History PopularityPolynomial / RealLife

* President UsefulNotes/UlyssesSGrant. When he left office, he was a well-liked president and much lauded as a general, credited with winning the Civil War for the Union. However, the scandals, as well as the economic downturn, that marred his second term quickly began to take their toll on his reputation. For a long time, even his military record was re-evaluated as nothing special, with Grant being credited more for being in the right place at the right time for good things to happen rather than any genuine military greatness on his own part. In the following decades, Grant's reputation has begun to recover, with modern Grant supporters pointing out that he had easily the best civil rights record of the Reconstruction presidents; Grant supported black Southerners (including undertaking a massive government crackdown on [[UsefulNotes/KuKluxKlan the KKK]] that left them crippled for four decades) and made numerous, albeit largely unsuccessful, efforts to keep the peace between whites and Native Americans in the West. Though Grant is still generally ranked as a below-average president in scholarly sources, his reputation is steadily climbing, while that of traditionally lauded presidents with ''bad'' civil rights records (such as UsefulNotes/AndrewJackson and UsefulNotes/WoodrowWilson) has headed in the other direction.

* Unlike Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, which are consistently famous and popular cryptids, TheMothman seems to regularly fade into obscurity only to suddenly become all the rage again. This almost always happens after he stars in a new work that gains a big fanbase. For example, he seemed all but forgotten with anyone but a few paranormal enthusiasts until the movie ''Film/TheMothmanProphecies'' came out in 2002, soon after which he received his own statue and festival in his hometown of Point Pleasant. Then he was mostly forgotten again for some years, but the popularity of ''VideoGame/Fallout76'' brought him into the spotlight again, including a whole lot of Internet memes as well as his own trope on this site.
* Nuclear energy seems to have undergone several cycles of popularity and lack thereof. In the 1950s, people were - by and large - excited about the "atomic age" but it took into the 1970s that commercial nuclear power really took off (and it took a ''lot'' of state or quasistate involvement of one kind or another) - aided in no small part by a certain 1973 war making clear to the entire western world that fossil fuels - and petroleum chief among them - were not infinite. However, come the mid 1980s and a certain incident on the Ukrainian / Byeolrussian border ({{UsefulNotes/Chernobyl}}) and the anti-nuclear movement had an enormous surge in popularity. While this led to some decisions to phase out nuclear energy or never enter it to begin with (of note Australia, one of the world's biggest Uranium suppliers never built a commercial nuclear reactor for electricity generation - they do have research and isotope production reactors whose thermal output is incidental, rather than a power-source), by TheNewTens nuclear energy seemed to have recovered popularity - only for Fukushima to throw yet another wrench into all the high flying plans, culminating perhaps with the bankruptcy of Westinghouse, a major supplier of "Generation III+" reactors. However, with some DevelopmentHell stuck projects ''finally'' getting completed and China becoming the second biggest nuclear energy producer (having overtaken France by some measures tho not by others) in the 2020s and with Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 leading to yet another fossil fuel price shock - and a fundamental re-evaluation of the "cheap natural gas" paradigm - numerous countries announced ambitious new building projects for nuclear power and/or the reversal of their prior abandonment of nuclear power - buoyed, in many cases, by rising support for nuclear power in the polls. It thus ''might'' appear that - especially in light of the whole Climate issue becoming more and more pressing - nuclear is on the upswing once more, but it should be obvious by now that there have been ''many'' false springs for nuclear in the past.

* Ventriloquism was once considered the deadest of all show business horses, since every new act would be [[ToughActToFollow inevitably compared to]] Edgar Bergen (or at least to [[PoorMansSubstitute Paul Winchell]]). Then all of a sudden Jeff Dunham came along, and earned his own TV special after several sold-out performances. Terry Fator also has his own Las Vegas show.

** Mustaches were ''very'' common for men between about 1850 and 1915, then slowly started to disappear -- partly for hygienic reasons during WWI (for instance, gas helmets required wearers to be clean shaven) and partly as a reaction against Victorian values by the RoaringTwenties. Since then only older or working-class men tended to have any facial hair other than pencil-thin mustaches, and things remained that way until about 1960, when beatniks, and after 1967, the hippie counterculture went mainstream. Thus began another golden age for the mustache, which lasted until about 1990 (by which point the Baby Boomers were seen as unhip). It's yet to return in full force, although it's still quite common among certain ethnic groups (Blacks and [[MagnificentMoustachesOfMexico Latinos]], to give two obvious examples) and in Eastern European, Mediterranean and Arab countries where facial hair is still considered manly and/or sophisticated.

* Throughout the last decades of the 20th century and especially after the start of the 21st, over-the-air (OTA) television and the traditional TV antennas used to receive it fell out of fashion in favor of cable and satellite TV, which offered a larger variety of programming, were less encumbered by content restrictions, and could produce shows with larger budgets thanks to the increased revenue from carriage and/or subscription fees. It got to the point where the most popular and talked-about TV shows were on cable stations, not major networks, and many newly built or renovated homes forwent the installation of TV antennas. In TheNewTens, however, public opinion, especially that of younger audiences, began to sour on cable and satellite, seeing them as obsolete and cumbersome services that force you to pay exorbitant amounts of money for hundreds or thousands of channels that you will only ever watch a handful of, comparing them unfavorably to newer Internet streaming services such as Creator/{{Netflix}} and Creator/HBOMax that are becoming the main source for "premium" programming. Many of these people, or cord-cutters as they came to be known, supplement online streaming services with OTA TV in order to watch programming that can't be found easily online, such as local news and sports, sparking a revival of interest in the service, especially after the transition to digital TV. This is because digital OTA stations offered "digital subchannels" and greater clarity due to the lack of signal compression on cable or satellite, as well as a lack of snow that you'd see on analog channels. In large markets, due to the proliferation of digital subchannels, available OTA channels can rival basic cable. While OTA TV may never return to being the dominant way of watching television like it was in the early days of TV, it is far from going extinct as many predicted.

* Television in general. Beginning in the 1950s, it was ''the'' form of entertainment for families everywhere, but by the 1990s it fell into a rut due to two main factors: one being the internet and newer media such as video games becoming popular, especially among the youth, but most importantly, many networks began turning towards the lowest common denominator and forced "hipness", leading to serious cases of NetworkDecay--which more often than not, meant flooding channels with RealityTelevision by the early 2000s, while the better-regarded shows generally [[ScrewedByTheNetwork got mediocre ratings and often were axed before long]]... unless the show was on premium cable, which gave viewers movie-quality production values for the first time on the "tube" in a weekly basis. However, during the mid/late-00s these shows ended without any worthy replacements, and as a result, people all over were cancelling their cable ''en masse'' and the phrase "who watches TV anymore?" was practically ubiquitous as internet became the medium of choice for audiovisual entertainment. Ironically, it was the web which allowed a renaissance for television in the 2010s, with streaming services, namely Creator/{{Netflix}}, providing a chance for watching whatever one wants anytime they like. The opportunities brought upon by stable revenue and a lack of ''enforced'' censorship led to the making of shows featuring themes and production values that would be unfeasible on traditional TV, often resulting in massive hits. Even shows that were unceremoniously booted by the networks gained a second life on streaming services. By the mid/late-2010s, roughly ''one-third'' of all Internet traffic in the US during certain hours was streaming. The success of Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Video not only led about everyone else to try their hand themselves, creating original content in some cases, but also contributed to the popular appreciation of high-concept series which have contributed to a resurgence of premium cable.
* TV's predecessor, radio, has also gotten a boost in the digital era due to the growth of podcasting, smart speakers and internet/satellite radio. Podcasting has made audio content for news, comedy and dramas popular again after they were overtaken by TV in the '50s. Internet and satellite radio have also allowed for greater variety in music programming and lack of censorship instead of the narrow formats of terrestrial radio. Listeners have embraced public radio as an alternative to the sensationalism of cable news. A major reason is that audio offers a relief from the visual overload from the revival of TV mentioned above. The medium had already gotten a boost due to new technology in TheFifties as dramatic programming was moving over to TV with the invention of the transistor radio and Top 40 programming. The former made radio portable in a way that TV wasn't and music programming appealed to a young audience eager to hear the new rock and roll music. Young people were catered to in a way they hadn't been before.

* Bill Gates became famous for the BASIC programming language, and Microsoft's [[UsefulNotes/{{MSX}} operating]] [[UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows systems]]. Then he became the world's richest man, and Microsoft was a MegaCorp with questionable business practices and unreliable software such as certain UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows versions, and thus the general public thought of Gates as a CorruptCorporateExecutive. Then in 2000 two things happened that along the years improved Gates' reputation, his NumberTwo [[LargeHam Steve Ballmer]] become Microsoft CEO and thus face of the company, and the establishment of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's wealthiest charity organization. The high profile philanthropy ended the {{Demonization}}, and perception of Gates changed from an UpperClassTwit and cutthroat businessman to an UnclePennybags who wanted to make the world better. However, his popularity would take a major blow in 2021 when he announced that he and Melinda were getting divorced, with reports coming out shortly after that cited his potential relationship with notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein as a major reason why. This, along with [[EatTheRich growing distrust of the mega-rich]] throughout UsefulNotes/TheNewTens and The New Twenties, led to further scrutiny of Gates, which revealed that many of his charitable activities were more self-serving than they appeared at first, and were seen by many as attempts to wrest control of issues such as public health and education from public hands into private ones. In particular, his opposition to waiving patents on vaccines for the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic also drew a lot of criticism, since many parts of the world, especially poorer countries, were struggling to obtain enough vaccines to inoculate their populations in time to curb the rapid spread of the virus.

** Smoking is nowadays associated with the poor and uneducated in much of the West and is banned in most indoor (and several outdoor) places -- a stark contrast to days past when it was considered to be tasteful and stylish, and even UsefulNotes/TheHindenburg had a dedicated smoking room, despite being [[MadeOfExplodium filled with hydrogen]]. Not that it was always that way, before WWI, tobacco was associated with cowboys and others. While vaporizers (better known as "vapes") have gained popularity, these are considered to be more of a "premium" product rather than for everyday use much like cigars (which have thrived since the 1990s with the rise of "cigar bars"). On the other hand, electronic cigarettes were intended for daily usage, but they never caught on for certain reasons, one of them being their propensity to explode. Like their non-electric counterparts, they've also quickly become associated with "white trash".

* Bill Gates became famous for the BASIC programming language, and Microsoft's [[UsefulNotes/{{MSX}} operating]] [[UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows systems]]. Then he became the world's richest man, and Microsoft was a MegaCorp with questionable business practices and unreliable software such as certain UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows versions, and thus the general public thought of Gates as a CorruptCorporateExecutive. Then in 2000 two things happened that along the years improved Gates' reputation, his NumberTwo [[LargeHam Steve Ballmer]] become Microsoft CEO and thus face of the company, and the establishment of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's wealthiest charity organization. The high profile philantrophy ended the {{Demonization}}, and perception of Gates changed from an UpperClassTwit and cutthroat businessman to someone who wanted to make the world better. However, his popularity would take a major blow in 2021 when he announced that he and Melinda were getting divorced, with reports coming out shortly after that cited his potential relationship with notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein as a major reason why. This, along with [[EatTheRich growing distrust of the mega-rich]] throughout UsefulNotes/TheNewTens and The New Twenties, led to further scrutiny of Gates, which revealed that many of his charitable activities were more self-serving than they appeared at first, and were seen by many as attempts to wrest control of issues such as public health and education from public hands into private ones. In particular, his opposition to waiving patents on vaccines for the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic also drew a lot of criticism, since many parts of the world, especially poorer countries, were struggling to obtain enough vaccines to inoculate their populations in time to curb the rapid spread of the virus.

* Supermodel culture: It first surfaced in 60s-era Swinging London, embodying the aesthetics of the era, although it fell out of favor by the early 1970s. It then came back during the 1980s, hitting a peak around 1990, with the release of Music/GeorgeMichael's ''Freedom! '90''. However a move towards a more casual and frugal lifestyle during the decade made supermodels and fashion designers AcceptableProfessionalTargets exploited by films like ''Film/{{Zoolander}}''. During the 2000s reality shows like ''Series/AmericasNextTopModel'' restored their mainstream acceptance and by the 2010s, supermodels were everywhere again, with the so-called "Instagram generation" becoming role models (dubious or not) for young women.

* The original UsefulNotes/{{Dada}} movement of 1916 - which was based on violating conventions and depended on [[{{Troll}} confusing and upsetting audiences]] - [[ItsPopularNowItSucks died]] when [[MisaimedFandom people began enjoying it]], thus [[SpringtimeForHitler defeating its purpose]]. However, its influence can still be seen to this day: it contributed to the rise of {{postmodernism}}, and {{Spiritual Successor}}s such as WebAnimation/YouTubePoop follow Dadaist ideology to a T.

Then came the "retail apocalypse" since 2016 and amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020, where a disproportionately large number of popular mall stores went through large amounts of closings or gone out of business entirely, including major department store chain The Bon-Ton. Combined with frequent store closings from the three major department store chains (J.C. Penney, Macy's, and Sears), creating further holes to be filled in malls countrywide (although discount-oriented department stores, such as Kohl's, Burlington, and Marshalls/TJ Maxx, have thrived). At the same time, social media became the place to hang out rather than the local decaying mall, especially for younger people. Despite these closures, many malls have worked around this by introducing more big-box stores; entertainment complexes (high-end theaters, bowling alleys, large-format arcades such as Dave & Buster's); unconventional tenants such as libraries, storefront churches, playplaces, or secondhand shops; or even non-retail use (one notable example being Fairlane Town Center in Dearborn, Michigan, which replaced a long-vacant department store with Ford offices). Indoor shopping malls remain popular in areas where extreme weather conditions previal, [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff particuarly in the Middle East]], mainly due to the fact that they're, well, indoors and thus provide climate-controlled places to walk around no matter what's going on outside. Even as the retail scene shifts, it appears that the American mall still has some life left in it.

** Perhaps the most dramatic is the story of alcohol prohibition, which was tried out in several countries, primarily in the first third of the 20th century, most notably in the United States between 1920 and 1933[[note]]on a nationwide basis--several states and counties had prohibition before 1920 (the Volstead Act was pretty much just an enforcement of this) and well after 1933[[/note]]. It backfired horribly however (while consumption ''did'' decrease opposed to popular knowledge, this was offset by increasing crime rates), and after its repeal alcohol gradually became more popular. The profile of the average beer and bourbon drinker since the 1990s has returned however to be the rowdy blue-collar layabout that became the focus of the temperance movement of the 19th century (this however does ''not'' apply to more upscale drinks such as vodka or wine, [[WineIsClassy still regarded as highbrow]]. Even beer has gotten in on the act with the rise of craft breweries).

* {{Pinball}} has seen its ups and downs in popularity. It was the dominant type of arcade game until the 1970's, when video games became inexpensive enough to manufacture for arcade owners, and intensified through the first half of the 80's with hits like ''VideoGame/PacMan'' and ''VideoGame/DonkeyKong''. Pinball then became popular again with ''Pinball/SpaceShuttle'' leading the charge, which featured an accurate scale model of a space shuttle inside, an impression no video game at the time could replicate. With nothing like it to follow up, however, pinball soon lost ground to video games again in the late 80's as video game technology became more advanced, allowing for more diverse gameplay and visuals where pinball, by nature, is stuck with a static image. This changed with ''Pinball/TheAddamsFamily'' in 1992, whose many modes and deep theme integration allowed pinball to once again compete on even terms with video games at arcades. By the end of the 90's, however, arcades in North America were becoming unpopular as console and computer video gaming allowed people to play within their homes as much as they wanted, combined with the increasing complexity and length of games as a whole. For nearly the entirety of [[TurnOfTheMillennium the 2000s]], pinball seemed to be practically dead, with Creator/{{Stern}} being the only major manufacturer left. This changed around 2012, when multiple developments combined to create an upsurge in popularity. Simulator games like ''VideoGame/ThePinballArcade'' helped spark new interest in the medium, prompting people to either find machines in public to play to see how they're like in person (or, if one could afford it, buy them for home use). In addition, Creator/JerseyJackPinball was founded and put out ''Pinball/TheWizardOfOz'' in 2013; its many features and innovations, particularly the use of a screen instead of a dot-matrix display, gave Stern a true competitor and opened the floodgates for several more upstart companies to try their hand in the field over the course of TheNewTens. Pinball has also been riding on the back of the RetroGaming craze, with many newer arcades hosting both video games and pinball machines. This renewed popularity can be seen in Stern's sales increasing ''300%'' between 2012 and 2014.

* Throughout the last decades of the 20th century and especially after the start of the 21st, over-the-air (OTA) television and the traditional TV antennas used to receive it fell out of fashion in favor of cable and satellite TV, which offered a larger variety of programming, were less encumbered by content restrictions, and could produce shows with larger budgets thanks to the increased revenue from carriage and/or subscription fees. It got to the point where the most popular and talked-about TV shows were on cable stations, not major networks, and many newly built or renovated homes forwent the installation of TV antennas. In TheNewTens, however, public opinion, especially that of younger audiences, began to sour on cable and satellite, seeing them as obsolete and cumbersome services that force you to pay exorbitant amounts of money for hundreds or thousands of channels that you will only ever watch a handful of, comparing them unfavorably to newer Internet streaming services such as Creator/{{Netflix}} and Creator/HBOMax that are becoming the main source for "premium" programming. Many of these people, or cord-cutters as they came to be known, supplement online streaming services with OTA TV in order to watch programming that can't be found easily online, such as local news and sports, sparking a revival of interest in the service, especially after the transition to digital offered "digital subchannels" and greater clarity due to the lack of signal compression on cable or satellite, as well as a lack of snow that you'd see on analog channels. In large markets, due to the proliferation of digital subchannels, available OTA channels can rival basic cable. While OTA TV may never return to being the dominant way of watching television like it was in the early days of TV, it is far from going extinct as many predicted.

* Bill Gates became famous for the BASIC programming language, and Microsoft's [[UsefulNotes/{{MSX}} operating]] [[UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows systems]]. Then he became the world's richest man, and Microsoft was a MegaCorp with questionable business practices and unreliable software such as certain UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows versions, and thus the general public thought of Gates as a CorruptCorporateExecutive. Then in 2000 two things happened that along the years improved Gates' reputation, his NumberTwo [[LargeHam Steve Ballmer]] become Microsoft CEO and thus face of the company, and the establishment of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's wealthiest charity organization. The high profile philantrophy ended the {{Demonization}}, and perception of Gates changed from an UpperClassTwit and cutthroat businessman to someone who wanted to make the world better. However, his popularity would take a major blow in 2021 when he announced that he and Melinda were getting divorced, with reports coming out shortly after that cited his attempts to form a connection with notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein as a major reason why. This, along with [[EatTheRich growing distrust of the mega-rich]] throughout UsefulNotes/TheNewTens and The New Twenties, led to further scrutiny of Gates, which revealed that many of his charitable activities were more self-serving than they appeared at first, and were seen by many as attempts to wrest control of issues such as public health and education from public hands into private ones. In particular, his opposition to waiving patents on vaccines for the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic also drew a lot of criticism, since many parts of the world, especially poorer countries, were struggling to obtain enough vaccines to inoculate their populations in time to curb the rapid spread of the virus.

* Americans were huge consumers of tea until the [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution Boston Tea Party]], when coffee became the beverage of choice and tea became synonymous with "elitist" and "sissified" Brits. During the 2010s however, tea became increasingly popular in North America, mostly because of the craze over British culture during the early years of the decade and growing aversion to caffeine, especially among younger demographics (which has meant a shift in coffee consumption towards more "gourmet" experiences like Starbucks and Nespresso; its place as the quintessential pick-me-up taken over by energy drinks and some varieties of tea). At the same time, green tea became popular as a health food, particularly among women. As a result, better quality teas became more readily available and big box stores began stocking electric kettles (though generally less powerful than the average U.K. models) in their kitchen appliance sections.

** Fear of nuclear war, ever present during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, subsided after the collapse of the Soviet Union at the start of TheNineties. However, it became widespread again in TheNewTens with U.S. President Creator/DonaldTrump and North Korean dictator Kim-Jong Un exchanging threats throughout 2017. While this initial scare mostly cooled off after both leaders' attended a summit in 2018 and Trump left office in 2021, it resurfaced in 2022 amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Then came the "retail apocalypse" since 2016 and amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020, where a disproportionately large number of popular mall stores went through large amounts of closings or gone out of business entirely, including major department store chain The Bon-Ton. Combined with frequent store closings from the three major department store chains (J.C. Penney, Macy's, and Sears), creating further holes to be filled in malls countrywide (although discount-oriented department stores, such as Kohl's, Burlington, and Marshalls/TJ Maxx, have thrived). At the same time, social media became the place to hang out rather than the local decaying mall, especially for younger people. Despite these closures, many malls have worked around this by introducing more big-box stores; entertainment complexes (high-end theaters, bowling alleys, large-format arcades such as Dave & Buster's); unconventional tenants such as libraries, storefront churches, playplaces, or secondhand shops; or even non-retail use (one notable example being Fairlane Town Center in Dearborn, Michigan, which replaced a long-vacant department store with Ford offices). Indoor shopping malls remain popular in areas where extreme weather conditions previal, [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff particuarly in the Middle East]], mainly due to the fact that they're, well, indoors and thus climate-controlled. Even as the retail scene shifts, it appears that the American mall still has some life left in it.

Then came the "retail apocalypse" since 2016 and amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020, where a disproportionately large number of popular mall stores went through large amounts of closings or gone out of business entirely, including major department store chain The Bon-Ton. Combined with frequent store closings from the three major department store chains (J.C. Penney, Macy's, and Sears), creating further holes to be filled in malls countrywide (although discount-oriented department stores, such as Kohl's, Burlington, and Marshalls/TJ Maxx, have thrived). At the same time, social media became the place to hang out rather than the local decaying mall, especially for younger people. Despite these closures, many malls have worked around this by introducing more big-box stores; entertainment complexes (high-end theaters, bowling alleys, large-format arcades such as Dave & Buster's); unconventional tenants such as libraries, storefront churches, playplaces, or secondhand shops; or even non-retail use (one notable example being Fairlane Town Center in Dearborn, Michigan, which replaced a long-vacant department store with Ford offices). Even as the retail scene shifts, it appears that the American mall still has some life left in it.

* While TheNineties never had the cultural backlash the 70's or the 80's had, some trends from that decade are starting to come back, such as plaid flannel shirts and hi-top fades.

* [[TheMall Shopping malls]], of all things, have been going through this since about TheEighties. Overly optimistic development resulted in a massive surplus of retail space across the US, causing older generations of malls to start dying off as newer, larger complexes replaced them. This, combined with rampant demographic shifts in urban areas, helped create the first generations of "dead malls" in the US (the UrExample being Dixie Square Mall in the Chicago suburb of Harvey, which closed in 1978 and, after being repurposed for a famous scene in ''Film/TheBluesBrothers'', was left to decay until it was finally torn down in the mid 2010s.) Malls continued to decline throughout TheNineties as rampant competition in the retail market did a number on a large number of clothing stores and department stores, causing many to severely retrench or go out of business entirely (including older department stores such as Montgomery Ward and Woolworth). The large number of youths hanging out there gave malls the impression that they were {{Teenage Wasteland}}s and made many women, who did most of the shopping, feel unsafe, believing them to be "gang-affiliated," and go elsewhere. And then by the end of the decade, the rise of "big box" stores and e-commerce took further pieces out of the retail pie, as did a myriad of department store mergers. It was in this climate that a huge number of malls began to die off entirely, most commonly aging and unremodeled centers that had failed to keep up with the times. What few malls were being built by the TurnOfTheMillennium were typically "lifestyle centers" in more affluent areas, boasting upscale shops and restaurants in a streetscape setting, or "power centers", largely composed of the aforementioned big-box stores -- both of which were also starting to become common redevelopment tactics for struggling indoor malls. Not a single enclosed mall was built in the US between 2006 and 2014. The mid 2000s-early 2010s economic crisis certainly didn't help, as seen by General Growth Properties, one of the largest mall companies in the U.S., filing for bankruptcy...\\\

* [[TheMall Shopping malls]], of all things, have been going through this since about TheEighties. Overly optimistic development resulted in a massive surplus of retail space across the US, causing older generations of malls to start dying off as newer, larger complexes replaced them. This, combined with rampant demographic shifts in urban areas, helped create the first generations of "dead malls" in the US (the UrExample being Dixie Square Mall in the Chicago suburb of Harvey, which closed in 1978 and, after being repurposed for a famous scene in ''Film/TheBluesBrothers'', was left to decay until it was finally torn down in the mid 2010s.) Malls continued to decline throughout TheNineties as rampant competition in the retail market did a number on a large number of clothing stores and department stores, causing many to severely retrench or go out of business entirely (including older department stores such as Montgomery Ward and Woolworth). And then by the end of the decade, the rise of "big box" stores and e-commerce took further pieces out of the retail pie, as did a myriad of department store mergers. It was in this climate that a huge number of malls began to die off entirely, most commonly aging and unremodeled centers that had failed to keep up with the times. What few malls were being built by the TurnOfTheMillennium were typically "lifestyle centers" in more affluent areas, boasting upscale shops and restaurants in a streetscape setting, or "power centers", largely composed of the aforementioned big-box stores -- both of which were also starting to become common redevelopment tactics for struggling indoor malls. Not a single enclosed mall was built in the US between 2006 and 2014. The mid 2000s-early 2010s economic crisis certainly didn't help, as seen by General Growth Properties, one of the largest mall companies in the U.S., filing for bankruptcy...\\\

* Bill Gates became famous for the BASIC programming language, and Microsoft's [[UsefulNotes/{{MSX}} operating]] [[UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows systems]]. Then he became the world's richest man, and Microsoft was a MegaCorp with questionable business practices and unreliable software such as certain UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows versions, and thus the general public thought of Gates as a CorruptCorporateExecutive. Then in 2000 two things happened that along the years improved Gates' reputation, his NumberTwo [[LargeHam Steve Ballmer]] become Microsoft CEO and thus face of the company, and the estabilishment of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's wealthiest charity organization. The high profile philantrophy ended the {{Demonization}}, and perception of Gates changed from an UpperClassTwit and cutthroat businessman to someone who wanted to make the world better. However, his popularity would take a major blow in 2021 when he announced that he and Melinda were getting divorced, with reports coming out shortly after that cited his attempts to form a connection with notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein as a major reason why. This, along with [[EatTheRich growing distrust of the mega-rich]] throughout UsefulNotes/TheNewTens and The New Twenties, led to further scrutiny of Gates, which revealed that many of his charitable activities were more self-serving than they appeared at first, and were seen by many as attempts to wrest control of issues such as public health and education from public hands into private ones. In particular, his opposition to waiving patents on vaccines for the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic also drew a lot of criticism, since many parts of the world, especially poorer countries, were struggling to obtain enough vaccines to inoculate their populations in time to curb the rapid spread of the virus.

* The sinking of the UsefulNotes/RMSTitanic was one of the biggest and most well-known disasters of the early 20th century and was the source of multiple book and film adaptations about passengers on board. By the 70's and 80's people had more than enough of those stories (in the issue 4 of ''Les Aventures Extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec'', part of the excitement is seeing whether or not she would get on board of the Titanic -- and die due to being unable to escape). No one would have expected that a movie adaptation in 1997 would end up becoming the, at the time, number one highest grossing film of all time, later going down to a still strong number three(not adjusted for inflation).

* TheSeventies. Throughout the '80s and '90s, this decade was seen as America's AudienceAlienatingEra. Since the late '90s, it's seen as a more innocent time. Elements from the '70s which have made comebacks since then include:

** Conspicuous consumption, at least until 2005, then became unthinkable of after 2007. It resurfaced again in the mid-2010s as the economy began to recover, then the COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent economic collapse made it fall out of favor again.

* TV's predecessor, radio, has also gotten a boost in the digital era due to the growth of podcasting, smart speakers and internet/satellite radio. Podcasting has made audio content for news, comedy and dramas popular again after they were overtaken by TV in the '50s. Internet and satellite radio have also allowed for greater variety in music programming and lack of censorship instead of the narrow formats of terrestrial radio. Listeners have embraced public radio as an alternative to the sensationalism of cable news. A major reason is that audio offers a relief from the visual overload from the revival of TV mentioned above. The medium had already gotten a boost in TheFifties as dramatic programming was moving over to TV with the invention of the transistor radio and Top 40 programming. The former made radio portable in a way that TV wasn't and music programming appealed to a young audience eager to hear the new rock and roll music. Young people were catered to in a way they hadn't been before.

* Creator/AdamWest. In the late 1960s, he was a primetime TV star and the actor charged with bringing Series/Batman1966 back to life after being crippled by UsefulNotes/TheComicsCode. Head to the '80s and the return of the [[UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks Dark Knight]], and West is a ''persona non grata'', firmly stuck as a reminder of what was then seen as an AudienceAlienatingEra of Batman. This is lampshaded in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'', in which a character based on and voiced by West is portrayed as a washed-up has-been matinee idol remembered only by hardcore fans. But toward the end of his life, he was a staple voice actor in comedies such as ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' [[AdamWesting precisely because of his history as Batman]] and trademark [[LargeHam overdramatic voice]]. Adam West's particular incarnation of Batman has enjoyed repopularization via the light-hearted ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'' and the comic book ''ComicBook/Batman66'', as well as a general reappraisal of the 60s series itself, with it being appreciated for the AffectionateParody that it is. All this led to West's death in 2017 causing much more public sadness than it likely would have a decade previously.

* Baby names. There are some names that never go out of style, but others run in 60- to 100-year cycles - in TheThirties "Shirley" was a little girl and "Zack" was a grizzled old prospector. Today Shirley's collecting Social Security and Zack's a young man in his teens or twenties. Such "time capsule names" tend to be popular for about 20 years and then become indelibly linked to the generation born when they were popular, until they're rediscovered a few decades after that generation dies off and then they become indelibly linked to the new one. One major reason for this is the tendency to name children after grandparents and great-grandparents. This is something for fiction writers to watch out for - one of the easiest ways to provoke outrage over sloppy research is to have an entire cast of 20- and 30-somethings with names that are popular baby names ''now'' but weren't between the '30s and '80s; or to have a period-set story where characters' names are typical of the generations that are that age today rather than the cohort the characters are supposed to belong to. An outlier or two is fine, but [[http://www.babynamewizard.com/archives/2009/3/sorry-what-was-that-i-couldnt-hear-you-over-your-name too many can be overwhelming.]]