Why do I miss the 90s so badly?

How old are ya op?

You know what I miss before cell phones op? It seemed to me people were more easy to mix with others in public. You were in space together with them. You might need them for time, directions, information, etc.

You would socialize with living people in the same space, not prefer the company of non-present people via phone. More things happened when you went out. You didn't know what was going to happen. You couldn't Google reviews. You had to talk to random people and ask if they heard about such and such place.

Then again, I was a teenager when the internet was just taking off so it's mixed in with how I saw things as a child. Still, it seems people were a little more grateful and gracious in the moment. I could be wrong! It could be just as good or better now and I'm feeling old and left out.

It's probably personal experience too op. My aunt's older than me and says she doesn't miss the 90s because no one had any money. My dad had money.

I miss not having to pay bills and shit.

And the big gay bear was quiet back then because he was still in special ed.

I miss the 90's sometimes too OP. Great music. Everything retail hadn't merged so there was a lot of variety. I graduated from high school in 94. With my grocery store job I was able to buy an old VW Bug and fix it up to keep it on the road. And afford a nice studio cottage in an older, nice part of town. And have money in the bank. And have money to take a vacation once a year and buy things like clothes and cd's. And I maxed out there at $8.50 an hour. Try that now.

I was a very unhappy closeted teenager in the 90s but it still seemed better than today, I agree with all of OP's points and complaints.

I miss the nineties. I was in the best shape of my life and had great legs that I showed off in daisy dukes. And impressive shoulders that looked great in a wife beater.

Now? Not so much…🤨

The last decent music, AFAIC, was written in the 90s.

I miss my 32X36 jean size and flawless young skin.

Only you know why... it's obnoxious to ask us. How can we possibly know the origins of your feelings, OP?

My high school and college years were in the 90s. An amazing time that can never be replicated even if I thought the 90s were boring AT THE TIME. I really hope (but definitely fear) it is all downhill from here. I mean things have been getting shitty for a while but can you imagine a future where we look back and DUMP seems not so bad.

On the day / night that Princess Diana died, I was out with friends. I didn't find out about her crash / death until I got home and turned on the TV. If her death had happened in now-times, I think my friends (that I was with in the '90s) would all be on their phones, trying to find out more news.

The 90s were the golden era of technology, when it all seemed so new and exciting and full of potential.

What? There were no cell phones and people didn't even use the internet that much.

R15 I used the internet all the time. It was dial up but it was good for the time,

The 9/11 happened and it sucked

9/11 was when everything changed.

Anyone besides me think summer of 2001 was so fun? Then shit hit the fan.

Pre-internet. Things had to be experienced.

Titanic seemed like a good movie back then. Friends seemed funny. Brad Pitt was cute. Spice Girls seemed like good music. MtV was how you knew what was cool. Will Smith was a huge blockbuster star. Being gay was sooo edgy. Big giant jeans. Metal silver prints. Home Alone was a hit. John Candy was alive. Silence of the Lambs. Rappers all wore flannel and black. Colorful suits. Thin starvation was in even if Sir Mix a Lot didn't want it. Going to the mall. Richard Simmons tapes. Roller blades. Kids played outside skated. Carry a quarter (used to be a dime in the 80s) might need to use a public pay phone. Guess logos. Tommy Hilfiger. Baggy clothes. The phone book. Using maps. OJ chase live on air. U2 Madonna Sting. Radio. Cassettes and CDs. Michael Jackson Superbowl.

Yeah I mean it was ok. It had it's time. As much as people are annoying about "tut tut tut, you didn't say the right term" "you committed a politically correct social media faux pas" it's better now than the open slut shaming and gay bashing that took place.

R16 so did I . I had WebTv and that's how my closeted ass started chatting with other gay men on TalkCity and discovering the joys of pictures of nude men.

I liked some aspects of the 90s, but AIDS was still a thing for gay men up through 1996 when the first glimmer of good news started. Also, we saw the rise of Newt Gingrich and the demonization of liberals inspired by his infamous playbook, wherein every time a conservative politician uttered the word liberal it was paired with something evil and dangerous. We saw Bill Clinton being brought down by a consensual blow job and forced to play out his second term from a defensive position. On the plus side, we did have a Democrat in the Oval office after 12 solid years of Republicans and that made the decade feel a little lighter in tone.

Off-topic:

r22 I am so tired of always reading your name as 'melvinguy' and thinking your name is 'Melvin.' Every time. Without fail. I fuck this up.

I want a refund on these new glasses. The problem has not been fixed. 😭

Carry on.

You miss Snack Wells!

The fashion was better. Today's styles have too much of an 80s influence, particularly accessories.

The music was better, too. Massive Attack, Portishead, grunge, plenty of rock.

Never look back, OP.

"Just wait until now becomes then. You'll see how happy we were."

The first dot com bubble was fantastic. Rents doubled and priced all the lower paid white renters out of gentrifying neighborhoods to be replaced with richer whites. Minorities? Oh, they had been losing since the 80s. Party On! Dillinger Capitalism!

Another high point were the Balkan Wars. "America Fuck Yeah" party in Iraq.

The music was definitely better. And there were more radio stations that catered to a variety of genres, so it was easier to discover something new.

Grunge in the '90s was the last vestige of ROCK music that we had. I thought that rock music would keep morphing and that we'd always have a form rock music. Sad. We have nothing, now, as far as contemporary rock music.

If only there were algorithms tailored to my taste and vast databases of all recorded music in history, to help me discover new music practically for free! That would be great. Sadly, I can only pine for the lost golden age of radio in the 1990s.

R2 spot on. Real human interaction is much better than digital likes & comments

Being in my 20s throughout the 90s was terrific. I miss it so.

It really was a great time to be young — at least in hindsight. I'm not sure it was as great of a time to be over 25.

Yes, I really miss being terrified of sex as a potential death sentence.

One broken condom and you could die. And medical experts were still debating if oral was safe.

That was great.

One unlucky Grindr or Scruff trick and you could get mugged and die. Leave the bar at the wrong time and you could get beaten up by waiting bashers and die. Both happen all the time. Risk of death is always imminent R36, including the special risks we have for being queer. At least with AIDS we got the chance to protect ourselves.

Different, not necessarily better. There are still too many people that like to look backwards rather than forwards which in some ways is why things like the UK leaving the EU happened, harking back to some imaginary Enid Blyton / Arthur Ransome view of the UK complete with cucumber sandwiches, picnics on the heath and especially no "darkies".

There's a certain type of person that is always saying how good things were, and when you talk to them you quickly realise that the reason they hark back to this imaginary view of the past is that they are often desperately unhappy with their current lot in life, feeling remorse at not having lived their life better. I listen to music from when I was in my late teens and twenties and it doesn't give my any feeling of warmth, if anything I find it a bit cringe. Maybe my view has been coloured by a parent that was always saying how much better things where in the 70s so much that it was a family joke.

[quote]Why do I miss the 90s so badly?

Because you're not thinking things through, OP.

People decry social media and people being "glued to their phones" these days, but before the internet, there was a hell of a lot of isolation and loneliness and feeling like you were the only gay and/or freak in your village.

There was a lot more cultural ignorance. The joy of discovery was more outside your control. You couldn't just pull up any movie or song or TV show you were curious about and learn and have experiences you never expected. Or just discover things randomly any time you wanted.

Things weren't great then, and they're not all bad now.

Thanks, Debs. Do you miss people dying of AIDS, too?

Every era has something horrible, but also something great. The 90s brought us the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the Internet, but also the Gingrich revolution and the peak of AIDS and the Rodney King beating. It would have been a different world if Florida could have accurately counted all their ballots in 2000.

I can remember in the 90s thinking Russia would become a great democracy...

I tend to recall the past, I’ve live a long life, but not in the context of missing it. I have a lot of memories. I think this is common to those of us lucky enough to have lived long lives.

Have to admit that while my phone is essential, that the ubiquity of phone fixation on the street, in restaurants, in the gym etc is depressing. People live in their own world or bubble which kind of cuts short human contact. They isolate many people and make ttt hot em less available to others.

Make “them” less…

Technology got smarter and humans got dumber. We are living in a post-human age. This is why everything sucks. Technology will keep evolving, while humans will devolve into potatoes.

There were some pretty dumb people in the 90s too. The nation ground to a halt for a year over a blow job in the White House.

Remember how shocking it was when Columbine happened...now that would be forgotten by the next news cycle. Republicans were terrible then as now, but they weren't openly neo-Nazi and they weren't posing for Christmas cards with AK-47s, etc.

Society has become far more hateful and aggressive, and just plain dumb, thanks to the Orange Fuhrer.

Sure R46, but not as dumb as today. Also, Europeans didn't care about Monica blowing Billy. It was a big deal in the US.

Me too OP. I feel the same.

R47, Not defending Frump but to think an entire nation became dumb just because of one man is, well... dumb. It was a gradual dumbing down of society. Frump is a consequence, not a cause. And wokes aren't extremely retarded in your opinion? Only MAGAs are? Everyone has a single digit IQ now.

No nuance here again, of course. I miss being able to have those moments of peace where the outside world could feel distant, pre-social media, or people from the past seeming to be truly in the past and not a lingering Facebook connection. No, I don’t miss unbridled homophobia but it’s still around today.

The last 12 years have seen a plummet to the almost depths of civilized behavior, people have become appauling.

The era of your late teens and early 20s is usually the era you have the most affinity for. You were young and there seemed no limits to how wonderful your life could be. Even if the world was particularly shitty at that specific time, you and your peers would somehow fix it. You hadn't been beaten down yet by all the mundane shit required to survive.

You miss the 90s, I miss the 2010s, and some misguided souls will miss 2023.

Nostalgia is a wound. You probably just miss your lack of cynicism.

I believe the reason that so many miss the older days is because we are living thru a transition of living one way of life to another. The life from before the mid 90's was completely different from today. When technology hit it changed everything and it was like we moved from one world into another. Younger people will not have a problem because they can't miss what they never had. The rest of us have had to go thru a huge change in the way we live. This is the future we always heard about when we were growing up but really didn't expect to affect us. Even children are born older than they used to be. We are actually fortunate to have been able to experience the past and we should embrace the future as it is a step forward for our world. Few will have the chance to have these experiences.

You should move to Portland!

[quote] Even children are born older than they used to be.

Huh?

children act and appear much older than they used to in the 80's/90's etc. They do things that children from the 50's/60's/70's didn't do until a much older age.

R58 yeah like transition as kinder-gardeners

R55 wrote "Younger people will not have a problem because they can't miss what they never had." That's stupid. It's like saying younger people who live in war torn countries won't have a problem if they've never known peace. Depression and anxiety is far higher in younger people today than it ever was because society is broken and humans are not meant to have virtual lives.

"This is the future we always heard about." No, I never heard about how people in the future would spend their days posting pictures of their asses on Instagram. I saw movies about robots taking over the world, flying cars and trips to Mars, but nothing about Instahoes.

R60 check out elroyjetsonxxx on Onlyfans

People romanticize their childhood and early 20s. When you're that young, everybody is telling you what to do: your parents, your teachers, your bosses. I prefer being an adult.

It was the calm before the storm