A Big 2000s Revival In the 2020s: The Year of Shadow the Hedgehog with the release of Sonic 3 and the Shrek 5 Outrage Killed the Cringe Culture of the 2010s?

Remember back in 2015, finding Shadow the Hedgehog and the Sonic franchise as a whole was considered cringy, and Shadow holding a gun was collectively regarded as cringy? Remember when Shrek became a massive meme before being a respectable franchise where there was outrage for Shrek 5? I dunno about you, but if you came out in my school admitting you un-ironically enjoy Sonic The Hedgehog, Shrek, Nu-Metal, 2000s pop-punk, or any edgy media from the 90s and 2000s, you were regarded as a "cringey autistic" kid who would get bullied. Even stuff popular with the pre-teen demographic in the early 2010s like Five Nights At Freddy's and Beyblade were considered cool to shit on from 2015-2018.

Today? My local mall and college campus are filled with people wearing Shadow the Hedgehog merchandise, despite some of those probably being the same kids who thought Shadow was lame for carrying a gun in the 2010s. All thanks to Sonic 3 breaking the box office. Anime is becoming more mainstream thanks to streaming services, and video games like Five Nights At Freddy's and Pokemon are popular and cool to like thanks to video game movies being the new superhero comic movies of the 2020s.

So what I mean by all this is that the 2000s and early 2010s nostalgia revival has helped kill cringe culture for good. Hell, even the 90s revival in the 2020s made Final Fantasy: VII cool to like (hopefully, a good remake for Final Fantasy 8 comes out to make it cool to like that game). 90s and 2000s edginess in pop culture and 90s and 2000s edge culture became a lost art because it was collectively regarded as cringey across the 2010s. Yet the 2020s have made the 90s and 2000s edginess cool again, and it put a stake through the heart of it, and I couldn't be any happier.