According to Ian Winwood’s book Smash, and NOFX’ book Hepatitis Bathtub, it is one of the records that paved the way for bands like NOFX, Blink 182,* and dozens of others to make the music we love and probably take for granted. If it weren’t for Dookie (and a few other landmark albums), record companies might not have taken chances on punk bands and we might not have had the 90’s punk explosion.
https://www.cougarboard.com/board/message.html?id=31492361
On a personal level, Green Day is one of the bands that got me into punk rock. Their music possibly also saved my life as a depressed teenager. I don’t get the gate keeping or trolling (My phone initially auto-corrected that to ‘hate keeping’ and I should have left it haha).
Green Day changed their sound for most of the last 20 years and I found myself steering away from their music (Not that there’s anything wrong with it). But that run of 1,039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours, Kerplunk, Dookie, and Insomniac was incredible and I don’t get the point of trying to say it wasn’t punk.
*Personally, I am not a fan of Blink 182 but I know many on CB are.