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"Part of what makes Y2K such a disappointment, is that a more thoughtful engagement with the actual Y2K problem could have easily led to a better movie, and a much better critique (to the extent that Mooney was interested in making any kind of critique). Many of the real concerns about the Y2K problem revolved around the ideas of power outages—and one can imagine a pretty decent horror movie in which a group of teenagers suddenly have to find their way home in the dark. Indeed, there’s a lot that can be done with the idea of “what if everything stopped working?” (for a great example of this I highly recommend Tim Maughan’s book Infinite Detail). In Y2K the teens ultimately triumph thanks largely to Laura’s excellent computer related skills, but one could imagine a much more frightening story unfolding in a situation where a group of characters realize that they don’t actually have any of the necessary skills to navigate the situation they find themselves in. A lot of the fear about the Y2K problem was hyperbole that was stirred up by irresponsible media coverage that preferred interviewing doomsday-preppers to speaking with IT experts, but the fear underlying much of this was based on an understandable concern that when things stop working everything starts falling apart pretty quickly. And such a scenario could still be played for a mix of horror and humor: a movie featuring Fred Durst as the leader of a group of post-apocalyptic rap rock fans hunting some nerds in the dark probably would have been funnier and scarier than anything Y2K has to offer."

#Y2K #ComputerHistory #Cinema #Movies https://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2024/12/13/mix-cds-instant-messenger-and-the-end-of-the-world-a-review-of-kyle-mooneys-y2k-the-movie/

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