Here it is, 2004. By next year we’ll be halfway through this decade. And yet we still don’t know what to call this decade we’re in. I’m not talking about a catchy phrase, such as the “me decade” or “the roaring ’20s.” We don’t even have a basic, uniformly accepted label at all.
You can talk about the music of the ’80s or the ’90s–but when it comes to the decade we’re in, the disc jockey will fumble. “The current decade,” they’ll say, or maybe “the two-thousands,” or “the aughts,” or “the O’s” (as if they’re talking cereal).
But one title in particular seems to stand out from the rest: “the zeros.”
In the future people are going to need to know what you’re talking about when you refer to this decade. I propose the zeros. It sounds cool on the radio. It’s perfectly accurate. It’s short and to the point. The zeros are shaping up to be quite a decade, for better and for worse, and it’s about time we gave it a proper name.
