Born in 2023

If you were born in 2023, you arrived in a year when Taylor Swift became the dominant cultural event. The Eras Tour launched in March and immediately became the highest-grossing concert tour in history, the economic impact on cities she visited measured in hundreds of millions—hotel rooms sold out months in advance, friendship bracelets traded outside stadiums, the whole phenomenon genuinely joyful in a way that cut across demographics and generations. OpenAI's ChatGPT, launched at the end of 2022, was the conversation of 2023—generative AI arriving in consumer form, everyone trying it, arguing about what it meant for writers and artists and teachers, the technology companies racing to integrate or counter it.

Barbie and Oppenheimer opened on the same weekend in July and the double feature—Barbenheimer—became a genuine cultural phenomenon, audiences in pink alongside audiences in atomic dread, the box office extraordinary. Israel and Hamas went to war in October after Hamas attacks killed twelve hundred Israelis, and the subsequent Israeli campaign in Gaza killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and divided American campuses and cities with a ferocity not seen since Vietnam. The economy was confusing—still hiring, inflation coming down, but the housing market frozen and credit card debt at records.

Remote work had become permanent for millions. The streaming wars had replaced the cable wars. The country was loud and divided and still, somehow, making things worth watching and hearing and attending.