With the end of the Cold War and the spread of the internet, the 1990s is often remembered as a time of peace and prosperity. However, the decade was not without violence and tragedy, including the Rodney King beating and subsequent L.A. Riots, and the bombing of the World Trade Center.
So to get a more accurate view of this iconic era, Reddit user IndieSyndicate made a post on the subreddit 'Gen X,' asking it's members to share the common misconceptions about it. Born between 1965 and 1980, the cohort stepped up to the task and shared their diverse perspectives and experiences, shedding light on the often oversimplified mainstream narratives.
Money was tight then, too. People were happy with fewer luxuries, because we could get by. And the very idea of giving a child a device worth hundreds of dollars was ludicrous! I still feel this way.The 90s was a lot more analog than it’s presented. People still read newspapers and magazines. Cell phones were not ubiquitous. Cassette tapes and VHS tapes still dominated.There’s a HUGE difference between the early 90’s and late 90’s. After 1996 it was more millennial, pokémon, Britney Spears vs the early 90’s which was more grunge smooth RnB.Internet being widely available, so many tv shows and movies showing teenagers in supposedly early and mid 90s sitting in their bedrooms chatting online on their personal computers or being "hackers" and I'm like "b*tch in 1994 I didn't even know what the internet was" and I didn't really get home internet until 1999 (in the one and only computer of the house), and neither did anyone I knew, even the rich kids at school didn't care or knew about it, you were either out of the house or watching tv.The 90s was the dial up era and transition from dot matrix printers to ink jet. That modem squealing sound sums it up. We had technology, but it required patience and we were so grateful to have it, nobody complained. You lose the Internet for 10 minutes these days and people act like they're going to lose their minds.The early 90s and late 90s were two very different times culturally.
I can't stand it when I see a picture of the spice girls with a "So 90s!" caption.That mom Jeans were cool. No one under 35 wore them. They looked like s**t.The 90s were NOT represented in the film SINGLES or the TV show “Friends”. But the music represented the 90s well.I will describe the usage of computers on university campuses in 1996.
"checking your email" meant walking across campus *in the snow* and sitting down in front of a gigantic metal box and starting up an email program. "notifications" did not exist at this time. Even medical doctors used pagers.Not all GenXers were disinterested slackers in the 90s.I loved the 90’s so much. But people do forget that 1/4 oz. Of weed could get you a serious sentence, and homophobia was even worse then i think.That the 90s were some kind of utopia. There was a lot of good things, but the 90s were violent and there were way more ism’s on display.Nobody seems to talk about all the maroon and hunter-green wallpaper strips that were added to the top of the walls in houses.
Maroon and hunter-green everywhere. From cars to vacuums and beyond.
Oh, and the prevalence of People magazine. I see stuff about Readers Digest, but People magazine is not really talked about.
I also don't think people really understand just how much people smoked then either. Smoking in the car with your kids in it, at McDonalds, at school, etc.That Nirvana ruled the 90s, and brought an end to all other forms of hard rock. They hit hard for about two and a half years, and then we were stuck with Tonic and the goddamn Spin Doctors.The Rave scene was bigger and better than anyone seems to remember. PLUR.I think one idea that's misrepresented is that we were already online, all the time.
I mean, I was STOKED when I got into the dorm with LAN connections in 1993, but I was an outlier. Lots of kids at my college barely understood using computers, much less anything internet-related beyond maybe an AOL/AIM. Obviously this was an evolution of ten very fast moving years.That the early 1990’s were really bleak economically. Nearly everyone I knew, including people with Ivy League degrees, were working good service or retail just trying to get by. The Information Age felt so distant in 1992 - it wouldn’t explode until another five years. Rodney King, the LA riots, OJ Simpson trial - these were big signs that we were a long way from racial harmony. Everyone older than us was screaming about family values, while we elected a known womanizer president, and a Speaker of the House who was impeaching the president while getting blow jobs from a woman who would become his third wife. We now had a known sexual harasser on the Supreme Court - gender equality wasn’t that great, either. The Balkans were destroying themselves. Rwanda genocide barely made the papers. Yitzak Rabin is assassinated. Middle East terrorism starts. There was a lot of global uncertainty. At home, Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine, the Olympic bomber - these show deep divides brewing. Matthew Shepherd, whole communities still dying of AIDS, Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell - we have a long way to go for gay rights. But by 1995, the economy starts to heat up. By 1998 it’s exploding. Then the dot com bubble burst. All of these things set into motion the new and continuing problems that continue to dominate our lives today. Don’t get me wrong - the 1990’s were an amazing decade. Despite all of these things, there was a lot of hope, and the feeling that we could be part of a world that could still do amazing things and we were going to get to see them, participate in them, prosper under it. GenXers were, more than anything, YOUNG. That feeling of youth is what a lot of people miss when they remember the 90’s. Just as there was neon in the 1980’s, there was prosperity and feelings of possibility in the 90’s. But it wasn’t the norm, and it wasn’t for everyone. We felt great, sleeping on futons at 25, but little we know we were destined to back problems in our 40’s because of them.That life was GREAT before the internet and cell phones made us all into anxious, isolated zombies.Grunge always seems to get the spotlight, but an overwhelming number of people were pretty preppy actually. We did, after all, make household names out of the Gap, Banana Republic, J Crew, etc.A comment I heard years ago and don't remember the source: "1997 was the year it stopped being weird to have email.".A lot of people mention grunge and gangsta rap, but country was very hot too. Country line dancing became a big thing, Branson, Missouri became a big tourist destination with its theaters, and artists like Garth Brooks and Shania Twain made tons of money. My grandfather always had the country station on. Alan Jackson and George Strait were his favorites. The country influence made its way into homes, with cow, geese, and rooster decor.I think one of the most interesting transitions from the 90’s into the 00’s can be observed through The Sopranos. It starts with phone booths and pagers and ends with iPhones (Sopranos ran until 2007*, there was definitely overlap. It’s featured prominently in the final season, used by Anthony Jr.) so the cell phone evolution represented there is just one aspect of tech and culture changes at the turn of the century that can be seen in the series. The inclusion of the iPhone in the final season was some prime product placement marketing for the new product. If you think of the 80’s as “grey” you may have missed the the obsession with “neon” (uv) colors that began in the 80’s and proliferated in the 90’s. The 80’s were hyper saturated with a wholly different palette from the 70’s, and laid a foundation for 90’s design. Some of the most popular music artists of the ‘90s were also the most popular music artists of the ‘80s, like: Michael Jackson, Madonna, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, LL Cool J, Aerosmith, Guns N Roses, Bon Jovi, George Michael, Paula Abdul, and Salt N Pepa.That everyone loved Curt Cobain and/or Nirvana or that he/they even “spoke” for a generation.“H****n chic” comes to mind.A lot of people talk about the 90s like it was a utopian decade. Sure, a lot of stuff was awesome. But there was also the AIDS epidemic, the crack epidemic, the heroin epidemic, lots of police brutality, the sharp uptick in domestic terrorism, etc. plus the casual sexism, racism, & homophobia. The hope for the future that started in late 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the heating up of our economy in the mid-90s only lasted until 2000. It was a very brief window, in retrospect. While I enjoyed the 90s, I lost a lot of friends to drugs. And I lost a lot of hope when W. was elected.Cellphones were considered tacky and unnecessary unless you were a doctor.Lots of smoking.The ‘80s never really went away. There were a lot of people who hated the new directions in music, fashion, TV and movies the ‘90s brought and held onto their butt rock, Aquanet and mullets with a righteous fervour.Us older Gen Xers we're full fledged, college educated working adults with careers in the 90s. Some of us even had kids and houses.
The advantage was that we had plenty of money for concert tix and Doc Martins.I'm from 75 and my best friend is from 65. We have very different memories of the 90s.Khaki's everywhere. I doubt that is represented correctly.There were ALOT more rugby shirts then what is portrayed today.Remember when everything was "X-TREME!" They were still marketing to us then.
I spent the whole early aughts saying "'Green' is the new 'X-TREME'".Please don’t bring 90’s fashion back. It died on the vine for a reason, it sucked. Run if you start seeing turtlenecks, multi color sweaters, buckle shoes and mullets.I don't think the Riot Grrrl movement gets enough recognition and acknowledgment as an extremely significant 90s cultural event.There werent roving gangs of equally diverse teenagers (including one girl in a wheelchair) running around spray painting everything with neon colored graffiti letters, all while learning wholesome life lessons from a kind hearted policeman, in EVERY city.
We were just as likely to be boring a*s losers at home watching TV as anyone else.Everything in the 80s was brown. Not grey.The 90s as a vibe really only stretched from 92-96. It peaked in 94. By 97-98 it was starting to be culturally stagnant. And then 2001 happened and nothing was the same since.That the economy was pretty weak for young workers until the dotcom boom in the late ’90s. Most so-called slackers were people who couldn’t find a good job.The statement about the 80's was about the overuse of neon in costumes and nostalgia. There was neon but we didn't walk around like a lightbulb everyday. The decor was not zany and bright, it was brown and dull. Country and Americana were popular household decor.
What do people get wrong about the 90's? Honestly, IDK. Most everything I see has been pretty well represented as truthful without too much nostalgia-washing. I started high school in 1990 and graduated college in 1997, I feel like I transcended that timeframe pretty well and rarely if even have I seen anything where I'm like "nah, that's not it." One thing about GenX is I don't think we are prone to embellishments too much.Bedhead... you know, the hairstyle? Seemed like everyone on MTV had it around '98 or '99. I hate it for some reason, but worse I hate media that capitalizes on nostalgia and wants to rewrite fashion history and say bedhead was around in the '80s which I sure as s**t don't remember.It wasn't exciting at the time. I remember in the late 90s there was an article in my local paper about 70s and 80s nostalgia and the conclusion was that the 90s would never be a nostalgic decade. They were wrong and I actually wrote the paper saying of course it would be. But at the time, the 90s felt unextraordinary.The early 90s were super violent depending on where you lived. That was the time of the "Super-Predators" as President Clinton called them. I think Woodstock '99 captures the idea.It was known as the poor 80s here in Denmark. I didn't notice as a kid and it was a very colorful decade. I noticed that dad could afford more food and toys for me, when I visited him in CA, USA.
In the 90s I was still pretty formal and colorful and a lot of my parents generation were clearly still living in the 70s - judging by their homes or even cars. It's not a decade I remember fondly.I won’t say people get it “wrong” per se but when I’ve seen video of typical office workers in the 90s I’m surprised by how well dressed everybody is compared to now.Americans mostly seem to not realise the rise of electronic music in the 90s in the rest of the western world. Most Americans were still hung up on three chords and the truth and the misery of grunge. I lived in the states for six months in 95/96 and was surprised how little inroads music like house and techno had made in mainstream society. People go on about how awesome video rental was back then. In reality, it completely sucked a*s, and heads would explode if we had to access movies that way today.Not all of us were neglected latch key kids. I f*****g wished my parents would leave us alone for one second. Looking back I should’ve been much more appreciative; we had great home made meals three times a day, parents played with us and helped us study, dropped off and picked us up from school, they never left us by ourselves or baby sitters, no one smoked, etc. But I’d be lying if I said I loved it. I still wish they gave us some privacy and didn’t treat us like some helpless twats. I craved freedom.That comic books sucked.
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