2002 was a banner year for pop culture: Bennifer was going strong. Spider-Man ruled the box office. Avril Lavigne was all over the radio, and The Bachelor had audiences in a chokehold. Twenty years later, this exact same sentence holds true. Bennifer is engaged for the second time. Spider-Man: No Way Home made a whopping $800 million at the box office. Avril Lavigne’s new album Love Sux is her highest-rated album to date. And The Bachelor somehow still has us in a chokehold, with Clayton Echard dividing fans over his final pick. The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Plenty of other things happened in 2002, too, from the first musical collaboration between Beyoncé and Jay Z, to the release of the first Gossip Girl book, to the premiere of American Idol. Justin and Britney were still a thing, and so were… Alanis Morissette and Ryan Reynolds?

It’s certainly fun to reminisce, but our fanfare over 2002 pop culture isn’t simply the product of early-aughts nostalgia. While there truly may be no other way to explain the comeback of low-rise jeans, the legacy of 2002 pop culture is embedded in our contemporary zeitgeist. Whether it’s the pop-punk revival, our propensity to meme-ify movies, or the very concept of creating a portmanteau for a hot celebrity couple, relics of 2002 continue to influence how we consume, create, and reflect on contemporary entertainment. For a very special TBT, we invited some of the internet’s most distinctive voices to take us back to 2002, pinpointing the people and moments we’ll be fixating on for decades to come.

— Samantha Rollins, Deputy Entertainment Editor

— Samantha Leach, Entertainment Editor at Large