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90s sucked. I think one of the worst things was the very real possibility of actually being killed for being gay. Even being suspected of it was enough to get you ostracized. Bless the early gays that led the way. Y'all some tough motherfuckers.
On the upside, I guess, was that the same shit chuds complain about today as being "pandering" or "sjw propaganda" was honestly just kinda commonplace during the 90s to an extent and it was met without any resistance. Women in videos games, Black representation in media, etc that shit just existed without any kind of weird reaction to it.
Oh, and I miss the part of the 90s where cities with distinct culture actually existed before everything got gentrified and homogenized. Sure do love going to a new city only to see the exact same shit but bigger. Oh boy, a fucking uhhh top golf or whole foods wow how neat.
killed for being gay
just remember they aren't bringing the 90's back by stoning gay people to death, they'll be doing 90's 2.0 and stoning trans people to death. This idea that we're "repeating a cycle" is true but each iteration has small changes that make massive differences.
Gays are cool now cuz Peter Thiel raped em or whatever.
Very good post. Fuck manufactured nostalgia that serves as anti-communist propaganda most of the time (looking at you, Stranger Things and Umbrella Academy season 2)
A bunch of the movies of 1998/1999 project the feeling that this fantasy or illusion was going to crash And we’d all have to wake up
Also Radiohead's OK Computer
It was a good time to be a kid. Peak Nickelodeon in the early 90s. Peak Simpsons. Arcades and Video Games. Rock music's last hurrah. Dial-Up Web 1.0 exciting and fun, not yet completely toxic and demoralizing. AIM door opens
Counterpoint: I was the exact right age for the 90s, and it ruled for me personally. Therefore, everything was good and right for everyone else too, is my understanding of how things work.
For real though, I think the main thing you're missing is that the 90s were the last optimistic decade for the country as a whole. It seemed like most of the country (note: offer not valid for minorities) believed things were headed in more or less the right direction. The military budget had actually been cut, even. There were problems in the US, but many of them were being worked on. We didn't realize the traps that had been laid; Congress becoming the performative body it is, NAFTA, the beginning of mainstream conspiracism (Clinton bodycount, militias, Black Helicopters, etc.).
Also, it was the last decade for monoculture in pop entertainment. While there are bad things to say about what was actually IN the monoculture, it gave a common frame of reference for large chunks of the population that are unavailable to us now. I suspect that's actually one of the main causes of our country being on the path we're on - everyone has a different frame of reference culturally, costing us cohesiveness and an ability to talk to almost anyone.
A fair point on Rowling, but the monocultural saturation of today is nothing compared to the 90s. 76M people watched the Seinfeld finale. 24M watched the American Idol finale in 2010, the last time a non sports event was the most highly viewed show for a year.
Quite frankly, sports is the closest we have to a class spanning monoculture anymore.
agree with everything except the morphing bit. morphing fucking rules.
animorphs were my absolute jam and honestly probably played no small part in making me the fanatical environmentalist that i am today. tobias was 100% my first crush and i will never apologize. also digimon.
Holy fucking shit, imagine thinking WWE was good.
WWE was everything wrong with the 90s. Performative conflicts between corporate icons, comically hypocritical standards on drug use and sexualization, rampant exploitation of the labor force, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia all cranked to 11, and behind it all a raging narcissist and fascist funneled his accumulated gains into a political system that's committed genocide throughout the Middle East.
Vince McMahon was a scourge on an already shady industry.
No. Fucking. Thank you.
Holy fucking shit, imagine thinking WWE was good.
WWE was everything wrong with the 90s. Performative conflicts between corporate icons, comically hypocritical standards on drug use and sexualization, rampant exploitation of the labor force, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia all cranked to 11, and behind it all a raging narcissist and fascist funneled his accumulated gains into a political system that's committed genocide throughout the Middle East.
Vince McMahon was a scourge on an already shady industry.
No. Fucking. Thank you.
They gave us the best Marxist film in history (A Bug's Life), a strong rise for console gaming, and everything was made weirdly colorful (the fashion, graphic aesthetics, the toys, the food). Like yeah it sucked in its ways but all of human history has sucked in its ways.
My brain gets a serotonin dump from 90s stuff cause it associates things from that era with when I was too young to participate in capitalism, and when the world was still exciting and full of wonder. That's what decades nostalgia is all about.
Being a poor kid on the 90s i very much felt the pain of capitalism even though I didn't know it was capitalism's fault at the time.
Any time someone says the '90s were cool, just remind them that 1995 was peak AIDS/HIV deaths
this holds true with a lot of the music i listen to. while there are plenty of 90s-worship indie bands that rip off pavement, i just as often see a revival in 2000s aesthetics (nu metal and trap metal, pc music, etc.)
