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Cloud, good post.. Generation X definitely earned it's name. In defense of X tho, I blame (in large part), the Baby Boomer parents, teachers, cultural influences.
My perception, Boomers & aging hippies uniquely demonized patriotism, religion, had unprecedented divorce rates. It left the up & coming Xers with little cultural bedrock. So by the 9os a lot of those lost X kids were entering adulthood with cynical attitudes. I especially noticed in the late 90s, the obesity epidemic, folks covered head-to-toe in ink & piercings, shameless out of wedlock reproduction, ridicule of religion, Jerry Springer & Maury etc all over TV.
Now it's (tragically) normal & bequeathed to the future..
Take care.
But the GenX brought us the future, the founders of all your favorite websites were born between 1961-1981 GenX succeeded in what the boomers attempted they changed the culture, they changed the way business was done, amazon is americas #1 retailer and are the old brick and mortar chains are trying to hold on lol.
I'm glad you brought this up. I completely agree with you.
I kind of felt the same way until I got older and started looking back.
I saw a picture, (I wish I could find it and post it here) that I swore had to have been taken in the early 90's, but it had actually been taken in like 2002.
If you look at any pictures from 2000 - 2003, maybe even 2004 - a lot of those you would think were taken at some point in the 90's.
Same goes for 90's - you'd think it was taken in the 80's. 80's and 70's I usually don't have that much trouble differentiating unless it's the late 70's and/or early 80's.
Now obviously there's been a lot of change from 2000 to 2010 and it's a lot less easy for me to notice as that was me from 8 to 18 years old. I would obviously say the early 2000's were very very very different from 2010. I FEEL like it's when the most change happened with the web 2.0, social media, cell phones and kids suddenly disappearing from playing on the street lol.
From 2000-2004 I remember all the neighborhood kids would meet up every evening and play on the street. But after 2004, it's like everyone just vanished.
Obviously less kids showed up as the years went on... less in 2003...but everyone just went poof in 2004. So I stayed inside too... and that's when AOL Red chats became my socialization lol.. myspace..xanga.. etc.
Ah... I should cut myself off here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jello071
I was born in 1995 and can say from what I remember and from research that the 90s sucked. The 80s was a fun and upbeat decade, the 90s was when all the fun ended.
If I had a time machine id love to be a teenager in the 80s. It felt like a decade that was 30 years ahead of it's time.
How would you even remember anything from the 90's? Lol, you were only five by the time they ended.
I personally have no memory of anything from 4-5 years old. Maybe a few blips here and there.
I'm telling you it's mostly people who weren't even old enough to enjoy the 90's that rag on the 90's so bad. Yes, the 80's were cool but I think the 90's was too.
Last edited by MadeUnderground; 03-06-2018 at 09:36 AM..
I thought everyone hated the 80's. I mean, yeah I have fond memories. But given the choice I don't think I would want to relive them again.
Are we talking terms of style or terms of the world? Yes I think it is harder to distinguish the 90s and 'oughts and 20-teens style wise - the world has shrunk and matured a lot in terms of styles so I don't think there is as much, um... experimentation? going on. The 80s, style wise, were very, very distinguishable.
But, in terms of the word and culture and technology I think there are huge differences, but a lot of that goes unrecognized as a much technology and cultural change was gradual and subtle, and you only really see it all in hindsight.
Simple example. When I say Germany, do you think East and West, or just one country? Do you remember anything about escaping over the wall? That only came down at the very end of the 80s.
People always act like the 80s is ancient and antiquated while the 90s is still fresh and relevant, and I used to feel that way myself.
But recently I've been looking at photos and videos from the 90s and listening to 90s music I grew up with and honestly most of the 90s was not that different from the 80s. 90s pop music was still full of gated drums and cheesiness, and there wasn't nearly as much rap on the charts as you'd think. Bryan Adams and Michael Bolton were still considered the bees knees from 1990 to 1994, that's how bad it was. Hell even Britney's debut album is much more similar to a Debbie Gibson album than to any recent pop album I've heard.
Even as late as 1997 you still had tons of people with thick rimmed glasses, mullets, overalls, and turtlenecks! The clothes people wore in the early and middle 90s are much more similar to 70s and 80s clothing than to clothing from after 2000. The TV was more similar too, sitcoms still dominated though when South Park came out I think things became a lot raunchier. The only reality shows from the 90s I can remember are Blind Date, COPS and The Real World.
Most people would probably peg this video around 1990, but it's actually from 1997.
I think people think 1989 and before was pre-Internet times and 1990 to today is the "Internet era" (the Internet's actually existed since the 70s) and they're like day and night. But actually Internet use was surprisingly low even in 1999 - only about 35-40% of Americans were online then (and far lower than that for almost every other country in the world), and fewer than 10 percent in 1994. Hardly anyone was online in 1993 aside from gamers and academics. If you were lucky you might have had a college email address but that's about it. Most people in western countries didn't even own computers, only a large minority did. The world was still a much bigger place than today and information traveled a lot more slowly even though "globalization" was really starting to kick into gear then.
Cell phones were around throughout the 90s but there wasn't really a "cell phone culture" until the early 2000s. My parents didn't have cell phones until 2003. Most people didn't feel a need to have one because there was a payphone on every corner, the sound quality was inferior, and they were expensive compared to landlines. I do remember many people owned "beepers".
Digital cameras were apparently around but I don't remember them until the very late 90s and the quality was so terrible and the price so high that everyone still used film, even as late as the early 2000s. The only digital technology that pretty much everyone used was CD players.
Lastly, Clinton and Reagan are not nearly as different as people think. Reagan was a neocon, and Clinton was a very right-leaning neoliberal. The 90s was just as much a conservative capitalist money-loving decade as the 80s. Worldwide even more so than the 80s when you consider the 90s was the decade of the Washington consensus and austerity.
I was an 80s teen. One of the most inaccurate stereotypes about the 80s was the "mullet" which was actually rare in my HS and college. The "ducky" hat was far more common - but mainly among prep students (particularly at the private undergraduate college I attended). The "ducky" hat was from "Pretty in Pink". That guy was also on "Two and a Half Men" decades later with Charlie Sheen who now has HIV.
The "specific to 80s" fad or lifestyle can be tabulated as follows with the related reasons:
* Video Game Arcades at the mall - home video games were very low in quality and malls were still popular
* The Sony Cassette Walkman - very convenient and small - no smartphones with music back then
* The Dewey Decimal System - most libraries did not have a computer network and database or CD.
* Rates of teen obesity were lower - outdoor activities were still very popular - see the guys riding bikes all day on ET rather than playing video games (which were low quality in pixel precision). None of those guys in that bike reading scene were fat.
* HS Football was far more dangerous - modern rules of tackling and blocking did not exist back then. See the guy below from "Fast Time at Ridgmont High". Participation was much higher since the science of concussions was largely unevolved compared to now with modern medical imaging.
* Minimally-Invasive Surgery - far more frequent and traumatic due to lack of imaging devices and minitiarized surgical techniques. The removal of galstones was far more dangerous.
* Bookstores were popular - the internet did not exist in its modern form and computers were largely immobile.
* Vocal talent was much higher - modern singers use Auto Tune (e.g. Taylor Swift) which did not exist back then. AutoTune makes bad singers sound excellent. So, an 80s singer typically had far more legitimate vocal talent.
* Racism was more prevalent - older people from back then were more likely to be bigoted. On a typical college campus or HS, interracial dating was rare. If it happened, the ostracization or violence against it were far more common.
* Breakdancing was huge briefly - it was due to "Flashdance".
* The Rubik's Cube - very popular and similar to breakdancing in its brief but intense reign.
* College Enrollment Sucked with very, very long lines - nowadays you can just enroll online but back then there was no internet access like that.
* The Vietnam War was TABOOO for academic discussion - although the war ended in 1975 it was largely untaught in the secondary or post-secondary school system as a legitimate academic topic. The war was unpopular and generally avoided in school discussions which has now changed. This finally started to get noticed in 1986 when the film "Platoon" came out but slowly.
* Professional boxing had 15 rounds - this ended in the mid 1980s when a boxer died in 1982 in a championship bout. Meawhile, with a career over, Ali had noticeable neurological brain damage.
* Sixties musicians who had been young back then were still making hits in the 80s - middle age did not slow them down (e.g. Starship, Jeff Beck, Monkees, Beach Boys, Eric Clapton, etc). They were mostly gone by the 90s.
* Plastic surgery was rare - the technique was unevolved.
* Hip hop was unheared of - it slowly became popular after the 1986 introduction of Run DMC with Aerosmith in "Walk this way".
* College tuition was less than $100 per credit hour at many public universities (blame inflation) - I'll bet many will miss that one.
* The 1980s three-wheeler was very popular - outlawed in the 1990s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=657TZDHZqj4
* Rock N' Roll was stilly wildly popular with huge media exposure of 80s "heavy metal": Quite Riot, Def Leppard, Judas Priest, Ozzie, Van Halen, etc. Only "oldies" stations still play that music genre.
But in the 1980s divorce and infidelity were rare. Just kidding. It was as prevalent as now.
Last edited by grad_student200; 03-11-2018 at 03:07 AM..
I was an 80s teen. One of the most inaccurate stereotypes about the 80s was the "mullet" which was actually rare in my HS and college. The "ducky" hat was far more common - but mainly among prep students (particularly at the private undergraduate college I attended). The "ducky" hat was from "Pretty in Pink". That guy was also on "Two and a Half Men" decades later with Charlie Sheen who now has HIV.first half of the 80's, yes but the second half the mullet was everywhere.
The "specific to 80s" fad or lifestyle can be tabulated as follows with the related reasons:
* Video Game Arcades at the mall - home video games were very low in quality and malls were still popularhome video games were low quality but the market had exploded (Atari, Intellivision, Colecovision, etc). The mall was a place to hang out with friends but those same people had home consoles
* The Sony Cassette Walkman - very convenient and small - no smartphones with music back then
* The Dewey Decimal System - most libraries did not have a computer network and database or CD.
* Rates of teen obesity were lower - outdoor activities were still very popular - see the guys riding bikes all day on ET rather than playing video games (which were low quality in pixel precision). None of those guys in that bike reading scene were fat.
* HS Football was far more dangerous - modern rules of tackling and blocking did not exist back then. Participation was much higher since the science of concussions was largely unevolved compared to now with modern medical imaging. I disagree on being more dangerous.....concussion science was non-existent in the 80's but even then it wasnt as much of a problem at the high school level. It was moreso at the NCAA/NFL level where admitting you were hurt meant you didnt play hurt your future. Most high school kids back then didnt know enough to try to hide it
* Minimally-Invasive Surgery - far more frequent and traumatic due to lack of imaging devices and minitiarized surgical techniques. The removal of galstones was far more dangerous.I assume you meant "infrequent"?
* Bookstores were popular - the internet did not exist in its modern form and computers were largely immobile.
* Vocal talent was much higher - modern singers use Auto Tune (e.g. Taylor Swift) which did not exist back then. AutoTune makes bad singers sound excellent. So, an 80s singer typically had far more legitimate vocal talent.
* Racism was more prevalent - older people from back then were more likely to be bigoted. On a typical college campus or HS, interracial dating was rare. If it happened, the ostracization or violence against it were far more common. I am not sure that racism was more prevalent in the 80's but racial insensitivity was definitely higher
* Breakdancing was huge briefly - it was due to "Flashdance".breakdancing was huge long before "Flashdance". It exploded toward the end of the 70's and lasted until gangsta rap took over
* The Rubik's Cube - very popular and similar to breakdancing in its brief but intense reign.
* College Enrollment Sucked with very, very long lines - nowadays you can just enroll online but back then there was no internet access like that.
* The Vietnam War was TABOOO for academic discussion - although the war ended in 1975 it was largely untaught in the secondary or post-secondary school system as a legitimate academic topic. The war was unpopular and generally avoided in school discussions which has now changed. This finally started to get noticed in 1986 when the film "Platoon" came out but slowly.even today controversial political wars arent taught. Vietnam, Grenada, Gulf War I & II are still not taught today
* Professional boxing had 15 rounds - this ended in the mid 1980s when a boxer died in 1982 in a championship bout. Meawhile, with a career over, Ali had noticeable neurological brain damage.Ali had Parkinson's. Hard to say whether boxing caused it since people with no history of head trauma are strickened with it.
* Sixties musicians who had been young back then were still making hits in the 80s - middle age did not slow them down (e.g. Starship, Jeff Beck, Monkees, Beach Boys, Eric Clapton, etc). They were mostly gone by the 90s.they are still making music today
* Plastic surgery was rare - the technique was unevolved.plastic surgery was huge in the 80's. As it was the "decade of decadence" everyone was showing off their new face/nose/cheeks/boobs
* Hip hop was unheared of - it slowly became popular after the 1986 introduction of Run DMC with Aerosmith in "Walk this way"."unhead of" was a poor choice of words. With the breakdancing explosion rap music had become more mainstream. "Rapper's Delight" was a huge hit and it came out in 1980
* College tuition was less than $100 per credit hour at many public universities (blame inflation) - I'll bet many will miss that one.
* The 1980s three-wheeler was very popular - outlawed in the 1990s.
* Rock N' Roll was stilly wildly popular with huge media exposure of 80s "heavy metal": Quite Riot, Def Leppard, Judas Priest, Ozzie, Van Halen, etc. Only "oldies" stations still play that music genre.oldies channels play THOSE bands but traditional rock is still out there and still mainstream
But in the 1980s divorce and infidelity were rare. Just kidding. It was as prevalent as now.
I was a teen in the 80's (graduated in '87) and I think you're off on many of these. My comments bolded above.
Music from the 90's was quite different from the 80s, which in turn was very different from the 70s, etc. Each decade has had an overall unique feel.
As to value, it's all personal and subjective. No music decade is by default better than another. Luckily, we have a lot of music out there to choose from and enjoy.
Personally, I like music from the 70s more than the 80s and 90s, despite it being older. Age or freshness isn't important to me, and I happen to be a musician too.
The newest music will always be considered the most fresh, but obvious reasons.
Kids that were born and grew up in the 80's early 90's are much much different than those born in the 90's and growing up with the internet / "millennial" era.
Everything peaked and entered into modernity around the late 90s millennial such as internet, basic phone, music (listen to a song from 2000 you don't know.. it'll sound as modern as an unknown song today). Movies generally as well. Sure certain tech is better, but you still had pixar back then that doesn't look much different than today. Entertainment as well. Shows like Sex and the City and Sopranos ushered in the modern HBO show that still have the same feeling as the shows of today.
Cars as well. A late 90s Honda Accord would still have fit in 10 yrs later, whereas a late 80s car was fundamentally different 10 years later. Far less reliable too.
2nd half of the 90s also saw very little shows that preceded it even 5 years before (which still had the classic TV show/sit com model).
People nowadays underestimate what a drastic difference there was between 1990 and 1999. And, indeed, the culture to come out of the '90s is still alive and well. I think part of the reason people tend to ignore this is (1) people feel the need to group everything conveniently into specific decades alone when in reality time doesn't work that way so clear-cut & black-&-white, and (2) every generation wants to believe it invented everything.
The '80s culture lingered well into the '90s, and was still every bit a part of everyday life alongside grunge when grunge culture came on the scene and during it coexisting. I'd say the grunge movement in its purest form was 1992 - 1995, but post-grunge was 1995 all the way to present day, including rock music still influenced by it but not as raw as the real thing. 1995, I feel, saw the dawn of modern culture with things like rap getting less old-school/party-oriented (i.e. "Gangsta's Paradise" by Coolio from 1995) and ska. Things were changing rapidly in the mid-to-late-'90s, for better or worse.
For musical examples of the '80s being alive and well in the early & mid-'90s, listen to "Power of Love" by Celine Dion which was a #1 national hit in 1994 (complete with heavy synthesizers and snare drums), "Dreams" by The Cranberries from 1994 (#41 as a single but on a more popular album and huge radio hit then), "Colors of the Wind" by Vanessa Williams (#4 in 1995), "Friday I'm in Love" by The Cure (#6 in 1992), "Ordinary World" by Duran Duran (#3 in 1993), "All for One by (#1 in 1994), "Bad Boys" by Inner Circle (#8 in late-1993), "Baby, I Love Your Way" by Big Mountain (#6 in 1994; compare to "Red, Red Wine" by UB40 from 1988), "November Rain" by Guns & Roses (#6 in 1992 -- synth-y (original-style metal) rock power ballad).
I'd say that by the end of 1995, the '90s/00's/'10s style and culture was fully formed (watch an episode of "Friends" from '95, or the movie "Clueless" from the summer of '95 which is eerily still relevant today in satirizing modern US youth pop culture), but (in addition to grunge in its purest form being there from 1992 to 1995) the '70s/'80s style and culture was present as late as 1997, and completely vanished by 1998. As mixed a bag as a bag can be. And yes, the '70s stuff was very slow to fade -- lots of hippie types as late as the mid-'90s, and if you don't believe me just watch "Murphy Brown" which was a very popular show till 1997 (or listen to Grammy-winning #6 hit "Layla" from 1992 by Eric Clapton, or "The Bomb! (These Sounds Fall Into My Mind)" by The Bucketheads popular in 1995, or psychedelic influence in Dave Matthews Band hits).
Strange thing -- looking back on the fact that "The Wedding Singer" came out in 1998 and parodied '80s culture, that's surprisingly really soon, but when I watched it in the movie theater in 1998 I didn't see anything strange about that fact at all, in fact I didn't even question that, simply because the present was absolutely nothing like that at all. But at the same time, the culture presented in it was one I was very much familiar with because it was all there such a short time before. It wouldn't have come out in 1994 because in 1994 we were still IN that era. But in 1998 our immediate world was so completely foreign from that it didn't even enter my mind then that it had been such a short amount of time since then. Adam Sandler has a mullet in it, yet in 1993 AC Slater (Mario Lopez) in "Saved by the Bell" had legitimate "woooo"s from female audiences (yeah, a laugh track, but an honest-reaction one to a show about then-contemporary high-schoolers) when he pointed at his mullet saying "business in the front, party in the back." Let's also have a look at Zach's acid-washed jeans or Kimmy Gibler's ("Full House") sideways ponytail. The fact that things had changed so suddenly and so drastically made the 'before' seem so much more distant than the 'after' than it actually was. Also in 1998 the term "'80s" started being used as a cultural concept.
Another example -- compare the original movie "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" from 1992 -- with its val-speak, big permed hair and crazy neon colors -- to the TV show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" from the exact same creator that was popular in the late-'90s and debuted in 1997. The movie was well-received by audiences then, and was funny and relatable back then (vampire slaying aside), but now it's too dated to people including the humor (I like it for nostalgic movie) whereas the show still has a big following on Netflix as it still feels modern and relevant. Or compare "Saved by the Bell" to "American Pie" (1999).
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Hell even Britney's debut album is much more similar to a Debbie Gibson album than to any recent pop album I've heard.
