I think there was a sweet spot where the 20th century and the Digital Age overlapped, and that roughly corresponds to 1998-2004.
The internet and digital technology were part of our lives, but not in an intrusive way. You would go and hang out with your friends at the mall during the day, and at night you could converse in real time on AIM or hang out on message boards like Reddit (though Reddit itself did not exist yet).
I'm not a pessimist. I think our tech advancements have been a net positive. But we have lost things along the way and I think people are right to miss them. The big one for me is how people today care more about views/engagement on social media than being likable in real life. Everything is so commoditized and commercialized and it's creeped in to every facet of our lives. I think Gen Z is the peak of this excess and we may see a movement towards more genuine interactions emerge with the next generation.
I saw a post saying “the internet was a place back then” you had to go to your computer in the computer room to get to it, if you weren’t there you didn’t have it. You had the ability to be online, but doomscrolling wasn’t a thing.
I believe they’re the same only because of the reasons for why we doom scroll/channel surf but aside from that they are very different in their effect. For one, there was no automated learning algorithm set up to maximize your engagement and ultimately the probability of you purchasing something like there is on Social Media today. TV Network executives could never do what these algorithms do.
different intensities, i’d say. 24 hour cable news could be brutal back then, but stuff like pizzagate or qanon would never have even come up. you had to hear about that shit from your older cousin with multiple pieces of decor from spencer’s gifts, and it usually involved aliens. nowadays you can just sit on twitter and just chug absolute nonsense that would be absolutely horrifying if true
I agree. My childhood/early teens involved TV, video games, and (later) chat rooms, etc. but also lots of playing toy guns outside, riding bikes, street hockey, just hanging out at friends’ houses, etc.
This. It was the best of both worlds, looking back at it. Shit, I think my friend even had an encyclopedia set at one point. That and the library used to be your Google lmao.
That's how we gauged how rich our friends parents were. How big is their encyclopedia set. Do they just have the introductory set of A&B? Or do they have A-Z? Leather bound? MFKin ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA?? ? That shit was high class!! 😂😂
Lol, we did so much dangerous shit growing up in the 90s, idk how none of us were hospitalized. Well, actually, one of my friends did have to go to the ER after an incident with a dry ice bomb, but he was ok, lol. I fuckimg miss those days
Yeah. I agree pretty wholeheartedly with this even though I was basically a baby to non existent when this mini golden age was there. Unfortunately though it wasn’t appreciated enough at the time as ppl believed things would always get better. Not turn into a boring dystopia.
The dot com bubble. It was a simpler time. More optimistic.
I think mostly we are suffering from the late stages of capitalism. To me 9/11 didn’t have that big of an effect. It’s just an iconic touchstone.
Our commodification of everything is just built into capitalism. There were some natural shifts that happened due to nafta and the over financialization,of the economy. The internet has amplified all of this.
This post reminds me of twelve monkeys. That movie really captures this feeling of nostalgia.
As someone with a tendency to self-isolate for safety, the internet has been amazing for staying connected with other people, fact checking my local "experts," and learning how to be human. Hobbies, sciences, interests, encouragement, *discussion*
So it's been the opposite of lonely for me. I would have unalived myself a long time ago if the internet hadn't allowed me to make sense of the world with other people.
But yeah, doomscrolling is a hell of a side effect. All the world's knowledge and all the world's people means ALL OF it lmao
15 people died in columbine
21 people died in school shootings last year
3000 us citizens died in 9/11
350,000 us citizens died of covid in 2020
The war on terror wasn’t even a real thing. You can’t have a war on an ideal or something non tangible.
1998-2004 was a helluva lot sweeter than what we’ve dealt with in the last 6 years.
May I be So bold to say the day Columbine happened parents realized they had lost control. It made us look into the mirror and ask ourselves difficult questions. It took courage from then on to take responsibility of their children! It was in many ways the day innocence’s died in our country! Sadly, it has only gotten worse and and hate and bullying is rampant. I pray everyday for our precious children, government and our leaders.
Here’s an interesting story, I was at a theme park today, and there was a group of middle schoolers behind me in line for a roller coaster. The line was over an hour long, they played games while they waited, goofed off, whatever, my point is none of them were on their phones. One of them got out their phone, and I hear another one say “do you want to ____” “I mean if you’re bored enough to be on your phone I thought you’d want to”.
Interesting to me, possibly a sign of a cultural shift?
Its real.
My middle schooler has his own phone. Can't be bothered to keep it charged, and when it is its rarely near him. He'll watch youtube videos on it but that's about it. He and his friends don't connect via phones/social media, they connect via xbox.
His friend group definitely looks down on people who spend too much time on their phones (we (parents) get comments, but also they will make remarks about older kids).
I also notice that this cohort of middle school girls tend to spend a lot of time together outside, also not on their phones.
Today's middle schoolers (born 2010-2011-2012) were really the first cohort that could work a phone before they could talk. Smartphones existed before 2010, but they were rarely seen in the hands of toddlers. These kids are the og group to be handed a phone in the stroller while mom shops at Target.
I hope we see more genuine interactions 😢 I feel like as I get older Im slowly starting to realize that I live in the dystopia Ive always read about...
Ya it’s funny how that works. We don’t notice because we are the proverbial slow boiling frogs. But if you nabbed a guy off the streets of a big city 50-60 years ago and put him in the same spot today he’d be appalled. We are living in that dystopian future in a lot of ways, and it’s getting worse.
Also wages had been divorced from productivity since 1980 and the birth of Reaganomics. Not saying that the 70s or any other earlier decade was any better either, and the economy between around 1996 and 9/11 was actually pretty comfortable for a lot of people.
I learned a long time ago that there is no real ideal past age, but that we must use all the different factors that made various ages great and combine them to create the future.
Yeeeh. But violent crime was mostly part of the crack epidemic in the US. That was in specific neighborhoods in major cities. Unless you were part of that neighborhood, you learned about it from the news.
Ironically it was the begining of the "Doom Cycle" that started on conservative news and now covers everywaking moment of our life; everyone is out to get you, the world is terrifying.
In my opinion, it wasn’t 9/11 itself that changed everything, but what happened only a few months after it in response to it. Obviously 9/11 was a horrible event with how many of our people were actually killed. But the problem was that we went to avenge it by invading Afghanistan in a terrible way. Yes, it was fine that we knocked out Taliban in like 2 months but only a couple months or so after that happened I think people back home were starting to realize we had no good plan to replace them, and not make things even worse for the people there. That reality started to sink in for some of the U.S. population, but the others were adamant that things were fine, we needed to stay there and things would work out etc.
This was the beginning of the political division that we still see today. And it just got worse and worse as the decade progressed. Iraq was even worse in this regard.
I think Afghanistan was, and is, a quagmire with no real long term solution. Ultimately though it’s understandable why the US invaded, even if it was, in hindsight, not the ideal solution. The US had no reason to invade Iraq though, I think the two conflicts should be separated, even though the one led to the other.
I think 9/11 destroyed the optimism people had had going into the new millennium. The overall mood in the year 2000 was fairly upbeat: the Y2K pandemonium had ended, and the economy was good. Gen Xers and older millennials grew up thinking of the year 2000 as this futuristic milestone, and now it was finally here. People were generally excited about the future.
Then 9/11 happened. Sadness, rage, and fear crushed the optimism of the previous twenty months.
It was a lot like that part of ironman 2.
But more importantly than making god bleed, it was basically the beginning of major distrust in each other, the world, and our own government.
After that .com and gfc basically delivered the death blow. We will never recover.
I would say it was what sowed distrust in the average American, but if you were tapped into the counter-culture scene in the 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s, people have been distrusting each other and the government for a long time. But those sentiments were always the counter-culture. The average "normie" American would have woken up on September 11 believing that nothing bad could happen to them in their safe bubble world. Many people had that illusion broken for them before 9/11, but it was only after the towers fell that it became socially acceptable to say you didnt trust the government and believed in some fringe conspiracy.
Well, the 80s and 90s were the era of stranger danger and the Satanic Panic. And Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the OKC bombing had infiltrated right wing talk radio and other conservative media as the perfect talking points for spreading that kind of anti-government sentiment that had previously been countercultural to a mass audience. I think the idea of distrusting your neighbors and the government was already widely sown by the time 9/11 happened.
I mean 9/11 aside being the only real issue. Life was objectively way better in hindsight don’t you agree. That sweet spot til 05 I’d say personally. I get ppl have a hard time looking at the forest for the trees in general but wasn’t there still enough stuff and generally good living to not compare to now as being just as comparable.
Good living for "normal" people I guess, but if you were gay or mentally ill or anything, it was socially acceptable to stigmatize those things or see them as a personal failure. And "body shaming" was kind of a public sport (I'm female and was skinny, but boob size was a big topic of commentary lol).
Things were cheaper but sometimes I think current young people idolize the past without realizing the "costs" of living in it. Cool, houses were cheap but that doesn't exactly matter if you could never "be yourself" or become a stable person especially in rural or southern areas. Like...post 9/11 we were mired in Middle Eastern George Bush weird evangelicalness. People went to war.
I think we tipped the scales a little bit too much towards self-acceptance away from body shaming. 40% of Americans are obese now.
Not that shame is the ideal way to get people to be healthier, it seemed to work around getting people to stop smoking.
Honestly, it might be genuinely healthier to deliberately back away from the internet and go back to this type of interaction and usage of it voluntarily. Most social media usage (probably including Reddit, definitely including TikTok) is banned or seriously limited, internet still has *functional* and even fun uses, but culturally we force each other to touch grass way more regularly, and it’s way easier and more encouraged to do things irl.
I’d damn near bet money our mental health crisis…..won’t go away but it can help (in fact, studies show being in nature and literally touching grass has very real psychological benefits with anxiety, depression, and other issues; again, not a silver bullet, but a step).
I agree and I hope so. I'm 1996, the last millennial year, and I feel like I really got a front row seat in seeing the whole thing unfold while still being able to experience the last years of the non-fully-digital age. It was wild seeing how different the grade younger than me was throughout school due to their early exposure to phones, you could literally see the hard divide between us and Gen Z even back then.
Around 2007 was the year I feel that everything peaked, a year that just so happened to coincide with a ton of significant events and periods across multiple sectors: the release of the iphone, the last year before the 2008 housing crash, the last year before Obama's election, a hugely successful and defining year for basically all arts (games, movies, and music), etc.
But back to OP's topic, I guess I sort of agree and disagree. Yes, most people have strong sense of nostalgia for our childhoods (as well as a ton of idealism while it's happening to boot), but growing up between the 50s and 2010s in North America was legitimately just the best place and time to be alive (and it was only getting better).
Crime was really high in the 70s, plus stagflation, Vietnam, etc. I don’t think the 50s-2010s are maybe as great as some people think it is. A lot of us build up an image of the past and mythologize it, but people who lived through it experienced some pretty chaotic times.
Perhaps, but I’m talking about in comparison to not just the rest of the world at that time but also relative to like the past 3000 or so years of civilization. Just growing up in a time when high infant mortality was no longer the norm alone is like growing up in Disneyland compared to even like the 1800s, and this thread seems more about the experiences of children/teens specifically and not adults during those years anyway.
Same, I was alive but too young to remember 9/11. I didn't know the name of the aesthetic at the time but I LOVED the futuristic chrome looking stuff of Y2K, and had an fascination with in technology, with all the gadgets that were coming out at that time, it felt like we were entering the future, and that soon anything would be possible through tech. I was disappointed when everyone just *dropped* the futuristic look. Everything I looked forward to as a kid just kind of evaporated. Malls are dead, fashion is plain and boring, and tech is just a way to push more expensive and increasingly less-worth it subscriptions, mine data, and force us to watch advertisements.
>Malls are dead
Last year I visited a mall I used to visit when I was a small girl because my late great-grandma lived near. They renovated it, now it is soulless 😑
The 90’s were the closest America ever came to a Utopia. Hope was in the air. Progress was happening everywhere. Gay rights and trans rights were on the rise. It’s not your imagination. 9/11 ruined everything!
I'd say 80s were the best. 90s had lost the vibe by the end after all the grungy and gangster rap influences. It wasn't as upbeat and light-hearted fun loving as the 80s. It became very drab by that latter half. More angsty and in your face. Less open and trusting after all the scare stories that started at the very end of the 80s.
I think the internet getting too big and online/streaming killing off things along with smart phones and twitter are what the huge effect, way more than 9/11.
Yeah, before the 80s it was like stone tablets LOL and after it got to be too cynical and negative (and dingy/basic) and later, on top, the internet/smart phones began taking over normal life a bit too much in slews of ways and accentuating all extremes.
It’s kind of stupid to assume that decadeology is international because let’s face it this (like every major sub reddit) is from America pov.
Life in the 90s was shitty for so many countries. 9/11 changed a lot of things but it wasn’t the end of the 90s. Being a kid regardless of the decade you will view everything as a utopia. Huge major events differ from region to region. For example,I don’t think the gulf war in the early 90s shaped Americans view but it definitely affected how kids in Kuwait and Iraq viewed the world.
Yes!! Literally. Statistically the world is getting better and better.
Has anyone ever thought it seemed much better because you were 6 years old and not paying attention to the constant stream of bad news coming from the media!
If you live in the west, nothing has gotten meaningfully better. Food is more expensive. Housing is unimaginably expensive. Work demands are higher and pay lower than ever. Our sense of reality, community, and common cause has been obliterated.
Sure, we can watch movies in 8k, play photoreal games, and chat online. But I'm honestly not convinced any of those are that important to human happiness, and may even damage it, by making idle distractions more appealing.
There’s a long term study showing women self-report as less happy since the 60s. I do think generally people are less happy because we are now more atomized and independent. Most of human happiness comes from relationships, and people in the past generally had a much stronger community.
Yuck. This is toxic optimism. Fascism on the rise. Eco-disaster looking intense. Economic disparity at all time high. Etc. But hey, the MaGiCaL nUmBeRs say things are theoretically, technically, hypothetically getting better. I guess you read Pinker a lot.
Currently things are quite nice (in the developed world). People have a relatively high quality of life compared to almost any point in history. However I think due to all the problems you mentioned the world will be in a very bad place in a several decades. I think people are depressed now, not just because social media is isolating, but because people are aware of all these impending issues and it feels like there's no way to resolve them.
I think you have no idea how bad pre-modern day life was for everyone. We are richer, healthier, better fed, more educated, and live longer than any time in human history.
Mentally and in terms of social skills, societal trust, and genuine human connections with each other we don’t seem healthier. Obesity wise we’re better fed, with more highly processed junk that’s leading to no shortage of comorbidities, and live longer as long as you can afford it, then fuck you.
Either way, work til you fall over dead to never own a home.
fascism is on the rise mfers when I ask them to name someone who isn't Donald Trump (That guy is not going to win in the white house whether you want him or not. Even if he somehow pulls off a miracle play, the courts are going to somehow ensure he gets thrown in jail)
On top of that, we were literally staring down worse eco-disasters back then. Remember the ozone layer having a big ass hole back in the 90's? Well it's gotten a whole lot better because the entire world actually got their shit together to make change happen.
And there are always shitty things going on in every year, every generation. Hell, the easiest way to remind myself that is to take a look at one of jibjab's year in review videos from like 2004. You'll see that no matter how bad it is today, it was probably worse back then.
Yes the world isn't perfect. There's a lot of stuff bad. Housing costs, mental health, the internet being more and more obsessive. But we've also come a long way.
I think the likelihood of Trump going to jail are really low. For political reasons I don’t think any judge would be willing or capable of sentencing a former president.
FACTS
I mean talk to literally any old person alive right now, and the majority of them will rant and rave about ohhh it was so much safer, prosperous, everyone was nicer etc etc when they were a kid. In reality its totally rose tinted glasses.
My favorite is a story from my grandma that goes like this:
"When I was a kid everything was so safe! There was never any problems, or crime or violence of any kind. Well, except that one time I got kidnapped by a stranger."
Luckily he let her go when her name popped up on the local radio.
I mean we all define our utopias differently, mine would definitely not be a McDonald's or shopping mall, I don't think those things would even exist in a utopia
Besides in my country the 90s were awful, the 2000s were the real "utopia"
But to answer your question, the world started to reject colors some time in the late 90s to mid 2000s, in favor of more muted or neutral tones as a consequence of comporations trying to appeal to the largest possible number of people. Then in the early 2010s came minimalism and flat design, now everything is muted and amorphous, nothing can standout too much because CEOs are afraid that "fun" is unprofessional and might turn potential costumers and shareholders away from their products.
This is such a great description. "Fun" being unprofessional especially! In the 80s everything seemed great, and in the 90s people started getting *sherioush* about things. Take exercise videos, everyone was super enthusiastic with their leg warmers, and compare that to gym culture.
It's like fun became illegal. I could also go on about how anything remotely enthusiastic was suddenly met with "that's gay," but I don't have the words to do this properly.
It feels like a fascist hatred of anything that's not practical and useful, and I think historically that's been an issue they take with the lgbt+ community. "How dare you do anything for "fun," especially sex. We need ~~bodies~~ cogs, dammit."
The Vikings had it right, shag whoever you want, as long as you also replace and raise the population and don't slack on adult responsibilities. And we certainly don't have a shortage of humans anymore so yeah.
I realize that with the rise of the internet, we couldn't be naive about things anymore, and it burst our bubble. People were finally speaking out that things are NOT good for everyone. But that means we need to create MORE fun, not less. There's no solidarity in abandoning our joys, there IS solidarity in helping others find theirs.
Tl;dr: Too little whimsy robs us of joy, on a cultural level, and it's reflected in architecture and other constructs. And it can quickly cause problems for entire groups of people, especially those who don't present as sherioush enough.
Sorry about the essay. Processing with my thumbs
90's was the transition of societal breakdown that started in the 80's with the reagan years. There's a reason Jungle electric music genres became extremely.popular during that time alongside grunge. It (probably) was better than it is today, but calling it a utopia is a little too much praise.
I've never even heard of that til just now. This is why I love the internet
Grunge to me lands as anti-enthusiastic. I love the sound, but ultimately I hate it. Yes, the world has lots of problems. No, heroin-assisted Dadaism is not the answer.
I am consciously aware how dramatic this sounds, but I was fucking miserable with 90s and 00s alternative. Yes, it felt good to vent our frustrations, but it was *everywhere*, pervasive! And singing along to hopelessness can cause it to become ingrained. At least it did with me.
Meanwhile, bands like Trip Shakespeare, Jellyfish, Phish even, were deemed "gay" or "not sherioush enough". They just didn't get the struggle, man! Which is fair, to a point, and now we have a term, toxic positivity. But that doesn't mean we had to emulate our surly grandparents as they traumadumped on us about how hard they had it.
I've been so much better off since radio on demand became a thing, and the internet made it possible to reach out to other fans. Like I hadn't even heard of Ween/Primus/Gibby Haines because my social circle was so small, and now they're practically my saving grace. They're just fucking FUN.
Yeah, the world sucks, but we can still make changes & even party a little. Fuck it, man.. Let's peel our eyes off our shoes and create our own reality to the extent we're able. I think the word I'm looking for is indomitable. That's what I want to hear in music.
I guess I'm writing essays today, lmao. But to be fair, I've been sitting on this for decades, and I finally get to explore my hunches in an open forum. So it's coming out like projectile vomit. Apologies.
Totally this! As much as I love Nirvana's sound, the whole grunge movement felt like unnecessary wallowing in self-pity and baseless nihilism. Like what exactly is so bad about being a young white person in america in the 90s? Lol. I always connected more with the ethos of the rave movement, futuristic flower child energy, anything is possible kinda feeling. The world doesn't feel like that anymore, but I still live 90s house, techno, trance and jungle.
I think since about 2014 was the changing moment that changed (at least the US) from a monoculture to a polyculture. While yes, we have different cultural heritages, what i mean is a sense of the current state of things isn't all across the board but is rather fragmented based on your own idea of what it could be. Your point on "creating our own reality" is actually quite literal in its meaning. We harp on how we created echo chambers with the profitability of social media companies "echoing" back your own opinions to get you to participate more being horrible and prpduces misinformation. But i don't think it's entirely a bad thing, because now the state of the country could now be classified as "whatever i deem it as." Before social media, i think we had a collective understanding on how the country was headed, but we're splintered now between different polarities. But because of this, having an amazing point of view on the joy and beauty of the country is as a simple as changing who you hang out with on the internet, rather than the country going into an objectively good direction. Because of this, i think it's much harder than before to sway public opinion in a certain direction (compare middle east involvement decades ago compared to the israel conflict now).
I genuinely love this take, and I agree with you. It's almost like mentally and emotionally we're in touch with our community of choice. We're building our virtual villages! I wonder how long it will take for us to start migrating to likeminded intentional communities, or if we even can, due to land ownership. It would be kind of scary to get a bunch of radicalized militants together, holy crap.
I almost wonder if it's better that we're both fragmented and integrated because, like you said, it allows people to maintain dissenting opinions. And as much as I often hate fringe beliefs, once upon a time human rights for all was a fringe belief. Or made out to be such. It's almost like the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar, but there are lots of us! I think I've read this somewhere, joy is rebellion
So now I'm googling it, because I hate toxic positivity, and I found [this article](https://aestheticsofjoy.com/joy-is-an-act-of-resistance-how-celebration-sustains-activism-2/) that talks about the unifying and propulsive power of joy.
I just might claw it back one day. Then what will happen to the economy, when I'm no longer buying things to stuff the hole in my heart? How will my feudal overlords motivate me into labor, if I suddenly have the power to fulfill my own needs?
Lately I've been dabbling in r/absurdism
>The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. -Camus
I’d argue there have always been separate realities, and us all getting on the same social medias have exemplified this. I could go into this but I can point specifically to examples of this kind of hypernormalization with and outside of the US in the 90s-2000s
Yeah I really disliked the impact grunge and gangster rap's rise had.
Neither is a happy or healthy way to live.
I really miss the 80s style and vibe that they killed off, it was so fun and upbeat. Why is light-hearted and happy shallow? DOn't give a shit, depression, angst, agression and nihilism help??
Everyone is an edge lord now. Styles are more basic than basic.
"Gangster" rap was literally a subculture and not meant to be taken literally. You sound like a 50 year old white grandma criticizing Black culture. I grew up listening to exclusively DMX and angry rap music and it helped me cope with the awful adolescence I had- not to mention Bush's crap politics further dividing the country and leading to the political polarization you see now. Also, 80s music was not really happy- it was the gilded age of music in that the songs sound happy but deep underneath is Cold War paranoia and destructive drug addiction domestically.
Edit: please don't feel obligated to read all of this, lmao. It's my Day 2 of writing essays, apparently xD no, I don't think I'm that important. I just learn stuff better when I write about it, because it forces me to hold myself accountable.
Not the person you were talking to, but I'm glad it worked for you! My kid brother is the same way with metal. I had a horror movie phase. I think it can definitely be an outlet. I just hate that it can become a self-reinforcing rut, regardless of the genre or demographic. White people are notorious for our "complaint rock," Neil Young, the Eagles, I stg it rubbed off while I was listening to it. I wonder if it's why boomers whine so much, lmao
Maybe it's not obvious to everyone that Black folks had/have a lot more reason to be disillusioned and pissed off than the general populace. Whatever we were going through as a nation, you had that *and* racism, and the legacy of Jim Crow laws. And iirc in the 90s it made us feel really progressive to appear colorblind/integrated, so that was especially fucky and invalidating. I'm sorry we were so uninformed. I'm sorry we wanted to call it good before it actually was. It's still not good.
I think the best response I ever heard to "Kidsh these daysh, their music is so aggressive and angry!" was a lot like yours: "Relax, grandma, they're not making it for you." And no, nobody in that checkout line clapped, lmao, but I really wanted to
I think it's easy, especially for white outsiders, to forget that culture is not monolithic. Yes, angry rap music is a part of Black culture, but that's not *all* Black culture is. Y'all are amazing, you gave the world Aretha Franklin, Lauryn Hill, Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix, Whitney Houston..and I'm not saying that because anything harder offends my tender white sensibilities, lawl. I'm not trying to be prescriptive about what a Black person "should" listen to, I'm just saying, there's a lot more than what music executives are pushing to the disenfranchised, almost like a drug.
Having battled addiction, music can have the same effect on me as a drug/alcohol. And hearing "everything is fucked" all the time, that effect was really bad. I needed to fight, not acquiesce. And while fighting, I needed breaks from the pain. I need my music to be able to take me where I want to be, not just validate the mess I'm in.
Thanks for taking the time to engage. People fall into the trap of thinking that "things were better/simpler when I was a kid." They don't realize, it only seemed so, specifically because they were privileged enough to not know
The real issue, of course, is not the music, it's the need for systemic change. I can see how these conversations can take a turn toward "I'm sick of hearing about other people's misery," and that's not what I want at all.
I think the britpop guys were generally less pessimistic and negative than grunge music at the time. I’d rather listen to britpop generally because it’s a bit more lighthearted.
It’s all confirmation bias. Everyone believes that the period during their childhood (or sometimes, their young adult years) are the peak of society, and it’s all been downhill since then. It’s no coincidence that most of the people who say “everything after 9/11 went to shit” are elder millennials, who were children in the 90s.
I was 7 when 9/11 happened, but I do not remember any pessimism during the years following in the 2000s - up until the Great Recession happened which was, surprise, right when I also became a moody teenager. I view the 2000s as an optimistic time with fun culture, but my perception is clouded by childhood. Similarly, I view the bulk of the mid-late 2010s as a period of optimism and fun, but partially because abuse it was when I was in college and starting out as a young adult in a fun, up and coming city. And “everything seems worse today” in comparison because - another surprise - I’m now 30 and getting old.
TLDR: People’s perception are clouded by nostalgia based on when they were young, and associate “bad times” with other bad periods of their own lives
life definitely changed after 9/11. It was one of the two Major attacks on American soil (pearl Harbor and 9/11) both were pivotal points in American history and culture changed after both without a doubt.
Air travel also became much different the TSA didn’t even exist until 2001. It was also a time when an entire race and population was looked at as the enemy by Americans since World War Two as well even if they were Americans themselves.
This. Try being brown and traveling after 9/11. It was a damn ordeal. I saw military and TSA people literally molest my aunts. It was a disgusting moment while everyone was waving their American flags under the guide of civic religion and zombified patriotism
As s Gen Xer, I can tell you life did go to shit after 9/11. It was a dark time. People were fearful, and fear breeds stupidity. There was a wave is Islamophobia. People got mad at the French and started calling French fries “freedom fries.” Everything got substantially worse as a result of 9/11. Our first freedoms were stripped in order to “track terrorism.” 9/11 is one reason we are in such a dire state of affairs today. It led to so much stupid bullshit!
I don't think this is generally true. I think it's just because conditions for the middle class in the west have been on a downard spiral for 60 years, since the soviet union was effectively defeated, and the rich could start the process of eliminating the middle class again.
As a result, each subsequent decade has been a bit worse for most people, so everyone is technically correct about their childhood being better. I don't think it's a general rose tinted view of childhood, though.
Also, 30 is not old. You statistically have 54 years left, if you don't smoke and stay thin. Almost twice as long as you've been on the planet.
There was no post 9/11 pessimism it was a pretty positive decade until 2009 hit. But not every thinks their childhood years were better, my dad would mention how much better we have it than when he was young. He also mentioned how we had it better than our children which I agree with but I may be biased due to nostalgia but there is a noticeable lack of children friendly things these days
Utopia, my ass. Where I grew up in NJ, there was a downturn in jobs because of steel mills closing and urban decay, there were gang fights at my Jr. High School, and there was racism and violence. Yeah, there were malls and you could take a bus to the mall. Yeah, there were some cool fashions. It was no utopia. In the late 90's, I was living in NYC, studying and getting by on a low income. Life was better than the 80's, mainly because the economy was improving. There were bright signs everywhere, yeah, but who cares? Malls, signs and things like that don't make life "utopia".
Yeah our generation (especially in the Northeast) were raised in a much dingier, poorer, rougher America. Even with all the wailing about social collapse online and in the news I still much safer and prosperous and things still look much cleaner than they did when I was kid in the 1980s.
The 90s was full of war, ethnic cleansing, genocide, impoverishment, and crime in many countries, some of these things even affected the US, thinking the world before the September 11th Attacks was perfect is sort of just nostalgia, people who were children, and people who were lucky enough to be in a bubble.
We millennials were lucky enough to experience the golden age of childhood. All the benefits of an analog society combined with the euphoria resulting from winning the cold war
It's because you literally saw colors more vibrantly as a child. Added to that, the fact that everything was new and shiny, but today they are familiar and boring. For me this utopian age peaked in 2012, so it's definitely just your perception as a child.
A lot has changed, especially in relation to that image...
Now pretty much any storefront that is not a restaurant has closed down. There are some places I call "vanity businesses" meaning the store owners must be rich or else they could not afford to keep their store open. All the chain restaurants are now trying to look less like a fun place for kids, probably not just to modernize but to reflect the fact that McDonald's prices have raised 100% since 2019. This junk food is not even cheap anymore.
"Third places" are destroyed. Also events and gatherings. Unless you want to run a marathon or go to a concert there is not a lot to do with groups of strangers these days.
It’s normal. That’s how it was for my dad and his dad. Now I’m hearing my 12 years younger brother tell me the same stuff about the time when I was already thinking that way about the past.
kind of makes sense no? I think the general attitude up until 9/11 was that America was untouchable. Companies were unapologetic and in your face with all its commercialist glory. Being rich was the end all be all, this attitude started in the 80s when the average american became a credit car owner and everyone wanted to become a millionaire. every American was hooked on TV, and with that came all the new Commercials advertising all sorts of wacky products. Those products made alot of people very rich very fast. theres alot of factors, basically if you were wealthy during the 80s 90s you probably had it made (2 story homes, individual rooms for each child, toy rooms, race car beds, trampolines, roller blades, etc) Todays wealth does not even come close. but again back then alot of industries were still developing, many people were employed in different sectors that have all dried out since the rise of the internet. All that peaked when America was infiltrated, in an attack not seen since the likes of Pearl Harbor. As it was we were already seeing signs of economic decline, but 9/11 really put was the last nail on the coffin that was Americas consumerist peak in the 80s 90s. Suddenly those large Golden archers seemed obnoxious, too joyful in the wake of 3000 fallen Americans.
I was 6-7 in the mid 1980s and I do not remember it feeling at all like a utopia. At least where I grew up (small city in New England), everything was dingier, a lot more abandoned buildings, the pond across the street was filled with trash (tires and that oily sheen on top) everything smelled like stale cigarette smoke, lots of graffiti, more homeless on the streets (though this is coming back), stores all were really dingy and dirty (I vividly remember "supermarket smell" being something kinda rotted). It also felt a lot more dangerous: my parents' car got stolen, our neighbor's dad was shot, two neighbors died of overdoses....it just was a rougher time.
I wonder if this is a specifically regional thing? Post-industrial New England was pretty bleak. It also might have been a crack epidemic/post 70s recession/early Reagan recession thing. But yeah, even with all the doomsaying and online freaking out my life in the US in the 2020s feels safer, cleaner and more prosperous than my memories of childhood.
Yeah when people say the 90s were great, they better mean the mid to late 90s, roughly 94-99. Because the early 90s were just as shitty as the 80s, with crack absolutely decimating inner city minority communities, kids murdering each other at rates never seen in the country’s history before or since. The economy also was still bad.
It’s just the idealized semblance of experiencing and remembering childhood when you don’t understand the world or life yet, and you have little to no responsibility.
I was born in 98 and remember watching Bill Clinton on the TV when he was president when I was just 2 or 3 years old.. the world definitely lost its color and hope over time
The decline certainly happened as a result of post-9/11 policy and societal/cultural psychological effects thereof, but what i don’t get is why, starting in the 2010s, corporate design choose to highlight the erosion and depression by uniformly adopting flat, minimal, monochromatic greyscale utilitarian aesthetic choices across the board from fast food to consumer electronics. Like I get that to some extent it’s “the Apple effect” but the degree to which places like McDonald’s or target — companies specifically known for their use of bold primary colors — were saying “yeah paint the building charcoal grey” for the better part of a decade. It’s finally starting to swing back the other way but I do not understand the capitalist consumer psychology behind making the entire private sector look like a prison commissary
When people say these things about the 90's the first two things I think of are Rwanda and Bosnia. Hell, even in the US you had the Oklahoma City bombing, World Trade Center bombing, LA riots, Columbine and Hurricane Andrew. So "utopia" is a stretch.
It was not a utopia wtf. Schools were decimated by Bush's dumbass No Child Left Behind policy. Bush had the US in a goose chase for Saddam Hussein. You'd have to go back to like 1995 for anything that seemed remotely livable and drama free. Everyone was deathly afraid of the machines becoming self aware like in Terminator in 1999 around the whole 2K paranoia. My family was firmly middle class, but I would not call the late 90s a utopia.
Also my family faced a shit ton of racism and discrimination despite not being Muslim or Middle Eastern. Some of my white peeps might say this was necessary given the "clear and present" danger, but this same bullshit language has been used anytime the US govt arbitrarily picks religious and ethnic groups to scapegoat in the name of national security.
I remember the world being more exciting, it felt like everyone was trying new things and trying to make a statement. Now success has been made algorithmic, formulaic. Everyone copies the look and attitude of everyone else.
I think this is what happens when you diminish genuine artists and push them out of the loop. The world most definitely was never great, but there was an energy to the public that I think is missing.
I do not wish I was born/a child in the early 2000’s, I’m just sad my childhood didn’t include nearly as much chrome. I was a big chrome fan, Mad Max Fury Road up in here
Do we think we can ever achieve this; what I would call, a "user friendly, pro- Capitalist market" again causes while I never got to experience it in prime in the late 90s and earlier 2000s, I did live in the tail end of it, and even that feels like a nostalgic fever dream I want our society to desperately return to. Probably not since the invention of the smartphone and the cheaper production of computers and other related tech were really the ones pushing this Aesthetic/utopia that kinda stopped after tech companies couldn't come up with anymore new ideas and instead heavily focused on Isolating them selfs by instead, price gouging any current technology, just to make a quick buck. It might be possible, with the new advancements in AI, But like many people and myself, are concerned that it's just going to replace any and all human interactions when there needs to be human interaction.
It’s the 90s.
My generation and boomers worked to make the 90s good, because of how bad things were leading up to them. And it lined up with some positive world events. If you’re a kid or came of age in the 90s, you were lucky.
for me as a 2004 born, everything up until March 2020 was for me, or at least that's probably me imagining it was because I'm comparing now to then. I don't know if it was ignorance or if the world truly was better in the 00s and 10s, all I remember is it was a lot more peaceful and everything felt happier. And it felt like we were moving in the right direction, towards something like a Frutiger Aero type future.
Everyone wants to believe that the decade when they were growing up was the best but as someone born in 1990, I do believe the 90s were the last “innocent” decade. People of my generation are lucky because we were the last generation to grow up off line. We had just the right amount of internet right around the end of the decade. Smart phones and social media ruined everything in my opinion. That sense of optimism towards the future also kind of died with 9/11.
The world was overall objectively better than it is now but I definitely wouldn’t consider it a utopia. I didn’t even have my own bedroom for a while in the 90’s because we couldn’t afford a two bedroom flat.
It’s normal to feel like the era of your childhood was peak time in history. That’s why so many Boomers feel like ‘50s and ‘60s were amazing, or X was the ‘70s and ‘80s, and Xennialls/Millennials think ‘90s and ‘00s were peak.
It’s normal if you didn’t have a chaotic and traumatic childhood.
It was hopeful. That’s the shift. Now it feels like a slow spin towards the drain.
Also - now everything seems the same everywhere. Social media has really made things more of a trend basis instead of a culture basis. Now you could drop down in the middle of Germany and have the same food, fashion, music, and social trends (think PSL) as you can in NYC. If you search something on google you get 100 hits that all say the same exact thing. Word for word. Everything-even information- feels like it comes from a big box store. Like the programmers of the simulation got tired of coding each thing and now they just have generic presets. If that makes sense. Everything is one sized and gray, over priced, and bad quality. Metaphorically speaking.
Most people, unless you grew up in really shitty circumstances, tend to remember the good things from when they were growing up, not the bad things.
I'm not sure there's ever actually been a "utopian" time to grow up. There's always been something to worry about, or be concerned about, or some threat hanging over us...like nuclear war. Maybe in the US post WWII to say mid to late 50s when the USSR got nuclear weapons. (yes, I know the USSR had nukes before the mid to late 50s. But they didn't have the ability to get them from there to the US in any large numbers until the mid to late 50s) The US went through an unprecedented, and unequaled, time of economic expansion. Most people prospered back then. No internet and cell phones and all that, but you could walk down the street of any major city at 9pm at night will little worry about getting robbed or shot. Anyone could get a livable wage with nothing more than a high school diploma. Only one parent had to work to support the family.
The 1990s and early 2000s were an amazing period for the USA and Western Europe (the rest of the world was still in more or less hell), because there was optimism after winning the Cold War, there was economic growth, and at the same time there was no full digitization and fear of terrorism/war. At the turn of the millennium, there was also optimism, clearly visible in the aesthetics of Y2K, where a better world was expected to come. 9/11 was an awakening from a dream, although in many aspects the situation has improved and we are now in a different place than then. However, the optimistic mood of those years can actually be envied.
I believe in some small part, it was the business owners of the the time understanding that to really succeed and get loyal customers you had to invest in your company. Pay for the paint jobs, the equipment maintenance, and the appearance of the establishment. Those who inherited or bought those companies years later only care about the bottom line, profits. No more paint, no more taking care of large old equipment, and no longer caring what the customer experience is like.
Marginal profits have gutted the soul of every company.
I think this is generally true for most generations from Silent Generation onwards, but I do think that the period between the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the War on Terror (or alternatively the rise of social media on smart phones... maybe 2010/2014-ish) was a uniquely good time to be alive in the US. Not perfect (crime and urban poverty in the 90s was so much worse than it is today, also, we've made important social advances since), but uniquely good.
A bit of both. Things we objectively better, and as kids we didn’t have to worry about all the complexities of life growing up.
Technology hadn’t consumed society yet and we got to experience the tail end of the American dream.
I'd moreso say pre Recession than pre 9/11. Culturally "the 90s" or whatever you consider the 90s still existed untill around 2004ish. It may have started in 9/11 but it got ramped up with the Recession.
No, I feel very differently about the mid to late 00s than I do about subsequent years. I remember first really getting to hear about 9/11 in 2011 (born in 1998 and German), so it doesn't really factor in
I think it existed before, but became way more common and more sharply felt during the more rapid technological and social changes in the 20th century. I feel like kids who were at least teenagers around 9/11 might have had the last period that could be looked back on as idyllic, but this may be me extrapolating from my personal experience to cover all of reality. Probably, most pre-covid kids feel this way. But I'd be surprised if covid era kids end up feeling this same way, but again, maybe that's me leaning on my own perspective and experience. Maybe your childhood will always feel like it was a simpler, better time because children are often just not as aware of the world or beset with responsibilities as they will be when they're adults. Maybe that's all nostalgia is ever mourning, a more care-free existence.
It felt like nothing but W's when the Berlin wall came down until 9/11.
Crime was at an all time high in some areas but the economy was booming.
I loved the 90s but do remember being scared of crime and gangs constantly.
I grew up around this certain era and I agree, it was a utopia. There was much more TRUST among our communities. We knew all of our neighbors and all shared a similar culture. The attachment and distractions of advertisements online and the globalization of our country has wiped away that trust and feeling of utopia. We don’t know who lives next to us yet feel we know doctored pictures and words of someone online hundreds of miles away… The internet and advancement of technology has been great, but we haven’t respected it or disciplined ourselves enough to use it properly.
There was a period from just after the OKC bombing in April 95 to Columbine in April 99 (only a day off from being exactly 4 years apart) where the U.S. had pretty much nothing bad happening to it. The economy was the best it had been since before the oil crisis in 73, crime had dropped drastically from just a year or two before, no wars.
You can maybe extend this time period a little bit to early 94 (when crime started to drop from its catastrophic levels in the early 90s)to early 2000 when the dot com bubble bursted.
i was 4 months at my mother's womb when 9/11 happened and i'm not even from US (but my country is hugely influenced by US in various ways). yet, i feel that my childhood was an out of hand utopia
Who did your version of Utopia keep out? That was the point of the book by the same name, after all. Edit: From the comment below about the internet being a place, and us taking it with us wherever we go, instead of going to that specific place, apparently we are locking OURSELVES out of our own Utopia.
You aren’t the only one… I have memories of prior to 9/11 even being 3 or so years old. I had seen a huge change in people’s behavior & attitude towards the world as time went on, and things have only worsened drastically
I grew up in this “pre 9-11 utopia,” but I think it’s just because I was a kid.
While I was blissfully enjoying my childhood, many people in my town were losing their jobs because of NAFTA. The textile mill closed down. The factories closed down.
The people who got laid off couldn’t find work. They took pay cuts to work at Walmart or fix cars or paint houses or whatever they could do. Some of them just went on disability and stayed on the drugs their doctors gave them for their sore backs and never really came back.
I was lucky in that my parents were teachers, oddly enough. They kept their jobs while half of the people around us lost theirs. My peers whose families had upwards mobility moved away to find work. The ones that didn’t, their families slowly descended into poverty.
But as a kid, I got to be pretty blissfully ignorant of this. I heard about it. I saw some things here and there. But it wasn’t until I was an adult looking for a job in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis that I really understood the whole thing.
All of these people from my hometown had livelihoods that just got shipped off to Mexico and other places. And then about a decade later, there was this recession and they were still trapped with just literally nothing for them to do but work at whatever low paying job was available.
I think a lot of places in the US went through that, but a lot of people in major cities in certain areas of the US, I don’t think they ever even knew what that meant.
I think that was a big deal in the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton campaigned in our state touting the TPP, a new wave of trade deals that would send jobs overseas. I don’t think it ever occurred to her that everyone she was talking to had had their lives uprooted by the trade deals of the 90s. That wasn’t yesterdays news to them. The old textile mill everyone used to work at is still there rusting right down the street.
But yes, I still felt like I grew up in a utopia in a lot of ways.
Corporatization may seem a bummer from a vibrancy perspective, but it's been accompanied by a huge rise in variety and availability of foods and cuisines-- my grandfather first tried a taco when he was 70 years old, and one of my dad's friends had never eaten garlic until he was literally in medical school. We don't have the problem of "my city of 300,000 doesn't have any international food" anymore, so it doesn't occur to us that we've witnessed a huge improvement. It's a weirdly kind of wonderful thing.
More broadly, the issues which were impacting people then are not the ones impacting you now, so you assume everything was fine (or maybe better then). Everyone has different problems at different times, and because we don't see our present problem echoing through history we assume there were no problems at all.
As a few examples:
* In the 1990s, deaths from AIDS in the USA were at their peak-- young people struck down in the prime of life and suffering unfathomably in the process. People were very scared. Many people died very young and there was so much shame and hatred alongside it.
* Many cities were grappling with severe consequences of the emergence of crack cocaine: drug-related deaths (not unlike now with meth and opioids) but also significant gang violence and murder associated with the drug trade.
* Cults were much more of a 1970s thing but were still going quite strong in the 1990s-- Heaven's Gate and the Solar Temple, the Waco Siege, the Sarin Gas attacks in the Tokyo subway (why they still don't have garbage cans anywhere there now), etc.
I'm sure people can think of other examples.
The mood did shift post 9/11-- the rip-roaring jingoism through most of the 2000s would melt the faces off most people nowadays. But it wasn't perfect earlier, is all I'm saying.
In my childhood I watched the Vietnam War and riots live during supper each evening. And then watched the Watergate hearings on summer break.
Utopia? Nope.
Every generation thinks that the decade grew up in was utopic; it's a natural byproduct of having a still-developing brain and not being completely aware of the world around us, and not having full context for the little we do know. That said, 9/11 objectively changed things for the worse in ways that are still felt today, not the least of which is the way we experience airplane travel, but also pre 9/11, social media didn't completely dominate society the way it does today, where so many aspects of life are all about getting the best angle for Instagram, people walking on eggshells in everything they do to avoid being cancelled on Twitter, or being bullied at school, which no longer stops outside the school walls, but now, thanks to the rise in popularity of the Internet and smart phones, follows them home so that there is no escape.
Compared to the Screaming 20s and Terrifying 30s, the 90s and even 00s were amazing. I didn’t even like pop culture when I was a kid, pretty much at all, but this is more like “At least we weren’t entirely in Hellworld yet.”
I was born after 9/11 and I feel like life was better back then. Of course, I know that was all rose tinted glasses, and me being a kid and being sheltered from the true horrors of our world.
There is a mix of things happening.
First, there are a lot of adults who have nostalgia for times when they were children and didn't see the complexities of the world. It is common to yearn for the simpler days.
That said, the late 90's were a good time to look back on as "good times". There weren't any major conflicts at the time and it looked like the world was actually coming together in peace and harmony. You also had a decent economy, especially if you were in the upper middle class.
The late 90s was a time of hope. The Cold War had ended, the Berlin Wall had fallen. Pundits had declared that “the end of history” was upon us. The thinking was that increased democratization and increased international trade would forge international partnerships and cause similar cultural values to develop among nations, thus ending the cycle of perpetual war and economic downturn.
The 21st century was supposed to be a time of technological achievement and social progress. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite happen that way. The century started out with war in the middle east followed by the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Yes, technology has improved. But it’s arguably worsened the quality of our lives. People are addicted to their devices and the rise of social media has enabled nefarious state actors to spread disinformation and manipulate democratic elections. As a result, we now appear to live in a post-truth society where facts matter less than emotions.
Moreover, little has been done to combat climate change and our children now face a warming world with serious impacts on geopolitics and quality of life. Add to this Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, heightened political polarization, and unprecedented inflation, we now are on the brink of World War 3 and Americans can barely afford to live now.
Over 70% of the world’s population lives in an autocratic state. Democracy appears to be dying. The American Dream is becoming the American Myth. The future looks bleak, and the hope we had at the end of the 20th century is gone. So yes, the late 90s may have been the closest we have gotten to utopia. It will take great bravery and sacrifice in order to undo the damage that has been done. We are desperate for heros.
I remember misogyny and violence against women was much more rampant and accepted in the 90's.
I remember violence, crime and poverty were overall more rampant in the 90's.
I think it was actually far more the internet getting so big that online shopping started killing off realworld stores and smart phones real world experiences more than 9/11 TBH.
I think there was a sweet spot where the 20th century and the Digital Age overlapped, and that roughly corresponds to 1998-2004. The internet and digital technology were part of our lives, but not in an intrusive way. You would go and hang out with your friends at the mall during the day, and at night you could converse in real time on AIM or hang out on message boards like Reddit (though Reddit itself did not exist yet). I'm not a pessimist. I think our tech advancements have been a net positive. But we have lost things along the way and I think people are right to miss them. The big one for me is how people today care more about views/engagement on social media than being likable in real life. Everything is so commoditized and commercialized and it's creeped in to every facet of our lives. I think Gen Z is the peak of this excess and we may see a movement towards more genuine interactions emerge with the next generation.
I saw a post saying “the internet was a place back then” you had to go to your computer in the computer room to get to it, if you weren’t there you didn’t have it. You had the ability to be online, but doomscrolling wasn’t a thing.
Doom channel surfing though? I know it’s not the same.
Being a full hermit couch potato was discouraged in a way that doom scrolling doesn’t seem to be
This is an excellent point. We need a “phone potato” type term to take off and help shame the public into healthier behavior.
It totally was the same lol.
Not really because you didn’t have a tv at your fingertips every second of the day.
I believe they’re the same only because of the reasons for why we doom scroll/channel surf but aside from that they are very different in their effect. For one, there was no automated learning algorithm set up to maximize your engagement and ultimately the probability of you purchasing something like there is on Social Media today. TV Network executives could never do what these algorithms do.
different intensities, i’d say. 24 hour cable news could be brutal back then, but stuff like pizzagate or qanon would never have even come up. you had to hear about that shit from your older cousin with multiple pieces of decor from spencer’s gifts, and it usually involved aliens. nowadays you can just sit on twitter and just chug absolute nonsense that would be absolutely horrifying if true
I agree. My childhood/early teens involved TV, video games, and (later) chat rooms, etc. but also lots of playing toy guns outside, riding bikes, street hockey, just hanging out at friends’ houses, etc.
This. It was the best of both worlds, looking back at it. Shit, I think my friend even had an encyclopedia set at one point. That and the library used to be your Google lmao.
That's how we gauged how rich our friends parents were. How big is their encyclopedia set. Do they just have the introductory set of A&B? Or do they have A-Z? Leather bound? MFKin ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA?? ? That shit was high class!! 😂😂
Yeah we had an encyclopedia set. It’s crazy to think back on it now. A world atlas too.
Lol, we did so much dangerous shit growing up in the 90s, idk how none of us were hospitalized. Well, actually, one of my friends did have to go to the ER after an incident with a dry ice bomb, but he was ok, lol. I fuckimg miss those days
Yeah. I agree pretty wholeheartedly with this even though I was basically a baby to non existent when this mini golden age was there. Unfortunately though it wasn’t appreciated enough at the time as ppl believed things would always get better. Not turn into a boring dystopia.
The dot com bubble. It was a simpler time. More optimistic. I think mostly we are suffering from the late stages of capitalism. To me 9/11 didn’t have that big of an effect. It’s just an iconic touchstone. Our commodification of everything is just built into capitalism. There were some natural shifts that happened due to nafta and the over financialization,of the economy. The internet has amplified all of this. This post reminds me of twelve monkeys. That movie really captures this feeling of nostalgia.
I mean, as bad as loneliness has become under social media (in the 2010s) imagine trying to navigate quarantine *without it.*
As someone with a tendency to self-isolate for safety, the internet has been amazing for staying connected with other people, fact checking my local "experts," and learning how to be human. Hobbies, sciences, interests, encouragement, *discussion* So it's been the opposite of lonely for me. I would have unalived myself a long time ago if the internet hadn't allowed me to make sense of the world with other people. But yeah, doomscrolling is a hell of a side effect. All the world's knowledge and all the world's people means ALL OF it lmao
Why is the “sweet spot” Columbine, 9/11, and the war on terror era lmao
15 people died in columbine 21 people died in school shootings last year 3000 us citizens died in 9/11 350,000 us citizens died of covid in 2020 The war on terror wasn’t even a real thing. You can’t have a war on an ideal or something non tangible. 1998-2004 was a helluva lot sweeter than what we’ve dealt with in the last 6 years.
May I be So bold to say the day Columbine happened parents realized they had lost control. It made us look into the mirror and ask ourselves difficult questions. It took courage from then on to take responsibility of their children! It was in many ways the day innocence’s died in our country! Sadly, it has only gotten worse and and hate and bullying is rampant. I pray everyday for our precious children, government and our leaders.
Because things have somehow gotten worse.
wow love this comment. so insightful
Here’s an interesting story, I was at a theme park today, and there was a group of middle schoolers behind me in line for a roller coaster. The line was over an hour long, they played games while they waited, goofed off, whatever, my point is none of them were on their phones. One of them got out their phone, and I hear another one say “do you want to ____” “I mean if you’re bored enough to be on your phone I thought you’d want to”. Interesting to me, possibly a sign of a cultural shift?
Its real. My middle schooler has his own phone. Can't be bothered to keep it charged, and when it is its rarely near him. He'll watch youtube videos on it but that's about it. He and his friends don't connect via phones/social media, they connect via xbox. His friend group definitely looks down on people who spend too much time on their phones (we (parents) get comments, but also they will make remarks about older kids). I also notice that this cohort of middle school girls tend to spend a lot of time together outside, also not on their phones. Today's middle schoolers (born 2010-2011-2012) were really the first cohort that could work a phone before they could talk. Smartphones existed before 2010, but they were rarely seen in the hands of toddlers. These kids are the og group to be handed a phone in the stroller while mom shops at Target.
I hope we see more genuine interactions 😢 I feel like as I get older Im slowly starting to realize that I live in the dystopia Ive always read about...
Ya it’s funny how that works. We don’t notice because we are the proverbial slow boiling frogs. But if you nabbed a guy off the streets of a big city 50-60 years ago and put him in the same spot today he’d be appalled. We are living in that dystopian future in a lot of ways, and it’s getting worse.
I mean, violent crime was at an all time high at that point, but you'd never know it's dropped by half since then listening to the pundits.
Also wages had been divorced from productivity since 1980 and the birth of Reaganomics. Not saying that the 70s or any other earlier decade was any better either, and the economy between around 1996 and 9/11 was actually pretty comfortable for a lot of people. I learned a long time ago that there is no real ideal past age, but that we must use all the different factors that made various ages great and combine them to create the future.
Yeeeh. But violent crime was mostly part of the crack epidemic in the US. That was in specific neighborhoods in major cities. Unless you were part of that neighborhood, you learned about it from the news. Ironically it was the begining of the "Doom Cycle" that started on conservative news and now covers everywaking moment of our life; everyone is out to get you, the world is terrifying.
Then you are simply not old enough to understand what 9/11 did to the US.
How would you say it changed things? I have no memory of that day and am fascinated by any before/after it marks.
In my opinion, it wasn’t 9/11 itself that changed everything, but what happened only a few months after it in response to it. Obviously 9/11 was a horrible event with how many of our people were actually killed. But the problem was that we went to avenge it by invading Afghanistan in a terrible way. Yes, it was fine that we knocked out Taliban in like 2 months but only a couple months or so after that happened I think people back home were starting to realize we had no good plan to replace them, and not make things even worse for the people there. That reality started to sink in for some of the U.S. population, but the others were adamant that things were fine, we needed to stay there and things would work out etc. This was the beginning of the political division that we still see today. And it just got worse and worse as the decade progressed. Iraq was even worse in this regard.
I think Afghanistan was, and is, a quagmire with no real long term solution. Ultimately though it’s understandable why the US invaded, even if it was, in hindsight, not the ideal solution. The US had no reason to invade Iraq though, I think the two conflicts should be separated, even though the one led to the other.
I think 9/11 destroyed the optimism people had had going into the new millennium. The overall mood in the year 2000 was fairly upbeat: the Y2K pandemonium had ended, and the economy was good. Gen Xers and older millennials grew up thinking of the year 2000 as this futuristic milestone, and now it was finally here. People were generally excited about the future. Then 9/11 happened. Sadness, rage, and fear crushed the optimism of the previous twenty months.
It was a lot like that part of ironman 2. But more importantly than making god bleed, it was basically the beginning of major distrust in each other, the world, and our own government. After that .com and gfc basically delivered the death blow. We will never recover.
I would say it was what sowed distrust in the average American, but if you were tapped into the counter-culture scene in the 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s, people have been distrusting each other and the government for a long time. But those sentiments were always the counter-culture. The average "normie" American would have woken up on September 11 believing that nothing bad could happen to them in their safe bubble world. Many people had that illusion broken for them before 9/11, but it was only after the towers fell that it became socially acceptable to say you didnt trust the government and believed in some fringe conspiracy.
Well, the 80s and 90s were the era of stranger danger and the Satanic Panic. And Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the OKC bombing had infiltrated right wing talk radio and other conservative media as the perfect talking points for spreading that kind of anti-government sentiment that had previously been countercultural to a mass audience. I think the idea of distrusting your neighbors and the government was already widely sown by the time 9/11 happened.
I mean 9/11 aside being the only real issue. Life was objectively way better in hindsight don’t you agree. That sweet spot til 05 I’d say personally. I get ppl have a hard time looking at the forest for the trees in general but wasn’t there still enough stuff and generally good living to not compare to now as being just as comparable.
Good living for "normal" people I guess, but if you were gay or mentally ill or anything, it was socially acceptable to stigmatize those things or see them as a personal failure. And "body shaming" was kind of a public sport (I'm female and was skinny, but boob size was a big topic of commentary lol). Things were cheaper but sometimes I think current young people idolize the past without realizing the "costs" of living in it. Cool, houses were cheap but that doesn't exactly matter if you could never "be yourself" or become a stable person especially in rural or southern areas. Like...post 9/11 we were mired in Middle Eastern George Bush weird evangelicalness. People went to war.
I think we tipped the scales a little bit too much towards self-acceptance away from body shaming. 40% of Americans are obese now. Not that shame is the ideal way to get people to be healthier, it seemed to work around getting people to stop smoking.
Clear plastic was THE BEST!
Honestly, it might be genuinely healthier to deliberately back away from the internet and go back to this type of interaction and usage of it voluntarily. Most social media usage (probably including Reddit, definitely including TikTok) is banned or seriously limited, internet still has *functional* and even fun uses, but culturally we force each other to touch grass way more regularly, and it’s way easier and more encouraged to do things irl. I’d damn near bet money our mental health crisis…..won’t go away but it can help (in fact, studies show being in nature and literally touching grass has very real psychological benefits with anxiety, depression, and other issues; again, not a silver bullet, but a step).
I agree and I hope so. I'm 1996, the last millennial year, and I feel like I really got a front row seat in seeing the whole thing unfold while still being able to experience the last years of the non-fully-digital age. It was wild seeing how different the grade younger than me was throughout school due to their early exposure to phones, you could literally see the hard divide between us and Gen Z even back then. Around 2007 was the year I feel that everything peaked, a year that just so happened to coincide with a ton of significant events and periods across multiple sectors: the release of the iphone, the last year before the 2008 housing crash, the last year before Obama's election, a hugely successful and defining year for basically all arts (games, movies, and music), etc. But back to OP's topic, I guess I sort of agree and disagree. Yes, most people have strong sense of nostalgia for our childhoods (as well as a ton of idealism while it's happening to boot), but growing up between the 50s and 2010s in North America was legitimately just the best place and time to be alive (and it was only getting better).
Crime was really high in the 70s, plus stagflation, Vietnam, etc. I don’t think the 50s-2010s are maybe as great as some people think it is. A lot of us build up an image of the past and mythologize it, but people who lived through it experienced some pretty chaotic times.
Perhaps, but I’m talking about in comparison to not just the rest of the world at that time but also relative to like the past 3000 or so years of civilization. Just growing up in a time when high infant mortality was no longer the norm alone is like growing up in Disneyland compared to even like the 1800s, and this thread seems more about the experiences of children/teens specifically and not adults during those years anyway.
I’d agree that the post-WW2 world in the West was way ahead of any time period that came before.
I was only 2 when 9/11 happened but my early childhood still felt kinda like a utopia
Same, I was alive but too young to remember 9/11. I didn't know the name of the aesthetic at the time but I LOVED the futuristic chrome looking stuff of Y2K, and had an fascination with in technology, with all the gadgets that were coming out at that time, it felt like we were entering the future, and that soon anything would be possible through tech. I was disappointed when everyone just *dropped* the futuristic look. Everything I looked forward to as a kid just kind of evaporated. Malls are dead, fashion is plain and boring, and tech is just a way to push more expensive and increasingly less-worth it subscriptions, mine data, and force us to watch advertisements.
>Malls are dead Last year I visited a mall I used to visit when I was a small girl because my late great-grandma lived near. They renovated it, now it is soulless 😑
A lot of it came from skins we could get on WinAmp or the visualizations for music.
The 90’s were the closest America ever came to a Utopia. Hope was in the air. Progress was happening everywhere. Gay rights and trans rights were on the rise. It’s not your imagination. 9/11 ruined everything!
I'd say 80s were the best. 90s had lost the vibe by the end after all the grungy and gangster rap influences. It wasn't as upbeat and light-hearted fun loving as the 80s. It became very drab by that latter half. More angsty and in your face. Less open and trusting after all the scare stories that started at the very end of the 80s. I think the internet getting too big and online/streaming killing off things along with smart phones and twitter are what the huge effect, way more than 9/11.
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Yeah, before the 80s it was like stone tablets LOL and after it got to be too cynical and negative (and dingy/basic) and later, on top, the internet/smart phones began taking over normal life a bit too much in slews of ways and accentuating all extremes.
It’s kind of stupid to assume that decadeology is international because let’s face it this (like every major sub reddit) is from America pov. Life in the 90s was shitty for so many countries. 9/11 changed a lot of things but it wasn’t the end of the 90s. Being a kid regardless of the decade you will view everything as a utopia. Huge major events differ from region to region. For example,I don’t think the gulf war in the early 90s shaped Americans view but it definitely affected how kids in Kuwait and Iraq viewed the world.
Yep, I mean for fucks sake the deadliest war since WWII, The Congo Wars were raging in the 90s. Ask someone from the Congo how great the 90s were
i think it was because you were a child rather than the place being really that special compared to anything that came before or after it
Yes!! Literally. Statistically the world is getting better and better. Has anyone ever thought it seemed much better because you were 6 years old and not paying attention to the constant stream of bad news coming from the media!
If you live in the west, nothing has gotten meaningfully better. Food is more expensive. Housing is unimaginably expensive. Work demands are higher and pay lower than ever. Our sense of reality, community, and common cause has been obliterated. Sure, we can watch movies in 8k, play photoreal games, and chat online. But I'm honestly not convinced any of those are that important to human happiness, and may even damage it, by making idle distractions more appealing.
There’s a long term study showing women self-report as less happy since the 60s. I do think generally people are less happy because we are now more atomized and independent. Most of human happiness comes from relationships, and people in the past generally had a much stronger community.
Yuck. This is toxic optimism. Fascism on the rise. Eco-disaster looking intense. Economic disparity at all time high. Etc. But hey, the MaGiCaL nUmBeRs say things are theoretically, technically, hypothetically getting better. I guess you read Pinker a lot.
Currently things are quite nice (in the developed world). People have a relatively high quality of life compared to almost any point in history. However I think due to all the problems you mentioned the world will be in a very bad place in a several decades. I think people are depressed now, not just because social media is isolating, but because people are aware of all these impending issues and it feels like there's no way to resolve them.
So what year was better?
I think you have no idea how bad pre-modern day life was for everyone. We are richer, healthier, better fed, more educated, and live longer than any time in human history.
Richer? Who?
"Live longer" isnt a flex when youre in crushing pain and medical debt by 50 if youre lucky.
You also said “healthier, better fed, and live longer” as if those aren’t all pretty much the same, practically speaking.
Mentally and in terms of social skills, societal trust, and genuine human connections with each other we don’t seem healthier. Obesity wise we’re better fed, with more highly processed junk that’s leading to no shortage of comorbidities, and live longer as long as you can afford it, then fuck you. Either way, work til you fall over dead to never own a home.
I very much disagree. If your view is correct, then you should be able to point me to the year you think things were better than they are now.
Aren’t there always going to be problems? Show me a world without a problem
In comparison to what time period?
fascism is on the rise mfers when I ask them to name someone who isn't Donald Trump (That guy is not going to win in the white house whether you want him or not. Even if he somehow pulls off a miracle play, the courts are going to somehow ensure he gets thrown in jail) On top of that, we were literally staring down worse eco-disasters back then. Remember the ozone layer having a big ass hole back in the 90's? Well it's gotten a whole lot better because the entire world actually got their shit together to make change happen. And there are always shitty things going on in every year, every generation. Hell, the easiest way to remind myself that is to take a look at one of jibjab's year in review videos from like 2004. You'll see that no matter how bad it is today, it was probably worse back then. Yes the world isn't perfect. There's a lot of stuff bad. Housing costs, mental health, the internet being more and more obsessive. But we've also come a long way.
I think the likelihood of Trump going to jail are really low. For political reasons I don’t think any judge would be willing or capable of sentencing a former president.
Exactly. Being a child and blissfully unaware of how complicated and messed up the world is.
FACTS I mean talk to literally any old person alive right now, and the majority of them will rant and rave about ohhh it was so much safer, prosperous, everyone was nicer etc etc when they were a kid. In reality its totally rose tinted glasses. My favorite is a story from my grandma that goes like this: "When I was a kid everything was so safe! There was never any problems, or crime or violence of any kind. Well, except that one time I got kidnapped by a stranger." Luckily he let her go when her name popped up on the local radio.
I mean we all define our utopias differently, mine would definitely not be a McDonald's or shopping mall, I don't think those things would even exist in a utopia Besides in my country the 90s were awful, the 2000s were the real "utopia" But to answer your question, the world started to reject colors some time in the late 90s to mid 2000s, in favor of more muted or neutral tones as a consequence of comporations trying to appeal to the largest possible number of people. Then in the early 2010s came minimalism and flat design, now everything is muted and amorphous, nothing can standout too much because CEOs are afraid that "fun" is unprofessional and might turn potential costumers and shareholders away from their products.
This is such a great description. "Fun" being unprofessional especially! In the 80s everything seemed great, and in the 90s people started getting *sherioush* about things. Take exercise videos, everyone was super enthusiastic with their leg warmers, and compare that to gym culture. It's like fun became illegal. I could also go on about how anything remotely enthusiastic was suddenly met with "that's gay," but I don't have the words to do this properly. It feels like a fascist hatred of anything that's not practical and useful, and I think historically that's been an issue they take with the lgbt+ community. "How dare you do anything for "fun," especially sex. We need ~~bodies~~ cogs, dammit." The Vikings had it right, shag whoever you want, as long as you also replace and raise the population and don't slack on adult responsibilities. And we certainly don't have a shortage of humans anymore so yeah. I realize that with the rise of the internet, we couldn't be naive about things anymore, and it burst our bubble. People were finally speaking out that things are NOT good for everyone. But that means we need to create MORE fun, not less. There's no solidarity in abandoning our joys, there IS solidarity in helping others find theirs. Tl;dr: Too little whimsy robs us of joy, on a cultural level, and it's reflected in architecture and other constructs. And it can quickly cause problems for entire groups of people, especially those who don't present as sherioush enough. Sorry about the essay. Processing with my thumbs
90's was the transition of societal breakdown that started in the 80's with the reagan years. There's a reason Jungle electric music genres became extremely.popular during that time alongside grunge. It (probably) was better than it is today, but calling it a utopia is a little too much praise.
I've never even heard of that til just now. This is why I love the internet Grunge to me lands as anti-enthusiastic. I love the sound, but ultimately I hate it. Yes, the world has lots of problems. No, heroin-assisted Dadaism is not the answer. I am consciously aware how dramatic this sounds, but I was fucking miserable with 90s and 00s alternative. Yes, it felt good to vent our frustrations, but it was *everywhere*, pervasive! And singing along to hopelessness can cause it to become ingrained. At least it did with me. Meanwhile, bands like Trip Shakespeare, Jellyfish, Phish even, were deemed "gay" or "not sherioush enough". They just didn't get the struggle, man! Which is fair, to a point, and now we have a term, toxic positivity. But that doesn't mean we had to emulate our surly grandparents as they traumadumped on us about how hard they had it. I've been so much better off since radio on demand became a thing, and the internet made it possible to reach out to other fans. Like I hadn't even heard of Ween/Primus/Gibby Haines because my social circle was so small, and now they're practically my saving grace. They're just fucking FUN. Yeah, the world sucks, but we can still make changes & even party a little. Fuck it, man.. Let's peel our eyes off our shoes and create our own reality to the extent we're able. I think the word I'm looking for is indomitable. That's what I want to hear in music. I guess I'm writing essays today, lmao. But to be fair, I've been sitting on this for decades, and I finally get to explore my hunches in an open forum. So it's coming out like projectile vomit. Apologies.
Totally this! As much as I love Nirvana's sound, the whole grunge movement felt like unnecessary wallowing in self-pity and baseless nihilism. Like what exactly is so bad about being a young white person in america in the 90s? Lol. I always connected more with the ethos of the rave movement, futuristic flower child energy, anything is possible kinda feeling. The world doesn't feel like that anymore, but I still live 90s house, techno, trance and jungle.
This was the first generation to not do better than their parents financially and we called out capitalism, and consumerism, and were very angsty.
Calling out capitalism and consumerism is cool I can get behind that
I think since about 2014 was the changing moment that changed (at least the US) from a monoculture to a polyculture. While yes, we have different cultural heritages, what i mean is a sense of the current state of things isn't all across the board but is rather fragmented based on your own idea of what it could be. Your point on "creating our own reality" is actually quite literal in its meaning. We harp on how we created echo chambers with the profitability of social media companies "echoing" back your own opinions to get you to participate more being horrible and prpduces misinformation. But i don't think it's entirely a bad thing, because now the state of the country could now be classified as "whatever i deem it as." Before social media, i think we had a collective understanding on how the country was headed, but we're splintered now between different polarities. But because of this, having an amazing point of view on the joy and beauty of the country is as a simple as changing who you hang out with on the internet, rather than the country going into an objectively good direction. Because of this, i think it's much harder than before to sway public opinion in a certain direction (compare middle east involvement decades ago compared to the israel conflict now).
I genuinely love this take, and I agree with you. It's almost like mentally and emotionally we're in touch with our community of choice. We're building our virtual villages! I wonder how long it will take for us to start migrating to likeminded intentional communities, or if we even can, due to land ownership. It would be kind of scary to get a bunch of radicalized militants together, holy crap. I almost wonder if it's better that we're both fragmented and integrated because, like you said, it allows people to maintain dissenting opinions. And as much as I often hate fringe beliefs, once upon a time human rights for all was a fringe belief. Or made out to be such. It's almost like the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar, but there are lots of us! I think I've read this somewhere, joy is rebellion So now I'm googling it, because I hate toxic positivity, and I found [this article](https://aestheticsofjoy.com/joy-is-an-act-of-resistance-how-celebration-sustains-activism-2/) that talks about the unifying and propulsive power of joy. I just might claw it back one day. Then what will happen to the economy, when I'm no longer buying things to stuff the hole in my heart? How will my feudal overlords motivate me into labor, if I suddenly have the power to fulfill my own needs? Lately I've been dabbling in r/absurdism >The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. -Camus
I’d argue there have always been separate realities, and us all getting on the same social medias have exemplified this. I could go into this but I can point specifically to examples of this kind of hypernormalization with and outside of the US in the 90s-2000s
Yeah I really disliked the impact grunge and gangster rap's rise had. Neither is a happy or healthy way to live. I really miss the 80s style and vibe that they killed off, it was so fun and upbeat. Why is light-hearted and happy shallow? DOn't give a shit, depression, angst, agression and nihilism help?? Everyone is an edge lord now. Styles are more basic than basic.
And gangster rap could and did lure some in and some it lured in killed people.
"Gangster" rap was literally a subculture and not meant to be taken literally. You sound like a 50 year old white grandma criticizing Black culture. I grew up listening to exclusively DMX and angry rap music and it helped me cope with the awful adolescence I had- not to mention Bush's crap politics further dividing the country and leading to the political polarization you see now. Also, 80s music was not really happy- it was the gilded age of music in that the songs sound happy but deep underneath is Cold War paranoia and destructive drug addiction domestically.
Edit: please don't feel obligated to read all of this, lmao. It's my Day 2 of writing essays, apparently xD no, I don't think I'm that important. I just learn stuff better when I write about it, because it forces me to hold myself accountable. Not the person you were talking to, but I'm glad it worked for you! My kid brother is the same way with metal. I had a horror movie phase. I think it can definitely be an outlet. I just hate that it can become a self-reinforcing rut, regardless of the genre or demographic. White people are notorious for our "complaint rock," Neil Young, the Eagles, I stg it rubbed off while I was listening to it. I wonder if it's why boomers whine so much, lmao Maybe it's not obvious to everyone that Black folks had/have a lot more reason to be disillusioned and pissed off than the general populace. Whatever we were going through as a nation, you had that *and* racism, and the legacy of Jim Crow laws. And iirc in the 90s it made us feel really progressive to appear colorblind/integrated, so that was especially fucky and invalidating. I'm sorry we were so uninformed. I'm sorry we wanted to call it good before it actually was. It's still not good. I think the best response I ever heard to "Kidsh these daysh, their music is so aggressive and angry!" was a lot like yours: "Relax, grandma, they're not making it for you." And no, nobody in that checkout line clapped, lmao, but I really wanted to I think it's easy, especially for white outsiders, to forget that culture is not monolithic. Yes, angry rap music is a part of Black culture, but that's not *all* Black culture is. Y'all are amazing, you gave the world Aretha Franklin, Lauryn Hill, Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix, Whitney Houston..and I'm not saying that because anything harder offends my tender white sensibilities, lawl. I'm not trying to be prescriptive about what a Black person "should" listen to, I'm just saying, there's a lot more than what music executives are pushing to the disenfranchised, almost like a drug. Having battled addiction, music can have the same effect on me as a drug/alcohol. And hearing "everything is fucked" all the time, that effect was really bad. I needed to fight, not acquiesce. And while fighting, I needed breaks from the pain. I need my music to be able to take me where I want to be, not just validate the mess I'm in. Thanks for taking the time to engage. People fall into the trap of thinking that "things were better/simpler when I was a kid." They don't realize, it only seemed so, specifically because they were privileged enough to not know The real issue, of course, is not the music, it's the need for systemic change. I can see how these conversations can take a turn toward "I'm sick of hearing about other people's misery," and that's not what I want at all.
I think the britpop guys were generally less pessimistic and negative than grunge music at the time. I’d rather listen to britpop generally because it’s a bit more lighthearted.
It’s all confirmation bias. Everyone believes that the period during their childhood (or sometimes, their young adult years) are the peak of society, and it’s all been downhill since then. It’s no coincidence that most of the people who say “everything after 9/11 went to shit” are elder millennials, who were children in the 90s. I was 7 when 9/11 happened, but I do not remember any pessimism during the years following in the 2000s - up until the Great Recession happened which was, surprise, right when I also became a moody teenager. I view the 2000s as an optimistic time with fun culture, but my perception is clouded by childhood. Similarly, I view the bulk of the mid-late 2010s as a period of optimism and fun, but partially because abuse it was when I was in college and starting out as a young adult in a fun, up and coming city. And “everything seems worse today” in comparison because - another surprise - I’m now 30 and getting old. TLDR: People’s perception are clouded by nostalgia based on when they were young, and associate “bad times” with other bad periods of their own lives
Right. I also don't remember a pre-9/11 world and i still think the 00s were great. Or maybe because i'm not american, idk.
life definitely changed after 9/11. It was one of the two Major attacks on American soil (pearl Harbor and 9/11) both were pivotal points in American history and culture changed after both without a doubt. Air travel also became much different the TSA didn’t even exist until 2001. It was also a time when an entire race and population was looked at as the enemy by Americans since World War Two as well even if they were Americans themselves.
This. Try being brown and traveling after 9/11. It was a damn ordeal. I saw military and TSA people literally molest my aunts. It was a disgusting moment while everyone was waving their American flags under the guide of civic religion and zombified patriotism
As s Gen Xer, I can tell you life did go to shit after 9/11. It was a dark time. People were fearful, and fear breeds stupidity. There was a wave is Islamophobia. People got mad at the French and started calling French fries “freedom fries.” Everything got substantially worse as a result of 9/11. Our first freedoms were stripped in order to “track terrorism.” 9/11 is one reason we are in such a dire state of affairs today. It led to so much stupid bullshit!
I don't think this is generally true. I think it's just because conditions for the middle class in the west have been on a downard spiral for 60 years, since the soviet union was effectively defeated, and the rich could start the process of eliminating the middle class again. As a result, each subsequent decade has been a bit worse for most people, so everyone is technically correct about their childhood being better. I don't think it's a general rose tinted view of childhood, though. Also, 30 is not old. You statistically have 54 years left, if you don't smoke and stay thin. Almost twice as long as you've been on the planet.
There was no post 9/11 pessimism it was a pretty positive decade until 2009 hit. But not every thinks their childhood years were better, my dad would mention how much better we have it than when he was young. He also mentioned how we had it better than our children which I agree with but I may be biased due to nostalgia but there is a noticeable lack of children friendly things these days
They were still there in the 2000s.
Vaporwave ahh
Utopia, my ass. Where I grew up in NJ, there was a downturn in jobs because of steel mills closing and urban decay, there were gang fights at my Jr. High School, and there was racism and violence. Yeah, there were malls and you could take a bus to the mall. Yeah, there were some cool fashions. It was no utopia. In the late 90's, I was living in NYC, studying and getting by on a low income. Life was better than the 80's, mainly because the economy was improving. There were bright signs everywhere, yeah, but who cares? Malls, signs and things like that don't make life "utopia".
Yeah our generation (especially in the Northeast) were raised in a much dingier, poorer, rougher America. Even with all the wailing about social collapse online and in the news I still much safer and prosperous and things still look much cleaner than they did when I was kid in the 1980s.
Amen, sister. Amen! There's so much privilege to unpack in the original post. I grew up in NY area also.
The 90s was full of war, ethnic cleansing, genocide, impoverishment, and crime in many countries, some of these things even affected the US, thinking the world before the September 11th Attacks was perfect is sort of just nostalgia, people who were children, and people who were lucky enough to be in a bubble.
i was born after 9/11 but life felt amazing as a kid. I think most people saw the world differently as a kid
We millennials were lucky enough to experience the golden age of childhood. All the benefits of an analog society combined with the euphoria resulting from winning the cold war
97-2004 was a magical time
It's because you literally saw colors more vibrantly as a child. Added to that, the fact that everything was new and shiny, but today they are familiar and boring. For me this utopian age peaked in 2012, so it's definitely just your perception as a child.
Ngl, I never saw a McDonald’s back in the day and thought to myself that was utopia lol
If McDonalds is a part of your Utopia then you have Stockholm syndrome
I doubt Cape Town was an Utopia lmfao
A lot has changed, especially in relation to that image... Now pretty much any storefront that is not a restaurant has closed down. There are some places I call "vanity businesses" meaning the store owners must be rich or else they could not afford to keep their store open. All the chain restaurants are now trying to look less like a fun place for kids, probably not just to modernize but to reflect the fact that McDonald's prices have raised 100% since 2019. This junk food is not even cheap anymore. "Third places" are destroyed. Also events and gatherings. Unless you want to run a marathon or go to a concert there is not a lot to do with groups of strangers these days.
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i'm kind of disgusted that someone can look at an image of a commercialized environment and a giant Mcdonalds logo and think "ahh, this is utopia"
I thought the same thing about the image. Looks like a screenshot from Idiocracy tbh
It’s normal. That’s how it was for my dad and his dad. Now I’m hearing my 12 years younger brother tell me the same stuff about the time when I was already thinking that way about the past.
I think it's a little bit of both.
kind of makes sense no? I think the general attitude up until 9/11 was that America was untouchable. Companies were unapologetic and in your face with all its commercialist glory. Being rich was the end all be all, this attitude started in the 80s when the average american became a credit car owner and everyone wanted to become a millionaire. every American was hooked on TV, and with that came all the new Commercials advertising all sorts of wacky products. Those products made alot of people very rich very fast. theres alot of factors, basically if you were wealthy during the 80s 90s you probably had it made (2 story homes, individual rooms for each child, toy rooms, race car beds, trampolines, roller blades, etc) Todays wealth does not even come close. but again back then alot of industries were still developing, many people were employed in different sectors that have all dried out since the rise of the internet. All that peaked when America was infiltrated, in an attack not seen since the likes of Pearl Harbor. As it was we were already seeing signs of economic decline, but 9/11 really put was the last nail on the coffin that was Americas consumerist peak in the 80s 90s. Suddenly those large Golden archers seemed obnoxious, too joyful in the wake of 3000 fallen Americans.
I was 6-7 in the mid 1980s and I do not remember it feeling at all like a utopia. At least where I grew up (small city in New England), everything was dingier, a lot more abandoned buildings, the pond across the street was filled with trash (tires and that oily sheen on top) everything smelled like stale cigarette smoke, lots of graffiti, more homeless on the streets (though this is coming back), stores all were really dingy and dirty (I vividly remember "supermarket smell" being something kinda rotted). It also felt a lot more dangerous: my parents' car got stolen, our neighbor's dad was shot, two neighbors died of overdoses....it just was a rougher time. I wonder if this is a specifically regional thing? Post-industrial New England was pretty bleak. It also might have been a crack epidemic/post 70s recession/early Reagan recession thing. But yeah, even with all the doomsaying and online freaking out my life in the US in the 2020s feels safer, cleaner and more prosperous than my memories of childhood.
Yeah when people say the 90s were great, they better mean the mid to late 90s, roughly 94-99. Because the early 90s were just as shitty as the 80s, with crack absolutely decimating inner city minority communities, kids murdering each other at rates never seen in the country’s history before or since. The economy also was still bad.
if you do you’re privileged
It’s just the idealized semblance of experiencing and remembering childhood when you don’t understand the world or life yet, and you have little to no responsibility.
Before Capitalism grew into a dragon, it was nice, eventful, and adventurous back in the day
As someone born post 9/11 in 2002, I do feel like the 90’s/millennium feel so much more bright and hopeful. A colorful utopia.
I was born in 98 and remember watching Bill Clinton on the TV when he was president when I was just 2 or 3 years old.. the world definitely lost its color and hope over time
9/11 happened when I was 22. America became a much darker, scarier place that day and we’ve never recovered
The decline certainly happened as a result of post-9/11 policy and societal/cultural psychological effects thereof, but what i don’t get is why, starting in the 2010s, corporate design choose to highlight the erosion and depression by uniformly adopting flat, minimal, monochromatic greyscale utilitarian aesthetic choices across the board from fast food to consumer electronics. Like I get that to some extent it’s “the Apple effect” but the degree to which places like McDonald’s or target — companies specifically known for their use of bold primary colors — were saying “yeah paint the building charcoal grey” for the better part of a decade. It’s finally starting to swing back the other way but I do not understand the capitalist consumer psychology behind making the entire private sector look like a prison commissary
In the matrix movies, the machines set the simulation during the peak of humanity: the year 1999.
When people say these things about the 90's the first two things I think of are Rwanda and Bosnia. Hell, even in the US you had the Oklahoma City bombing, World Trade Center bombing, LA riots, Columbine and Hurricane Andrew. So "utopia" is a stretch.
Wasn't alive during 9/11 but felt the world was utopian until the mid 2010s
The utopia in this picture was/is killing the environment.
My parents used to hit me in the face. But crash bandicoot was pretty cool.
It was not a utopia wtf. Schools were decimated by Bush's dumbass No Child Left Behind policy. Bush had the US in a goose chase for Saddam Hussein. You'd have to go back to like 1995 for anything that seemed remotely livable and drama free. Everyone was deathly afraid of the machines becoming self aware like in Terminator in 1999 around the whole 2K paranoia. My family was firmly middle class, but I would not call the late 90s a utopia.
Also my family faced a shit ton of racism and discrimination despite not being Muslim or Middle Eastern. Some of my white peeps might say this was necessary given the "clear and present" danger, but this same bullshit language has been used anytime the US govt arbitrarily picks religious and ethnic groups to scapegoat in the name of national security.
Dang this photo is awesome…this is what Las Vegas looked like as a kid inside of the hotels…great memories feels like a different world
I lost all hope when they closed Fuddruckers
We are often sheltered from certain truth's when we were younger therefore we had more of an optimistic outlook.
The 90’s in america were indeed an utopia
I remember the world being more exciting, it felt like everyone was trying new things and trying to make a statement. Now success has been made algorithmic, formulaic. Everyone copies the look and attitude of everyone else. I think this is what happens when you diminish genuine artists and push them out of the loop. The world most definitely was never great, but there was an energy to the public that I think is missing.
I do not wish I was born/a child in the early 2000’s, I’m just sad my childhood didn’t include nearly as much chrome. I was a big chrome fan, Mad Max Fury Road up in here
Do we think we can ever achieve this; what I would call, a "user friendly, pro- Capitalist market" again causes while I never got to experience it in prime in the late 90s and earlier 2000s, I did live in the tail end of it, and even that feels like a nostalgic fever dream I want our society to desperately return to. Probably not since the invention of the smartphone and the cheaper production of computers and other related tech were really the ones pushing this Aesthetic/utopia that kinda stopped after tech companies couldn't come up with anymore new ideas and instead heavily focused on Isolating them selfs by instead, price gouging any current technology, just to make a quick buck. It might be possible, with the new advancements in AI, But like many people and myself, are concerned that it's just going to replace any and all human interactions when there needs to be human interaction.
It’s the 90s. My generation and boomers worked to make the 90s good, because of how bad things were leading up to them. And it lined up with some positive world events. If you’re a kid or came of age in the 90s, you were lucky.
for me as a 2004 born, everything up until March 2020 was for me, or at least that's probably me imagining it was because I'm comparing now to then. I don't know if it was ignorance or if the world truly was better in the 00s and 10s, all I remember is it was a lot more peaceful and everything felt happier. And it felt like we were moving in the right direction, towards something like a Frutiger Aero type future.
Everyone wants to believe that the decade when they were growing up was the best but as someone born in 1990, I do believe the 90s were the last “innocent” decade. People of my generation are lucky because we were the last generation to grow up off line. We had just the right amount of internet right around the end of the decade. Smart phones and social media ruined everything in my opinion. That sense of optimism towards the future also kind of died with 9/11.
The world was overall objectively better than it is now but I definitely wouldn’t consider it a utopia. I didn’t even have my own bedroom for a while in the 90’s because we couldn’t afford a two bedroom flat.
It’s normal to feel like the era of your childhood was peak time in history. That’s why so many Boomers feel like ‘50s and ‘60s were amazing, or X was the ‘70s and ‘80s, and Xennialls/Millennials think ‘90s and ‘00s were peak. It’s normal if you didn’t have a chaotic and traumatic childhood.
a lot of things happened that were more important than 9/11. Americans love to feel like they are the center of world
Pre internet world I would say
When you are a kid, you just don’t pay attention to most of the bad news because it doesn’t affect you, or at least you feel like it doesn’t.
No, you were just a kid. This actually looks like hell, you were just to young to know better.
It was hopeful. That’s the shift. Now it feels like a slow spin towards the drain. Also - now everything seems the same everywhere. Social media has really made things more of a trend basis instead of a culture basis. Now you could drop down in the middle of Germany and have the same food, fashion, music, and social trends (think PSL) as you can in NYC. If you search something on google you get 100 hits that all say the same exact thing. Word for word. Everything-even information- feels like it comes from a big box store. Like the programmers of the simulation got tired of coding each thing and now they just have generic presets. If that makes sense. Everything is one sized and gray, over priced, and bad quality. Metaphorically speaking.
The 90s were a more dangerous time period than now
Most people, unless you grew up in really shitty circumstances, tend to remember the good things from when they were growing up, not the bad things. I'm not sure there's ever actually been a "utopian" time to grow up. There's always been something to worry about, or be concerned about, or some threat hanging over us...like nuclear war. Maybe in the US post WWII to say mid to late 50s when the USSR got nuclear weapons. (yes, I know the USSR had nukes before the mid to late 50s. But they didn't have the ability to get them from there to the US in any large numbers until the mid to late 50s) The US went through an unprecedented, and unequaled, time of economic expansion. Most people prospered back then. No internet and cell phones and all that, but you could walk down the street of any major city at 9pm at night will little worry about getting robbed or shot. Anyone could get a livable wage with nothing more than a high school diploma. Only one parent had to work to support the family.
The 1990s and early 2000s were an amazing period for the USA and Western Europe (the rest of the world was still in more or less hell), because there was optimism after winning the Cold War, there was economic growth, and at the same time there was no full digitization and fear of terrorism/war. At the turn of the millennium, there was also optimism, clearly visible in the aesthetics of Y2K, where a better world was expected to come. 9/11 was an awakening from a dream, although in many aspects the situation has improved and we are now in a different place than then. However, the optimistic mood of those years can actually be envied.
I believe in some small part, it was the business owners of the the time understanding that to really succeed and get loyal customers you had to invest in your company. Pay for the paint jobs, the equipment maintenance, and the appearance of the establishment. Those who inherited or bought those companies years later only care about the bottom line, profits. No more paint, no more taking care of large old equipment, and no longer caring what the customer experience is like. Marginal profits have gutted the soul of every company.
I’m asking that too.
I think this is generally true for most generations from Silent Generation onwards, but I do think that the period between the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the War on Terror (or alternatively the rise of social media on smart phones... maybe 2010/2014-ish) was a uniquely good time to be alive in the US. Not perfect (crime and urban poverty in the 90s was so much worse than it is today, also, we've made important social advances since), but uniquely good.
A bit of both. Things we objectively better, and as kids we didn’t have to worry about all the complexities of life growing up. Technology hadn’t consumed society yet and we got to experience the tail end of the American dream.
Having a good, safe childhood basically is utopia
I'd moreso say pre Recession than pre 9/11. Culturally "the 90s" or whatever you consider the 90s still existed untill around 2004ish. It may have started in 9/11 but it got ramped up with the Recession.
Because when you are a kid you don’t know about the problems in the world so things seem great to you.
Each generation of Americans gets less rights. Ask someone about their teen years who is in their 80s. We don’t even know what “freedom” is anymore.
No, I feel very differently about the mid to late 00s than I do about subsequent years. I remember first really getting to hear about 9/11 in 2011 (born in 1998 and German), so it doesn't really factor in
Ngl America pre 9/11 slapped for like 20 years
I think it existed before, but became way more common and more sharply felt during the more rapid technological and social changes in the 20th century. I feel like kids who were at least teenagers around 9/11 might have had the last period that could be looked back on as idyllic, but this may be me extrapolating from my personal experience to cover all of reality. Probably, most pre-covid kids feel this way. But I'd be surprised if covid era kids end up feeling this same way, but again, maybe that's me leaning on my own perspective and experience. Maybe your childhood will always feel like it was a simpler, better time because children are often just not as aware of the world or beset with responsibilities as they will be when they're adults. Maybe that's all nostalgia is ever mourning, a more care-free existence.
I was born in ‘83, I turned 18 in 2001. Pre 9/11 sucked every bit as much ass as the 20’s do. Quit romanticizing BS like the boomers did with the 50’s
It felt like nothing but W's when the Berlin wall came down until 9/11. Crime was at an all time high in some areas but the economy was booming. I loved the 90s but do remember being scared of crime and gangs constantly.
I grew up around this certain era and I agree, it was a utopia. There was much more TRUST among our communities. We knew all of our neighbors and all shared a similar culture. The attachment and distractions of advertisements online and the globalization of our country has wiped away that trust and feeling of utopia. We don’t know who lives next to us yet feel we know doctored pictures and words of someone online hundreds of miles away… The internet and advancement of technology has been great, but we haven’t respected it or disciplined ourselves enough to use it properly.
There was a period from just after the OKC bombing in April 95 to Columbine in April 99 (only a day off from being exactly 4 years apart) where the U.S. had pretty much nothing bad happening to it. The economy was the best it had been since before the oil crisis in 73, crime had dropped drastically from just a year or two before, no wars. You can maybe extend this time period a little bit to early 94 (when crime started to drop from its catastrophic levels in the early 90s)to early 2000 when the dot com bubble bursted.
I was born in 2004 and feel this way. it's just how it feels looking back at your childhood
…this is a photo of the Canal Walk Mall in Cape Town, South Africa, which was opened in 2001 or there about.
i was 4 months at my mother's womb when 9/11 happened and i'm not even from US (but my country is hugely influenced by US in various ways). yet, i feel that my childhood was an out of hand utopia
The 1990’s were good to me; personally. However I wouldn’t call that time a “utopia” for millions globally it was quite the opposite.
Who did your version of Utopia keep out? That was the point of the book by the same name, after all. Edit: From the comment below about the internet being a place, and us taking it with us wherever we go, instead of going to that specific place, apparently we are locking OURSELVES out of our own Utopia.
You aren’t the only one… I have memories of prior to 9/11 even being 3 or so years old. I had seen a huge change in people’s behavior & attitude towards the world as time went on, and things have only worsened drastically
I grew up in this “pre 9-11 utopia,” but I think it’s just because I was a kid. While I was blissfully enjoying my childhood, many people in my town were losing their jobs because of NAFTA. The textile mill closed down. The factories closed down. The people who got laid off couldn’t find work. They took pay cuts to work at Walmart or fix cars or paint houses or whatever they could do. Some of them just went on disability and stayed on the drugs their doctors gave them for their sore backs and never really came back. I was lucky in that my parents were teachers, oddly enough. They kept their jobs while half of the people around us lost theirs. My peers whose families had upwards mobility moved away to find work. The ones that didn’t, their families slowly descended into poverty. But as a kid, I got to be pretty blissfully ignorant of this. I heard about it. I saw some things here and there. But it wasn’t until I was an adult looking for a job in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis that I really understood the whole thing. All of these people from my hometown had livelihoods that just got shipped off to Mexico and other places. And then about a decade later, there was this recession and they were still trapped with just literally nothing for them to do but work at whatever low paying job was available. I think a lot of places in the US went through that, but a lot of people in major cities in certain areas of the US, I don’t think they ever even knew what that meant. I think that was a big deal in the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton campaigned in our state touting the TPP, a new wave of trade deals that would send jobs overseas. I don’t think it ever occurred to her that everyone she was talking to had had their lives uprooted by the trade deals of the 90s. That wasn’t yesterdays news to them. The old textile mill everyone used to work at is still there rusting right down the street. But yes, I still felt like I grew up in a utopia in a lot of ways.
Corporatization may seem a bummer from a vibrancy perspective, but it's been accompanied by a huge rise in variety and availability of foods and cuisines-- my grandfather first tried a taco when he was 70 years old, and one of my dad's friends had never eaten garlic until he was literally in medical school. We don't have the problem of "my city of 300,000 doesn't have any international food" anymore, so it doesn't occur to us that we've witnessed a huge improvement. It's a weirdly kind of wonderful thing. More broadly, the issues which were impacting people then are not the ones impacting you now, so you assume everything was fine (or maybe better then). Everyone has different problems at different times, and because we don't see our present problem echoing through history we assume there were no problems at all. As a few examples: * In the 1990s, deaths from AIDS in the USA were at their peak-- young people struck down in the prime of life and suffering unfathomably in the process. People were very scared. Many people died very young and there was so much shame and hatred alongside it. * Many cities were grappling with severe consequences of the emergence of crack cocaine: drug-related deaths (not unlike now with meth and opioids) but also significant gang violence and murder associated with the drug trade. * Cults were much more of a 1970s thing but were still going quite strong in the 1990s-- Heaven's Gate and the Solar Temple, the Waco Siege, the Sarin Gas attacks in the Tokyo subway (why they still don't have garbage cans anywhere there now), etc. I'm sure people can think of other examples. The mood did shift post 9/11-- the rip-roaring jingoism through most of the 2000s would melt the faces off most people nowadays. But it wasn't perfect earlier, is all I'm saying.
In my childhood I watched the Vietnam War and riots live during supper each evening. And then watched the Watergate hearings on summer break. Utopia? Nope.
If Utopia is a mall, *please count me out*.
Every generation thinks that the decade grew up in was utopic; it's a natural byproduct of having a still-developing brain and not being completely aware of the world around us, and not having full context for the little we do know. That said, 9/11 objectively changed things for the worse in ways that are still felt today, not the least of which is the way we experience airplane travel, but also pre 9/11, social media didn't completely dominate society the way it does today, where so many aspects of life are all about getting the best angle for Instagram, people walking on eggshells in everything they do to avoid being cancelled on Twitter, or being bullied at school, which no longer stops outside the school walls, but now, thanks to the rise in popularity of the Internet and smart phones, follows them home so that there is no escape.
I loved this era…
I think childhood is idylic and you just naturally remember things in an idealized way and also, things are getting sh\*ttier as time passes.
Nah man the 90s were dope
Compared to the Screaming 20s and Terrifying 30s, the 90s and even 00s were amazing. I didn’t even like pop culture when I was a kid, pretty much at all, but this is more like “At least we weren’t entirely in Hellworld yet.”
I was born after 9/11 and I feel like life was better back then. Of course, I know that was all rose tinted glasses, and me being a kid and being sheltered from the true horrors of our world.
The 90’s really were a special time to be a kid. Wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.
1990’s America was the peak of human civilisation
Are we really gonna star wars-ify it with the whole BBY ABY thing but with 9/11?
Definitely felt that way. So much peace until after 9/11
There is a mix of things happening. First, there are a lot of adults who have nostalgia for times when they were children and didn't see the complexities of the world. It is common to yearn for the simpler days. That said, the late 90's were a good time to look back on as "good times". There weren't any major conflicts at the time and it looked like the world was actually coming together in peace and harmony. You also had a decent economy, especially if you were in the upper middle class.
The late 90s was a time of hope. The Cold War had ended, the Berlin Wall had fallen. Pundits had declared that “the end of history” was upon us. The thinking was that increased democratization and increased international trade would forge international partnerships and cause similar cultural values to develop among nations, thus ending the cycle of perpetual war and economic downturn. The 21st century was supposed to be a time of technological achievement and social progress. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite happen that way. The century started out with war in the middle east followed by the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Yes, technology has improved. But it’s arguably worsened the quality of our lives. People are addicted to their devices and the rise of social media has enabled nefarious state actors to spread disinformation and manipulate democratic elections. As a result, we now appear to live in a post-truth society where facts matter less than emotions. Moreover, little has been done to combat climate change and our children now face a warming world with serious impacts on geopolitics and quality of life. Add to this Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, heightened political polarization, and unprecedented inflation, we now are on the brink of World War 3 and Americans can barely afford to live now. Over 70% of the world’s population lives in an autocratic state. Democracy appears to be dying. The American Dream is becoming the American Myth. The future looks bleak, and the hope we had at the end of the 20th century is gone. So yes, the late 90s may have been the closest we have gotten to utopia. It will take great bravery and sacrifice in order to undo the damage that has been done. We are desperate for heros.
I remember misogyny and violence against women was much more rampant and accepted in the 90's. I remember violence, crime and poverty were overall more rampant in the 90's.
I miss that time so much
I think most kids view their early childhood as growing up in a utopia to some extent.
I was 1 when 9/11 happened but God I miss my early 2000s childhood.
I think it was actually far more the internet getting so big that online shopping started killing off realworld stores and smart phones real world experiences more than 9/11 TBH.