The music, pre social media, freedom of being a latch key kid, “be home before the street lights come on”, the simplicity of pre-tech times with the aid of early unimposing tech, getting lost, finding our way back.
Idk how to word it…
MTV was MTV. Playing with the kid you hate down the street because you needed even teams in whatever the neighborhood was playing. No pharmaceutical ads, society seemed to try more and overall people seemed more together(maybe that’s my young self being naive), the personal connection, the disconnection, the lack of constant input.
It was a perfect blend of the way our parents grew up and the way our kids would grow up. We grew up playing outside and not having the Internet or cell phones, and just as we reached early adulthood that stuff was really popping off and we adapted easily.
We (Gen-X) came “of age” in the 90s. We learned to drive, graduated HS, went to college, had parties, explored the world around us (nearby and far away) and we did these things withOUT the help of the internet or pressures of social media.
It is almost impossible for someone to comprehend what that felt like and it is an experience that is very difficult to replicate in any meaningful way in this digital world.
And the drugs weren’t all laced with freaking fentanyl…so we could experiment without such a risk of instant death like there is today. Not that it was “safe” by any means…but damn, it’s crazy today.
It was the end of the cold war.
The world had averted nuclear Armageddon without a major conflict.
Standards of living were rising.
Life expectancy was increasing.
The .com boom of the late 90’s had the stock market rising at 30% per year for multiple years.
Regular people felt like they were getting ahead in life.
Technology was advancing.
The world seemed to have evolved without conflict, and that was a new thing.
It was a careless time! More laid back compared to today. These days you don’t trust yourself to have an opinion because everyone feels personally attacked! And life was cheap back then too!
After that the world went mad and supported the US bombing the hell out of people who never did anything to deserve it.
People who knew absolutely nothing about GeoPolitics had “Support our Troops” magnets on the cars and minivans and you were a traitor if you asked “Why”.
It was big con job, and people got tricked into surrendering their intellectual integrity in a gigantic mass hysteria hoax.
Going to relatively cheap concerts (Lollapalooza), joking around and feeling connected with people that weren’t buried in phones. Girls in wide legs. Most people seemed fairly happy and expected good things. I felt better just about immediately when Clinton got elected. Bush and Reagan were such downers and wanted to make it the 50s again.
The economy was far better with the dot com rise, there was a definite musical genre for the time in grunge and so many bands that would become future mega stars were just getting started, there was no social media and the internet was still in it’s 1.0 configuration so there was far less toxicity and bullshit and far more exploration of the new digital frontier. There were no major wars being fought and domestically there didn’t seem to be any great social struggles. It felt to most that the biggest problems of racism and sexism were behind us and all the work ahead was simply getting things like qual pay and anti discrimination laws.
In short things actually felt like they were getting better. And then the 200 election happened and we went down the darkest timeline.
It was a brief pause in geopolitical tensions. Russia just collapsed, china was not yet rich. There was not a constant stream of distressing news to worry about.
Adults miss being young and careless. But I’d say that the world felt a lot freer then without social media, smart phones and whatnot. No one expected to talk to you at any given time. You wouldn’t have people wanting to know what you’re doing at some random time. These days I feel like we’re being constantly watched.
Also, I felt that the sense of impending doom was a lot less. We were just out of the cold war, it seemed things were going to be good again. Famous last words, I guess.
Not paying bills was a plus. But, it was a time of no social media where we could experience life without feeling the need to document every moment. We were present in life and that is a gift in its own. Not to mention everything was better: music, movies, shows.
Nostalgia is a significant component of our entertainment culture and has been for decades. The 80s loved the 50s, the 90s loved the 60s, the early 00s loved the 70s, 80s nostalgia started in about 2012 and now, it’s 90s nostalgia.
The reason for this, I think, is because mass produced entertainment is marketed to teens and very young adults. It’s why you’ll hear people over 30 claiming “today’s music sucks and it was better back in my day!” Of course they believe that. It was once marketed directly to them and no longer is.
Nostalgia is another marketing tool that aims to include the over 30 crowd in pop consumption. It’s why each decade, there are dozens of movies or TV series set about 30 years in the past.
Life was simpler and everything wasn’t on demand. You actually had to wait to watch a tv show and had to interact with people in real life. The fake virtual / online life didn’t exist. The most interaction online was from AOL Chat.
The internet offered hope. 9/11 hadn’t stained everyone’s souls. The greatest generation was still alive. People still remembered the great wars and there was a global sense of not wanting to repeat. Climate change was still something in the future. Russia really looked like they wanted to be part of the world. There hadn’t been 30 years of constant politically correct social auditing making everyone hate each other. There were no billionaires and there was far less concentration of wealth at the top 1%. And corporations were not people and could not fund politicians with millions of dollars.
It never felt like I had to pay for every second of existence which it does now. I could miss a day of work without choosing which meals I then had to skip to afford rent
Parties on the roof of my apartment in the east village, art school, dive bars, $1 slices, indie bands on the jukebox, clove cigarettes, great drugs fentanyl-free, matte mauve lipstick and pumas, no phones, no computers connected to the rest of the world, missed connection shenanigans, just hanging out and shooting the shit on a Saturday night.
I lived in a studio apartment in Chelsea in Manhattan, and worked for a publishing company and later, a dot com startup. We still did martini lunches and no one cared or passed judgment. People were far less judgemental for sure. We had parties and gathered at beaches on weekends, and we were building lives and careers without anything hovering over us. The music wasn’t as great as the 70s and 80s, in my opinion, and the cars were not as cool. There was just a really happy vibe in the 90s, like What Could Possibly Go Wrong.
Millennial here… Just trying out what something does by finding out on our own. Was it risky? Yes, but it was worth it as you learned what something does on your own.
It was especially true when it comes to playing games outside.
Kids had a lot more freedom back then, at least where I grew up. In the summer, we left in the morning and didn’t go back home until the street lights came on.
Best way to really quantify it is: During that time we still believed the world to be a good place where we as individuals could make a difference rather where we saw a bright future. That is gone now (mostly) and the collective consciousness is skewing more pessimistic. Towards survival mode.
Probably the fact that people weren’t so chronically online and people were capable of just chilling and getting along with other people even when they disagreed about things. Mostly because you wouldn’t even know all of the things you disagreed about, because people weren’t arguing with their relatives on the internet 24/7.
Honestly, the internet is probably the biggest difference. It was around enough to be useful for some things, but not to such an extreme degree that it is now.
All other reasons – the 1980s had a crazy economic downturn, sky high interest rates (like 20%). The 90s came and those issues were getting resolved and the economy was on the bounce back. A lot of Gen-X, Xennials and Millennials were living in their teens and early adult age.
Times were ‘simpler’ not every bit of news travelled the globe in the span of minutes, TV media was busting out and was more and more accessible. Home entertainment was starting out (consoles, PCs…). THe internet appeared and it was the start of a giant economic boom… price of oilgas was low, interest rates were back down. The cold war had just ended with the fall of the Soviet Union.
China was cracking out of its shell and joining the rest of the world in its trading.
Then we lost our minds about terrorism, and wasted money on wars in the Middle East while giving a huge tax cut to the rich.
We have never recovered from this.
Consequently the government has not been able to provide for its people making them lose even more faith in the government.
Which culminates with Trumpism a kind of hybrid of fascism fueled against their typical targets of liberals and minorities but also at the idea of the deep state or typical federal workers.
Lack of constant connection throught internet and smartphones. It was such a time of pop culture and hope for the future with the millennium coming, even with the Y2K scare. But then 9/11 happened and shook America’s guise of security and safety. That shifted everything to higher government surveillance, especially TSA. Then, the 2008 housing market crash, etc.
We knew that everything was shit. So balls out, lets’ do it. Nothing mattered. We were all going to die soon so who gives a shit? Not our parents. Not our teachers. No our government. So Fuck it! Let’s just enjoy the last couple years of our lives at best.
But we’re still here. Still, no one cares. So Fuck it.
Nothing specific about that generation that you couldn’t make similar comparisons to other generations.
The reason you hear so much about the 90s specifically is twofold:
There used to be plenty of 80s nostalgia. Dances, costume parties, radio stations dedicated to 80s music, tv channels showing 80s shows, etc. There still is plenty of that. Same can be said for the 70s, 60s, etc. But the people who are nostalgic for the 80s aren’t as chronically online as the people nostalgic for the 90s. That’s why you see more 90s nostalgia online than earlier generations.
00s doesn’t have the same ring to it as “the 90s”. What do you say? “The Two Thousands”? “The Naughties”? “The New Millenium”? We didn’t really collectively decide on a name for it as a society. There is plenty of nostalgia for that time though, and it’s getting more and more popular. You just don’t see it labeled as often as “00s nostalgia”. Same goes for the ’10s
My mom misses freedom. She complains now there’s a lot of laws for everything, she believes many of them have no sense, she doesn’t like to be controlled in everything.
A world before the Internet and before 9/11 is so different that nobody under 30 really gets it.
I bought a plane ticket with cash and flew across the country without showing anyone any ID. When I pulled out a cigarette to smoke on the flight, I noticed I’d accidentally brought a live 22 round on the plane with me.
It was a moment in time when youth culture was a mix of cynicism and distrust of shallowness and vapid excess while also being hesitantly optimistic about the future because the Cold War was finally over and the economy wasn’t in complete shambles, and we were seeing gigantic leaps in technology happening before our eyes. The world had opened up and things like going to college and meeting some exchange student who grew up in East Germany or the USSR and could tell you first-hand about how life was there became much more common.
Add to it that we were the last generation to experience life before the Internet was a thing, for good and bad, and it was a really great time to be young. We saw the birth of many things current young people take as fundamental parts of their lives and we saw them develop and evolve the next 30 years, and we are very aware of how much they’re not actually necessities as much as they are luxuries or convenient because we remember what it was like to live without them.
I always thought it must’ve been somewhat similar to how my grandmother went from living without electricity to seeing her first automobile, to having a phone in her house, to flying to Europe on vacation as a senior citizen, to using video apps on a cellphone to talk to me when I was in grad school in the 2000’s shortly before she passed away. I can’t fathom what her life was like before cars, TV, phones and so on existed, just like kids these days can’t really understand what things really were like in the ’90’s and before.
I was a kid in the 90s. I miss biking over to my buddy’s place, throw my bike by the lawn, then barge in (we didn’t lock doors those days), yell: “Hi Mrs. Hall, where’s Mike?” Then go find him in the basement playing N64 with the boys. Good times…
Sport: iconic heavyweight division in boxing, Alex Ferguson’s Man United in England and USA94, Tiger Woods emerging, Formula 1 going mainstream, South Africa winning the Rugby World Cup after the end of apartheid
Video games: The PlayStation and N64, they were groundbreaking consoles with classic games
TV: Twin Peaks, Simpsons, X-Files and later, The Sopranos. And for many, the Monday Night Wars in professional wrestling were a highlight of the 90s
It really was an unbelievable decade for entertainment and culture
Not everything being recorded or online. You could come to school and everyone watched the same episode of the same show the night before. Music was new and diverse not just digital kit sounds. Your friends would have to call the landline and make plans to meet somewhere. It was a great time I miss it a lot. But life goes on.
Actually discovering secrets in games while playing them, or rarely finding a guide in a videogames magazine and instantly launching your favourite game to try that new hint
The 90s was the last full decade of “the before times.” We aren’t talking about a small generational change. We are talking about a full-fledged transformation from the pre-internet age into the age of computing–this is as important as the agricultural revolution and industrial revolution.
What’s more, we might be living through another similar transformation right now with AI.
Anyway, the before times were more wholesome, in my opinion. Less poison in your brain.
Ah yes…The Beforetimes. Before Bush Jr trashed the economy to start a two front war in Asia for oil and to give the entire treasury over to military contractors. The economy was doing great, and I had a sweet job. Concerts were cheap, and there were like five outdoor music fests every summer.
Feeling of modernity without the over-connectedness of present day. You had cool stuff coming out, but you still needed to go places to do it. You want to play games with your friends, you lazy asses need to actually meet up and game.
Sure, stuff is definitely nice now. Nicer in some ways. But there was something pleasant about the actual need to interact with people.
The internet was still new and creative and fun. Social media didn’t exist. Cable news was a thing, but it wasn’t so saturated into daily life. Cell phones were still expensive in the early and mid-90s to limit availability (the phones were expensive and so was usage until the late 90s).
We were a decade or two away from the last large inflationary period (the Jimmy Carter years) so prices had been stable for families for a LONG time. People had a very stable price baseline.
It was relatively peaceful for most Western nations. The end of the cold war. The Gulf War shocked the world (both allies and enemies) in how far the US military had come, and a new peace sort of set in until 9/11.
Politically in the US, we had the perfect combo for prosperity (for most of the decade): Democrat President, Republican Congress (and they were all willing to work with each other, for the most part)
As others have said, 90% of modern conveniences you have today without all the social media bullshit that goes along with it.
In the US, politically, the “right” and the “left” political spectrum curves both basically touched the middle until the sharp shift left in 2000 by Democrats, followed by a sharp shift right by Tea Party. Most people agreed on most things.
There was a lot of media creativity and WAY more diversity of entertainment. If you listened to a top 40 radio station in the mid to late 90s it had grunge, pop, rock, metal, hip hop, rap, EDM, even a little country. It was just so much more creative. Everybody sort of liked a bit of everything.
It was the last pre-internet generation, basically. The junior high and high school formative years of the group that had grown up in the 80s and 90s. Born analog, adopted digital.
They were young when they first heard it. People obsess about the 60s WAY more than people do about the 90s. People are nostalgic about the music of their youth.
As a kid who turned 8 in 1990 everything seemed to positive. We won the cold war. Then we went on to curb stomp Iraq with all our friends in the gulf war. America had no serious threats against it. We’d won.
Cable TV meant you had more stuff to watch than ever and so much of it was aimed directly at younger people. The movies that were coming out were amazing. Music was changing every few years in dramatic ways.
We were at the balance where the Gen X latch key kids style of parenting was going away. Parents were actively involved with their kids and wanted them to be happy. However, there was still a huge amount of freedom given to kids to do their own things.
Then later in the 90s, the internet happened.
I could go on ICQ and talk to other kids all over the world. I made friends I’d talk to every day after school and we knew more about each other than a lot of people I was friends with in real life. I could spend three hours downloading a Metallica MP3 only to find out it was actually Pantera. But I could still download it without having to go to a record store.
Gas was so cheap.
When I started driving it was under a dollar per gallon. We’d load up a crappy car with 6 teenagers and just cruise around smoking cigarettes and blasting music. The car cost less than $800 and when something broke it was fixable with a Chilton shop manual and a trip to a salvage yard.
When we were kids we’d ride bikes from house to house, but when one of us got a car, we’d drive. Sometimes we’d just drive around with nowhere to go because we were all broke, but we could still scrape together the $10 to fill the gas tank. Being in the car with a bunch of friends was better than being at home with our parents for most of us.
Jobs were fairly easy to get because it was right on the cusp where you had to go in and fill out an application. If the manager got a good feeling about you, you got the job.
It all felt like nothing much was going on, but we were heading in the right direction.
The USA was actually the biggest superpower in the world. Free trade ruled, and the USA called the shots. Everything was at most half as expensive as they are today. EVERYTHING. You were more likely to own a real home with only one or two jobs. More jobs were very stable, and the intent on keeping people employed in the same job was considered normal and consistent. Learned about progressive/liberal morals in schools? They actually CAME TRUE when you graduated, and the real world set an example to those morals! Very very few mass shootings. People respected actual lessons that helped the fellow man. People upheld the separation of church and state. Presidents weren’t stupid assholes. There were less skills being outsourced. There were no such things as credit scores, surcharges, or streaming. Subscriptions were only reserved for magazines.
Prime of life. Any generation will harken back to their youthful ‘glory days’ as the best days of their lives. Unless they learn the value of being present, then it’s always “now” and the beauty constantly wells up.
Its just age old nostalgia. Its exactly why adults in our youth, were so glossy eyed over there hey-days (my parents, 60’s-70’s and others 70’s-80’s).
Like yeah, you can mill it down to specific things all you want, but each generation is going to miss so much about their youth, that they end up missing the forest for the trees;
Nostalgia of course, but many are really only remembering what it felt like to be young and full of energy. A time where there was only growth and development, learning and doing new things, and always having the body to take it (generally speaking of course).
Most aren’t missing the 90’s specifically. They are missing a formative period of their lives. It just so happens that for a lot of people, that period lined up with “the 90’s”, give or take a decade. By that, I mean that time period could have started in the 80’s but largely took place in or spilled over into the 90’s/ early 2000’s, or started in the 90’s and spilled over into the 2000’s. 90’s just rolls of the tongue easier and sounds better to sum it up, and as a result of how people’s brains work, it all just blends to being perceived as just “the 90’s”.
I don’t necessarily know that it was better. I remember worrying about the environment, Y2K, presidential sex scandals (and would this mean every president after this would be morally corrupt), being thin, not getting called gay, and some aspects of arts and culture were just disillusioned with society.
However, I don’t know that it was worse than the present day on average, either. I loved the sense that economically things were getting better and better.
Honestly, I think it’s because the 90s were the last decade where life felt both connected and unplugged. We had just enough technology—landlines, cable TV, early internet—to feel modern, but not so much that it overwhelmed daily life. You could disappear for hours without anyone freaking out. No smartphones tracking your every move, no social media pressure.
Music felt more personal, too. You had to hunt for albums, make mixtapes, or burn CDs. There was something magical about discovering stuff on your own, not just from algorithms.
Plus, the world felt… slower. You lived more in the moment, even if it was just chilling with friends, biking around, or watching TGIF on a Friday night. The nostalgia hits hard because life now is always “on,” and the 90s gave us space to just be.
Nostalgia. I don’t think there was any childhood that people didn’t appreciate more. It’s the process of knowing nothing and feeling bliss, to learning how fucked up the world is. I’d guess That only kids born into the depression go “You know what, the 30s sucked.”
No social media… everybody knew who they were, things were just easier, kids were kids, kids played outside with other kids, not everybody got a trophy.. it was the last of the best times to grow up… I feel bad for the kids now..
I’m seeing a lot of people giving complex answers. Actual reality, We were young without problems and the things we remember from those times were fun or cool. Adulthood is stressful and we miss when things weren’t that way. It’ll be the same of today’s kids looking back on their childhoods I’m sure.
Edit: I’d like to add reliving nostalgia isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. When I was a kid, surge was my favorite pop. They stopped making it, and then sometime within the last decade they brought it back and I didn’t like it. Could be my tastes just changed, could be I just had a fond memory of something that just wasn’t as good as I thought it was. I probably won’t ever know the answer to that, but my point is nostalgia is usually best left in the past
Freedom, no robo calls, fast food was quick and affordable, no social media to cram bullshit down your throat, being a kid and exploring the world around you without you tube or tik tok consuming every moment.
Technology was sort of just a blip on the radar, versus basically your entire life now. Not being as “connected” meant joy in things now take for granted – bumping into a friend totally by chance, catching a song you love on the radio, the anticipation of waiting for something like a TV show to be on at a certain time. There was a certain charm of things happening by chance, or patiently waiting for something and just going to social events purely by word of mouth. Or even not going to social events and not being incessantly pestered about it. You consumed tech at your own pace…but at the end of day you put away your devices and tech toys and just hung out with your friends.
Workers in jobs were more valued, we had smaller privately owned stores with the fancy stuff being in malls which were relaxing to go to, no politics drama except for clintons affair, older family members still knew how to service their families cars, 99c Whopper Wednesdays, video games costed 80% less after 2 years for every console, Saturday morning cartoons that teens / young adults could also enjoy, upscale suburb editions were all decorated in christmas lights and people would take their families to drive by them around mid sized cities, quality leather stuff made in mexico that people brought back before they got cheaper mass produced stuff. The list can go on and on.
I miss everything about it. The music, the attitude, the 90s. I think you had to live it to understand what an incredible time it was and the hope people had for the future, but so much for that, 2000 had arrived like a wrecking ball.
I think people are generally nostalgic for the time periods when they were a kid, teenager, or young adult, and Millennials and Gen X were those ages in the 90s. But I don’t think older people like my 70-year old mom are especially fond of the 90s over other decades. She talks more about the 60s and 70s.
I think it was the optimism, Cold war ended , new technology and internet was blooming, pre 9/11, we didn’t know what we didn’t know. being ignorant of so many of the horrors that we see everyday online now was bliss.
To be clear… mid to late 90s. Minimal internet and maximum prosperity. Great movies. Generational music across numerous genres. Freedom from surveillance, the innocence of a pre-9/11 world and most importantly… NO SOCIAL MEDIA
Less tech. Now I love tech, adore it. However, I know the internet and my phone is as much a curse as a blessing.
As great as the internet is, it’s kind of a cesspool and creates nightmare scenarios for privacy, misinformation etc.I turned 18 around 2000 so we still HAD internet, it just wasn’t what it is today.
As far as cellphones, I never had one until like 2003-2005. There was a simple freedom in not having one.
The combination of both made the late 90s and early 00s feel a bit more liberating.
Being young. As much as I believe this current decade to be a shit hole, I have no doubt that in 20 or 30 years young people will look back on the 2020s as the good old days.
Yeah no one thought about the Cold War in the 90’s. It was fun, it was cool to play weird music and for bands to make it. Entertainment in general was edgy and cool without trying. PEOPLE had fun, they didn’t walk around talking about how other generations fucked them. It was the last decade without the dominance of social media and people had their own thoughts and opinions. In the 90’s people enjoyed themselves and hoped everyone else was having a good time. I’m guessing most of the commenters weren’t adults in the 90’s so you’re just guessing.
People have felt nostalgic for life within the Kowloon Walled City, so yeah; you can feel nostalgia about pretty much anything. I personally like to take a break every now and then and ponder about what I have now that I’ll be missing in the future.
I wasn’t old enough to remember at the time, but I suspect a lot of the nostalgia is from not being permanently connected to the Internet. Life was slower, and the world felt bigger because information wasn’t as readily accessible. If you found cool music or a new game or similar it was much more niche and special because it wasn’t as widely known. Everything felt more unique.
I’m more nostalgic for the late 2000s personally, when we had more advances but just before the internet and smartphones overtook everything. Or more specifically, the corporatisation of the Internet that makes it a mass of ads and clickbait seemingly devoid of passion. I miss being able to disconnect like that, because even if you do it now, you know everyone else won’t be doing the same
I don’t know but the other day somebody posted a picture of a Taco Bell hot sauce packet from the early 90s and it made me emotional. It was just a simpler time, it had its own aesthetic and feel. Nostalgia overload.
The late 90’s. I worked for Comcast, so my cable bill was employee discounted to nearly nothing. I managed content on a cable channel operated by a PC slide show. It was buggy as he’ll, and we had to transfer all the image files using Bernoulli disks. Then AT&T bought the cable advertising business, replaced my channel with WB because everyone wanted Buffy the Vampire Slayer, AT&T ran fiber optic cable which allowed them to close all the cable advertising offices throughout Indiana. I was laid off, then 9/11 happened. I lost everything and had to move in with my mother.
It was the last real and organic decade. After that everything was heavily sanitized corporate bullshit and every decade is largely been the same since the 2000s
I was able to work a $12.50/hr job with health insurance that covered not only rent but an entertainment budget. I worked my 40 hours and left. Spent the rest of my time clubbing, going to shows for amazing bands that cost $5-10, art shows, gallery openings, endless house parties, goofy camping or beach trips with large groups of friends.
Life didn’t cost so much. So we had more time and funds to really enjoy things. And we didn’t have cell phones to document ALL our stupid mistakes so we could just make them. And learn from them.
Politics weren’t such a divide. We def had our differences between party affiliations but we could still have family dinners with our grandparents, aunts and uncles without them even being brought up. Heck, I once brought my roommate to Thanksgiving in 1998 with my whole very Christian conservative fam. I was Goth, he was punk with blue and green trihawks and a middle finger patch on his jeans (which we both kinda forgot about). They accepted him as one of us and were very impressed by his ability to EAT. 😄
There was a feeling of hope for the future, of community, that we don’t have anymore.
No social media. No cell phones. No hyper-radicalized politics. Much less government surveillance.
You could live next to someone for decades and never know about their political affiliation.
If you needed a break you could literally just go for a walk or get in your car, and as far as the rest of the world was concerned, you might as well be on the moon. If they wanted you for something, they just had to wait until you came back, and making people wait until you came back was completely acceptable behavior.
If politics was in your face too much, You could literally just not read the newspaper and it was gone until you were ready to engage with it again.
You could go places on trains or airplanes without a stranger checking your crotch for bombs.
When you left work, You never had to think about it again until you went back the next time.
You had so much more control over your life and your relaxation, and that was normal. Disappear for a day without picking up your phone now and people react like you slapped a baby in the face.
Hope in America ended on 9/11/2001. We went from defeating the Soviets and feeling invincible to fear of terror, loss of rights and privacy, and then an economic meltdown that lasted 3 years. When that finally ended, we were stuck with the political zoo we have now (beginning with the “tea party” who shut down the government) and a general feeling that our best days are behind us.
There has been a constant stream of fear mongering and acts to isolate minorities since 9/11. We have been bombarded with propaganda and rhetoric to make us suspicious that someone else was gonna get a better deal than you and take what you have worked hard for. And it worked. We had all the fun of the 80’s plus a sense of optimism and increasing global awareness and then we had it all taken away. Everything is becoming increasingly corporate and cold. Everything is moving to subscription models so we lose ownership of things we paid for. And there’s nothing we can do about it. We’ve lost our privacy, our basic human rights, and our future is being plundered as we speak. And because of our years of isolation we’re too divided to put up any sort of resistance. There’s a reason the Matrix chose the end of the 20th century, it was the last breath of fresh air we were allowed.
Youth. But the 90’s were pre 9-11, pre-covid, post vietnam war, lots of changes, social acceptance, and computers constantly being re-invented. Went to college to learn applications, only for those applications to be out of date, by the time of graduation. I don’t miss the 90’s that much, but it was a period of growth and possibilities.
It was 30 years ago. 40 year olds were 10 in 1995. 30 year olds grew up with 90s pop culture in recent memory.
Back to the Future was written in 1985 and was set in 1955, That 70s show came out in 1998 and was set in 1996, Freaks and Geeks came out in 1999 and was set in 1980, The Wonder Years came out in 1988 and was set in 1968, Grease came out in 1978 and set in 1958, Forrest Gump came out in 1994 and is set from the 1950s-1981. Turning Red came out in 2022 and was set in 2002.
Notice a pattern? Nostalgia bait always runs 20-30 years back, because the people who came of age then were adults now. Expect a transition of pop culture more and more into the 2000s over the next 10 years.
Adults who are kids in the 90s are at the age where the back pain is really starting to hit us. If there’s anything distinct about millennials it’s that the line between childhood and adulthood came for us at the same time as the shift between analog and digital technology and then the use of a cell phone for every single thing that previously required a separate analog device, so we can really distinctly associate times with periods of our own development. In other words, we just miss being kids.
Lookup dance clubs and eaves back in the 99s see how much fun people were having at the moment? If you were bored you had to go out and interact with people but people were more used to strangers talking to them. Life was yours.
There was a collective, albeit snarky optimism that the world was improving and an ethical renaissance, if not possible in our lifetimes, would happen soon after.
Then it all seemed to go to shit in about 10 months. We weren’t aware of the number of complete shits quietly living in our midst.
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Smashing Pumpkins, and it just felt cozy and like better times were ahead.
Things were dumb then too, but it felt like we were headed in a better direction.
They were kids without any real responsibilities or pressures.
They were young and the world felt new and exciting with fewer responsibilities.
Same for every generation.
Not having smart phones let people disconnect, even if only for a little while.
Social media hadn’t gotten to a point where we compared our daily lives to everyone else’s photoshopped highlight reel.
The music, pre social media, freedom of being a latch key kid, “be home before the street lights come on”, the simplicity of pre-tech times with the aid of early unimposing tech, getting lost, finding our way back.
Idk how to word it…
MTV was MTV. Playing with the kid you hate down the street because you needed even teams in whatever the neighborhood was playing. No pharmaceutical ads, society seemed to try more and overall people seemed more together(maybe that’s my young self being naive), the personal connection, the disconnection, the lack of constant input.
There is a lot of repetition here but you get it.
It was a perfect blend of the way our parents grew up and the way our kids would grow up. We grew up playing outside and not having the Internet or cell phones, and just as we reached early adulthood that stuff was really popping off and we adapted easily.
We (Gen-X) came “of age” in the 90s. We learned to drive, graduated HS, went to college, had parties, explored the world around us (nearby and far away) and we did these things withOUT the help of the internet or pressures of social media.
It is almost impossible for someone to comprehend what that felt like and it is an experience that is very difficult to replicate in any meaningful way in this digital world.
And the drugs weren’t all laced with freaking fentanyl…so we could experiment without such a risk of instant death like there is today. Not that it was “safe” by any means…but damn, it’s crazy today.
It was the end of the cold war.
The world had averted nuclear Armageddon without a major conflict.
Standards of living were rising.
Life expectancy was increasing.
The .com boom of the late 90’s had the stock market rising at 30% per year for multiple years.
Regular people felt like they were getting ahead in life.
Technology was advancing.
The world seemed to have evolved without conflict, and that was a new thing.
It was a careless time! More laid back compared to today. These days you don’t trust yourself to have an opinion because everyone feels personally attacked! And life was cheap back then too!
The lack of smart phones, touching grass
Before cell phones were really on the scene, social media, etc technology trying to grab your attention 24/7
The world changed after 9/11.
After that the world went mad and supported the US bombing the hell out of people who never did anything to deserve it.
People who knew absolutely nothing about GeoPolitics had “Support our Troops” magnets on the cars and minivans and you were a traitor if you asked “Why”.
It was big con job, and people got tricked into surrendering their intellectual integrity in a gigantic mass hysteria hoax.
“You are with us, or you are with the Terrorists”
Grunge, for me
Life was slower.
No cell phones
It was before Coldplay.
Going to relatively cheap concerts (Lollapalooza), joking around and feeling connected with people that weren’t buried in phones. Girls in wide legs. Most people seemed fairly happy and expected good things. I felt better just about immediately when Clinton got elected. Bush and Reagan were such downers and wanted to make it the 50s again.
Soundgarden.
The economy was far better with the dot com rise, there was a definite musical genre for the time in grunge and so many bands that would become future mega stars were just getting started, there was no social media and the internet was still in it’s 1.0 configuration so there was far less toxicity and bullshit and far more exploration of the new digital frontier. There were no major wars being fought and domestically there didn’t seem to be any great social struggles. It felt to most that the biggest problems of racism and sexism were behind us and all the work ahead was simply getting things like qual pay and anti discrimination laws.
In short things actually felt like they were getting better. And then the 200 election happened and we went down the darkest timeline.
It was a brief pause in geopolitical tensions. Russia just collapsed, china was not yet rich. There was not a constant stream of distressing news to worry about.
Less internet and less light pollution. Music was good.
Adults miss being young and careless. But I’d say that the world felt a lot freer then without social media, smart phones and whatnot. No one expected to talk to you at any given time. You wouldn’t have people wanting to know what you’re doing at some random time. These days I feel like we’re being constantly watched.
Also, I felt that the sense of impending doom was a lot less. We were just out of the cold war, it seemed things were going to be good again. Famous last words, I guess.
Not paying bills was a plus. But, it was a time of no social media where we could experience life without feeling the need to document every moment. We were present in life and that is a gift in its own. Not to mention everything was better: music, movies, shows.
Nostalgia is a significant component of our entertainment culture and has been for decades. The 80s loved the 50s, the 90s loved the 60s, the early 00s loved the 70s, 80s nostalgia started in about 2012 and now, it’s 90s nostalgia.
The reason for this, I think, is because mass produced entertainment is marketed to teens and very young adults. It’s why you’ll hear people over 30 claiming “today’s music sucks and it was better back in my day!” Of course they believe that. It was once marketed directly to them and no longer is.
Nostalgia is another marketing tool that aims to include the over 30 crowd in pop consumption. It’s why each decade, there are dozens of movies or TV series set about 30 years in the past.
the lack of internet, we spent a lot more time going out and doing shit.
Tom Petty
The Saturday morning cartoons!
They were young then.
Happiness!!
90% of the comforts of today with 30% of the complexity of today’s internet-rage fueled world.
I was 18 then.
TV shows and movies like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Deep Space Nine and Goofy Movie.
There used to be hope
General optimism, and most days were slow news days. Watch West Wing, they captured it well.
Life was simpler and everything wasn’t on demand. You actually had to wait to watch a tv show and had to interact with people in real life. The fake virtual / online life didn’t exist. The most interaction online was from AOL Chat.
Freedom and affordability.
The internet offered hope. 9/11 hadn’t stained everyone’s souls. The greatest generation was still alive. People still remembered the great wars and there was a global sense of not wanting to repeat. Climate change was still something in the future. Russia really looked like they wanted to be part of the world. There hadn’t been 30 years of constant politically correct social auditing making everyone hate each other. There were no billionaires and there was far less concentration of wealth at the top 1%. And corporations were not people and could not fund politicians with millions of dollars.
Nostalgia and life being affordable for the middle class
It never felt like I had to pay for every second of existence which it does now. I could miss a day of work without choosing which meals I then had to skip to afford rent
You could be a successful musician and ugly in the 90s.
Going to concerts where people only snap a handful of pictures instead of record the whole thing.
…They weren’t adults then.
Their youth
… We weren’t adults then
Parties on the roof of my apartment in the east village, art school, dive bars, $1 slices, indie bands on the jukebox, clove cigarettes, great drugs fentanyl-free, matte mauve lipstick and pumas, no phones, no computers connected to the rest of the world, missed connection shenanigans, just hanging out and shooting the shit on a Saturday night.
You had to wait for everything, and let the excitement buildup until you were red in the face before getting to experience it.
Somehow instant gratification just makes everything seem pointless.
I lived in a studio apartment in Chelsea in Manhattan, and worked for a publishing company and later, a dot com startup. We still did martini lunches and no one cared or passed judgment. People were far less judgemental for sure. We had parties and gathered at beaches on weekends, and we were building lives and careers without anything hovering over us. The music wasn’t as great as the 70s and 80s, in my opinion, and the cars were not as cool. There was just a really happy vibe in the 90s, like What Could Possibly Go Wrong.
Millennial here… Just trying out what something does by finding out on our own. Was it risky? Yes, but it was worth it as you learned what something does on your own.
It was especially true when it comes to playing games outside.
The most common online adult demographic probably grew up in the 90s, so their nostalgia goggles just look brighter.
Kids had a lot more freedom back then, at least where I grew up. In the summer, we left in the morning and didn’t go back home until the street lights came on.
Lots of specific stuff like music etc…
Best way to really quantify it is: During that time we still believed the world to be a good place where we as individuals could make a difference rather where we saw a bright future. That is gone now (mostly) and the collective consciousness is skewing more pessimistic. Towards survival mode.
Being constantly connected with smart phones really just fucked life up lol.
Probably the fact that people weren’t so chronically online and people were capable of just chilling and getting along with other people even when they disagreed about things. Mostly because you wouldn’t even know all of the things you disagreed about, because people weren’t arguing with their relatives on the internet 24/7.
Honestly, the internet is probably the biggest difference. It was around enough to be useful for some things, but not to such an extreme degree that it is now.
#1 reason – Rosy eyed syndrome
All other reasons – the 1980s had a crazy economic downturn, sky high interest rates (like 20%). The 90s came and those issues were getting resolved and the economy was on the bounce back. A lot of Gen-X, Xennials and Millennials were living in their teens and early adult age.
Times were ‘simpler’ not every bit of news travelled the globe in the span of minutes, TV media was busting out and was more and more accessible. Home entertainment was starting out (consoles, PCs…). THe internet appeared and it was the start of a giant economic boom… price of oilgas was low, interest rates were back down. The cold war had just ended with the fall of the Soviet Union.
China was cracking out of its shell and joining the rest of the world in its trading.
Topping bars were legit
It’s our childhood, and the best decade
Nothing really, just the gen x and older millennials are having our nostalgia moment. Same thing our parents went through in said 90s.
Nostalgia media, fashion and memories.
The government functioned better.
Then we lost our minds about terrorism, and wasted money on wars in the Middle East while giving a huge tax cut to the rich.
We have never recovered from this.
Consequently the government has not been able to provide for its people making them lose even more faith in the government.
Which culminates with Trumpism a kind of hybrid of fascism fueled against their typical targets of liberals and minorities but also at the idea of the deep state or typical federal workers.
Lack of constant connection throught internet and smartphones. It was such a time of pop culture and hope for the future with the millennium coming, even with the Y2K scare. But then 9/11 happened and shook America’s guise of security and safety. That shifted everything to higher government surveillance, especially TSA. Then, the 2008 housing market crash, etc.
The internet was barely a thing. Smartphones did not exist. Just those two things alone changed society very profoundly.
The economy was good. The Soviet Union was history.
We knew that everything was shit. So balls out, lets’ do it. Nothing mattered. We were all going to die soon so who gives a shit? Not our parents. Not our teachers. No our government. So Fuck it! Let’s just enjoy the last couple years of our lives at best.
But we’re still here. Still, no one cares. So Fuck it.
Nothing specific about that generation that you couldn’t make similar comparisons to other generations.
The reason you hear so much about the 90s specifically is twofold:
There used to be plenty of 80s nostalgia. Dances, costume parties, radio stations dedicated to 80s music, tv channels showing 80s shows, etc. There still is plenty of that. Same can be said for the 70s, 60s, etc. But the people who are nostalgic for the 80s aren’t as chronically online as the people nostalgic for the 90s. That’s why you see more 90s nostalgia online than earlier generations.
00s doesn’t have the same ring to it as “the 90s”. What do you say? “The Two Thousands”? “The Naughties”? “The New Millenium”? We didn’t really collectively decide on a name for it as a society. There is plenty of nostalgia for that time though, and it’s getting more and more popular. You just don’t see it labeled as often as “00s nostalgia”. Same goes for the ’10s
They miss being kids
My mom misses freedom. She complains now there’s a lot of laws for everything, she believes many of them have no sense, she doesn’t like to be controlled in everything.
Being 30 years younger than I am now certainly makes it an appealing decade.
A world before the Internet and before 9/11 is so different that nobody under 30 really gets it.
I bought a plane ticket with cash and flew across the country without showing anyone any ID. When I pulled out a cigarette to smoke on the flight, I noticed I’d accidentally brought a live 22 round on the plane with me.
This was 1993.
Freedom, hope, societal progression towards a better world.
It was a moment in time when youth culture was a mix of cynicism and distrust of shallowness and vapid excess while also being hesitantly optimistic about the future because the Cold War was finally over and the economy wasn’t in complete shambles, and we were seeing gigantic leaps in technology happening before our eyes. The world had opened up and things like going to college and meeting some exchange student who grew up in East Germany or the USSR and could tell you first-hand about how life was there became much more common.
Add to it that we were the last generation to experience life before the Internet was a thing, for good and bad, and it was a really great time to be young. We saw the birth of many things current young people take as fundamental parts of their lives and we saw them develop and evolve the next 30 years, and we are very aware of how much they’re not actually necessities as much as they are luxuries or convenient because we remember what it was like to live without them.
I always thought it must’ve been somewhat similar to how my grandmother went from living without electricity to seeing her first automobile, to having a phone in her house, to flying to Europe on vacation as a senior citizen, to using video apps on a cellphone to talk to me when I was in grad school in the 2000’s shortly before she passed away. I can’t fathom what her life was like before cars, TV, phones and so on existed, just like kids these days can’t really understand what things really were like in the ’90’s and before.
I was a kid in the 90s. I miss biking over to my buddy’s place, throw my bike by the lawn, then barge in (we didn’t lock doors those days), yell: “Hi Mrs. Hall, where’s Mike?” Then go find him in the basement playing N64 with the boys. Good times…
The last decade you couldn’t be reached.
It ain’t today.
The world seemed like a… freer place before 9/11.
The explosion of new art & what felt like a new phase of popular culture.
Music: grunge, Britpop, nu-metal, rap, boy bands & girl bands, dance
Films: so many to mention
Sport: iconic heavyweight division in boxing, Alex Ferguson’s Man United in England and USA94, Tiger Woods emerging, Formula 1 going mainstream, South Africa winning the Rugby World Cup after the end of apartheid
Video games: The PlayStation and N64, they were groundbreaking consoles with classic games
TV: Twin Peaks, Simpsons, X-Files and later, The Sopranos. And for many, the Monday Night Wars in professional wrestling were a highlight of the 90s
It really was an unbelievable decade for entertainment and culture
One reason may be 9/11 happened right after the 1990s
Everything changed after that
the government quietly just did their jobs and the media cared about the truth
Late 90s I was 21, making $600 a week and my rent as a roommate in a 2/2 with 1 other was $250 a month, all inclusive.
Not everything being recorded or online. You could come to school and everyone watched the same episode of the same show the night before. Music was new and diverse not just digital kit sounds. Your friends would have to call the landline and make plans to meet somewhere. It was a great time I miss it a lot. But life goes on.
I was in the corner. I was in the spotlight losing my religion.
No cell phones
Actually discovering secrets in games while playing them, or rarely finding a guide in a videogames magazine and instantly launching your favourite game to try that new hint
Gaming really felt much higher value than now
The 90s was the last full decade of “the before times.” We aren’t talking about a small generational change. We are talking about a full-fledged transformation from the pre-internet age into the age of computing–this is as important as the agricultural revolution and industrial revolution.
What’s more, we might be living through another similar transformation right now with AI.
Anyway, the before times were more wholesome, in my opinion. Less poison in your brain.
Ah yes…The Beforetimes. Before Bush Jr trashed the economy to start a two front war in Asia for oil and to give the entire treasury over to military contractors. The economy was doing great, and I had a sweet job. Concerts were cheap, and there were like five outdoor music fests every summer.
Feeling of modernity without the over-connectedness of present day. You had cool stuff coming out, but you still needed to go places to do it. You want to play games with your friends, you lazy asses need to actually meet up and game.
Sure, stuff is definitely nice now. Nicer in some ways. But there was something pleasant about the actual need to interact with people.
The internet was still new and creative and fun. Social media didn’t exist. Cable news was a thing, but it wasn’t so saturated into daily life. Cell phones were still expensive in the early and mid-90s to limit availability (the phones were expensive and so was usage until the late 90s).
we had a world before phones and a world after and can compare.
A few reasons:
We were a decade or two away from the last large inflationary period (the Jimmy Carter years) so prices had been stable for families for a LONG time. People had a very stable price baseline.
It was relatively peaceful for most Western nations. The end of the cold war. The Gulf War shocked the world (both allies and enemies) in how far the US military had come, and a new peace sort of set in until 9/11.
Politically in the US, we had the perfect combo for prosperity (for most of the decade): Democrat President, Republican Congress (and they were all willing to work with each other, for the most part)
As others have said, 90% of modern conveniences you have today without all the social media bullshit that goes along with it.
In the US, politically, the “right” and the “left” political spectrum curves both basically touched the middle until the sharp shift left in 2000 by Democrats, followed by a sharp shift right by Tea Party. Most people agreed on most things.
There was a lot of media creativity and WAY more diversity of entertainment. If you listened to a top 40 radio station in the mid to late 90s it had grunge, pop, rock, metal, hip hop, rap, EDM, even a little country. It was just so much more creative. Everybody sort of liked a bit of everything.
It was the last pre-internet generation, basically. The junior high and high school formative years of the group that had grown up in the 80s and 90s. Born analog, adopted digital.
They were young when they first heard it. People obsess about the 60s WAY more than people do about the 90s. People are nostalgic about the music of their youth.
Not having constant stimulation of the internet
As a kid who turned 8 in 1990 everything seemed to positive. We won the cold war. Then we went on to curb stomp Iraq with all our friends in the gulf war. America had no serious threats against it. We’d won.
Cable TV meant you had more stuff to watch than ever and so much of it was aimed directly at younger people. The movies that were coming out were amazing. Music was changing every few years in dramatic ways.
We were at the balance where the Gen X latch key kids style of parenting was going away. Parents were actively involved with their kids and wanted them to be happy. However, there was still a huge amount of freedom given to kids to do their own things.
Then later in the 90s, the internet happened.
I could go on ICQ and talk to other kids all over the world. I made friends I’d talk to every day after school and we knew more about each other than a lot of people I was friends with in real life. I could spend three hours downloading a Metallica MP3 only to find out it was actually Pantera. But I could still download it without having to go to a record store.
Gas was so cheap.
When I started driving it was under a dollar per gallon. We’d load up a crappy car with 6 teenagers and just cruise around smoking cigarettes and blasting music. The car cost less than $800 and when something broke it was fixable with a Chilton shop manual and a trip to a salvage yard.
When we were kids we’d ride bikes from house to house, but when one of us got a car, we’d drive. Sometimes we’d just drive around with nowhere to go because we were all broke, but we could still scrape together the $10 to fill the gas tank. Being in the car with a bunch of friends was better than being at home with our parents for most of us.
Jobs were fairly easy to get because it was right on the cusp where you had to go in and fill out an application. If the manager got a good feeling about you, you got the job.
It all felt like nothing much was going on, but we were heading in the right direction.
I can’t imagine.
*If you were born in the 90s you were not a adult and shouldnt comment*
It’s just nostalgia. Every generation has it. You will too.
The USA was actually the biggest superpower in the world. Free trade ruled, and the USA called the shots. Everything was at most half as expensive as they are today. EVERYTHING. You were more likely to own a real home with only one or two jobs. More jobs were very stable, and the intent on keeping people employed in the same job was considered normal and consistent. Learned about progressive/liberal morals in schools? They actually CAME TRUE when you graduated, and the real world set an example to those morals! Very very few mass shootings. People respected actual lessons that helped the fellow man. People upheld the separation of church and state. Presidents weren’t stupid assholes. There were less skills being outsourced. There were no such things as credit scores, surcharges, or streaming. Subscriptions were only reserved for magazines.
Prime of life. Any generation will harken back to their youthful ‘glory days’ as the best days of their lives. Unless they learn the value of being present, then it’s always “now” and the beauty constantly wells up.
Its just age old nostalgia. Its exactly why adults in our youth, were so glossy eyed over there hey-days (my parents, 60’s-70’s and others 70’s-80’s).
Like yeah, you can mill it down to specific things all you want, but each generation is going to miss so much about their youth, that they end up missing the forest for the trees;
Nostalgia of course, but many are really only remembering what it felt like to be young and full of energy. A time where there was only growth and development, learning and doing new things, and always having the body to take it (generally speaking of course).
Most aren’t missing the 90’s specifically. They are missing a formative period of their lives. It just so happens that for a lot of people, that period lined up with “the 90’s”, give or take a decade. By that, I mean that time period could have started in the 80’s but largely took place in or spilled over into the 90’s/ early 2000’s, or started in the 90’s and spilled over into the 2000’s. 90’s just rolls of the tongue easier and sounds better to sum it up, and as a result of how people’s brains work, it all just blends to being perceived as just “the 90’s”.
It was the ska.
Cost of living & livable wages
I don’t necessarily know that it was better. I remember worrying about the environment, Y2K, presidential sex scandals (and would this mean every president after this would be morally corrupt), being thin, not getting called gay, and some aspects of arts and culture were just disillusioned with society.
However, I don’t know that it was worse than the present day on average, either. I loved the sense that economically things were getting better and better.
The food was better, air was cleaner, people were cooler, music was better. I miss everything and everyone I ever loved in the 90’s.
They were younger.
My 20’s
Honestly, I think it’s because the 90s were the last decade where life felt both connected and unplugged. We had just enough technology—landlines, cable TV, early internet—to feel modern, but not so much that it overwhelmed daily life. You could disappear for hours without anyone freaking out. No smartphones tracking your every move, no social media pressure.
Music felt more personal, too. You had to hunt for albums, make mixtapes, or burn CDs. There was something magical about discovering stuff on your own, not just from algorithms.
Plus, the world felt… slower. You lived more in the moment, even if it was just chilling with friends, biking around, or watching TGIF on a Friday night. The nostalgia hits hard because life now is always “on,” and the 90s gave us space to just be.
No social media.
$125k houses were really nice.
No social media dividing us.
Could still kinda believe the news.
The patriot act wasn’t a thing.
Nostalgia. I don’t think there was any childhood that people didn’t appreciate more. It’s the process of knowing nothing and feeling bliss, to learning how fucked up the world is. I’d guess That only kids born into the depression go “You know what, the 30s sucked.”
Organic living I was a kid in the year 2002 but that ES sticks with me each year just organic
People werent as blatantly fucking stupid back then and having an IQ over 90 was considered the standard, not the exception.
No social media… everybody knew who they were, things were just easier, kids were kids, kids played outside with other kids, not everybody got a trophy.. it was the last of the best times to grow up… I feel bad for the kids now..
It’s just that it was the last time
We partied like it was 1999
Good new music on any given radio station AND on MTv for one thing.
I’m seeing a lot of people giving complex answers. Actual reality, We were young without problems and the things we remember from those times were fun or cool. Adulthood is stressful and we miss when things weren’t that way. It’ll be the same of today’s kids looking back on their childhoods I’m sure.
Edit: I’d like to add reliving nostalgia isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. When I was a kid, surge was my favorite pop. They stopped making it, and then sometime within the last decade they brought it back and I didn’t like it. Could be my tastes just changed, could be I just had a fond memory of something that just wasn’t as good as I thought it was. I probably won’t ever know the answer to that, but my point is nostalgia is usually best left in the past
For me it was the music. Most of those singers are dead now so they are frozen in time.
Freedom, no robo calls, fast food was quick and affordable, no social media to cram bullshit down your throat, being a kid and exploring the world around you without you tube or tik tok consuming every moment.
Technology was sort of just a blip on the radar, versus basically your entire life now. Not being as “connected” meant joy in things now take for granted – bumping into a friend totally by chance, catching a song you love on the radio, the anticipation of waiting for something like a TV show to be on at a certain time. There was a certain charm of things happening by chance, or patiently waiting for something and just going to social events purely by word of mouth. Or even not going to social events and not being incessantly pestered about it. You consumed tech at your own pace…but at the end of day you put away your devices and tech toys and just hung out with your friends.
Workers in jobs were more valued, we had smaller privately owned stores with the fancy stuff being in malls which were relaxing to go to, no politics drama except for clintons affair, older family members still knew how to service their families cars, 99c Whopper Wednesdays, video games costed 80% less after 2 years for every console, Saturday morning cartoons that teens / young adults could also enjoy, upscale suburb editions were all decorated in christmas lights and people would take their families to drive by them around mid sized cities, quality leather stuff made in mexico that people brought back before they got cheaper mass produced stuff. The list can go on and on.
It was the last time people truly lived in the moment.
The song ‘Jump Around’ by House of Pain.
I miss everything about it. The music, the attitude, the 90s. I think you had to live it to understand what an incredible time it was and the hope people had for the future, but so much for that, 2000 had arrived like a wrecking ball.
We were 20.
My knees and back didn’t hurt.
I think people are generally nostalgic for the time periods when they were a kid, teenager, or young adult, and Millennials and Gen X were those ages in the 90s. But I don’t think older people like my 70-year old mom are especially fond of the 90s over other decades. She talks more about the 60s and 70s.
I think it was the optimism, Cold war ended , new technology and internet was blooming, pre 9/11, we didn’t know what we didn’t know. being ignorant of so many of the horrors that we see everyday online now was bliss.
It was the 90’s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxwzaoIgDXA
Bill C was always entertaining
The colors were so warm
The economy.
To be clear… mid to late 90s. Minimal internet and maximum prosperity. Great movies. Generational music across numerous genres. Freedom from surveillance, the innocence of a pre-9/11 world and most importantly… NO SOCIAL MEDIA
Less tech. Now I love tech, adore it. However, I know the internet and my phone is as much a curse as a blessing.
As great as the internet is, it’s kind of a cesspool and creates nightmare scenarios for privacy, misinformation etc.I turned 18 around 2000 so we still HAD internet, it just wasn’t what it is today.
As far as cellphones, I never had one until like 2003-2005. There was a simple freedom in not having one.
The combination of both made the late 90s and early 00s feel a bit more liberating.
Growing up in the 90s was amazing.
Our parents had jobs that paid well enough to have that “American dream” life.
The stock market and 401ks were great.
The internet was used primarily for education.
You knew your neighbors.
People were more “connected” then, before the digital age.
Street lights coming on was your cue to head home.
You had great TV shows and movies.
You had freedom of going wherever and there wasn’t a log of it.
It was fucking incredible and I feel so bad for my kids because they won’t know what they don’t have in a palpable, tangible way.
Every generation misses there youth generation
Being young. As much as I believe this current decade to be a shit hole, I have no doubt that in 20 or 30 years young people will look back on the 2020s as the good old days.
Yeah no one thought about the Cold War in the 90’s. It was fun, it was cool to play weird music and for bands to make it. Entertainment in general was edgy and cool without trying. PEOPLE had fun, they didn’t walk around talking about how other generations fucked them. It was the last decade without the dominance of social media and people had their own thoughts and opinions. In the 90’s people enjoyed themselves and hoped everyone else was having a good time. I’m guessing most of the commenters weren’t adults in the 90’s so you’re just guessing.
Life was simpler then.
That we lived through it. That’s it.
People have felt nostalgic for life within the Kowloon Walled City, so yeah; you can feel nostalgia about pretty much anything. I personally like to take a break every now and then and ponder about what I have now that I’ll be missing in the future.
Hope
Coke and Miami Vice.
I wasn’t old enough to remember at the time, but I suspect a lot of the nostalgia is from not being permanently connected to the Internet. Life was slower, and the world felt bigger because information wasn’t as readily accessible. If you found cool music or a new game or similar it was much more niche and special because it wasn’t as widely known. Everything felt more unique.
I’m more nostalgic for the late 2000s personally, when we had more advances but just before the internet and smartphones overtook everything. Or more specifically, the corporatisation of the Internet that makes it a mass of ads and clickbait seemingly devoid of passion. I miss being able to disconnect like that, because even if you do it now, you know everyone else won’t be doing the same
I don’t know but the other day somebody posted a picture of a Taco Bell hot sauce packet from the early 90s and it made me emotional. It was just a simpler time, it had its own aesthetic and feel. Nostalgia overload.
Everyone thinks their childhood was the best era
The late 90’s. I worked for Comcast, so my cable bill was employee discounted to nearly nothing. I managed content on a cable channel operated by a PC slide show. It was buggy as he’ll, and we had to transfer all the image files using Bernoulli disks. Then AT&T bought the cable advertising business, replaced my channel with WB because everyone wanted Buffy the Vampire Slayer, AT&T ran fiber optic cable which allowed them to close all the cable advertising offices throughout Indiana. I was laid off, then 9/11 happened. I lost everything and had to move in with my mother.
It was the last real and organic decade. After that everything was heavily sanitized corporate bullshit and every decade is largely been the same since the 2000s
Pantera and Dream Theater.
Our youth.
I was able to work a $12.50/hr job with health insurance that covered not only rent but an entertainment budget. I worked my 40 hours and left. Spent the rest of my time clubbing, going to shows for amazing bands that cost $5-10, art shows, gallery openings, endless house parties, goofy camping or beach trips with large groups of friends.
Life didn’t cost so much. So we had more time and funds to really enjoy things. And we didn’t have cell phones to document ALL our stupid mistakes so we could just make them. And learn from them.
Politics weren’t such a divide. We def had our differences between party affiliations but we could still have family dinners with our grandparents, aunts and uncles without them even being brought up. Heck, I once brought my roommate to Thanksgiving in 1998 with my whole very Christian conservative fam. I was Goth, he was punk with blue and green trihawks and a middle finger patch on his jeans (which we both kinda forgot about). They accepted him as one of us and were very impressed by his ability to EAT. 😄
There was a feeling of hope for the future, of community, that we don’t have anymore.
No social media. No cell phones. No hyper-radicalized politics. Much less government surveillance.
You could live next to someone for decades and never know about their political affiliation.
If you needed a break you could literally just go for a walk or get in your car, and as far as the rest of the world was concerned, you might as well be on the moon. If they wanted you for something, they just had to wait until you came back, and making people wait until you came back was completely acceptable behavior.
If politics was in your face too much, You could literally just not read the newspaper and it was gone until you were ready to engage with it again.
You could go places on trains or airplanes without a stranger checking your crotch for bombs.
When you left work, You never had to think about it again until you went back the next time.
You had so much more control over your life and your relaxation, and that was normal. Disappear for a day without picking up your phone now and people react like you slapped a baby in the face.
Everything seemed like it was getting better over time
Hope in America ended on 9/11/2001. We went from defeating the Soviets and feeling invincible to fear of terror, loss of rights and privacy, and then an economic meltdown that lasted 3 years. When that finally ended, we were stuck with the political zoo we have now (beginning with the “tea party” who shut down the government) and a general feeling that our best days are behind us.
There has been a constant stream of fear mongering and acts to isolate minorities since 9/11. We have been bombarded with propaganda and rhetoric to make us suspicious that someone else was gonna get a better deal than you and take what you have worked hard for. And it worked. We had all the fun of the 80’s plus a sense of optimism and increasing global awareness and then we had it all taken away. Everything is becoming increasingly corporate and cold. Everything is moving to subscription models so we lose ownership of things we paid for. And there’s nothing we can do about it. We’ve lost our privacy, our basic human rights, and our future is being plundered as we speak. And because of our years of isolation we’re too divided to put up any sort of resistance. There’s a reason the Matrix chose the end of the 20th century, it was the last breath of fresh air we were allowed.
There hope for the future, now there’s nothing..
Youth. But the 90’s were pre 9-11, pre-covid, post vietnam war, lots of changes, social acceptance, and computers constantly being re-invented. Went to college to learn applications, only for those applications to be out of date, by the time of graduation. I don’t miss the 90’s that much, but it was a period of growth and possibilities.
It was 30 years ago. 40 year olds were 10 in 1995. 30 year olds grew up with 90s pop culture in recent memory.
Back to the Future was written in 1985 and was set in 1955, That 70s show came out in 1998 and was set in 1996, Freaks and Geeks came out in 1999 and was set in 1980, The Wonder Years came out in 1988 and was set in 1968, Grease came out in 1978 and set in 1958, Forrest Gump came out in 1994 and is set from the 1950s-1981. Turning Red came out in 2022 and was set in 2002.
Notice a pattern? Nostalgia bait always runs 20-30 years back, because the people who came of age then were adults now. Expect a transition of pop culture more and more into the 2000s over the next 10 years.
It was a generally chill decade in north America, things seemed to just be getting better, early internet optimism and no forever war
Before we were slaves to our phones.
Snailiens. Pronounced “Snailll-leeee-unnnns-UH!”.
They were supersonic shell fighters.
Because the economy was good, there was hope for the future, the TV, movies, and music were good, and there was no social media or smartphones.
No internet. No cell phones. The 90s were the last gasp of societal freedom.
Adults who are kids in the 90s are at the age where the back pain is really starting to hit us. If there’s anything distinct about millennials it’s that the line between childhood and adulthood came for us at the same time as the shift between analog and digital technology and then the use of a cell phone for every single thing that previously required a separate analog device, so we can really distinctly associate times with periods of our own development. In other words, we just miss being kids.
No social media.
No social media influence. Better economy. Life was fun and exciting. Not dreadful and defeating
Lookup dance clubs and eaves back in the 99s see how much fun people were having at the moment? If you were bored you had to go out and interact with people but people were more used to strangers talking to them. Life was yours.
Stable economy, safe to travel, and SOME internet access.
There was a collective, albeit snarky optimism that the world was improving and an ethical renaissance, if not possible in our lifetimes, would happen soon after.
Then it all seemed to go to shit in about 10 months. We weren’t aware of the number of complete shits quietly living in our midst.