Opinion | The Best Year of Our Lives - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
I read this piece every couple months. It makes me think about how times have changed? How the 90s special and sorta the end of an era. What do you guys think?
Btw the article doesn’t mention Pokemon but I think its still relevant.
I don’t subscribe to the times and I still have access. Let me know if its behind a paywall for you guys.
I feel like this sort of feeling happens whenever the next generation(s) get older. For example, in the '90s, people were saying how much they missed the '70s and '80s.
I personally think the '90s were fantastic, but that was also when I grew up (born in 1990), so I am biased. I would say that many of us here will probably be biased toward the '90s.
Give it another 10 years, and people will be saying how great the early 2000s were. It’s a cycle.
I agree. I think in adulthood, we all yearn for simpler times, and remember our childhood with rosy red glasses. I think we fail to recognize that the world itself wasnt a simpler place— theres always been crazy bad shit going on in any given time period. Its moreso how we perceived the world and how we interacted with it as kids. The only thing to do was to be a kid and have fun (and honestly, a lot of kids dont even get that). Everything seemed novel, magical and mysterious as a kid, at least to me. Eventually, you become disillusioned and learn that the world isnt always a great place. I think thats what we struggle with as adults. Our perspective changes. We cant unlearn what we come to know and it can feel bad to try and just pretend things arent happening. I think the ignorance of being a child is bliss
every decade is the last great decade in America. im partial to 2000-2010 since thats when I grew up
All true points. We are biased to believe things were better in the past and we forget so much. However, two objective measurements that I find convincing are:
Btw I was only 6 in 1999 so I too consider myself more product of the 2000’s. I’m trying avoid nostalgia for another era.
We all have rose-colored glasses for the nostalgic past. Unfortunately, the way we remember the past is never the reality. Rather, it is how we would like to remember it. This is a real phenomenon in Psychology.
The 90s had a lot going for them but it wasn’t all peaches and cream
This is a good point and I partly agree with it - but besides the social media part which was garbage from the very beginning, this did not end in the 90’s. This ended in 2017/2018 when Google (especially Google) and Youtube’s introduction of AI machine learning (2015 and 2016 respectively) took full effect.
As someone who has self-educated on the internet to the most extreme degree, literal years of my life, it is crazy to see how bad it has become and how fast it is happening. I couldn’t learn 25% of what I did if I started now.
There are many challenges for every generation, but all we can do is learn from the past and apply those teachings to the present. It’s a futile endeavor to wish today was as good as the 90’s, regardless of whether it’s true or not. To further that, 99.99% of what happens in our world is outside our control. Nearly everything. I’m extremely grateful to live in America, and a big believer that if I keep swallowing’s eBay listings at the rate I’m going, my binders will be as full as my heart <3.
Hmmm interesting. Was that when algorithms for advertising because much more powerful?
Yes. I am not a computer expert so I’m sure someone could explain that part much better but the search engines, for lack of a better word, died.
Yes it was. I don’t agree that it’s a bias thing. A lot of this is hard to quantify objectively without writing a novel’s worth of material. As you pointed out, zubat, it was an age before corporate internet control, a system of addicting people to various platforms. Mass brand advertising, corporate consolidated and dominated market. There was a time where there was a push to have the internet be a free, public space. Not one where certain entities control what is seen and where. We are watching the consolidation of wealth become frightening, and watching corporate ideology and presence overwhelm every sector in the public and in art.
Pre 9/11 there wasn’t such intense focus on surveillance, security etc.
It was a time where children didn’t have ipads and screens in their face 24/7. Where there weren’t screens everywhere you look.
It was a time where the mainstream frequented the outdoors, spent time on outings, went out to get everything they needed, read literature to a far higher degree. Where the youth weren’t dumb as bricks with a dipping average IQ. Where tiktok and other social media didn’t exist, that scrambled people’s brains and shortened the attention span to dangerously low levels.
A time where things were extremely affordable, and in today’s dollars, were a third of the price on average. Home values, essential goods, every day services, and even non essential goods for leisure.
I could go on an on about a variety of examples that showcase this.
Look at it this way. The arts are a reflection of the times. Look at the music that was popular as late as the early 90’s, the creativity, the uniqueness. You need to know how music is made to know that in the 2000’s and especially now, it started to degrade in richness, complexity, artistic caliber, creativity, and originality. Did you know that most of the top charting pop songs are made, written, produced by a couple of the same people who dominate the industry? And look at the movies.
For the 90’s and all the decades prior, most if not all top grossing and most popular films were original. For the 90’s, which started the trend, but didn’t seal it, 9/10 of the films were original screenplays or original adaptations. For the very next decade, only 3/10 were. The rest were sequels, or franchise material. It gets even worse when the industry’s fate was sealed by next decade. Look at the general trend towards re-boots, franchise, sequels. Scarcely anything is original anymore. This is my industry. They hate originality, they hate risk. Art is risk. Look at the past decades preceding this, on that article I linked.
This is a talk of culture, not medical or scientific advancements that are objectively good, get better with time.
Yes.
The 90s was an optimistic time. It seemed like anything was possible; technology was booming, the economy was growing, and it was overall a peaceful time.
Today is pretty much the opposite, there is a ton of anxiety in the air all the time. Partly due to real issues; pandemic, bumpy economy, increased cost of living, and oddly enough, technology. An idea I can’t shake is how we have less shared truth today, due to technology, primarily, social media. You don’t need people as much, and this creates a lack of cooperation. You can find a group who believes the world is flat, spend most of your time there, and ignore reality. Not to mention, the horizon of AI brings more fast fundamental changes.
Nostalgia aside, the future looked bright in the 90s. Where today, the future is uncertain.
Plus the fact that there was no social media in the '90s, so all of the crazy things that were going on weren’t out in the open like they are today.
There has been horrendous and depressing stuff going on in every decade. The difference is that due to the advent of the Internet, everyone now has it right in front of their face. So while it may seem like things are crazier in 2023 than they were in 1999, the fact of the matter is that it really isn’t much different. The difference is Twitter and Instagram.
Funny thing is, I guess in that case, you CAN say that the '90s were better than today because we didn’t have social media. Funny how that works, right?
I didn’t even think about that, but you’re 100% right.
But see, then people from the '70s and '80s would say that '90s kids had video games and the Internet much like we currently say that kids have tablets in their faces.
Remember: there was a time when '90s kids were considered “spoiled.” Now, that time seems like the Stone Age.
Fifty years from now when a phone can transform into a car, kids from the 2020s will be talking about how rough they had it.
Like I said: it’s a never ending cycle.
This thread will be recreated in every generation until the end of time.
Sometimes your outlook on things change because of your age and the life-stage that you are in, not necessarily because of differences in society/culture by decade. The more things appear to change, the more they tend to stay the same. As @Cerulean said, it’s a never ending cycle.
The 90s were a great decade in America, and in Europe as well, it isn’t just nostalgia. The Cold War was over, and 9/11 and the fallout it trigerred hadn’t come yet. Now I feel that we squandered a lot of opportunities and are in a period of downright decline, with war, political radicalism, demographic and environmental challenges and an economy that is growing but where the middle classes are getting squeezed. It is impossible to pinpoint who is at fault, but our sytems sometimes don’t feel up to the many challenges.
Dude those old folks were just scared of change. In retrospect that is a subjective thing, moderate amounts of video games are just the same as their cinema going, and we all know that. An argument of relativity won’t work as much as explaining what is bad or good in a timeless way, irrespective of the time. What is good for our souls and humanity. The “tablets” in our faces then were video games. Limited hardware and software. They had a beginning and an end, even if you had personal trouble managing your time with it. They weren’t algorithmic programs with marketing and devices that keep you sucked in. With infinite media. Everything at the click of a button. The internet being carried around with you, keeping your attention at all times. These are very, very different things.
The example you give is no different than saying there was a time when they considered smoking healthy. Now that seems like the stone age. It’s a fallacious argument.
There was a line that was crossed and once we got there, things were instantly different. If you see it, you know.
This thread will be created until the end of time because as humans we are retrospective and an accumulation of our past experiences.
Even though the fundamentals of the human condition are always present doesn’t mean civilization does not oscillate throughs highs and lows.
