The 1990s and 2000s - why are they equal in most people's view? (ancient, biggest)

[PA2UK]

Originally Posted by MimzyMusic

Most people in America didn't have the Internet until 1997, and globally not until the early 2000s!

It's not really about how many people had the internet at home. The mere existance of the internet becoming publically known and at least making it's way into businesses and schools, even if a lot of people did not yet have it at home, was a major, noteworthy event of the 90s. You might be too young to have experienced it but you have no idea what the mere concept of the internet was like when it was introduced into mainstream society.

Grunge is as popular now as it was in 1992, if not more. Listen to any rock station.

If you were older than 2 years old in 1992, you'd know how untrue that statement is.

Hip hop was a very popular type of music in the 90s - in the 2000s, it IS music.

I would have to disagree - to say that it IS music is to suggest there are no other types of popular music. Hiphop might be very popular or maybe even the most popular but it is not the only popular music. Especially here in England or even in the rest of the world. A lot of your comments sound specific to America, yet you made the comment about most people globally not having the internet at home until the 2000s. Are we talking specifically American culture here, or the rest of the world too?

Cell phones were around in the 90s but not needed until 2003 from my memory.

What exactly is the definition of "needed"? One arguably does not need a cell phone at all, even today. It would be inconvenient not to have one but I actually went a whole year without one and that was only a couple years ago. Even if cell phones were absolutely necessary, you can't put an exact date on when they became so.

The '90s and 2000s are in some ways the same era (like the 1960s and '70s), but I'm sick of them being seen as the exact same because that's insulting to the great decade that was the '90s. The 2000s are trashy, stupid, shallow, and materialistic, the '90s had soul, wasn't all about technology, the music was great and the TV was AWESOME. My childhood wasn't much different from an '80s childhood.

How could you possible know what an 80s childhood was like?

I do agree that culture is not seperated on the exact decade mark - there are some things I will think "that is SO 80s" but really, it came from 1993. Just like with the 60s and 70s - the hippy movement was started in the 60s and ran into the 70s. And even the 90s saw the comeback of bell bottoms renamed as "flares" which are still available today. New Kids On The Block started in 1984 and split in 1994 - so are they an 80s or 90s group? I typically associate them with the 80s but they were together for 4 years into the 90s.

I don't know anyone who thinks the 90s and 2000s are exactly the same. There will always be similarities from decade to decade but anyone who thinks they are exactly the same is a fool. I'm not really sure what your point is though - on one hand you say you're sick of people saying the 90s and 2000s are the same, on the other hand a lot of your examples seem to be pointing out how similar you think the 90s and 2000s are. And then you throw in a comment like your childhood not being much different from an 80s childhood. What exactly is it that you're trying to say? Your thoughts just seem a bit all over the place.

[redwine]

Originally Posted by PA2UK

It's not really about how many people had the internet at home. The mere existance of the internet becoming publically known and at least making it's way into businesses and schools, even if a lot of people did not yet have it at home, was a major, noteworthy event of the 90s. You might be too young to have experienced it but you have no idea what the mere concept of the internet was like when it was introduced into mainstream society.



If you were older than 2 years old in 1992, you'd know how untrue that statement is.



I would have to disagree - to say that it IS music is to suggest there are no other types of popular music. Hiphop might be very popular or maybe even the most popular but it is not the only popular music. Especially here in England or even in the rest of the world. A lot of your comments sound specific to America, yet you made the comment about most people globally not having the internet at home until the 2000s. Are we talking specifically American culture here, or the rest of the world too?



What exactly is the definition of "needed"? One arguably does not need a cell phone at all, even today. It would be inconvenient not to have one but I actually went a whole year without one and that was only a couple years ago. Even if cell phones were absolutely necessary, you can't put an exact date on when they became so.



How could you possible know what an 80s childhood was like?

I do agree that culture is not seperated on the exact decade mark - there are some things I will think "that is SO 80s" but really, it came from 1993. Just like with the 60s and 70s - the hippy movement was started in the 60s and ran into the 70s. And even the 90s saw the comeback of bell bottoms renamed as "flares" which are still available today. New Kids On The Block started in 1984 and split in 1994 - so are they an 80s or 90s group? I typically associate them with the 80s but they were together for 4 years into the 90s.

I don't know anyone who thinks the 90s and 2000s are exactly the same. There will always be similarities from decade to decade but anyone who thinks they are exactly the same is a fool. I'm not really sure what your point is though - on one hand you say you're sick of people saying the 90s and 2000s are the same, on the other hand a lot of your examples seem to be pointing out how similar you think the 90s and 2000s are. And then you throw in a comment like your childhood not being much different from an 80s childhood. What exactly is it that you're trying to say? Your thoughts just seem a bit all over the place.

I agree with all your points. Didn't feel like write as much but you did it for me. Thanks.
The OP, is 18 years old. We can't expect him/her to know much about anything. I had both a cell phone and internet (when Windows 95 first came out) in 1995. This was in Sweden and almost everybody I knew had cell phones and internet back then.. I met my current husband on a internet chat room while being in 2 different country's. This was 1997.

[big mean bear]

Originally Posted by skytrekker

The period of American History from 1980- to today are remarkably the same in the USA as relating to political and economic idealogy. It has been a period of rather conservative dogma on cultural issues- but also rather conservative laissez Fair economics. With the current meltdown worldwide- it may augur in a New Era of Increased government safety nets for ordinary people- as well as more regulation.

The last liberal period lasted from 1932-1964- and peaked in the late 1960s- these cycles tend to last around 30 years- when change is demanded from the excesses any idealogy may breed. The pendulum usually swings too far to the left of right. We are probably on the cusp of a change back to the left.

I think this '30-year cycle' you are talking about will be broken. There is no way that an increase of big government (and everything that goes with big gov't) will occur anytime soon. The reason for this is that there is too much privatization going on if you look at state and local governments. Privatization, not deregulation or or laissez-faire economics, marks the newest trend. No matter how much our economy sputters, the amount of GDP growth we have seen since 2001 is simply astronomical.

Look at how they build cars now. Fast, fancy, and with TV's! Look at the number and variety of luxury car models now availible. It makes the 1990's look like an era of tightening the purse strings. Look at the number of minorities moving out of the hood and into thte 'burbs... People nowadays are a lot happier (and wealthier) than they sound.

[iPwn]

Originally Posted by redwine

I agree with all your points. Didn't feel like write as much but you did it for me. Thanks.
The OP, is 18 years old. We can't expect him/her to know much about anything. I had both a cell phone and internet (when Windows 95 first came out) in 1995. This was in Sweden and almost everybody I knew had cell phones and internet back then.. I met my current husband on a internet chat room while being in 2 different country's. This was 1997.

It's funny you said that, because the Nordic countries are even more high tech than America! From what I've read, even many people in Finland during the 80s used cell phones.

I guess I'm distressed by how similar people view my childhood to a current one, when I look so fondly back on it. I suppose there is some truth to the 90s and 00s being similar, though it seems like such a different time.




The OP, is 18 years old. We can't expect him/her to know much about anything.

Now this part pissed me off a little. Why does being born in 1989 make someone such a better source on the 90s? A lot of people born in 1988 and 1989 remember LESS of the 90s than I do born in January 1990.

Born in 1990 is pretty much born in the 80s anyway. It's not like, being born in 1995 or something and getting a MySpace when you were 8.

[PA2UK]

Originally Posted by redwine

I agree with all your points. Didn't feel like write as much but you did it for me. Thanks.

Yeah I was bored yesterday, lol

I met my current husband on a internet chat room while being in 2 different country's. This was 1997.

I met my husband on the internet as well but that was in 2000

Originally Posted by MimzyMusic

I guess I'm distressed by how similar people view my childhood to a current one, when I look so fondly back on it.

I think that's probably because we're still in the first decade of the 2000s. Give it another 5 years and people will probably think differently. My childhood was in the 80s so in the 90s, I was still just a teenager, there had barely been enough time passed to be able to look back fondly on my childhood. Of course I did look back fondly on it but to expect other, older people to do so is different. I think it's because to you, the 90s and your childhood probably seems like a long time ago? Whereas to older people, it doesn't seem as long ago, probably because you've grown and changed that much more in that time. I'm not even that much older than you but my perspective is different so just give it 5 or so years.

[bobsmith]

First of all, what's with this rash of older people belittling younger people topic after topic? Teens might be new on the scene but they are starting to stretch their brain muscle and and figuring out where they fit in a continually evolving society that is older than them or indeed even you. You fifty-somethings shouldn't insult that--you were there once yourself.

At any rate, I see the 90s and 00s as being pretty different. I'm pretty much with the guy earlier in that I had a 90s childhood and came of age this decade. I was far too young to remember the 4 years of the 80s in which I was alive. But most of my early ideas of the world were formed durring the 90s, when Bill Clinton was president, after the Cold War ended, but before the "War on Terror" started. I was already fairly politically-minded at age 15 when 9/11 happened in 2001. I feel that the United States in the 00s under the leadership of George W. Bush was a country completely foreign to what I had been raised to believe it would be. I was raised with the "old fashioned" idea that America was a fair arbitrator of international problems rather than partisan, America did not start wars but only joined wars to protect the lives and freedom of opressed citizens, and that the racial and ethnic prejudices from our early years had all but dissappered. Soon after 2001 I started to realise that these were very nieve ways of looking at the world, but it took two more years for me to really become dissillusioned with my home country. I can distinctly remember the feeling of betrayal when my nation launched an unprovoked war on March 20, 2003; I knew we were in a new era then and the 90s values that I was raised with were no longer applicable in a 00s geopolitical reality.

Politics aside, a lot has changed culturally. "Web 2.0" has brought us You Tube, Wikipedia, My Space, and internet forums such as this one, all of which were in their infacy or non-existant in the 90s. I am old enough to remember when floppy disks were actually floppy and all phones had chords, and though cell phones were introduced even before the 90s they did not have the dominant place in our culture. 1998 is typically regarded as the "tipping point" where cell phones transitioned from a novelty/luxury to commonplace. As far as internet, I admit I was a bit behind the curve, first getting Dial-Up in 1997 and Cable internet in 2003, but I can tell you that life with the internet is vastly different, and though I once lived without E-Mail and Google it is hard to hard to imagine how I ever did.

Still, some trends continued through the 90s into the 00s uninterrupted. The continued over-suburbinization of our metropolitan areas continued without a hickup, houses being built larger and larger and property values going up and up, infamously creating a bubble this decade, but the bubble started growing long before the decade started. The music of this decade may be a bit different than the 90s, bit it seems to me to be further along the same trend lines that ran through all but the earliest of the 90s.

[bobsmith]

One other note, it is commonly said that "Web 2.0" started in 2004, the year I was 18. I am greatful I was able to have a childhood before Web 2.0, which really thrusts young teens and pre-teens into a rather harsh and unforgiving online environment, and I can hardly imagine the detremental impact it would have had on my adolescent psyche. I'm greatful that I had a childhood right at the end of the era where relationships were face-to-face and the internet, while existant, had not yet become the immature comment-ridden toxic swamp that it is today due to the proliferation of user-created content. It's bad enough I have to be an adult in this era, I can't imagine being a child these days. I feel bad for the 1994-and-later generation who will have grown up with this nonsence as part of their earliest memories.

[Hungry For Cheese]

LOL What was the OP thinking? I was born in 82 and have to completely disagree...I loved the 90s...2000 is so different. Times were better before the net, IMO.

[mofford]

I decided to cast away my old 90s way of life in 2000, when I bought a cell phone and computer that year. Oh the joy !! That will always be what makes the 2 decades different for me. But as I've been around since 1966, the difference in these 2 decades pale in comparison to the changes in 1975 to 1985.

So many little things in daily life changed so much during that time. The junk electronics in 1975 for example. Like listening to records and 8 tracks, and buying a new needle cartridge for your crap turntable every couple years. Or listening to AM radio, Yikes !!! No cable TV yet for most of us either.

If you could walk into a 1975 grocery store, you would be shocked !! Not just the prices, but the noise from all those old cash registors clicking away, price tags on everything (no laser scans) ashtrays at the end of each isle with happy smokers puffing up and down the isle with indifference. TV dinners in metal tins with a foil wrap. Milk in paper cartons, not plastic. S&H green stamps given to you at checkout, your groceries sacked in brown paper bags, carted out to your car and loaded for you.

Big cars everywhere, all looking distintly different, with the older ones blowing a fair amount of smoke out the tailpipe. No turning arrows at traffic light intersections. Trucks with 20 different license plates on the back for each state they travel in. 60 cent a gallon gas and nice $25,ooo houses to be found everywhere. You people under age 35 think you've seen some change do you ?

[bobsmith]

That was an extremely informative post, mofford. I do admit that the change that has taken place since the beginning of my cultural conciousness (early 90s) to now pales in comparison to the changes that have taken place since the 60s, 70s, even 80s. I expecially liked the part about the grocery store. I have heard similar stories from other people in their 40s and 50s, yet I have a very hard time picturing it; it's almost like thinking about a foreign country I have never visited. Sometimes I wish I would have been born earlier because certian aspects of those eras seem more appealing to me.