My review of the decade, top ten events

[fezzyfestoon]

Disaster, disaster, disaster.  Things like the invention of Facebook and YouTube, the wardrobe malfunction, the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts, and other less self-pitying events are far more significant in the long run than all these disasters.  Eight of your ten were disasters, that's ridiculous.  9/11 covers the significance of the development of a culture of fear in this country adequately.

[fezzyfestoon]

Disaster, disaster, disaster.  Things like the invention of Facebook and YouTube, the wardrobe malfunction, the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts, and other less self-pitying events are far more significant in the long run than all these disasters.  Eight of your ten were disasters, that's ridiculous.  9/11 covers the significance of the development of a culture of fear in this country adequately.

Disasters drive legislation. Dead bodies in the newspaper, TV or internet have always driven discourse on many major issues of the day.  Just in this last decade 9/11 completely reorganized the Federal government and Katrina completely altered FEMA and our threat posture in relation to natural disasters. It has always been this way as well- globally Black death re-ordered society, and in America, the Chicago Fire, SF Earthquake, Spanish Flu etc. all had lasting cultural and legislative relevance.   It is rather depressing and there are certainly other relevant issues but you cannot discount them.

Just because we're all obsessed with politics doesn't mean it actually affects our lives.  Laws aren't always significant, not that we made laws with regards to Katrina or the tsunami anyway.  Disasters are momentarily impactful, but real cultural changes have been caused by the things I listed.  Changing a law for disaster preparedness isn't exactly a life-changing event.

[fezzyfestoon]

If you're going to insist social networking belongs on it, then it should go to the creation of Friendster, not Facebook. Social networking was already huge before Facebook existed. As for YouTube it was already very easy to watch videos on the internet long before it.

I don't really care who started it; Facebook and YouTube were the ones who popularized it to the point it's at now and made it mainstream. They're indisputably the most notable sites for social networking and video sharing.

Exactly.  There's no denying that Facebook and YouTube are now the identity of social networking and internet video.