Current Events > Was the world better in the 90s?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Technically, I only lived during 7 years of the 90s, but they were pretty good years!!

I was ages 15-25

Got married

Finished undergrad and grad school

Yeah, pretty good

Most people were still openly homophobic in the 90s. Even people who didn't hate them, had homophobic ideas engrained in their minds through culture

Was safer.

I bet it sucked

Prince was alive, so yes.

Ratchetrockon posted...

I bet it sucked

Was much better than what followed

Shotgunnova posted...

Prince was alive, so yes.

Formerly known as

For some people.

BoomerTheGreat posted...

Was safer.

For who?

economy was better, no real internet yet, everything was more fun and experimental.

Zikten posted...

For who?

And here we go

inloveanddeath0 posted...

And here we go

It's a valid statement.

That CE will turn into trash for 500 posts.

For me it was, then again I was a kid or teen for most of it. It wasn't all gravy, but it felt more free and less stressful in some ways.

Better in what way?

Killmonger posted...

Better in what way?

Being a child/teen is most likely the response

As someone who grew up in the 90s.... kind of? It mostly started getting better towards the end when cd players became more used. But the headphones were absolutely awful. No matter what pair you picked up it would always sound like garbage and was guaranteed to catch a couple of your hair strands each time you tried to take them off.

Everything was affordable. I could go to the corner store and pay a dollar and get a small brown paper bag filled with candy. Soda was 50 cents a can, and Mcdonalds still had Shake Shake Fries. Games were more consistently better as well. It was very rare that you would pick out a bad game when going to the game store. And who could forget the YTV Zone/Fox Kids Saturday Morning cartoons.

Pretty much the same.

It was before the internet got traction. I remember internet was slow, the videos online were shit quality. For social media, Im not sure how popular myspace was though.

But i dont think youtube and better quality games would have stopped me and my friends playing sports back then. We would play football (soccer) til we're tired af, grab a pie from the corner store for lunch and then play some more.

Oh yeah, we still played games but instead of being online, i would go to his house to play animal crossing, smash bros melee and super monkey ball.

One thing the internet really killed, are the couch co-op games.

The world was a better place before the internet got big imo

Why did so many sad songs come out in the 90s????

Like the on-ear type headphones? People still buy the koss variants and complain about hair pulling lol. I read that they sound decent tho at least the ones made by koss they just lack subbass cuz they don't have a seal
Ivany2008 posted...

As someone who grew up in the 90s.... kind of? It mostly started getting better towards the end when cd players became more used. But the headphones were absolutely awful. No matter what pair you picked up it would always sound like garbage and was guaranteed to catch a couple of your hair strands each time you tried to take them off.

Everything was affordable. I could go to the corner store and pay a dollar and get a small brown paper bag filled with candy. Soda was 50 cents a can, and Mcdonalds still had Shake Shake Fries. Games were more consistently better as well. It was very rare that you would pick out a bad game when going to the game store. And who could forget the YTV Zone/Fox Kids Saturday Morning cartoons.

Ratchetrockon posted...

Why did so many sad songs come out in the 90s????

Like the on-ear type headphones? People still buy the koss variants and complain about hair pulling lol. I read that they sound decent tho at least the ones made by koss they just lack subbass cuz they don't have a seal

90's emo/hardcore was at its best

Yes, but mainly because the negative impacts of Reaganomics hadn't hit yet and blow back for our decades of being evil imperialists hadn't blown back on us yet.

It was basically the peak of the "good times" that short term, short-sighted policy decisions brought us.

Economically, yes. Late stage capitalism had not yet kicked in, and we didn't have a Republican for President. The GOP also weren't insane yet.

Everything else, not so much. Homophobia was still rampant, race relations were still not good, and bigots still felt safe.

The only reason things are pretty bad now are because of late stage capitalism continuing to go unchecked, and bigots being as active as they were during the civil rights era.

Things were definitely a lot better in the 90s

B18Champ posted...

Things were definitely a lot better in the 90s

Sure, if you were a straight white male. All the awesome entertainment wasn't worth the hardships minorities had to face.

I'm not sure about the world.

Even though we were worse in some ways, I've said that the late 90s in particular were an unusually good period of time in the US when you consider various factors.

No idea. I was a kid in the 90s. Didn't experience the 90s as an adult. Everything is rose-colored as a kid.

Rodney King, race riots, crack epidemic in full swing, stop and frisk, the real beginning of the end for "made in America" manufacturing. Nah man I'm a nineties kid it was my favorite decade but a lot of shit was real bad.

honestly, nope, because fast speed internet is the fuckin' tops. don't get me wrong, i love the style of the 90s, the culture, the music, the feel.

but the world? life? overall quality? the fact that nearly the entire world is connected to fast speed internet is everything we dreamed about back in the 90s and this is the reality. things are amazing now because of it. can't beat it.

Zikten posted...

Most people were still openly homophobic in the 90s. Even people who didn't hate them, had homophobic ideas engrained in their minds through culture

Also openly ableist. There was lots of "that's R" flying alongside the "that's so gay!" bullshit.

Zikten posted...

For who?

American kids in public schools, though I guess it really depends on where your school was. But at least every kid in the nation wasn't in fear of getting shot to death like they probably are now that republicans have deemed them all an acceptable sacrifice to the gun deity.

You don't know 90s until you've played the original starcraft, warcraft III reign of chaos, and counterstrike through an all night lan party with 10 people at an internet cafe guzzling energy drinks and eating hot pockets.

Does anybody else remember playing Friday Night Magic? It was so peaceful back then. I'd be a 10-12 year kid, in a room full of 30 year olds, topdecking win conditions and destroying their egos with my luck.

TodorokiHayato posted...

You don't know 90s until you've played the original starcraft, warcraft III reign of chaos, and counterstrike through an all night lan party with 10 people at an internet cafe guzzling energy drinks and eating hot pockets.

Does anybody else remember playing Friday Night Magic? It was so peaceful back then. I'd be a 10-12 year kid, in a room full of 30 year olds, topdecking win conditions and destroying their egos with my luck.

Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction on a Pentium 3 computer with 3 gigs of hard drive space and a 56k modem. For reference, D2:LOD took up 2.5 gigs of space. So I was playing through a crawl praying mom didn't answer the phone. As for Friday night magic, yes I remember it but for us it was Saturday morning magic. That got shut down real fast. The owner of the business putting it on was a creep and was dating his cousin who was 17 at the time. He's also a Grade S asshole. Someone gave him legitimate criticism and he flipped his lid telling him to F off, as well as a bunch of other things I can't repeat, all on a public review website.

GuerrillaSoldier posted...

honestly, nope, because fast speed internet is the fuckin' tops. don't get me wrong, i love the style of the 90s, the culture, the music, the feel.

but the world? life? overall quality? the fact that nearly the entire world is connected to fast speed internet is everything we dreamed about back in the 90s and this is the reality. things are amazing now because of it. can't beat it.

This would be true if the average person used the Internet to it's potential. Instead we have the terrible parts of tiktok, twitter, and the like that have infested people and given bad apples a bigger platform.

Top tier decade of the century. Probably third following the 80s

50s > 80s > 90s > 20s > the rest

60s had that hippie crap, and the 70s... had Disco.. ugh.

argueible. The world always sucked.

I'd say no because at that time the things that would lead to 9/11 were brewing and we didn't know.

fuck no it was only "better" for cis het white men

According to the Matrix, yes.

inloveanddeath0 posted...

Was much better than what followed

This. I'd gladly trade the current era to go back to pre 9/11 america.

No it was not better but global warming had not progressed as far, Putin was unthinkable, Trump was unthinkable

Thinking was that if we get fascism, we will still turn things around. Thinking now is that fascism may well be irreversible.

Understanding of what makes people tick has improved. Indoctrination used to be imposed from without. Now we know how to put people in situations where they indoctrinate each other.

The Clinton years did really feel like American came out on top of everything and was going to guide the world to a golden era, and then Bush screwed everything up.

I suppose everything boils down to how much it matters to you about gay rights over everything else.

I openly told people at the time that this our roaring 20's and to enjoy it.

It couldn't last, and I was right.

2001 and on has been a complete shit show, on just about all levels.

Ivany2008 posted...

As someone who grew up in the 90s.... kind of? It mostly started getting better towards the end when cd players became more used. But the headphones were absolutely awful. No matter what pair you picked up it would always sound like garbage and was guaranteed to catch a couple of your hair strands each time you tried to take them off.

Everything was affordable. I could go to the corner store and pay a dollar and get a small brown paper bag filled with candy. Soda was 50 cents a can, and Mcdonalds still had Shake Shake Fries. Games were more consistently better as well. It was very rare that you would pick out a bad game when going to the game store. And who could forget the YTV Zone/Fox Kids Saturday Morning cartoons.

50 cents for a 12 oz can in tbe 90s is not cheap.. lol

TodorokiHayato posted...

You don't know 90s until you've played the original starcraft, warcraft III reign of chaos, and counterstrike through an all night lan party with 10 people at an internet cafe guzzling energy drinks and eating hot pockets.

Does anybody else remember playing Friday Night Magic? It was so peaceful back then. I'd be a 10-12 year kid, in a room full of 30 year olds, topdecking win conditions and destroying their egos with my luck.

Warcraft III came out in 2002.

As for me... I dunno. I was a kid. It was the golden years for me. Playing outside and videogames, and hanging out with friends.

Homophobia was pretty big.

Ubergeneral3 posted...

argueible. The world always sucked.

I'd say no because at that time the things that would lead to 9/11 were brewing and we didn't know.

It was known but ignored.
Then again most Americans openly didn't pay attention to politics. On 9/10/01 most people would say they didn't care....they liked sports. On 9/12/01 everyone became a politics scientist...
And is part of how we are in the mess we are in.

Yeah. People could actually buy homes. $20 an hour was actually really good. You could say whatever you wanted and nobody would care.

TodorokiHayato posted...

You don't know 90s until you've played the original starcraft, warcraft III reign of chaos, and counterstrike through an all night lan party with 10 people at an internet cafe guzzling energy drinks and eating hot pockets.

This was very much an early 00's thing for me, even considering 9/11 to be the marker of the new decade.

Arcanine2009 posted...

50 cents for a 12 oz can in tbe 90s is not cheap.. lol

50 cents Canadian. So 35 cents American.

the world overall is better now than it was at p much any time in the past. there are still insanely major issues, but stuff like hunger/famine have steadily decreased and while disease is still incredibly deadly, it is much less so than at any time in the past

Ivany2008 posted...

50 cents Canadian. So 35 cents American.

i was getting 25 cent faygo's in the mid 00's from a local grocery store vending machine lol