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Writer Setting Guide – Y2K

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“Y2K aesthetics are so hot right now – and so is the era’s existential dread.” –  Willingham, A. J.

The kids are wearing weird pants, chunky highlights are back, and silvery, space-age silhouettes are edging their way into vogue.

Like clockwork, the 20-year fashion cycle has made the late 90s/early 2000s cool again. For us millennials, this can bring back a nostalgia for our preteen/teenage years. And for the Gen Zs and Gen Alphas, this reflects a fascination with a time in which the internet did exist—but without all the doodads that make it suck (i.e. social media and smart devices).

If you’d like to write a story in this era (because you’re a Gen Z trying to impress your friends), or you’re a crusty old millennial like me who wants to take a walk down memory lane, let’s take a journey to the Y2K era. A time when dot com fever was on the rise, people messaged their friends on AIM, listened to boy bands, and liked lots and lots of plastic shiny things.

Disclaimers:

  • Don’t write toward trends for the sake of following a trend alone because trends can always change.

  • There’s only so much I can cover. I tried to cover the basics, but I’m sure there’s a lot I missed out on. I’m not writing a book y’all.

Major Events in the Year 1999:

  • Fear of the Y2K Bug: This is the obvious one to have on the list. The world experienced a widespread fear of computer shutdowns and civilization collapse due to a potential computer programming glitch known as the “Y2K Problem.” We’ll discuss this more below.

  • Bill Clinton Impeachment Trial: Let me tell ya, it was very awkward having to hear about a particular kind of white stain on the dress of the president’s intern almost constantly. The entire news cycle was dominated by talk of that stupid dress. Fun fact! My dad took me out of school to go see the president’s impeachment hearing!

  • Columbine High School Shooting: Back in 1999, school shootings were unheard of. (Oh to be back in such times, right?). So when it happened on April 20, 1999, it was all over the news. Some people were even blaming goth rocker Marilyn Manson for corrupting the youth.

  • Launch of Napster: This is a big one. On June 1, 1999, the peer-to-peer file-sharing platform was launched, forever changing music distribution. At that time, the norm was buying and listening to CDs. Napster would eventually lead to the shift in downloading music in the early 2000s. Metallica even sued Napster in 2000 for copyright infringement.

  • Big Film Releases: The Matrix, Fight Club, American Pie, 10 Things I Hate About You, and The Blair Witch Project.

What the Heck Was the Y2K Bug?

The Year 2000 Bug, or millennium bug (abbreviated as the “Y2K” bug), referred to a potential problem in computer systems.

In the early days of computers, memory was expensive, and computers generally had less of it than they do now. In order to save space, programmers abbreviated the four-digit year designation and stored only the final two digits. For example, computers recognized “98” as “1998.” So how would computers interpret “2000”?

There was a fear that when dates were moved from 1999 to 2000 that there would be massive crashes in programs that ran banking, utilities, communications, insurance, manufacturing, government, etc. There were also fears that key devices that used computer chips would fail, including medical equipment, temperature-control systems, and elevators. (Some people even said that planes would fall out of the sky!)

The theory was that when clocks struck midnight on January 1, 2000, affected computer systems, unsure of the year, would crash and worldwide chaos would ensue. Maybe civilization itself would even fall apart!

Obviously that didn’t happen (at least not in this timeline). But that would be cool if you wrote an alternative history in which it did.

U.S. Tech Usage in the Y2K Era

(Source – Our World in Data)

Note: When people refer to the “Y2K era,” they are referring broadly to the time between 1997-2004. In this guide, my focus was prominently on the year 1999, while also acknowledging elements of the late 90s and early 2000s.

The Internet:

As you can see above, 1999 was a turning point in which internet usage started to become more common in U.S. households (it wasn’t just for nerds anymore). People began using email more (even sending out email chains that promised a curse for not continuing the chain), bidding for things on eBay, getting spam about penis enlargement pills in their inboxes (OMG you can’t believe how common that was), talking in chat rooms, sending messages to friends on AIM with abbreviations like “lol” and “brb” and emojis, searching Ask Jeeves, and many people started using websites for the first time.

(A view of AIM from 1997 – Source)

Cyber cafes also started to emerge in this era. Though it seems they were more popular in other countries than the U.S. You could also have someone using the internet at work or school but not having access to it at home.

If you’re writing a story in the late 90s, it’s also important to understand how the internet was different than it is now. People still used dial-up, the internet came on an AOL CD, and you often couldn’t be on a landline phone and on the internet at the same time (without hearing a horrifying SCREEE EE ERRGHHH noise on the phone that sounded like a dying robot). The internet was also slower. Sometimes it could take so long for a page to load that I would get up, get a snack, and return while it was still loading. Though people were also more patient about this kind of thing since the internet was still new, exciting, and full of possibility—when it was “the information superhighway” and not a doom scrolling machine.

I think it’s significant that The Matrix came out in the year 1999, because this year marked the beginning of the shift from a more analog world to a digital one, and even an almost existential worry about where this shift could take us as a species.

SOME KEY TECH DEVELOPMENTS IN THE LATE 90s

1995 – eBay is founded.

1997 – AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) is released and becomes common by 1999.

1997 – The search engine Ask Jeeves comes out.

1999 – AOL buys Netscape. Peer-to-peer file sharing becomes a reality as Napster arrives on the internet, much to the displeasure of the music industry.

1999 – BlackBerry was introduced, a groundbreaking phone that would become an iconic device of high status businessmen and Wall Street executives.

2000 – The Y2K bug doesn’t kill us all and destroy civilization— phew!

Cellphones Were “Dumb Phones”

While cellphone usage in 1999 was still uncommon and largely dumb compared to the smart devices of today, this year represented a turning point where people were just starting to use cellphones more and cellphones were gaining more advanced features. Yet I’d say it would still be extremely uncommon for a teenager to have one. It wasn’t until the mid-2000s that it became commonplace. In general, people were more likely to call their friends on a landline, or possibly message a friend on AIM. Yet in 1999, having a device like a BlackBerry was quite a status symbol for high powered businessmen.

CDs Dominate for Music and Computer Games

(Image Source)

The CD-ROM as we know it was invented in the 80s, but it didn’t go into common use until the late 80s, when people started using it for gaming and music. In the year 1990, tape cassettes were more common for music. However, over time CDs became more prevalent than cassettes, to the point that CDs were the main way to listen to music, play computer games, and use the internet by the late 90s. Though I will mention, while use of floppy disks were becoming less common by the late 90s, people were still using floppy disks for file storage or computer programs. I remember using floppy disks up until the mid-2000s.

Also, people commonly said “CD.” Not many people casually used the term, “CD-ROM.”

VHS and DVDs

If you are wondering how people watched movies at home back then, VHS tapes were still the dominant format in 1999. However, by 2003, DVDs would finally surpass VHS.

Also, going to Blockbuster on a Friday night to rent a movie was still a popular activity among friends and family. Blockbuster is definitely a part of the Y2K era nostalgia.

Y2K Era Music

The above are hits from 1999. Image from Billoard.com.

Latin Pop Goes Mainstream: Artists like Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, and Enrique Iglesias brought Latin music to the forefront of American pop culture. The year 1999 was when “Livin’ la Vida Loca” became a global phenomenon. The year 1996 is when that “Ay Macarena!” song became popular, attracting the fascination of white people everywhere (Really…I think we just stopped doing the Macarena dance at weddings like two years ago lol).

The Bling Era of Rap: By the late 90s, Hip Hop started to become more commercialized and eventually morphed into the Bling Era, which would be very popular in the early 2000s. This was a time when there were a lot of rappers wearing shiny bling and there were shiny metal backgrounds on all the MTV videos. It would be easy to mistake the sets for many of these videos for the inside of a cheese grater. In 1999 we saw the release of Eminem’s “My Name Is,” Missy Elliot’s “Hot Boys,” B.G.’s “Bling Bling,” Ja Rule’s “Holla Holla,” and Nas’s “Nas is Like.”

Pop Punk: While people have been saying “rock is dead” since the late 60s, people were really saying and feeling that by the late 90s. This sentiment was caused by the meteoric rise of pop and hip hop, along with the death of grunge by the mid-90s. And yet despite that feeling, there was an emergence of many great pop punk bands that still have staying power today. These bands include Blink-182, The Offspring, Green Day, Sum 41, New Found Glory, Good Charlotte, and Jimmy Eat World.

Nu Metal: This new form of metal began to emerge in the late 90s. Though it would really experience its heyday in the early 2000s. The most popular bands were Korn, Slipknot, Papa Roach, Staind, and P.O.D. Nu metal has elements of heavy metal, industrial music, grunge, and even rap. Technically, it’s more simple on guitar than past forms of metal (rarely featuring guitar solos), and darker in nature with lots of drop D chords (for those of you who know what that means), and guitars that even feature an extra string to accomplish a heavier/darker sound. Nu Metal can include singing, rapping, growling, and sometimes even DJs to sample elements of techno. In particular, I’m very nostalgic about this form of music because it was what I listened to as a mall crawling, Hot Topic loving goth in middle and high school.

Pop Princesses: The late 90s was dominated by the popularity of pop princesses and pop divas. There were already the established stars such as Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, and Janet Jackson. In 1996, Celine Dion’s song from the Titanic was literally everywhere—you couldn’t escape it. The Spice Girls also heavily influenced pop in the mid to late 90s. However, new teen pop icons would emerge as well. Britney Spears broke onto the scene in 1999 with her debut album Baby One More Time. Christina Aguilera emerged around the same time, establishing her own powerful voice and career. Britney Spears in particular achieved massive success with her charismatic blend of teen pop and marketable image that captured the late 90s/early 2000s zeitgeist.

Boy Bands: I kept the most obvious one last. The late 90s and early 2000s were THE golden age for boy bands. This was driven by the immense commercial success of bands like Backstreet Boys and NSYNC who dominated the airways (along with their mini-me’s such as O-Town, LFO, 98 Degrees). Part of their meteoric success was due to marketing, a focus on fashion/appearances, and even the fan clubs that popped up around the bands. Many of my friends at that time loved to talk about which guy in the Backstreet Boys or NSYNC they had a crush on (I of course was the weirdo who listened to Linkin Park and had a crush on Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z, so I didn’t care). Thanks to MTV and TRL, many young people were also watching boy bands on TV every day. For more info, check out a brief history of boy bands.

Y2K Era Looks and Fashion (1997-2004)

(In the image above I asked ChatGPT to capture Y2K fashion and I think it did a pretty good job. The setting at the food court is also relevant since people still hung out at malls back then).

The style in the Y2K era featured an eclectic mix of shiny metallic technological optimism with pop culture trends directly influenced by icons such as Britney Spears or the Backstreet Boys. The ideal silhouette was tight on the top and baggy on the bottom, with emphasis on showing the midriff. The ideal color palette was a futuristic shimmery, shiny, metallicness (this is a word I just made up) mixed with pop music hues of hot pink, lime green, and neon orange.

  • Fashion for Women: Low-rise jeans with a wide or flared leg, crops tops, tube tops, rhinestone/baby tees, velour tracksuits, and pants with words like “juicy” or “angel” or “princess” or “baby” on the butt.

  • Fashion for Men: Baggy jeans, graphic t-shirts, sports jerseys, and puffer vests.

  • Hair: Chunky highlights and frosted tips.

  • Makeup: Thin eyebrows (women would often wax their eyebrows), shimmery eyeshadow, lots and lots of lip gloss (you can’t underestimate how big lip gloss was!), and eyeliner was more subtle/less emphasized.

Read more about Y2K aesthetics here.

Y2K Fiction and Films

Created Recently

Y2K film (2024) – “Two high-school nobodies make the decision to crash a Y2K party. The night becomes even crazier than they could have ever dreamed when the clock strikes midnight.”

Honey a novel (2024) – “It is 1997, and Amber Young has received a life-changing call. It’s a chance thousands of girls would die for: the opportunity to join girl group Cloud9 in Los Angeles and escape her small town. She quickly finds herself in the orbits of fellow rising stars Gwen Morris, a driven singer-dancer, and Wes Kingston, a member of the biggest boy band in the world, ETA.”

10 Books to Fuel Your Y2K Nostalgia – This is a list of further books written recently, but focused on Y2K era nostalgia.

Popular Shows From the Late 90s

To understand the zeitgeist of the late 90s it’s key to watch shows like Friends and Sex and the City. Friends became popular for its timeless themes of navigating friendship (hence the name of the show), relationships, and early adulthood. It’s also experienced a re-emergence in popularity today for those who want to engage in Y2K nostalgia.

Sex and the City was also a big cultural hallmark of the time for its sex positive themes for women, which was edgy for the time. As I mentioned in my 90s Writer’s Guide, the 90s was a time in which sex positive feminism started becoming more prominent.

Popular Films

The year 1999 was when many iconic films were released such as The Matrix, Fight Club, American Pie, and 10 Things I Hate About You. While each of these films are still popular today, they also have key elements that represent something that was important at the time they were released.

The Matrix deals with greater questions about the impact of technology on reality and society.

Fight Club contends with themes of consumerism and its emptiness, masculinity or emasculation in modern society, identity crisis and alienation, and mental illness and repression.

American Pie – As I briefly mentioned in my 90s Writer’s Guide, the late 90s/early 2000s is when an era of “raunch culture” became popular, a phenomenon marked by the increased sexualization and objectification of women in the media. This can be seen in shows like The Man Show, Girls Gone Wild, and of course the film American Pie.

10 Things I Hate About You – This film is a great time capsule of teenage life in the late 90s. This includes a soundtrack that captures the pop-rock energy of the era, the fashion, the cliques and stereotypes of high school life.

Relevant Links

That’s all, folks!

If you enjoyed this guide, consider others written by Stories From Tomorrow!

Writer Setting Guide – The 90s

Game of Grunge – A Song of Rock and Hip Hop (Fanfiction on AO3)

World Building Guide for Writing Solarpunk

Here’s another article on why Y2K is hot

Y2K aesthetics are so hot right now – and so is the era’s existential dread (CNN). “The current looks scream “party,” but the vibe still whispers, “worry.” And there’s nothing more Y2K than that.”

How to Write a Character with Cancer – From a Cancer Patient

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We’re all familiar with the depiction of cancer on TV. Someone goes to the doctor for a couple of tests. In the very next scene, they are in the doctor’s office. The grave faced doctor gives them the bad news. A minute later, they are in the hospital hooked up to an IV in their arm. Shortly after that, they lose all their hair and spend most of their time bed ridden.

This isn’t everyone’s cancer experience. Some of this is also an oversimplification of the whole cancer experience. I will tell you about what I learned from my own experience. However, I encourage you to do your research, because everyone’s cancer experience is different.

Why should you listen to me? Because I had cancer myself and went through a very strong chemotherapy regimen.

Disclaimer: You might not want to read this if you are currently going through chemotherapy or about to start. This article has emotional triggers. It discusses much of the hardship that can happen during chemotherapy.

First, let me go through some of the things fiction often gets wrong.

Chemotherapy is not often delivered through a needle in a vein in the arm.

If someone is getting chemo on a regular basis, they would most likely be given a device called a port.

The port is a device used to draw blood. It is surgically placed under the skin, usually in the right side of the chest. It is attached to a catheter (a thin, flexible tube) that is guided (threaded) into a large vein above the right side of the heart. It is placed there because that is the biggest vein in the body. During chemo sessions, a needle is inserted through the skin into the port to draw blood or give fluids.

The port must be cleaned with a saline flush every few weeks. The port will stay in the patient for many weeks, months or even years. When I had a port, it looked like a bump beneath my skin. My doctors gave me a heart-shaped port–as if the heart shape was supposed to make the whole experience of cancer more cheerful. I was put to sleep when the port was surgically put in me. Yet when it was taken out, they actually did the surgery while I was awake. My doctor simply used a local anesthetic to numb the area.

Getting surgery while awake was a very bizarre experience. Even though it wasn’t painful, the pressure on my chest and the noise of the drill made it all very unsettling. I cracked a lot of jokes with my surgeon to put myself more at ease.

Giving your character a port can serve as a way to dramatize the experience of cancer while also showing the audience that you did your research.

Cancer patients don’t always get their diagnosis right away.

In the movies, a patient gets their diagnosis in like five minutes. In real life, it often takes a month of tests and waiting to hear one’s results. People in the cancer community call the anxiety induced by this waiting period, “scanxiety.” Even though I understand that things can’t happen in real time in fiction, overlooking this waiting period is a missed opportunity. This waiting period is an opportunity to build tension.

Many forms of cancer today are survivable.

Of course this all depends on the type of cancer and the stage. But often in fiction when someone gets cancer, the immediate assumption is that they are going to die. The reality is that for a well researched and well funded disease like Breast Cancer, about 85% of patients will survive. Especially if they are young and have no other pre-existing conditions.

Survival is less certain for people with a Stage IV cancer. So if you want to heighten the drama or the risk of death, give the character a rare form of cancer or a late stage where the cancer has metastasized throughout the body.

Chemotherapy patients can live healthy, normal lives

A common fictional depiction of a chemotherapy patient is that they have lost all their hair, or are stuck in bed for months. While this is the case for some cancer patients, this isn’t the case for all of them. There are many different types of chemotherapy treatment, and different people have different reactions. And not all patients need chemotherapy. For some, surgery or radiation is good enough.

Some chemotherapies don’t cause hair loss. Some chemotherapy only makes a patient sick for a few days, and then they go back to work afterward. Some chemotherapy doesn’t even make the patient nauseous. It really all depends on the person’s diagnosis, treatment plan, as well as their own health.

I did lose my hair and become nauseous. But I was actually able to work throughout the majority of the chemotherapy process. Usually I would be nauseous for a couple of days after treatment, but then feel normal for the next few weeks until I got another infusion. I got one infusion every three weeks.

Overlooked Realities of Cancer:

Below I will list the realities of cancer that are often not captured in fiction. And yet these realities can still make for good drama, characterization and story telling.

Even though there are many forms of cancer that can be survived, there is drama to be found in the struggle after survival.

Many people assume that once the patient is finished with chemotherapy, all the hardship is over and they go off to live happily ever after. Yet the reality is that there are struggles to be found in the aftermath of cancer. Some patients experience a decreased quality of life. Some patients had to make large sacrifices in order to survive their prognosis: giving up a job, leaving an unhealthy relationship, surgically removing a body part or even giving up their own fertility.

Medical Abuse:

While I am sure that most medical professionals have a genuine interest in “doing no harm,” there is the unfortunate reality that medical abuse does happen. Often it’s not out of malevolence. It’s from medical professionals being tired and overworked, or it’s from inept employees keeping their job because the practice is short-staffed.

Regardless of the reason, many people with chronic illness have had a case of their health providers making a mistake, not taking them seriously, not being professional, or causing a problem by trying to rush.

I myself had a chemotherapy nurse who made mistakes on me three times. After the third time, I reported her to the clinic’s supervisor. He said that they basically had an entire book of complaints about this woman, but that there was nothing they could do since they needed the staff. I then even wrote to my state medical board to complain about her, since other patients and nurses privately told me they were unhappy. And yet nothing happened.

Medical Racism:

In the U.S., black women have the highest rates of death from breast cancer and cervical cancer.

Studies have shown that the African American community faces discrimination and implicit bias in the medical setting.

Dayna Bowen Matthew’s book, Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Healthcare (2015), explores the idea that unconscious biases held by health care providers might explain racial disparities in health.

If there was an author who wanted to highlight this disparity, I think that would make for a compelling and powerful story that needs to be told.

Cancer patients can experience denial about their illness.

Facing the reality that one has a deadly illness is not easy. There are different reactions to threats. Fight, flight, or freeze. Some people choose to ignore the problem and pretend it doesn’t exist. Some people engage in magical thinking or buy into snake oil solutions. Even Steve Jobs (one of the wealthiest men on the planet) refused medical treatment for his cancer, because he thought he had other solutions. He ended up dead.

My doctors have told me sad stories about patients who had entirely treatable cancers, but ended up dead because they refused treatment.

There are people who try to control a cancer patient’s treatment.

When I was undergoing treatment, I had the experience of people pressuring me not to get chemotherapy or surgery. I had to tell these people in the most polite way to leave me alone.

Cancer patients often have to make a series of life altering decisions in a short amount of time.

This is another reality of cancer that could make for good drama in a book. People often have just a few weeks to make choices about their surgery, radiation treatment, chemotherapy regimen, and fertility preservation procedure. Surprisingly, there are many different options to choose from, and doctors often make their patients choose instead of telling them what to do outright. This can definitely lead to decision fatigue, as most people are not used to making a bunch of life altering decisions about their bodies in a matter of weeks.

Romantic partners can become MORE abusive after a diagnosis.

Most people would imagine after a cancer diagnosis that a person’s romantic partner would become more supportive. It’s hard to imagine a person being abusive to a cancer patient. It seems downright rotten in fact. And indeed, many people do have partners that step up and become extra supportive after a diagnosis.

However, this is not the case for everyone.

Unfortunately, what I have learned from being part of the online breast cancer community, is that partner abuse can actually escalate (rather than de-escalate) after a diagnosis. This was something I saw numerous women discuss. They often had stories about how once they started going through chemotherapy and surgery, their husbands would start becoming more distant or abusive.

What explains such horrible behavior? My own theory is that if a person is in a partnership where they are doing much of the housework, child care, or finances, and then they suddenly stop, the other person can become more stressed out as they take on a greater load. Not everyone is capable of taking on this extra load without becoming stressed out and toxic in the process.

There are also people who cheat on their partners or leave them after diagnosis.

Men more likely than women to leave partner with cancer (Reuters)

Divorce Risk Higher When Wife Gets Sick (The New York Times)

Cancer patients and domestic violence: More common than you might think (MD Anderson)

The Loneliness of Cancer

After I shared this article, many other people who experienced cancer also mentioned the loneliness of cancer.

On TV they often make it look like cancer patients are constantly surrounded by a large, supportive group of friends and family members. This certainly is the case with some people. But this isn’t always the case. There are often people who go through cancer alone. There are also people who had family members supporting them at first. But then when these family members realized that the ordeal was going to go on for months or even years, they backed off.

Cancer patients have to spend a ridiculous amount of time consoling OTHER people about their own illness.

Cancer is a scary thing. And when the loved ones of a cancer patient find out about their illness, they do a number of things. They freak out, cry, and go into panic mode. Indeed, most people aren’t taught how to deal with the reality of a loved one having a chronic or deadly illness. So unfortunately, many people can start unloading on the cancer patient themselves with the expectation that the cancer patient is supposed to do the emotional labor of dealing with all their fears and woes.

And yet the cancer patient does NOT want to hear someone tell them, “You’re gonna die! I’m so scared you’re gonna die!” People would say this stuff to me all the time. I had enough of my own worries to deal with, I didn’t need other people unloading on me at the same time. I had to tell people in the kindest way possible to STFU.

Some women lose their fertility after their battle with cancer.

The battle with cancer is already traumatic enough. But it’s an extra stab of the knife afterward when a woman may have to give up her dreams of being a mother. This isn’t always the case. If a woman is young, there is still a good chance she could give birth, but it becomes harder the older a woman gets.

There are medical treatments that can potentially preserve fertility, but they are not full proof.

Egg freezing, for example, is ridiculously expensive. It usually costs over $10,000, and most of the time, health insurance won’t cover it. Also, when I did my own research, I found that the results weren’t even that effective. The overall chance of a live birth from a frozen egg is 39%.

Many cancer patients become more spiritual as a result of their struggles.

So far, much of what I said was negative. But, there are some positives as well.

As the old expression goes, there are no atheists in foxholes. When someone has to face their own mortality in addition to going through scary and uncomfortable medical procedures, the belief in a higher power can go a long way.

Many cancer patients end up realizing what is truly important in life.

There’s nothing like confronting your own mortality to make you realize what’s truly important. Many cancer patients change their lives for the better after defeating their illness. This can involve making healthier choices, getting out of a toxic relationship, pursuing a job that they always wanted, prioritizing family and friends, and becoming internally stronger overall.

Despite all the negatives I’ve mentioned, cancer survivors are often very emotionally strong people.

I hope this was helpful to you. Now go write something cool and feel free to share it in the comments.

Related Articles:

Coping with Global Pandemic – Thoughts From a Cancer Survivor (Stories From Tomorrow)

My Stories About Illness:

“Artisanal Cancer” (Teleport Magazine)

How far will an influencer go to get likes? In this short story about a post scarcity future, people are literally killing themselves out of boredom. Chemotherapy treatment has become the next edgy fad.

“The Red Devil” (Vine Leaves Press)

This is a 50 word story about chemotherapy treatment.

“Fibromyalgia Fire” (Cuento Magazine)

This is a microfiction about fibromyalgia.