Genisa, Guillotinex, the Scroungers, the Ugly Shits, and Galaxia. Edgy artists include Sulfur Pie (with lead singer Stan Dzwonkowski, and such songs as “The Reason”), Glue Stain, Feel the Brace, and Spandex. Bleach (lead singer Mark Giannakis) does such songs as “All Fed Up”, “Around the Rainbow” (a psychedelic song with a techno-trance beat),“I’d Like to Like You”, “Pheromone Girl”, and “Virgo Star”. Rap still exists. Ethan Milian is an artist known for his dusty voice. The Dragonflies do the song “Flipside”. Aquetta is a musician with a current song called “Bring Me the Day”, who does yoga underwater in her music video for the song and has a new-agey feel to her. Thirst (lead singer Zach Stillwell) is an example of a kuro band; kuro is a genre of music with a dark, foreboding sound (“Stark Doorways” is one Thirst song). Lorito is a music genre of Ecuador. “Hipster Hip-hop Hippo” is a popular techno song. All at Once are a trendy boy band who have a song called “How Sweet You Are”. A past musician was reggae artist Brandon Ifill, who died of a heroin overdose at age 27. Young people enjoy raving.
Elevel is a video game invented by Jeff King that includes secret levels.
Skateboarding is a popular pastime.
A Sunday night sitcom is Pals. Two characters on the show, Raine and Aidan, have dated each other twice. (It ended the same way both times. Each time Raine and Aidan mutually decided to end it, and they stayed friends.) Cotton Candy Castle is a popular children’s TV show.
People drink a lot of coffee (including coffee from Jeff King’s invention, Max-i-Mized coffee powder), and still drink Fanta. Apple juice, pomegranate juice and sapodilla juice are popular drinks, while other juices people drink include mango cooler and cranberry-hibiscus blend. A faddish drink is the maltuccino – alcoholic coffee. Ilana Greenberg invented powdered tea in 2021 when she was still a child. A food fad is psychedelic candies, such as Swirl 360's, Schatz, and Lava Stix. Another candy is candy necklaces with pieces are shaped like little cylinders. Likki-zunge is red, white and pink candy that changes color as it sits on your tongue (the bag shows pictures of teens, all in red-and-white-striped T-shirts). Tropo-bran is a breakfast cereal made of golden bran flakes, with chunks of banana, sapodilla and pineapple thrown in. It can be identified by the orangutan on the box.