Did the year 2000 feel more like 2014 or 1986? (90s, Washington, economic)
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Haha. Being 36 years old, I would say for me at least, 1986 was wayyyy more different from 2000 than 2000 was to 2014. Although some of the consuming devices have changed, not much has actually changed since 2000. Instead of a flip phone that gets tv (my cell phone in 2000 got internet and did stream tv on the sprint network), we have flat phones that do different things for consumers, but fundamental technology hasn't made giant leaps actually. If more people in 2000 were into streaming and addicted to consuming, we would have had phone makers include wifi in more phones. Whereas in 1986, We had 50 megabyte computer hard drives the size of shoe boxes, no internet for the average citizen at all, pay phones, you didn't find out that your meeting plans had changed until you either found a payphone or reached the person at your destination, no gps, and in fact, no printable mapquest either, you wanted to preplan? Better go to AAA and get a trip tick made.
To me, the biggest difference from 2000 to 2014 is that the average internet user consumes rather than creates. I would consider the world, but especially the US, as wayyyy more emasculated than it was before. We create things that don't help us do anything but consume. It's weird. We celebrate, celebrating. We have cars like Hyundai's that are obviously copied from designs of other manufacturers cars because they celebrate the celebrate-able, we are turning into a copy cat culture, like China that creates fake rolex watches and has their own strange version of Disney world with creapy, mis-proportioned mickey mouses mixed with hello kitty characters at their park. We had great internet in 2000, I had two way cable, which is fast for the smaller programs that we used, we had ICQ where I would connect with people from all around the world and it would translate conversations into your language, I had over 1000 friends on ICQ alone, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Huge forums and boards where I had wayyyy more friends than I ever connected with on Facebook, we had usenet newsgroups which would dwarf conversations and group interactivity on FB. We had incredibly high resolution video in 2000, although most people didn't have hd tv's, again, that's because they weren't popular, like phones, the technology wasn't a leap away, it's just more efficiently manufactured. I was playing video games at twice the resolution of an hdtv back in 2000 because computer tube monitors had higher resolution than 1080p. And America started using hdtv wayyyy after France and parts of Europe.
As for our cars, in 1986, they just started using electronics in the average joe's car. Electronic fuel injection had just begun. By 2000, we had dohc and v-tec engines in cars, made famous by honda, which still exists today. The manufacturing process of making cars from 1986 to 2000 had changed completely. We started using robotics that could actually create a higher quality car than could be made by previous robotics or by hand for mass production. The materials went from steal and aluminum, to heavy use of plastics. We still use plastics today, just with different looks. 95% of cars in 1986 didn't even have airbags, let alone anti-lock brakes. Anti-lock brakes by 2000 were way more common, so common that by 2011, the US government felt it was something manufacturers should be expected to include, and make it mandatory. There are other differences in cars too. Basically, driving in 1986 was a completely different experience than driving in 2000, whereas 2014, the biggest difference is, yep, you guessed it, instead of 2 airbags in 2000 that already prevents you from breaking your neck or mashing your face into the steering wheel, a common thing to see at car accident scenes in 1986, we have 7 airbags now, auto braking cars (because, right, people had a problem being awake while driving into a brick wall? yeah, uh no), and in-seat butt heaters. We had lcd screens in 2000.
Learning, we had online classes, fewer ones we could sign up for, but we also had a brick and mortar location you could go to. In 1986, there was no researching online for your thesis due tomorrow. You would fixate on the closing time of the library and wish you could turn back the hands of time, you had no out after 8pm, learning was closed in America. In 2000, that was over with. In 2014, I'll be lucky if I can find someone with the knowledge I seek, who has an actual keyboard or something more than a mobile version of a website, or more than a giant click button for their finger to press on their tablet. Ah, yes. The emasculating of the American culture.
My message to born after 1986 people is this: Your life, no matter how much it seems has happened or changed, to people born before 1986, seems like 1 year has passed since 2000, almost the same, when you have memories of drive in movie theaters, all but disappeared by 2000, 3D glasses that made you see a 2 hour flick in red and blue not full color, analog everything, dials, tvs, phones, music tapes, radio, riding in the back of a pickup truck legally as a kid without your dad being accused of endangering a child, or playing outside all day long because, well, there was nothing in the home suited for a growing teen to occupy themselves with except to get in the way of adults. The biggest difference from 1986 to 2000 for me? The change from a country that creates, to a country that will ignore it's own children so that mom and dad both can have pointless climbs up the career ladder and buy a $250k home and pay for those expensive gadgets. We used to have to go somewhere to take part in almost anything, the point of living, was the build a life, we didn't celebrate celebrating, to knowing your neighbors and getting to know your butcher because there were only a few places to grocery shop, to having 100 different specialty, organic, frufru markets, millions of confused items to choose from and an obnoxiously high number of niche restaurants devoid of culture or style or real purpose, everyone getting the same cookie cutter yard decorations from one of 5 Walmarts in the area instead of the craft store no one knows how to get to, or the hardware store that would have probably made a copy of your keys and if you asked let you try your hand at making it on their machine for free but now you use a machine at home depot for because everyone is afraid to help their customers these days, or is that because we hire 18 year old, first time having a job that should be out learning how to roller skate, building their education, or babysiting and can't manage to tell the difference between a weber and a master forge grill so they sell me the wrong rotisserie for my 4th of July party?
Last edited by tomrander; 10-05-2014 at 05:26 PM..
I'm sure he knows that, but they were not so common that people were actually aware of it at the time unless they were around rich people or NASA scientists or something. If you were born in 1981, you really have no business being so condescending to someone who actually was old enough to remember both eras. As a 5-year old, you wouldn't know.
Hell even during most of the '90s cell phones, while definitely not rare, were only used by a fairly small minority of the population. I think in 1995 there were something like 30 million of them in use in the US so I'd say probably only about a quarter of households had them by then if not less. The movie Clueless was filmed in 1994 and the protagonist Cher had a phone but she was extremely rich and for a teen to have their own in that time was pretty uncommon. And my parents didn't get them until about 2002 or 2003, I remember when I called my dad up to then it was on a landline and he'd be notified on his pager if he wasn't there to pick it up.
The situation with phones in 1995 was far closer to the '80s than to today where everyone is doing just about anything you can imagine in public with their smartphones.
Last edited by Mini-apple-less; 10-06-2014 at 12:58 PM..
Haha. Being 36 years old, I would say for me at least, 1986 was wayyyy more different from 2000 than 2000 was to 2014. Although some of the consuming devices have changed, not much has actually changed since 2000. Instead of a flip phone that gets tv (my cell phone in 2000 got internet and did stream tv on the sprint network), we have flat phones that do different things for consumers, but fundamental technology hasn't made giant leaps actually. If more people in 2000 were into streaming and addicted to consuming, we would have had phone makers include wifi in more phones. Whereas in 1986, We had 50 megabyte computer hard drives the size of shoe boxes, no internet for the average citizen at all, pay phones, you didn't find out that your meeting plans had changed until you either found a payphone or reached the person at your destination, no gps, and in fact, no printable mapquest either, you wanted to preplan? Better go to AAA and get a trip tick made.
To me, the biggest difference from 2000 to 2014 is that the average internet user consumes rather than creates. I would consider the world, but especially the US, as wayyyy more emasculated than it was before. We create things that don't help us do anything but consume. It's weird. We celebrate, celebrating. We have cars like Hyundai's that are obviously copied from designs of other manufacturers cars because they celebrate the celebrate-able, we are turning into a copy cat culture, like China that creates fake rolex watches and has their own strange version of Disney world with creapy, mis-proportioned mickey mouses mixed with hello kitty characters at their park. We had great internet in 2000, I had two way cable, which is fast for the smaller programs that we used, we had ICQ where I would connect with people from all around the world and it would translate conversations into your language, I had over 1000 friends on ICQ alone, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Huge forums and boards where I had wayyyy more friends than I ever connected with on Facebook, we had usenet newsgroups which would dwarf conversations and group interactivity on FB. We had incredibly high resolution video in 2000, although most people didn't have hd tv's, again, that's because they weren't popular, like phones, the technology wasn't a leap away, it's just more efficiently manufactured. I was playing video games at twice the resolution of an hdtv back in 2000 because computer tube monitors had higher resolution than 1080p. And America started using hdtv wayyyy after France and parts of Europe.
As for our cars, in 1986, they just started using electronics in the average joe's car. Electronic fuel injection had just begun. By 2000, we had dohc and v-tec engines in cars, made famous by honda, which still exists today. The manufacturing process of making cars from 1986 to 2000 had changed completely. We started using robotics that could actually create a higher quality car than could be made by previous robotics or by hand for mass production. The materials went from steal and aluminum, to heavy use of plastics. We still use plastics today, just with different looks. 95% of cars in 1986 didn't even have airbags, let alone anti-lock brakes. Anti-lock brakes by 2000 were way more common, so common that by 2011, the US government felt it was something manufacturers should be expected to include, and make it mandatory. There are other differences in cars too. Basically, driving in 1986 was a completely different experience than driving in 2000, whereas 2014, the biggest difference is, yep, you guessed it, instead of 2 airbags in 2000 that already prevents you from breaking your neck or mashing your face into the steering wheel, a common thing to see at car accident scenes in 1986, we have 7 airbags now, auto braking cars (because, right, people had a problem being awake while driving into a brick wall? yeah, uh no), and in-seat butt heaters. We had lcd screens in 2000.
Learning, we had online classes, fewer ones we could sign up for, but we also had a brick and mortar location you could go to. In 1986, there was no researching online for your thesis due tomorrow. You would fixate on the closing time of the library and wish you could turn back the hands of time, you had no out after 8pm, learning was closed in America. In 2000, that was over with. In 2014, I'll be lucky if I can find someone with the knowledge I seek, who has an actual keyboard or something more than a mobile version of a website, or more than a giant click button for their finger to press on their tablet. Ah, yes. The emasculating of the American culture.
My message to born after 1986 people is this: Your life, no matter how much it seems has happened or changed, to people born before 1986, seems like 1 year has passed since 2000, almost the same, when you have memories of drive in movie theaters, all but disappeared by 2000, 3D glasses that made you see a 2 hour flick in red and blue not full color, analog everything, dials, tvs, phones, music tapes, radio, riding in the back of a pickup truck legally as a kid without your dad being accused of endangering a child, or playing outside all day long because, well, there was nothing in the home suited for a growing teen to occupy themselves with except to get in the way of adults. The biggest difference from 1986 to 2000 for me? The change from a country that creates, to a country that will ignore it's own children so that mom and dad both can have pointless climbs up the career ladder and buy a $250k home and pay for those expensive gadgets. We used to have to go somewhere to take part in almost anything, the point of living, was the build a life, we didn't celebrate celebrating, to knowing your neighbors and getting to know your butcher because there were only a few places to grocery shop, to having 100 different specialty, organic, frufru markets, millions of confused items to choose from and an obnoxiously high number of niche restaurants devoid of culture or style or real purpose, everyone getting the same cookie cutter yard decorations from one of 5 Walmarts in the area instead of the craft store no one knows how to get to, or the hardware store that would have probably made a copy of your keys and if you asked let you try your hand at making it on their machine for free but now you use a machine at home depot for because everyone is afraid to help their customers these days, or is that because we hire 18 year old, first time having a job that should be out learning how to roller skate, building their education, or babysiting and can't manage to tell the difference between a weber and a master forge grill so they sell me the wrong rotisserie for my 4th of July party?
I could even say that in terms of technology 1986 was more like the 50s or possibly even the 40s than 2000.
I would wager for today. Not only it feels closer to today than it does to the early '00s, I can hardly believe 2002 is the same time frame with 2009 as 2016.
I have to say 2014, but honestly I was not around in 1986. I was born in Dec of that year. But I would say 2000 would have more in common on most factors with 2014 than the 1980s.
My message to born after 1986 people is this: Your life, no matter how much it seems has happened or changed, to people born before 1986, seems like 1 year has passed since 2000, almost the same
I was born in 1985, and I couldn't agree more with this statement. Even though I don't remember 1986 of course, I can't emphasize enough how absolutely the early-1990's were culturally a continuation of 1989. Also the 1980's and early-1990's were culturally very eclectic and diverse in that they continued the cultural elements of, say, 1981 or 1982, there were the many newer cultural elements in play since the mid-'80's. (I observe all this because I'm a history enthusiast/retro junkie (including vinyl collector).) And prior to 1995, pop culture in the US was infinitely more innocent than what would follow in a way that people born too late could never understand.
The hippie counterculture that had gained (much) ground in the late-1960's was not the mainstream culture, even though it did influence the mainstream to very varying degrees. Why am I talking about that here now? Because even though that SUBCULTURE is largely associated with things like "free love," being anti-"Establishment," and hallucinogenics, it did not displace the majority innocence, even if it did cause a certain tension between different groups in the US with very different views on life and how they lived life. This is actually very relevant to this topic because I distinctly remember that even the hippie-influenced subculture was alive and well in the early-'90's, while the vast majority of Americans still had very strong family and moral values that wouldn't even have been given any second thought by anyone at the time. Even hippie-type people weren't doing and saying things remotely like most people nowadays in the US do and say literally on a daily basis without thinking twice about it. (For the record I'm not against hippie culture, I think there were a lot of good points and aspects to it, including recognizing the importance of peace, and the appreciation for nature.) Nowadays there's a prevailing backlash against the concept of Christianity throughout the US. (Again for the record I happen to be Christian but not Fundamentalist Christian, and consider myself to be in many ways open-minded, and feel that there are a lot of phony Christians these days who are antagonistic, condescending, and narrow-minded, misrepresenting Christ.)
So anyways there was definitely still late-'60's/'70's-type culture present as late as the early-'90's. There was also still culture that had been present for much longer than that. I remember my family (and everyone else at tables) at the casual (family) Chinese restaurant we often went to really dressing up for dinner. I remember pressing the letter and number buttons on a neon-lit jukebox at a Mexican restaurant we often went to and seeing the record come down and start blaring out of its speakers.
And then there was the stereotypical "'80's"-culture still going strong as late as 1994. And believe me, everything you think you know about that was actually true, except that despite all its eccentricities, it wasn't seen as abnormal at the time. SAVED BY THE BELL is a good reflection of that side of things in the early-'90's as far as shows that are still well-known and can easily be acquired for viewing. I remember sideways ponytails, frizzy hair, bright oversize female sweaters with neon swirls and stars, a lighthearted, fun feeling around of -- how shall I put this? -- girls, let's have a 4th-grade slumber party where we play with our Barbie collections then watch Babysitter's Club (the TV show, on VHS tape), or let's all go to our class member's roller-rink birthday party, or (boys now) let's play Zelda on our SNES and watch Power Rangers, or (high-school) let's go to the party at the lake and bring your boombox, or let's go to the senior-class friends' Winter Break trip to the ski lodge, or (adults middle-aged and over) [reflecting the presence of the materialistic (yet in a more conservative-than-now-way) aspects], you (to husband) put on your best black suit and I'll put on my white jacket with shoulder pads and my long dangling gold earrings to go to the backyard dinner party where we pretend to like people we actually despise while exchanging masked insults and seeking to out-impress the other couple with our own status. Yes, things are never perfect, are they?
All that said, I know that even though people often cite 1992 as a turning point year, if you can't already tell I disagree though I see where they're coming from. See, I do agree that 1992 brought in new, drastically-different cultural elements into the picture. For musical proof examples, 1993 had such hits as "Ordinary World" (US #3) by Duran Duran, and 1994 had (synthesizer and snare-drum heavy power ballad) "Power of Love" (US #1) by Celine Dion. Alongside all the aforementioned things a lot of things came in big-time around Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" being a big hit, but they coexisted (peacefully, so to speak) with everything else still there. I'm a guy, my parents were the ones at the dinner party in the last paragraph, and I have 3 older sisters, so I was the one playing Zelda with my best friend, the youngest sister was having slumber parties, though we both were going to our class' roller rink parties despite being 4 years apart, the middle sister was going to ski lodge trips with her friends, and the oldest sister strongly embraced this brand-new lastly mentioned culture. She bought all the latest grunge and alternative hit singles (though alternative [and her playing the songs] got bigger a bit later, like 1995 with Alanis Morisette), wore jeans and flannel shirts, and had similarly-(open-)minded friends (some Goth), some quite cynical, who would hang out (or some even perform in bands) at the local coffee houses (crowded on weekends). In some ways this anticipated the hipster culture that would be big later on and even moreso now.
Now here's something I never here mentioned, that alongside the grunge culture there came in other things in 1992 that would to this day appear normal in American society, to the point where when I remember these aspects it's truly amazing they've been unchanged for such a very long time, it already had so much of the look and feel of everyday life like today. This includes fashions like (female) crop tops and (male) T-shirts (not brightly colored) with logos that looked just like those of today, general way of life and way of thinking just like today, and even many exact slang words that are still used today daily throughout the US. To see examples of this, watch the movie MRS. DOUBTFIRE from 1993, the first half of the first season of the TV show FRIENDS from late-1994 to early-1995, and MY SO-CALLED LIFE from late-1994 to mid-1995.
Then came 1995, and at the same time grunge culture went away, ALL aspects of '80's culture were swept completely under the rug, and we were truly at the dawn of the modern era that we are still in in 2016 (!). Post-grunge rock music (like "When I Come Around" by Green Day" and "Fake Plastic Trees" by Radiohead [both 1995]) became popular [okay I know that genre hasn't been nearly as popular for 10 years now, but it's still around and often manages to make the lower part of the Top 40], rap and hip hop one would now call "old school" (like "Insane in the Brain" by Cypress Hill [1993] or "Whatta Man" By Salt 'n Pepa [1994]) were replaced by hip-hop beats that still sound modern today and serious rap lyrics (not like the earlier party lyrics) like in "Gangsta's Paradise" by Coolio (#1 in 1995). Techno was there and had a subculture following it. No Doubt was popular, and for instance "Don't Speak" was a huge hit single in 1996 and still sounds modern today. Clothes was completely indistinguishable from what we wear today. For instance watch the comedy CLUELESS (1995) for a reflection (and biting commentary) of youth culture still relevant today with skaters and girls wearing clothes I still see on a daily basis on any given day at, say, a mall or social gathering (even with young adults), or the scene where all the characters at the dinner table answer their cell phones at the same time when one of theirs rings, or one scene where in response to the use of the word "virgin" a character says "I believe the PC term is...", or a scene where one character -- when told she looks confused when the channel is turned to CNN -- responds with "Well, I thought they declared peace in the Middle East" and we then see their (huge flat-screen) TV showing CNN reporting with army tanks rolling along a desert landscape. Or watch the horror movie SCREAM from 1996 for a reflection of this. Or the 1997 TV show BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (with Sarah Michelle Gellar) compared with the 1992 movie of the same name it was based on. 1995 also brought the "tech boom," so all of a sudden every household had Internet (dial-up, but still), and I was typing on forums just like these, and chatting on messengers that were just like the one on today's Facebook. We were using fast Inkjet printers and just a couple years earlier the other home computer had been so clunky and inefficient it was more practical to use our typewriter. From car phones (only for car use) being a luxury item affordable to few we went to cell phones. Movies became more blockbuster-oriented like they still are today much like JURASSIC PARK was in 1993, although that movie was well ahead of the curve in '93. Popular comedy TV shows falling into the 1995-1999 time frame included EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND, WILL AND GRACE, JUST SHOOT ME, SOUTH PARK, and KING OF THE HILL, and in comedy movies, BILLY MADISON (1995), THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY (1998) and AMERICAN PIE (1999). Innocence was gone, and daily news was more consistently horrific, so -- and here's where it gets seriously sad -- parents were (like now) constantly more on-edge about parenting, just like people in general became much more on-edge, whereas earlier on most people had generally been either polite or genuinely friendly or considerate to one another, unlike starting in 1995 and increasing more from there to where today it's the general trend for a lot of people to see how much they can take from the other person regardless of anything because money and what it buys is the only thing that matters to them and they can be openly hostile to everyone, and be such a self-entitled, self-centered spoiled brats that (for instance what I experienced just this last week) if a driver loses literally 15 seconds when making a turn at a (busy) intersection because the car in front of them is advancing a tiny bit slower than they would like it to be advancing, the entire world has come to an end for said infuriated driver, and it is a completely justified response to accelerate to 70 mph and narrowly avoid crashing into the other driver before swinging into the adjacent lane while flipping the bird with the entire arm extended out the window and arm shaking vigorously.
Back on subject, I'd say 1997 brought an element of tackiness to the musical picture with boy bands and The Spice Girls, then a year later with Britney Spears. Although I admit those artists' songs (and image styles) actually haven't held up over the years, I can see how Britney Spears is kind of an exception in that she was kind of a prototype singer of artists like Gwen Stefani (as a solo artist post-No-Doubt), Lady Gaga, and Miley Cyrus.
I know I've written an essay, but in summary, the second half of the '90's couldn't have been more different from the first half of the '90's in a way that people who didn't (or weren't old enough to) truly experience the first half of that decade (or the '80's or pre-'80's) for themselves could never, ever fully understand. The differences between 2000 and 2016 pale so much in comparison to those of years before, so whenever I see posts about nostalgia for the late-'90's, I can't relate, the general overall look, feel, and day-to-day-life is much too unchanged since then, and the fact that they group it with the early-'90's proves that they didn't really experience the early-'90's for themselves. I know people talk about technology with Smartphones and social media, but it's just an extension of the (already advanced) Internet that was already commonplace in 1995 (and even though cell phones were really basic in function, they were still cell phones); Nintendo WII U games are still similar even in 3-D graphics to Nintendo 64 games from 1996 (remember Super Mario 64 [1996]?). All that said, the only significant difference in my honest opinion -- and this IS a very significant difference -- is that the vast majority of young people are tolerant toward gay people, which as late as 2004 when I was in high school (graduated that year) was not the case, as it was common to hear students making fun of them derogatorily and using slurs; in fact, I'd say most young people up to young adults are a good deal more open-minded (and tolerant of others) in general than those of the later-1990's. So the on-edge mentality I mentioned earlier seems shifted mostly to just the middle-aged-and-older crowd, while the younger crowd is significantly more open-minded and liberal than even 10 years ago or than their parents or grandparents.
So was 1986 very different from 2014 & now? Only in the sense that, well, it's like comparing the size of an ant to the size of Jupiter!
Final breakdown (with some other closing thoughts):
1986-1991= Nothing like 2016
1992-1994= Grunge + Some things there that were setting the stage for what was to follow, but still overwhelmingly different from what followed due to everything from before 1992 still being very much there
1995-2016= One REALLY long era (including in terms of clothes, a presence of reliance on technology, popular music styles, and general lifestyle and sensibility) EXCEPT for:
2001-2005= Just like before except 9/11, Iraq War, and recession cast a dark shadow over things
2006-2016= Widening gap in mentality and social views between youth and older (more liberal versus more conservative); expansion of hipster culture; baggy pants giving way to skinny jeans, then neither but still pants and shorts styled the same since 1995 just not worn sagging; rock music taking a back seat in popularity to electronic-tinged dance music (like Lady Gaga) then creative electronic songs (like, again, Lady Gaga, and Adele); improved economy.
So when bloggers younger than me link nostalgia to the quality of shows on Nickelodeon I just face-palm and want to tell them that isn't a drastic difference and advise them to be exposed to movies and songs from, say, the 1950's or 1960's. Was 1999 different from 2016? Yes and no. Was 1986 different from 2016? The answer is a resounding YES!
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