Redpill me on the 90s. Was it really as good as some say or is

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it was a magical time

>more white people
>less shame
>fewer fatties
>people could joke about each other without worrying about offending people

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>>34680822
Nostalgia..
The 90s suck.
Don't get me wrong, I'd like to go back in time and relive some of my childhood moments, but it wouldn't be worth it to permanently go back there.

>>34680822
It was generally at least better than the 00s.

Well, the internet certainly had a different feeling to it. Youtube was pretty much entirely OC, and had no ads. Flash games were huge, places like newgrounds and albino blacksheep were getting their start in the late 90's. Dial up sucked because no one could use the phone.
However, because the internet was so slow, there were fewer complaints heard on a daily basis. With the rise of social media sites came more special snowflakes and an outlet for all of their feelings. Not to mention, a new way advertise to and control the public.


The overall feel of the 90's was pretty casual. Rock n' roll was still a very popular form of music. Terrorism was present, but before 9/11 no one was in a rush to carpet bomb the middle east, sign up for the patriot act, or suck a soldier's cock for the sake of nationalistic pride and public safety. The term "politically correct" had an entirely different meaning then.

>>34681265
>Youtube
>Flash games
>in the 90s
found the generation x cuck

>>34681392
OP said he wanted oldfag opinions, aka teenagers in the 90's. So, yes. Gen X reporting in. Are you proud of being a millennial or something?

>>34680822
They were just the 2000's light.

Some of it was good and some of it was bad.

The area that I lived in at the time was in California and it was very white and didnt have any real crime in the 90s.
By the time my family moved to Idaho in 2005, I left after I graduated in 2001, the area was very diverse with more mexicans and crime was out of control. The reason they moved was 3 stolen cars out of our damn driveway of all places in less than a year along with one attempted break in to the house. He house break in the cops showed up 25 minutes after we called them and that was in a city of over 180,000

Some of the bad about the 90s was in school bullies got away with a lot more. Getting beat up was normal and the school didnt give a shit unless they witnessed the incident. All the memes about getting your lunch money stolen was real and there wasnt much you could do about it, tell your parents sure but when they call the other kids parents they didnt give a shit, cops would laugh.

>>34681265
Youtube came out in 05.

The internet was slow as shit and cost too much so no it sucked.

>>34680822

Magic the gathering online.
People telling me they were going to hack me in yahoo chat.
Competing search engines like lycos,all the web etc.
No social media bullshit.
I used to have a geocities site just full of gif's.

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36 year old cyborg here. It really was good.

>Better jobs/economy

Minimum wage was 5 but all the dipshit jobs were paying 3 more than that where I lived. My uncle got a new job and his boss tried to sue him because 15 of his coworkers quit and followed him there. Employers were literally fighting over workers.

>People were more reliable

I had to meet my friends at specific landmarks at specific times. None of this texting your friends that you're just around the corner when you haven't left yet. You could hang out with a popular person without their phone blowing up constantly.

>Geek girls

If you met a girl playing D&D or at anime club you could be sure she was an actual geek. It wasn't like today where it's a fashion statement and geek girls are worse than Stacies(ie, Jessica Nigri).

>Better internet

More close-knit. Smarter people. No narcissistic social media. Late night chats with friends on ICQ/IRC/AIM.


The only thing I like better today is the TV. Shows like Mad Men and Stranger Things would have been unimaginable back then. TV shows had lower budgets, more meddling from corporate turds, there were obnoxious things like laugh tracks, and episodes were expected to self-contained. Every once in awhile a good show would pop up like Daria or Firefly('02, close enough) but these inevitably got axed.

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>>34681452
>am I proud to still be youthful
Yes yes I am old timer

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>>34680998
>tfw litterally heard some late 90s comedian complaining about political correctness the other day

This is a meme.

>>34681563
The good old days man.

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>Playing Vampire the Masquerade and Shadowrun without being interrupted by faggy cell phones
>Crushing on Kirsten Dunst and Winona Ryder
>Using AltaVista to find caches of MP3s hosted on students' university websites
>Updating my Livejournal
>Going to concerts without 500 faggots trying to make shitty recordings of it on their phones
>Making lists of things for our first friend with Road Runner internet to download for us
>Reading Sandman comics with qt goth gf
>SJWs weren't a thing. Being Liberal made you feel like part of a counterculture resistance and not a self-loathing internet lynch mob.

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My dingdong retail job actually had more stuff than needed and there were even retired/part-time backup people. So you could call in sick without everyone hating you. And the floaters got away with sneaking away and wandering the mall. Nowadays the fad seems to be having only 2-3 people running an entire store.

Less of a NEET culture. Even the nerdiest/shyest people had to work part-time and get out and about to buy basic stuff. You couldn't just stream music on YouTube, you actually had to buy CDs.

Lots of wandering around in the woods and walking to school. Kids fighting in the halls. Biking down steep hills. Kids carrying knives and wrist rockets. Definitely wouldn't fly today.

Working up the nerve to call girls. Going on actual dates. Texting seemed like such a godsend when it became a thing but it just ends up wasting time/enabling friendzoning. 15 minutes at the coffee shop will give you a better idea of how you gel with someone than a month of text exchanges.

>>34681673
> Livejournal

Invented in 1999, hardly a major part of the 90s

> No SJWs

Liberals have been getting worse and worse as time has gone on. 90s liberals may have been less bad than those of today, but you can rest assured that they were worse than any other time period.

>>34681887
* any other time period before the 90s

>>34681649
yup, the soccer moms won.

>Born in '87 here.
The 90s were shit in a lot of ways, great in others.
EVERYTHING you take for granted now cost money in the 90s:
>Batteries
Nothing was rechargeable. All of it ran on batteries. Listen to music? Walkman needs batteries. Toys? Batteries. If it didn't plug into the wall, or was in any way portable, it required batteries. What about rechargeable batteries?? This was before Lithium Ion technology. You had NiMh at best, which was shit, btw. YWN know the struggle of carrying around or owning a pile of half dead batteries, switching and swapping, moving from your Atari Lynx, to the GameBoy, to the portable radio, to the TV remote. Or loaning someone your CD player with no batteries, because batteries were precious. When was the last time you even bought batteries for general use?

>Music
There was no such thing as a free download for most of the 90s. Even that required that you had internet, which wasn't common, and it was slow as shit, so even if you did, it took forever. So for 95% of people, you either knew someone with the music you wanted, and shared, bought music, or listened to the radio. That was basically it. Free music that you own and listen to on demand was a unicorn. Music on demand in general, for that matter, was vastly uncommon outside of tapes & CDs.

>Pictures
Film required. Every picture had to be paid for TWICE. Once for the film, again for development. Then if you wanted people to see them, it meant carrying them around to show to people.

>Video Games
Try this one for yourself. Don't play any games that came out for PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, or later. No GameBoy Advance, no PC games made after 1999. See how long it takes you to get bored without "muh graphics", or "muh 3d", or "muh open worldz".

>Anime
You either had cable, or you had a ton of money for imports and you spoke Japanese, or you watched one of the dozen that came on TV.

All this is from the perspective of a kid, of course. I was only 12 when the year 2000 came around.

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Best memories:
>Taking a qt Jewel Staite lookalike to a Third Eye Blind concert
>Shared anime culture. Save Our Scouts, making fun of Apollo Smile, trading VHS fansubs
>I-Zone camera(mini polaroids with adhesive backing)
>Badass senior prank(200 kids biked to school as slowly as possible, delayed school 2 hours, pissing off commuters, and making the local news)

I would seriously an hero right now if the afterlife could be the 90's teenage experience

>>34681993
>>Born in '87 here.
You were a young child in the 90s and dont even remember the early 90s.

>Nothing was rechargeable
You had power adapters.

>Music
Very hard to copy a cassette or cd.

>video games
When you grow up around it its fine, your not going to remember much about the culture of the era when you are age 1-10, that kicks in when you are a teenager.

>>34680822
>born 89
Memorizing my friends house numbers to call them.
>wanna hang?
>"sure"
>k. Meet at the big tree in 15, bring your bike. Let's ride the farthest ever today.
It feels kinda odd now that you either got a hold of someone at home or you had to find them by asking around.
>"ya Josh was here but left to go to Bronte like an hour ago"

>>34681993
Me still.

>Anime (cont.)
Most kids I knew didn't know what anime was except for the asians. Even kids who watched Dragonball or Ronin Warriors or Sailor Moon saw it as another regular cartoon, no different from western ones.

>There was no such thing as piracy outside of bootleg movies or CDs for a LONG time.
SNES roms and emulators weren't perfected until after 1997/98.
Bootleg anything still cost you money to get it from the bootlegger 99% of the time.
Nobody even bothered with bootlegged TV shows.

>Shit video quality on EVERYTHING.
Imaging watching EVERYTHING on earth in 480i. That's it. This was the norm.

>You knew every kid in your neighborhood, and they knew you.
Everybody played outside. Everybody went to everyone else's house. There was little else to do. Kids in your neighborhood were unavoidable when you were outside.

>TV
TV was better in the 90s because there was no alternative. There was no way to skip commercials for most people. They knew you were watching TV, and that you were stuck watching the commercials, so they spent more money on it. Binge watching cost money for every show also. There were no subscription services for on demand anything until 1999. You either owned it on VHS, or it didn't happen. Same with radio. Radio was a lot better because you had no options. XM and Sirius weren't a thing until after 1998 or later.

>Maps and directions to everywhere
NO GPS, ANYWHERE. EVER. You got directions from someone and hoped neither of you fucked it up.

I could go on for a LONG time.

Felt like there was less rapid pop culture turnaround. Plenty of kids still played NES in the early 90's even after SNES was out. And teachers showed us an education program from the 80's(link related) and a show called High Feather from the 70's..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KnR-biKYKA

There is nothing positive about 00's. People don't want to remember that era like they don't want to remember the 30's.

>>34680822
>no niggers/shitskins in europe (frenchcucks don't count)
>first days of the internet when it was truly a free place and free from jewing and normies
>no sjw bullshit

>>34682198
Snes only got good when Super Metroid was released.

I like NES and Genesis because they have more arcade style games. Snes was too complicated for my simplistic taste in vidya. I still feel the same way.

>>34682204

I have some good memories of 00-05 like conventions/roadtrips and downloading anime in my dorm but the late 00's seem like a barren wasteland. I can't think of any memorable shows or good experiences. Shit economy, expensive gas, seeing everyone become Obamabots...

>>34682243
Early 00's was great.

>>34682145


>You were a young child in the 90s and dont even remember the early 90s.
I remember the early 90s just fine. I was already in school in 91. But the life of a 3/4 year old is what it is. But now, they have tablets. 4 year olds didn't have tablets in my day.

>You had power adapters.
That assumes you had an outlet, and you were close to it, and it had a free socket. This was often not the case, unless you never went outside.

>your not going to remember much about the culture of the era when you are age 1-10
I think you may have a memory problem. I remember arcades, taking your cartridges next door, playing new stull like Killer Instinct and Sonic 2 and Duck Hunt and tons of stuff from the time. I remember New Order on the radio, and the new Nirvana albums and INXS. But, I live in LA, so that shit was everywhere.

I miss the old fashioned billboards. I know it sounds stupid, but there were some amazing ones on Sunset Blvd back in the day.

>>34680822
It was shit. Slow ass computers, shitty 3D games and shitty porn.

Imagine a world where people only have land-line home phones. An internet where images literally load pixel by pixel and external storage was limited to 2mb. Teenagers masturbating to real-world magazines instead of hentai. Families watching television together. No computer, no video games, nothing to do but sit and watch TV. At least the shows were better back then right? Nope! You'll have all of about 40 channels, if you're lucky.

>>34681649
There's always been political correctness, but it's way more over the top now.

In the '90s political correctness was mostly concerned moms complaining that TV shows were too risque or video games were too violent. But you didn't have mentally ill freaks calling you an oppressive bigot for using normal pronouns.

>>34681452

>youtube
>in the 90s
>i am of old fagging yes

Youtube didn't exist then you role playing faggot.

All we had were shitty geocities and angelfire websites with dancing skeletons.

>>34682375
It's still a tiny minority. Social media (Twitter) amplifies this minority to the fullest.

>>34682405
>before search engines like google existed
>searching the wide net for porn
>www.porn.com www.sex.com www.ass.com

figuring out my fetishes watching horror movies. a lot of biking and talking to kids in your neighborhood, "exploring", anime that wasn't westernized, cd players, etc. people were nicer, more social/helpful, they wouldn't really look at you weird if you had dirty jeans or combat boots on. everyone is vain and sad now.

>>34682429
Did you miss the millions of privileged women marching across the entire globe because they don't have enough privilege?

>>34682586
A relative minority.

>>34680822
it was a much better time to be an adolescence robot

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>>34680822
There was only one benefit of the '90s.

A E S T H E T I C S
2 0 0 2

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good music
amazing motorcycles
the 90s was pretty good

>>34680822
I was some what happy in the 90s have chronic depression don't socialize or much of anything

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>>34680998
>yfw watching old mcdonalds commercials on youtube seeing how cheap they used to be
>yfw 2.89 will never go that far again

>>34682243
>but the late 00's seem like a barren wasteland.
Holy fuck this is it.

It's as though western culture just fucking crumbled and collapsed and nothing replaced it. I still feel that emptiness.

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>>34684609
sometimes you get lucky

>>34684778
Early 2000s were the last shreds of post-WWII prosperity. Any wealth left was all blown on pointless wars and bank bailouts. The rise of smartphones and social media also ensured that any culture that was left became completely bland, homogenized and forever tied up with some half-baked Internet movement. Basically, the late 2000s-now have been a gradual period of decline. 2020s will be a horror show, 2030s will be a nightmare surpassing the Depression/WWII.

>>34680822
People didnt have problems with other people, they hard problems with things. That's what made the 90s a good Era. Look at this Era, look at the hatred between people, this is not good, it's a slippery slope we walk on. One that we seen to have a very small grasp on.

>>34685052
>2030s will be a nightmare surpassing the Depression/WWII.
Honestly at this stage I doubt we even have that long left. What has not yet collapsed is on the brink of collapse.

>>34682303
>I think you may have a memory problem.
Nice deflection. Not talking about specific memories but with regards to the actual culture, most kids dont even understand what culture is until they are a teenager.

Also you must of had shit devices. I remember my cassette player being able to last 8-11 hours of continuous use on one set of batteries. The only thing I remember having to use a bunch of batteries was game boy but even then I only ever played it when I was at home.

>>34685052
>2020s will be a horror show, 2030s will be a nightmare surpassing the Depression/WWII.
Eh I dont think it will be that bad for that long.
I am thinking the mid to late 2020s through the early 2030s will be very bad but it will only last 10-12 years, not 20 years.

>>34681563
This dude knows what's up although you do have a few years on me. The availability of media is exponentially better now though I'd contest that the hunt for it and discovering new ways to access info and entertainment was such an intangibly great feeling to have. Now just toss on Spotify or youtube and you'll get what you want. Wanna talk to friends and or meet people that you can scout out ahead of time? Man you have it easy, install Spybook and you basically have all the tools to see if your prospect is attractive and sharing the same interests.

It was so legit getting people's AIM contacts through sketchy classmate back channels and actually finding out about the other person, I got so much more female action and interaction then it was phenomenal and validating, now it's all vapid rants and hurt feelings that everyone apparently needs to know about.

It was cool times man, there was actually a pain in the ass kind of excitement having to install a newer OS off of like 16 floppy disks just go have a slightly better GUI and shit, so much random autism about the times. But it was cool, just not nearly as cool as people recall and unfortunately it's culturally worse now IMO.

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Anyone here old enough to remember Kurt Cobain's death?

>>34680822
90s were great but the Internet was slow (the day mommy got 50KByte/s DSL, yay) and cellphones couldn't do much.

>>34681993
This guy: >>34685727
Forgot about the batteries. Polymer-Li-Ion wasn't invented yet and everything depending on protable electrical energy sucked, especially Notebooks (cellphones not that much because they couldn't do anything).

>>34681265
>YouTube
>in the 90s

>>34685850
Late 80s kid reporting in, we used Altavista. I can remember when Google was invented, though - damn good search engine.
I was among the kids who still Altavistaed, though, to be edgy.

Reading threads about this stuff always makes me want to quit the internet for good; of course as a neet, I am extra addicted to it, but it always feels so hollow.

>>34680822

People were nicer/more optomistic. Technology was worse. Music (popular) was more diverse. Porn was rarer.

>>34680822

I'm probably the only person who unironically posts on /r9k/ from a windows 95 computer.

>>34686014
I like how in the 90s I still had false hope about maybe finding a cute girl to have kids with (including big titted 12 year old school crush). Seems funny now.

>>34680822
the 90's were awful

>be in your room watching Clarissa Explains it All and wishing Melissa Joan Hart was your gf
>suddenly mom walks into your room
>"Anon there's a classmate of you on the phone"
>shit
>"Tell him I'm not here, mom."
>"Anon you need to make friends, you'll thank me someday."
>Go to the phone
>They only wanted to know if we had something to do for school the following day because they had missed it that day
>Had to stand there talking awkwarldy with mom and dad just a couple of feet away

>>34685706
You mean murder?

>>34685322
Nah man i was born same year as that guy and I can guarantee you the sense of culture and societal memes were absolutely as remembered. People only attach the feels to them now because as opposed to listening to new Tupac pre-murder they have extremely over produced ad-nauseum ways to access these pieces of information and entertainment. You really think the sheer volume of MTV, late-night computer shenanigans degraded our memory and or cognition of the times? I challenge that it's clearly far worse and autistic now, the kids can't get away from it and their memory is a blur of the same pop song with the Millennial Whoop and reboot of movies for the 3rd time whereas there was far more options and interest then, albeit primitive far less insane to have jammed down your throat with tablets and I phones from 1 year old. I absolutely contest that we do remember the culture and the vibe, just because it's been vampirized into a shell of what it was doesn't reduce what we recall.

>>34682162

>Imaging watching EVERYTHING on earth in 480i. That's it. This was the norm.

Except movies at the cinema. Those had been HD for decades. Camera film has a stupid high resolution of about 35 megapixels in todays measurement, so did movie projectors. Thats why the movie you watched at home on VHS never looked as good as it did in the cinema...because you'd watched it in HD there.

>>34686085
Screencap now.

>>34680822
Remember how the internet was better before everybody started getting it on their phones? Think of something better than that.

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>>34680822
i was born in 88 and everything just felt amazing in the 90s

>>34686548
You know I've never met anybody born in 1988, just 1987 or 1989. What is the source of this conspiracy?

>>34680822
It was easier to make friends as a kid back then because all you had to do was to go outside with your bike and you'd almost always run into other neighborhood kids riding theirs.

Well, at least that's how I remember it anyways. Maybe it wasn't actually that great. It just makes me really sad seeing my nephews/nieces and younger cousins playing with their tablets all day.

>>34686291

Not on it now, but I'm a poorfag that can't afford a smartphone, and when I stay round my father's, it's the only option I have. At least he has broadband.

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>>34686548
Same here. All the cartoons were great, toys were awesome even though they were shitty, and games were perfect.

I remember how everyone seemed to have this phone too.

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>>34686548
>Diddy's Kong Quest
>Always thought it was Diddy Kongs Quest

>>34686107

Yeah I had that hope and many others back then too. I always got the sense in the 90's that if you worked your ass off you could be something. I don't see that today, judging by what I see kids doing their ambitions seem to be:

1. Have cool phone+clothes
2. Drink starbucks
3. Get drunk at weekends and fuck.
4. Stare at phone all day.

That's it for them, maybe they know there is no hope for anything better than that in these times.

>>34686712

It is in the Berenstein universe.

>>34686852
>maybe they know there is no hope for anything better than that in these times
Actually, a lot of them do. They are aware that once they finish school they will struggle to find jobs, housing, and that they will have to go keep studying even if that's not what they want to do/are good at just to barely make ends meet.

It's sad