Madeleine Chapman looks back at ten years of global migration from the real world to the online world. 

Nothing has changed humanity and how we navigate it more than the internet in the 2010s. In 2010, the world had the internet. In 2019, the world is Online. The internet at the start of the decade was an unexplored planet. Potentially dangerous but full of wonder and harmless, dumb debates. The internet at the end of the decade has been thoroughly explored and found to be worryingly dangerous, filled with hate and harmful, dumb debates.

In a country where distance has been a sticking point in keeping up with global trends (paying $50 for international shipping and waiting five weeks for the latest cool thing to arrive really dampens the excitement), the internet has been an equaliser for New Zealand. Myspace, Bebo, and Tumblr allowed real-time interactions to take place across oceans, with complete strangers. In 2010, the migration to Facebook began in earnest. Americans had been on the cursed site for years, but New Zealanders were Bebo purists.

Facebook was fun. Status updates were short and to the point, usually broadcasting a mood or a meal. Anything beyond that and it was time to hit the message boards. That was what defined early-2010s internet: rooms. So many different sites for everything, before a select few billionaires decided they wanted to own every second of every person’s attention and amalgamated them all.

The Spinoff’s Decade in Review is presented in partnership with Lindauer Free*, the perfect accompaniment for end-of-decade celebrations for those looking to moderate their alcohol content (*contains no more than 0.5% alc/vol). 

Communities grew throughout the decade, and online homes formed for every person, personality, and kink imaginable. Interests deemed uncool (comics, Dungeons & Dragons, reality television) went from being highly populated but isolated corners of the internet to being unavoidable for anyone with a connection. Iron Man 2 was an objectively terrible Marvel movie in 2010 that did well at the box office and had audiences questioning whether superhero movies were sustainable. Avengers: Endgame in 2019 is the highest-grossing movie of all time and was memed beyond recognition within hours of its release. The previously silent and maligned had found a voice, and safety in numbers.

The internet brought people together, and never was this demonstrated more strikingly than with KONY2012. KONY2012 was a short documentary uploaded to Vimeo and then to Youtube by non-profit organisation Invisible Children seeking donations to help fight Ugandan militia leader Joseph Kony. The documentary wasn’t particularly well-made but it struck all the right emotional chords and found an audience of young adults desperate to be part of a global movement. The KONY2012 saga was perhaps the earliest demonstration of the very best of the internet (its ability to unite millions around the world within minutes – my flatmate ordered a KONY2012 merch pack as a first year university student in Auckland) and the very worst (by the time his pack arrived, the movement was over. The doco had been criticised for being white-saviouring and overly dramatic; attempts to inspire real-life action as opposed to online clicks had proven futile; and the movement’s leader was arrested after suffering a mental breakdown and being filmed publicly masturbating in San Diego). No matter the original intention, viral fame rarely ends well.

In 2013, Chorus announced a nationwide competition, Gigatown, to determine which town or city in New Zealand would become the first in the Southern hemisphere to receive ultrafast fibre broadband. Ironically, the competition to see who would get the fastest internet in the country – internet that would apparently load a gigabyte per second – took two whole years to find a winner.

Before they found a winner, New Zealand had its first brush with internet fame. Paul Vasquez aka Yosemitebear aka the guy from the ‘double rainbow’ viral video, starred in a Vodafone TV ad. By all accounts, he was the first viral star to have a New Zealand connection. We had our own ones soon after. In fact, 2013 was a golden era for New Zealanders going global. There was the the Always Blow On The Pie guy, the Father’s Day is on Sunday lady, and the Nek Minit guy who had a resurgence after originally appearing in 2011.

What separates New Zealand’s internet moments from the early 2010s to the ones of the late 2010s is simply commercialisation. The videos and memes of 2010-2014 stayed just that. Even the double rainbow guy, whose video was the most-viewed in the world at one point, only appeared in two commercials, and one was halfway across the world in New Zealand. Now, a good online thing can never stay as just that. One viral video from How To Dad in 2015 has turned into a full-time influencer career for Jordan Watson. A funny Snapchat guy with crack up dance moves in 2017 became William Wairua on Dancing With The Stars, and seemingly every second TV commercial, in 2019.

Before, there was real life and the internet. Now there’s just online and it’s everything. At least we have memes.

At the end of 2015, Dunedin was crowned Gigatown, some 18 months after most people had stopped caring about the competition. The lack of interest was probably for the best, because some gold-standard desperation videos were made by more than one city mayor at the time.

By then, the internet had become synonymous with social media. Everything was absorbed through social media. News outlets turned their attention from print to online, then to video. Netflix was a staple in New Zealand, and enjoyed a monopoly for a while before other streaming services caught up. Everything you used to want in real life was now available with a click.

The flipside, however, is that the internet has become everyone’s drunk friend in the worst way. You present a questionable thought or idea to it and no matter how bad it is, the internet will provide support and encouragement. Whereas previously someone harbouring secret racist resentment would keep it that way for fear of recrimination, now they can go online and find thousands of people saying actually, you’re absolutely right.

The one crucial arena where New Zealand falls slightly behind is using the internet as a democratic tool. In 2016, foreign agents used Facebook and other social websites to influence the US general election. While such heavy-handed corruption wasn’t emulated here in 2017, the power of memes and ‘shitposting’ – two things largely seen as harmless until that point – was made clear. Sean Topham and Ben Guerin assisted the National Party in its social media during Bill English’s prime ministerial campaign. English won the election night but lost the government. The strategy of rapid response memes and video clips was a winner though, and Topham Guerin have since gone on to lead Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson to election wins in Australia and the UK. It’s unlikely their influence will be felt in the 2020 election (who could afford them now?) but the success of the method is undeniable.

Harnessing the power of the internet, particularly Facebook, for democracy isn’t so cut and dry for a country that now holds the shameful title of First Country in the World to Experience a Terror Attack being Livestreamed on Facebook. New Zealand, through Jacinda Ardern, is leading the call to stop online extremism, especially targeting platforms like Facebook that are repositories for the worst of human behaviour. We are leading the way on this, but even Ardern refuses to rule out spending big sums on Facebook advertising in order to win the election next year.

The new decade will begin and thousands of New Zealanders will vow to delete their social media accounts and be more present in their own lives. It’s become as common a New Years resolution as wanting to get fit.

At the start of the decade, everyone wanted to know how best to make use of this great, expanding commodity we had in the internet. We were all searching for the next big thing. At the end of the decade, everyone is online, searching for a way back.

The internet phrases of the decade:

• Viral: Everyone wants it but few survive it
• Meme: Communicating through a language of shared cultural images has alienated older generations but is one of the few beautiful things this decade has fostered online
• Algorithm: After years of denial, it was finally made clear that every aspect of our lives is monitored and sold to advertisers
• Monetised: Nothing is free, especially not when you think it is

The decade in a sentence:

Everyone shared too much and now everyone knows too much.

A landmark study has shown the true value of tikanga Māori-based early-intervention childcare using research from a parenting programme in West Auckland.

Corrine grew up in a wonderful household; her parents never so much as swore in front of her. In her own words, they were “amazing role models,” but when she became a teenager Corrine started rebelling.

“I ended up doing a lot of naughty things. I became a drug addict. I had gone through some abusive relationships and violence and I had my baby and was still in that cycle.”

Now a mum of two, Corrine thanks Incredible Years Parenting, an early-intervention parenting programme created to address conduct problems in children, for teaching her to be the parent her children deserve.

Incredible Years is an international early-intervention initiative. The West Auckland version, renamed Ngā Tau Mīharo o Aotearoa, is adapted to suit the specific needs of Māori families with a tikanga-based approach. Over its six years, the programme is credited with helping hundreds of parents like Corrine become better equipped to understand and properly deal with the challenges they face.

“There are things that you learn there that we do every day anyway but we forget them because we’re so caught up in life and business and time and we forget these things like child directed play and praise.”

Now a landmark study has proven the programme’s value through a methodology known as Social Return on Investment (SROI). It’s the first internationally accredited SROI study to be conducted in New Zealand, and shows that the social return of the Incredible Years programme was almost quadruple the investment put into it.

The difference with the SROI framework is that it takes into account not only the monetary returns of a programme, but the lived experiences of those who participated in it, says Dr Sneha Lakhotia is New Zealand’s first accredited SROI practitioner. She says the framework provides an important distinction between monetary and social value.

“SROI is an outcomes-based framework, in the sense that it looks at change in terms of real change and not mere numbers. It’s beyond economic changes… In layman’s terms, it is basically seeing something from a broader perspective: social, environmental and economic, and it’s turning the real change away from the normal numbers reporting.”

The research is important to understanding the value of early intervention parenting programmes, and importantly, the value of programmes tailored towards Māori. The overwhelmingly positive results of the report, Lakhotia says, are beneficial for people right across the board – from the whānau taking part to the people delivering the programme, and even the government.

“We often discount the importance of parenting considering there are other things going around, but if you do not take care of your caregivers and your parents then they are not guided well. If they are Māori, non-Māori, they are poor or rich – everyone requires [good parenting]. It has a multi-factorial effect across the child’s life span, and it really defines the way the journey is going to be. It’s very important from a policy perspective that we don’t just use this as a remedial programme, but as a toolbox for parents.”

Piripi is another parent who went through the Incredible Years programme. His four children are currently in state care, and he’s not shy about his past issues with drugs that landed them there. Piripi joined Incredible Years on the advice of a friend three years ago, and says it was the first step in changing his life.

“I needed changes. I needed something to do and the guy I knew was very convincing that this was the way to go. Incredible Years was my foundation, and I worked from that and started growing and getting into other courses, other parenting ones. Incredible Years was the one that opened that door up to getting me motivated to get out there and do these things.”

The success of the programme can, in part, be put down to the tikanga Māori approach which both Corrine and Piripi say was important in making them feel welcome and open to learning in the class environment. “There is a big difference between having Pākehā facilitators and Māori facilitators. It is just more like a loving, whānau environment that you’re walking into,” says Piripi.

Corrine explains that while there were parents there from all different backgrounds, the tikanga setting helped everyone to find connection.

“Right from the very beginning of the programme it’s about coming together and realising that we’re all parents and we all struggle and go through difficult times, and we’re here to learn to make that better. You go in there thinking you’re going to be doing all this hard work and you just end up meeting people and you make your own rules. We do whanaungatanga, and we do a kawa, and make rules together and make those bonds and then we get to start work next week.

“The Māori environment really helps to show that we’re all the same and I may not have known that. I look at other people and I think they have it all figured out, but then I go to these lessons and I realise it’s all the same, we’re struggling together and it’s wonderful that we can all connect on that.”

Being aware of cultural differences can make a huge change in how people react to a programme like Incredible Years, says Lakhotia. “Simple things like keeping your shoes outside, which is a specific Asian culture too – recognising things like that which may offend one but not offend the other, is important.”

The inclusion of tikanga Māori doesn’t exclude other ethnicities. Corrine says in her class were “Indians, Africans, Mexicans, Chinese, English. I’ve been in there with every culture and we’re all the same, no matter where we’re from.”

Anecdotal evidence backs up the report’s findings that the programme’s worth greatly outweighs its cost. For Piripi, it played a huge role in his journey to hopefully getting his kids back.

“I’ve amazed myself, actually, just learning the things that I can do. There was so much I didn’t really know about how to be a father.

“I learned how to talk to my children, and it’s not just talking down on them, it’s getting down on your hands and knees and talking to them at their level. I learnt how to listen to them. I learnt how to praise them for good things that they do, I learned about giving them treats but not all the time.”

It’s a similar story for Corrine, who says the most important lessons she learned were about her own behaviours.

“What it ended up coming down to was the way that I reacted. [The programme] ended up teaching me a whole different language and how to speak to my children. I was a yeller. I would get my kids to do things and if they didn’t listen, I would yell at them

“Now my children can tell me anything – and they do – and I’ve learned to be able to handle that without having a negative reaction so that they can continue to talk to me.”

This content was created in paid partnership with the National Urban Māori Authority. Learn more about our partnerships here.