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

MovieBob

New member
Dec 31, 2008
11,495
0
0
The 90's Didn't Suck

MovieBob takes us back to the decade people love to hate.

Watch Video
 

Erttheking

Member
Legacy
Oct 5, 2011
10,845
1
3
Country
United States
They didn't suck?

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NinetiesAntiHero

That depends all on where you look.
 

PsychedelicDiamond

Wild at Heart and weird on top
Legacy
Jan 30, 2011
1,923
746
118
I was born in the early 90s (93, to be precise) and if i was asked what that decade was all about, experiencing it as a child growing up i'd say... well, i suppose i will be considerered the rise of the information age. And the birth of a generation that grew up with the internet, viewing it as less of a tool and more of a second reality that allows us to communicate with people we'd have otherwise never known. I like to believe that some day people will remember this generation... well, my generation for being among the first people who reached a level of global understanding that none of our ancestors were able to. And maybe that's what the 90s werde. The beginning of an era of communication and understanding that started with the end of the Cold War.

Now, for a better question: What were the 00s all about?
 

Aiddon_v1legacy

New member
Nov 19, 2009
3,672
0
0
so the 90s were a decade that had an identity crisis like a teenager to trying to find themselves. Sounds about right
 

Chrono212

Fluttershy has a mean K:DR
May 19, 2009
1,846
0
0
There's a play that really encapsulates the whole idea, if not also the mood, of the 1990s. It even does that whole speil of 'longest period without major conflict, boom in personal computers and largest growth in the economy' evar.

That being said, yeah, having a neither here-nor-there attitude because of the lack of any kind of decade shaping events do mean that it "sucked". :p
 

J0057Mith

New member
Nov 18, 2009
8
0
0
So in other words to sum up the video... the nineties were... cultural doldrums!
People got bored and tried a little do-over of 70's and 80's things, or made something new-but crappy without any inspiration.

Good point Bob, thanks for the video.
 

WoahDan

New member
Sep 7, 2011
93
0
0
I think its a product of the decadal system breaking down, for a while culture tended to change over a decade, leading to each decade having a distinctive 'mood' and narrative. Culture nowadays moves way to quickly for that to work.
 

Chris Mosher

New member
Nov 28, 2011
144
0
0
I think that the 90's was more like a team building decade. Think of it like a sports team that the takes a year off from really competing so that they can rebuild themselves. The 90's was the cementing of the net as communications tool. War changed from the cold war to multisided conflicts currently in the middle east; their precursor being what happened the former Yugoslavia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. There is also the beginning of the democratization of pop culture, napster coming out in 1999. The 90's was not then end of history but the realigning of it.
 

Random Argument Man

New member
May 21, 2008
6,011
0
0
Alright, I'll give you a break on that matter as long you don't kick the dead horse. (In otherwords, stop using that "90's suck" picture)

The alarm from Fukuyama's theory didn't mean that "war as historic concept was over". It meant that the concept of "history" was over. If no one challenged the idea of the order of the world, which Fukuyama said was liberal capitalism, than human history would only stagnate and nothing would truly prove that things are getting better. Civilization obtained the ultimate goal of an end. No need for change if everyone believes that everything is fine with what we have.

As for "not much happened and pop culture wasn't stable", I believe Fight Club was a good commentary of what happened to society after a decade of not much. There's a lot of good stuff that happened in the 90s.
 

JSW

New member
Oct 7, 2009
93
0
0
The 90s were a great decade to live in but an absolutely boring decade to look back on. Basically, for that brief period the entire world turned into Canada.
 

2xDouble

New member
Mar 15, 2010
2,310
0
0
J0057Mith said:
So in other words to sum up the video... the nineties were... cultural doldrums!
People got bored and tried a little do-over of 70's and 80's things, or made something new-but crappy without any inspiration.

Good point Bob, thanks for the video.
And yet, the last decade and this one are continuing to do exactly that, only instead of trying to relive glory days of the past and look hopefully toward the future, they fearfully try to avoid both the past and future. Maybe it's time for a new awakening, where people didn't ***** about things not being "new" and "fresh" and actually did stuff... you know, like the 18th and 19th centuries, perhaps recapturing the latter 20th century's obsession with space travel and colonization with current discoveries and technologies that do, in fact, make the project possible (if not entirely practical for the moment).

Basically what I'm saying is, get the hell off my planet.
heh.
 

Urh

New member
Oct 9, 2010
216
0
0
Aiddon said:
so the 90s were a decade that had an identity crisis like a teenager to trying to find themselves. Sounds about right
The word that came to my mind to sum up the 90s was "meh", but I think your assessment is better. It's like that entire decade was spent simply waiting for the future to arrive.

Oh, and Bob, I hate to get all pedantic on you, but the swing dance revival actually started in the 80s. At least that's what my teachers tell me.
 

Quadocky

New member
Aug 30, 2012
383
0
0
The 90's was the golden age of cartoons and animations beyond the 80's style make cartoon to sell toys model. Can't forget all the original Anime that was made in this Era either, like the Slayers.

Also the late and early 90's was an amazing time for PC gaming and video games in general. Who could forget Baldur's Gate, Final Fantasy 7, Super Mario RPG, Final Fantasy 6, Fallout, etc.

Hip Hop and Electronic Music definitely created a huge root to take hold. All those 90's Sound Modules.

Then again, I basically grew up as a child in the 90's.
 

unacomn

New member
Mar 3, 2008
974
0
0
As someone that lived behind the wall and under the iron curtain, the '90s meant freedom and hope for the future. Sure, there were a lot of problems, but that shining glimmer at the end of the tunnel kept beckoning.
That got blown to crap after the '90, sadly, but hey, sometimes, the light at the end of the tunnel is a train racing towards you.
 

Zombie Sodomy

New member
Feb 14, 2013
227
0
0
It's interesting to think that I lived through that decade and can't remember a single thing about it.
 

Zombie_Moogle

New member
Dec 25, 2008
666
0
0
DVS BSTrD said:
Well I don't think it sucked, but it was definitely a vacuum.

And think people were calling you out on the 90's thing precisely because they knew it was personal for you.
I'm not sure I'd call a time that dedicated itself to speculation & advancement a "vacuum"

To me, the 90's was a time of self-reflection. As Movie Bob pointed out, we didn't have the usual external forces acting on the culture, which allowed for the culture itself to evolve organically. The counterculture movement expressed in grunge music & other suddenly cynical entertainment forms of the 90's looked back on the failures of the previous era & rejected them outright. In my observation, this allowed for the birth of the subculture. The internet allowed like-minded people to connect on a scale that they never could before, creating the type of communities we're presently an example of; this was the time when gaming really went from "hobby" to "lifestyle".

I'm just thinking out loud here, but perhaps there was a mainstream cultural vacuum because so many new niches were busy being carved out.