"let me live the life i did in the beginning"
by my calculations there was at least one aborted version of the y2k revival which kinda? predated the mcbling style one which became most popular during 2018-2022, and it was nerdier and kinda more cyberpunk oriented. back in the day my sole experience of this alternative y2k option came via princess nokia. she was possibly also the sole champion of this version of the thing at the time. idk i was just on tumblr.
i loved princess nokia in high school. to b rlly real, i use to think she was so cool. her style and her aesthetic interests seemed so fresh to me, they were like a stylized version of my own childhood. winx club and anime tht looked like the shit my aunts use to watch... video games tht looked like the shit my aunts use to play...nascent social media like the kind my older cousin was allowed on but i wasnt yet bc i was too young..nokia gave toonami. her mvs were the first time i encountered any kind of modern fashion or aesthetic which harkened back to the mid or early 2000s. and the first time id seen a (at the time) contemporary music artist take so much interest in talking about either pop or sub culture during the aughts in a nostalgic way was probably in her music. of course y2k would go on to become a hugely popular micro-aesthetic (or watever they're called) online. so many video essays about this now, and my memory's too jumbled to recap the timeline anyway, so you can imagine what im getting at hopefully. but its been freaking huge.
i remember watching the interest in y2k aesthetics rise across the internet among ppl my age really slowly over time. from 2014 until about 2022, i guess. from this princess nokia shit to pc music to all the shit tht came after, it's been a long time. i wasn't surprised at how popular the y2k glam stuff in particular got. however, in retrospect, i am sometimes stunned that people around my age were seemingly looking backwards into our childhoods in that way for a span of nearly ten years. thts a lot of reflecting..i should think more abt tht later. but its almost 12am im abt to shut my brain down for the night.
i guess im also not surprised that princess nokias markedly unglamorous y2k visions weren't the ones tht caught steam among the online public. they're always the ones ill love the most though. guess i use to watch too much inuyasha on adult swim to not love them.