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

JenSeven

Crazy person! Avoid!
Oct 19, 2010
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It's pretty easy to say what the 90's was about.

It's the back-seat generation.
They are the kids of the people that were born in the 60's, and grew up in the 70's.
They never had to fight for anything, they didn't need to achieve anything. Everything was given to them by their parents, the government, education, everything. All they had to do was ride along in the back-seat of the car of the people that actually did things.

The 90's is more about egocentrism, consumer entitlement, decentralization of society and individualism.
It's a generation of splintered groups, individuals even, without any common goals besides themselves.
There is the overall majority that just goes with the flow of the rest of society, and there are many splintered groups that try to go against it, but unlike the punks of the 70's, they have no structure or ideal.

So the 90's is a generation of individuals, of consumers, of self-obsessed magpies.
And they are the people that are currently producing the next generation.

Oh how I weep..
 

Raikas

New member
Sep 4, 2012
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I know this is an American website, but the 90's sucked view is so US-centric it almost hurts.
Totally - so many hugely imporant things were happening during that decade. To be fair, he did throw up the "if you lived in the US" disclaimer, but I think that actually misses that a big part of the 90s is people getting online and communicating with the rest of the world.


And can I just say that the cartoon thing baffles me. Who defines a decade based so strongly on the relative quality of their cartoons? I get that it's probably a semi-self-mocking thing, but even from a pop culture perspective it's just silly.


JenSeven said:
It's pretty easy to say what the 90's was about.

It's the back-seat generation.
They are the kids of the people that were born in the 60's, and grew up in the 70's.
They never had to fight for anything, they didn't need to achieve anything. Everything was given to them by their parents, the government, education, everything. All they had to do was ride along in the back-seat of the car of the people that actually did things.
Eh, a decade isn't owned or defined by the people who were born in it. I think it's just as much defined by the people who came of age during it and the people who having their kids and running the world (and retiring in it, and so on) - those people who "actually did things" were the ones building the culture, after all.
 

Tormuse

Regular Member
Nov 18, 2009
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Brilliant, insightful video, Bob! I especially liked the part about Reality Bites, because I just watched that movie for the first time recently and... ugh... there's so much wrong with it that I don't even know where to begin complaining about it... Thankfully, someone else posted a helpful link: :)

Thespian said:
Oh and on Reality Bites, I'll just leave this here.
Oops, forgot that was the worst sentence on the internet. I'll just.. place this video... in this area.

http://blip.tv/nostalgia-chick/nostalgia-chick-reality-bites-6385005
This is beautiful and hilarious! :D I'm definitely gonna have to check out more stuff from her. :)
 

TurkeyProphet

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Aug 18, 2009
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The general miasma of nothingness is kind of why I love a lot of music and films from the 90s. The video kind of glossed over this by brushing away grunge as hard rock and only giving Slacker as an example of the really bizarre angst that is present in a lot of stuff from the 90s. You have this huge amount of self loathing in all of the indie/DIY/low fi type movements because they clearly want to rebel against something but it's all been done. The establishment doesn't give a shit so it all this hate turns inwardly on itself. Nirvana is possibly the quintessential 90s band and they made songs only about self loathing and isolation. You can also see this is stuff like Pulp Fiction. Rather than breaking boundaries like earlier post-modernists to a show a lack of meaning in art it's just pointlessly breaking them. Even fashion in the 90s was like "who gives a fuck?".

The 90s is basically what happens if you take away all conflict and meaning from the world.