Charting the 2000s Pirate Craze in 15 Steps

The 2000s were a confusing time. Everyone was dressing like a ‘70s porn star, all the good musicians were either dead or no longer teenagers, and social media consisted of sentence fragments explaining your current “status.” It was also, however, the golden age of memes. You can instantly get elder millennials all nostalgic by mentioning cats that speak in broken English or the superhuman powers of Chuck Norris and more than a few of them to blush and create a hasty excuse to leave by asking if they ever talked like a pirate.

Because for about a decade there, we were all super into pirates for some reason. What was up with that? Why did we ever think rapists and thieves who didn’t shower and dressed like MC Hammer were so cool? You might think it started with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, but if anything, Disney was responding to a trend, not starting one. It actually goes back much further.