The Big Picture: The 90's Didn't Suck

Guffe

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Jul 12, 2009
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I was born in 1991.
This means at least one good thing came out of that decade!!
 

MB202

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Sep 14, 2008
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I wouldn't list Power Rangers among the list of awesome stuff from the 90's personally, unless you're also going to list He-Man in terms of awesome stuff from the 80's... Also, how come you didn't mention anything about the Disney Renaissance?

But, whatever. I was born in 1988, so I grew up in the 90's. Anything that happened between 1990 and the early 2000s are ultra-nostalgic to me, though I'll admit, there were quite a few bad/lame things in the 90's. Not to mention, anything trying to be "cool" in the 90's ends up instantly dating itself and looking ultra-ridiculous today.

Wait, wait, wait... Bob used BLACKFACES on this show? How did I not notice that?
 

MrBaskerville

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Mar 15, 2011
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The 90 had some really cool music, it´s always fun to listen to 80s bands changing their style during the 90s until their 00s comeback. It resulted in some pretty interesting stuff.
 

Mumorpuger

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Apr 8, 2009
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I was ages 6-16 during the 90's. Here's the word you can use to describe them:

"XTREME"
 

franksands

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Dec 6, 2010
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The 90s was when that "information super highway" thing started and super "hackers" started appearing in Hollywood, like this gem: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/ (Hackers from 1995)

EDIT: more hacker movies from the 90s:

23
Sneakers
The Net
Nirvana
Lawnmower man (more virtual reality, but still "invading" computers)
Pirates of the Silicon Valley (though this is more of programming than hacking)
The Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires
 

bigjmdavis

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Sep 9, 2009
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I'm psyched to see a mention of Francis Fukuyama in such a non-scholarly cultural context. I'm generally assuming that these decade characterizations are about what made up American popular culture at the time. My theory - a burgeoning global awareness. Not quite on par with the "end of history" thesis, but generally having Americans exposed to aspects of global culture (and valuing diversity and international teamwork). I have a few examples of this:

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Yes, I know that they got their start in the 1980s, but they really took off in the 1990s. These mutants were poster-boys of globalization not just in their popularity, but also in their composition - a group of mutant turtles that live in New York, USA trained in the art of Japanese stealth fighting and named after Renaissance European Artists. To fully appreciate TMNT, kid had to have a rudimentary grasp on the cultures of 3 continents. If nothing else, these characters were a jumping-off point for kids to explore the rest of the world. A (possibly apocryphal) story that I heard was that English-language dictionaries had to be altered in the 1990s to include the word "ninja" because so many kids were trying to look it up.

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiago? - Again, the video game originated in the 1980s, but the 1991 - 1995 kids game show is where it became a cultural phenomenon (with its catchy theme song in particular). This emphasized geographical knowledge as important and travel to other countries as easily within reach, no matter how exotic.

Captain Planet and the Planeteers - Clearly bounded between 1990 and 1992, this show had the theme of global environmentalism. A band of five kids from a variety of national backgrounds were brought together to combat ecological menaces each week (and always decided to stupidly split up for most of each episode even though they could only activate their one superpower in unison).

This is just a sample of the kids shows. 1990s Sci-Fi emphasized the value of diversity through Star Trek: The Next Generation and Babylon 5. Even comedies like Seinfeld had some of its funniest moments with cross-cultural misadventures (think of the Chinese Restaurant or Soup Nazi episodes).

All of these shows contrasted with the "us or them" mentalities that bookended the 1990s. There were the Cold War fears that had been presented before and the post-9/11 global paranoia after. Battlestar Galactica appeared in the late 70s/ early 1980s and then reappeared in the 2000s, both featuring an apocalyptic war between humans and Cylons. Star Wars movies emphasizing the plucky rebellion versus the evil empire had a similar hiatus. Macho American patriotism saw a lacuna during the 1990s as well (both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone did more comedies during that period or poked fun at their previous exaggerated action personas).

This is just my perspective, though. I don't know if this matches other people's experience. I felt more free to travel internationally during the 1990s than I did in the 1980s or have since 9/11.
 

Mr_Terrific

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So basically, if you were born in the 90's, you didn't notice how mediocre the 90's were. If you were born in the 80's, you dealt with jr. High, High School, first job, first firing from said job, getting booted out mom and dad's to be homeless and or going to college. In your teens, you're suddenly conscious of the fact that the opposite sex could potentially give you sex. You now have to work for things. School isn't just about drawing and gym class...and now instead of a $5 calculator, you need and $85 calculator. You start to notice how much of a dick your mom and dad are (they're really not because you are the dick). etc.

That's why the 90's sucked for me and why the 80's were awesome....

And to the guy that says the 90's had better movies...ha.. Remember Back to the Future, Big trouble in Little China, The Last Dragon, Revenge of the Nerds, Highlander, The Running Man, They Live, Platoon, The Untouchables, The Terminator (was that the 80's????), Die Hard, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Ghostbusters???? Remember those? And those are just cult classics but they're all better than Fight Club.
 

UNHchabo

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Dec 24, 2008
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People only think of grunge and boy bands when it comes to 90s pop, but there's tons of it that still gets played a ton. At most of the stores I go to, they're playing a mix of 60s pop and 90s pop, with very little in between. Bob brought up Lisa Loeb; I still hear "Stay" on a regular basis.

Lenny Kravitz, Natalie Imbruglia, Goo Goo Dolls... these acts define the 90s just as much as grunge and boy bands.

R.E.M., U2 and Metallica had some hits outside the decade, but the 90s are when they all became megastars, and they all produced music in the 90s that is both radically different than their previous work, and generally well-received by the public.
 

LordLundar

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I would say the 90's were a time of refinement. Taking aspects of previous decades and saying "we could do it better" Whether successful or not is debatable but the effort certainly was there.
 

carnex

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Jan 9, 2008
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Well, that's the USA view of the '90s era. Chinese remember them as a start of a great reform. Ex USSR remember them as the big search for lost identity (tip, nobody found it), French remeber it as a big loss of identity as imigrants started beeing prominent groups in cities. And Balkans. Well, after 50 years of peace, this region was bomb 10 years past it's annual rage age. Yea, Balkan and wars are kind of thing, beeing on and off through entire histroy. 50 years without war or major rebelion is something like a local record.

So, while USA had it's moment of glory before it's empere was challenged again, rest of the world was working hard on its own problems or was knee deep in dead.
 

twaddle

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Nov 17, 2009
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You have no idea how hard it is to find Bob's "the 90's sucked" pic on the internet besides "prt sc" from his videos.
 

talideon

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Mar 18, 2011
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The '90s is essentially two parts: a comfortable long exhale, followed by a build-up of anxious, giddy ennui.

The '90s where the decade where, for a while, things seemed too good to be true. And, as we found out, they *were* too good to be true.
 

Hyper-space

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You almost answered your own question there, Bob. The 90's introspection wasn't just limited to its own era but to the entirety of the 20th century, thanks to the advent of the information era. It was as if people were attempting to do the same navel-gazing as had always been done only to find nothing of significance, so they took a step back in order to see something out of it. The entire (then-passing) century become the focus.

Its a different type of characteristic, yes, but it doesn't mean that its any less valid or significant than any of its preceding decades.
 

Rad Party God

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Feb 23, 2010
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SWAT Cats... OMG... *squeeeeeeeeeee*

Ahem... so, apparently, the 90's sucked because there was no conflict, well... isn't that pretty much what everyone tries to accomplish?, the new millenium was around the corner and people looked back and looked at the future, I mean, yeah, it was equally awesome and equally awful, but so does pretty much any era.

And yes, the 90's had it's own paranoia, remember that silly "2000 virus" that had the potential of turning itself into it's very own Cyberdyne?.
 

Lunar Templar

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*shrugs*

only part of the 90s I really remember is the games and TV, yeah there was the Clinton thing, and OJ if I remember right, thing is, didn't care then and still don't.

also, in terms of over all progress (and lasting quality of games) the 90s where the best :p
 

VonBrewskie

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Interesting take Bob. I was born in 1980. The 90's were my formative years. I feel like, (looking back), the 90's were a buffer decade. Our cultural identity in America morphed from disparate but individually defined movements and atmospheres to a more "bleh" generation of people living without life-threatening challenges. I think that's why X-TREME sports took off in the 90s too. Neon colors, guitar riffs or hip hop on every kind of ad, it was like "Madison Avenue" was beating us about the neck and shoulders to get us to give any kind of shit about anything. Especially the products they were trying to sell. (I'm speaking to a large percentage of the population, but not necessarily all of us, of course.)And oh god how we took to the MMOs when they came out. Huge portions of our population desperate for a danger fix and intellectually stimulating leadership challenges diving into virtual worlds and creating worlds unto themselves within. We're the "make your own reality" generation, I think. We're more self-aware than most generations before us. That's not necessarily a good thing. I think many of us are paralyzed by how self-aware we are. Also, we were one of the first generations to have college set as a certainty, rather than as an option too. We got done with high school and they began slashing the living shit out of auto shop and trade schools. They were doing it before the 90s, but it really took off then. It was like "take huge debt, because you have to go to college." Now there's oceans of college graduates and few jobs to go around and shit tons of personal debt. The 90's were fun, because I was a kid. SWAT Kats. Holy crap. I loved that show. Good piece here Bob.
 

Furrama

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I kinda liked growing up in a decade where things were calm and relatively stable. As a little kid I missed out on all the "crap" and only saw the good. So to me the 90's were this lovely thing that got stepped on by the 00's.

You are more prone to dislike the decade you were a teenager/young adult in.

The 90's were a time where everyone looked back and forward and not so much in the now, like you said. But that isn't bad. When there isn't a crisis or imminent threat that's just a thing that happens. We just haven't seen a period like that in so long we forgot what it looked like. Like a teen or young adult, we had the time and freedom to look around and figure out who we were in relative safety. ( Though like a teen/YA we were somewhat insufferable because of it.)

So the 90's are really this special, maybe once in a lifetime thing, that you were fortunate enough to live in.
 

scw55

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I went through primary school in the 90s. I experienced being a kid. Getting into Pokemon. And getting my heart broken.