Did The 90s Suck? - And if so, why?

[BrunoMattei]

It was a weird transitory decade. More corporations taking over. NAFTA. More cynicism and nihilistic expressions rife in the counter culture scene. Movies were becoming more milquetoast and safe but there were still auteur/passion project movies that were made that the studios strived to create on occasion. It sucked as a horror fan not unless you knew a guy who could hook you up with what's going on in foreign cinema. DVD's became a thing and kickstarted the whole movie preservation among cineastes' (AKA film nerds). It was ultimately a decade that had as much good about it and equally as much bad going for it. If that makes any sense.

 

[Prj4MW8iPT3vmFM2rzDc]

in the 90's people said the n-word and no one cared.

 

[Buttigieg2020]

It was a bad time to live in Yugoslavia.

 

[Dysnomia]

Early 90s was pretty late and gay. Bad music, worse fashion, the rise of political correctness, shitty ISA PCs and first gen consoles. Things had mostly turned around by the end of the decade fortunately.

A lot of people were opposed to the political correctness and it became more of a joke. We all made fun of it and it didn't quite take off seriously until later. Because the teens of the 90s were not overly indoctrinated in that stuff. Only losers were PC. But having it pushed on us was really irritating. If you were the kid who was like irl Daria you knew how retarded it was. It's too bad that these days there's not a lot of pushback. And when there is people get banned and cancelled for daring to question it. Hopefully the pendulum will swing back a bit. But not too much. It's best to have it swaying a bit in the middle.

I thought a lot of the early 90s alternative was good. The grunge bands hated the term grunge. Chris Cornell hated it and there's an interview where he talks about how it was created by MTV and the media. A lot of those bands had a similar vibe. But you wouldn't say that Pearl Jam was the same as Alice In Chains unless you never really listened to them. Really, Alice In Chains and Soundgarden are more metal. Badmotorfinger gets overshadowed. But it's too heavy for a lot of normies. And their older stuff is not gonna appeal to them much either.

I think the grunge umbrella was just as bad as the hair metal umbrella. It lumped all these bands together into one genre even if they didn't sound the same. Kix didn't sound like Motley Crue at all. But they were all hair metal ect... It hurt a lot of good bands reputations. Winger was made up of very talented musicians and Jani Lane was more than just the Cherry Pie guy. But the label just made them a joke after awhile.

Getting back to the 90s it was the same thing. I'm glad grunge didn't last long. Lots of good bands but the marketing obscured many of them because MTV was focused hard on the big four of grunge. The media just bled it dry then the artists started dropping like flies. It was a crazy amount over the years. It's amazing how many overdosed or suicided while all those 80s party animals are still alive.

I think the dance music was ok even though I wasn't too into it. When I was a kid I didn't realise how fake C+C Music Factory was with the fronting act of models with hot bodies. Milli Vanilli got thrown under the bus. A lot of record companies were doing this and getting away with it. Technotronic was fake too until the suits realised that Ya Kid K's look was actually trendy and not a deterrent to marketing. The only reason Milli Vanilli got outed and made an example of was because they won a Grammy and then their tape got stuck on a loop during a live performance. Never mind the other farces going on at the time.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

The 90's was pretty good.

 

[Doctor John B. Zyklon]

The 90s was a high watermark of culture for sure

I thought this was a fever memory. I've never watched the whole thing but I seem to remember seeing bits and pieces on tv. I'll have to check it out.

 

[Harbinger of Kali Yuga]

The 90s was when movies like PCU (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCU_(film)) could be made and present radical feminism less obnoxious than what we have today.

Yeah, I'll take the 90s over 2023.

 

[Monsieur Guillotine]

The 90's predated the internet which sucked for finding information or media, but was great for niche groups because social justice hadn't taken off yet so there was none of it to infect your spaces.

 

[Radion_Godiva]

Everyone was so slim and white.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

Getting back to the 90s it was the same thing. I'm glad grunge didn't last long.

Its kinda cringy that whenever some show or something takes place in the 90s everyone is dressed like they are in an Alice in Chains video, most normies didn't look like that but the actual mainstream 90s fashion was so lame people prefer to think they did.

Ironically it was in the late 00s that more people were dressed like that and alternative fashion also became more mainstream only because millenials were trying to be "retro" and pretend they were already into Nirvana when they were 3 years old. Some gen xers try that larp as well but then you look at their teenage pictures and they are wearing some Chris chan looking Polo shirt their mom got for them and curtain bangs.

 

[More AWS-8Q Than You]

So, slight PL: I was born tail end of '81, so there was a lot of coming of age in the 90s, overall it was a pretty good decade, but it is when the cultural rot really started to take off. The Clinton/Lewinsky thing really seems to be when the media decided public decency was a thing of the past, I remember when thongs killed any other kind of sexy underwear for a good long time, but it wasn't so bad since people were in better shape and girls knew how to wear jeans that fit. That fucking thong song though, and never mind the Blue one, that shit sticks with you forever. I miss nice one-piece swimsuits and the girls who looked good in them, everyone is so blandly frumpy or asexualish now.

My dad had a thing for Mustangs, so I learned to drive in part in a Ford Lightning, which at the time was a small ford truck with a mustang engine in it. I was not allowed to learn how to drive a stick though, the only car we had that was manual was his red, black leather interior, 1997 Mustang Cobra. That was a nice car for long stretches of straight country roads though.

Some feels though:

 

[Therapy Dog]

I genuinely can't imagine what it'd be like growing up as an awkward kid/teen in a world where literally everyone has a fucking miniature "video camera" in their pocket. For me, the 90's ruled for this reason alone.

 

[Rubick]

Its kinda cringy that whenever some show or something takes place in the 90s everyone is dressed like they are in an Alice in Chains video, most normies didn't look like that but the actual mainstream 90s fashion was so lame people prefer to think they did.

Mainstream fashion was generally lame. 90's though had the best suits arguably. Shoes were still quality. hell, clothes in general had better quality. And fashion in general was more broad then it is now.

On the other hand it's the decade wearing sneakers to a job interview became a thing. And in genera became a fucking thing. How the fuck that became society's acceptable god knows.

 

[The Tall Man]

I believe those nostalgically praising the 90s are actually longing for the sense of belonging to the mainstream. Back then, TV served as the primary source of information, essentially shaping American culture after the decline of genuine community, courtesy of the Boomers.

It was also a notably philosemitic era.

The advent of the Internet allowed those who sought the truth to swiftly realize that the narrative constructed by the media is an Illusion. Consequently, numerous people have detached from this media-crafted culture, confronting the unsettling reality that the world can be a grim place.

 

[skykiii]

Its kinda cringy that whenever some show or something takes place in the 90s everyone is dressed like they are in an Alice in Chains video, most normies didn't look like that but the actual mainstream 90s fashion was so lame people prefer to think they did.

This kind of shit happens to the eighties too. I usually don't like period places about either decade because they're always so full of inauthentic details that I'm just completely detached from the experience. I don't want to see some modern dilettante's bastardized idea of what the past was like when I could watch, say, my own home videos and see it.

Kinda like Fry's problem with "farmers on the moon" in Futurama.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

The 90's predated the internet which sucked for finding information or media,

Information was still around. Go to the library or ask around. It was more fun IMO, it meant that you had to talk to other people and maybe compare notes/discuss the thing instead of surfing to wikipedia on your phone and think "yeaaaaah seems about right, molecules of some kind, I'll read the rest later..."

 

[TiggerNits]

I mean, I was born in 1984 so I spent my childhood and early/mid teen years in the 90s. We’re all going to be nostalgic at times for the time period our carefree childhood days with little to no responsibility were spent. Same can be said for Gen X and the 80s and Zoomers and the 2000s.

I’m sure older people who lived through the 90s will easily be able to find things about the decade that get overlooked when we put on our rose colored glasses, but just strictly speaking as a child/teen during that time, it was pretty fucking sweet. Even my dad (who is a very staunch conservative that likes to laugh with me over PC police/wokescold faggotry) will say to me that yeah that shit started in the 90s, but even back then it was mostly just roll your eyes and chuckle before moving on. People just seemed much more laid back and willing to let shit slide then, for good and for bad.

I'm almost a decade older than you and I can firmly say that the 90s were great., but did a lot to fuck us over in the modern day.

It represented the time corporate america and europe figured out the lowest common denominator in terms of advertising, media and economics which is why everything became so extremely formulaic over the last 20 years (Look at Friends and tell me what the difference is between that and How I met Your Mother/The Big Bang Theory, etc is, because its all superficial).

It was when we went in to overdrive irt turning China in to the manufacturing center for the entire world because cost-correlation made it the only way to control tech costs. The first dot-com boom rode that wave and quickly became why everything digital became centralized, because when the bubble burst, a few companies with insane money started buying up every single copyright they could to further exploit.

its when education was over-burdened with special-ed and constant attempts to turn the inner-city schools around as if they were at fault for the kids in them being sociopathically raised inside their own homes. Once we saw kids with Downs Syndrome getting diplomas it really killed the American public school system, as it costs 5 times more to get a kid with a major disorder through high-school than it does to educate a kid with a 110+ IQ enough to be an MD because a lot of the choices made by bureaucrats and elected officials from 1993-2015.

The EU coming in to existence as a result of the collapsed Soviet Empire didn't help anyone that wasn't born in to wealth either and is directly to blame for all the awful shit going on in most of Europe.

America ignoring terrorism and trying to have the Saudi's self-police directly led to 9-11/GWOT/Etc. Us ignoring Iran and focusing on Iraq in relation to destabilization o the region is another very large problem we created then, as well.

The explosion of pornography in to the mainstream and the NEA even going to bat for it as a legitimate art form and getting subsidized funding for it along with the proliferation of the internet leading to the ease of access is also to blame for a lot of social maladies we deal with today.

But hey, it also gave us better manicured pubes, which made oral sex being 100000X better to perform

 

[More AWS-8Q Than You]

This one is for all the real 90s kids, we know it's true

 

[ToroidalBoat]

grunge

I can still recall the late '90s when it seemed that was taking over pop music on the air.

This one is for all the real 90s kids, we know it's true

I think it was the same with '80s too. Looking at photos of '80s rooms shows they usually didn't have that "vaporwave" aesthetic.

But '70s rooms could be a different story: they could easily have those wood panel walls and orange carpet floors.

 

[MG-34]

Clinton fucked shit up. The military was losing benefits and letting closeted faggots in. The assault weapons ban drove up the price of the cool firearms, but PlayStation and N64 was fun.