It's interesting how Gen y's/Gen x's glorify the 1990s today, when if you actually look at 90s pop culture it was very cynical and there was a general sense at the time that it was a worse period than the more ideological era of from a generation earlier.
Consider Austin Powers, which spawned three films largely off the premise that the 90s were a more greedy, selfish, less cultured time period than the naive but good natured 60s.
Even Simpsons had jokes about the jaded youth of the 90s not even knowing if they were being sarcastic anymore when they saw Homer get shot with a cannon.
Is the truth simply that the 90s were no better or worse than any other time in modern history, and people always look at their youth with rose tinted glasses?
Or is it even worse, and the 90s genuinely were a worse time in Western history than the 60s, but it's only remembered fondly today because the current era is even worse?
It's interesting how Gen y's/Gen x's glorify the 1990s today...
>if you actually look at 90s pop culture it was very cynical
Yep. Sarcasm, cynicism, comical pessimism, laughing at things that should cause concern.
>the 90s were a more greedy, selfish, less cultured time
Yes. There seems to be a consensus that 9/11 was the moment we got a shift of consciousness to a more greedy, selfish, less cultured world; but all of that was churning away in the background during the 1990s. It might have become more obvious in the 2000s but I think it would have progressed with or without the terrorist attacks on that fateful day in September 2001.
>Is the truth simply that the 90s were no better or worse than any other time in modern history, and people always look at their youth with rose tinted glasses?
I'm nearly 40, but don't have clear and consistent memories extending back further than about 1989, so I cannot comment on the 1980s.
(I mean, I remember stuff, but not enough to make any meaningful commentary on it).
Unfortunately I can't shed any light on this by examining other decades in detail and using my first hand experience to guide me.
I'm going to give your thread a bump.
I think this is a good topic and it has a lot to do with politics and society and it's a welcome break from talking about Covid-19.
Maybe the way that the youth generation feels about the time they live in, based on no possible comparison to anything else, is ultimately meaningless?
America was moderately fascinated still with the assortment of cults that formed in the shell of American culture. By 2020, all those competing cults have made a lot of bad blood.
The popuarlization of grunge and "gangsta" rap in the early 90s ruined western culture forever
I think nineties were more optimistic than the world after 2001 and especially after 2008. It is the fucking boomers.
Yes. Also, you can't really look at that time through the modern lens of today because back then, skepticism and cynicism was a tool that people used, but didn't hide behind. The ones that did hide behind it were made fun of by everyone. See cunt likes Janine Garafalo for that example. The problem today is that nearly every person that does the sarcasm and cynicism angle just hides behind that tool. And there are no longer any comedians or anyone else popular enough to say anything about it because the ones doing it are typically considered now protected classes of people according to the modern lens of PCism today.
Agreed. Everywhere I fucking go, every TV commercial, every movie nigger music everywhere. I'm tired of it.
here's tier list of decades since WW2
>40s: B
>50s: A+
>60s: D-
>70s: C
>80s: B
>90s: B-
>00s: D
>10s: F
>mfw I have to watch tv with family
More like
>40s: C
>50s: C
>60s: A
>70s: B
>80s: C
>90s: C
>00s: D
>10s: F
daria was the punchline though, you're not supposed to take her seriously.
The most important skill you can learn is bullshit detecting, and the most frightening contrast between Gen X and later generations is healthy cynicism vs disturbing conformity.
No, the 90s were great. I had a lot of hope for the future. Don't believe j*w media.
I used to live with my uncle who had the Boomer schedule of come home from work, then watch TV till bedtime, rinse and repeat. Even just a year or two ago I didn't think the racemixing propaganda was that bad. Now it's absolutely everywhere. But it's only ever one combination that I see... Hmm...
Good thread, OP.
I think after the fall of Communism in 1989, there was a kind of ideological vaccuum. What Francis Fukuyama called 'the end of history': all that survived was democratic liberalism. As atheism spread too, cultural producers (like the makers of Daria) realised that there weren't really many institutions that created or gave MEANING. The hypercynical, sarcastic, and nihilistic culture of the 90's either consciously or subconsciously reflected that. Daria is the perfect example, or Daniel Clowes' comics.
In the new milennium, we got religious zealotry, neoliberal wars of intervention, then Occupy Wall Street, indentity politics, immigrant politics, and finally the alt-right / new right.With social media there's a huge marketplace for ideas, and no shortage of cultural zealots: from MAGAtards to Kekistanis to purple-haired tumblrinas and SJWs. Cynicism is completely gone: almost none of these groups are even capable of introspection or self-criticisism. They're zealous tribal associations, just like in McCarthy era with its hippies and commie-haters.
Once the dust settles among these ideologies,we might see another moment like the 90's. Honestly, I miss how calm and cool culture seems back then. Nobody would dare rant and rave about being morally right, everyone was much more blasé.
Grunge accelerated cynicism and pessimism in music; even though grunge died, the attitudes of grunge remained prevalent in lyrics in other songs.
Gangsta rap was probably a reaction to other types of rap that were popular in the late 1980s - early 1990s. Early gangsta rap (before it became commercially successful) was the first time disenfranchised poor people had a chance to speak about their experiences - and to this day early gangsta rap lyrics are still relevant to people living in urban poverty. The violence, the dysfunctional families, the filth and neglect, the constant sense of danger. All of that is as real today in the hood as it was then.
The problem with gangsta rap in my view was its commercial success, suddenly being from the hood is glamorous and talking about hood shit makes you tough.
Hood shit is horrible and ruins lives. People die of neglect: both kids and the elderly. I'm saying this from working in the hood (I work in one of the most financially disadvantaged communities in Australia based on recent census data: per capita income in the community I work in is less than $20,000 AUD per person per annum, extreme poverty). People here die of neglect from not enough food, or malnutrition, and living in filth and squalor, the adults are drinking, doing drugs, gambling, constantly in and out of jail. Hood shit, in other words.
And the reality of hood shit, it fucking sucks.
Look at this picture I've included for contrast, that's a happy childhood, admittedly concocted to sell toys, but that happy childhood was deprived to so many and I don't think commercialising and glamorising the negativity of grunge or the horrific conditions of the hood did anyone any favours.
If anything, we are still picking up the pieces from those musical/cultural movements and trying to move forward from there in a positive way.
I generally agree with these scores. I'd give the 90s an A+, and the 00's an F though. 90s were fucking awesome.
Well given i was between 2 to 12 during the 90s... basically 90's animation like batman, dragonball, sailor moon, digimon, pokemon and eary video games like starcraft, star wars tie fighter, everquesy Were about all i enjoyed of the 90's era otherwise it was a fugged era.
Totally agree. I think the defining feature of post 2010's culture is a lack of cynicism. So many quasi-religious zealots running around, wether their god is feminism, immigration, or MAGA, they totally lack introspection or criticality. Fucking sucks.
>gangsta rap was the first time disenfranchised poor people had a chance to speak about their experiences
correction: it was the first time the urban poor had a chance to describe their experiences without requiring a background in music or access to musical instruments.
Obviously, there were many earlier avenues for musical expression prior to this (blues, for example).
Maybe in Finland, but the 60's is when mass immigration started in the USA, so most people on this board won't give it a passing grade. The 50's were kind of an optimum point of high wages, high opportunity, low wealth gap, low crime rate, and few foreigners - a true golden age for America.
What the fuck? Have you never listened to blues music, dude?
Blues and bluegrass was like gangsta rap, but without glorifying being a cunt. It's absolutely dope.
Gangsta rap has some decent music, but in terms of framing poor people's experiences, it's fucking terrible.
the perfect example of this is Clueless, where the main girl starts the relief fund for Pismo Beach or whatever after some earthquake and it is very satirical but everyone is all on board with her campy stupid fundraiser. You could say you were a moral vegan a bunch and people would just laugh about it and you wouldn't be really... taken seriously almost. like you said, blase about everything. Ended after 9/11
Of course you think that if you're a Kevin like jock or other kind of normalfag. What were you even doing watching it? It wasn't made for you, it was made for people like me who saw how shallow you dumdums were and are.
Unironically, I think Yas Forums is one of the last bastions of cynicism. It's one of the reasons I love this place. If you're too passionate about your little theory, you'll almost always be called a retarded faggot
>and that's just how I like it
in some episodes, yeah, but for the most part she was the straight man to the buffoonery of the others
the only place she was consistently the butt of the joke was in romance
It was the last decade when expressing love and happiness to find a good partner was celebrated in music and general pop culture. Anyone else noticed this?
I agree with you and the other guy too. Daria is the protagonist, but it's made clear that her cynicism doesn't get her anywhere. It doesn't make her happy, either. She's completely anhedonic.
Contrast with Jane, who shares her worldview but has a profound passion for something. Daria is a tragic character, unable to really relate to the people around her or to find something she loves in the world.
Little wonder so many of us, ironically, fell in love with her completely.
some early 2000s stuff was similar to the 90s, but things got very bizarre starting then
>tfw too shy to talk to the qt scene girl in 2008
I still think about her bros
see:
>Little wonder so many of us, ironically, fell in love with her completely.
bro I just came out to have a good time not to feel
Endocrine disruptors made people gay. Not even memeing.
Everything pre 9/11 was better.
90's sucked compared to the 80's
But the 00's and 10's where just awful
the 90's where really bad because it was the beginning of the end, and it all went downhill from there. the USA didn't recover from the 80's. thats why retro and future wave is so cool.
GenX here.
We always thought life and society sucked. It did. Cynical. Boomers, the epitome of “me me me”, either ignored us for their own interest (latchkey kids, absolutely no parental skills), or shat on us (economically).
The one thing that didn’t suck was the (pop) culture we created because it was the one thing we controlled and created, that was honest and authentic, and (relatively) lacked the overwhelming bullshit of boomer majority.
When GenX started making culture, boomers couldn’t stop uselessly criticizing it (ohnoes gangsta rap and Madonna’s sex!) and trying to compare it to their 60s sell out mediocrity. We owned technology and the internet too (like zoomers own mobile these days).
All that’s dead and replaced by new youth culture. That’s all commerical sell out, just like the boomers. Zoomers are essential boomers.
But the fact remains: GenX created hiphop, rap, electronica, synth/wave, music videos. A new boom in independant cinema. The anime and cartoon revolution. Shows like The Simpsons,etc. International cross culture appreciation. pretty much the whole culture of the interest.
Millennials built, what? Beiber and instathotting?
For GenX that’s just life. Not angry. Meh, whatever. At worst, kinda sad for you. At best, laughing to ourselves, at you.
If you want to read a masterpiece cut from similar cloth, read GHOST WORLD by Daniel Clowes. It's brilliant.
Honestly, there's a lesson here, too. We empathise deeply with Daria, but really, we should aspire to be like Jane. Even in the small things, like doing exercise and pushing herself and being creative, Jane's philosophy is vastly more conducive to a well-adjusted and happy life than Daria's.
Which isn't to say that I prefer Jane; I much prefer Daria. I had a sort of parasocial obsession with her. But objectively, you want to be Jane, not Daria.
They finally get to the reason why in the last few episodes of the series. She's not anhedonic at all. It's just her self-defense mechanism because when she was younger and more normalfag like, her parents romantic life was a mess and they tended to take it out on her while basically being like, "Why can't you be more like Quinn, Daria? SHE's happy. SHE's popular. Be more like her, Daria." But she could never be like Quinn, because she couldn't just put on blinders to everything like her. Being the older sibling, and with her parents always working she had to take charge and be responsible. Then life kicked dirt in her face because of how she had to change just to survive like that.
Normalfags will never understand this kind of struggle. Even her imagined possible relationship with Trent, her romantic interest she pines after is just a pipe dream. She eventually ends up with some ivy league prep family guy, that also doesn't fit in his own family's world and wants out of it. Shit, why is this making my heart hurt so much to reflect on this.
The 90s were a capitalist hellhole just like any other decade in the last centuries.
Petty-bourgeois degenerates remember their school years with a pathetic sense of nostalgia because that's the time when they hadn't been apprehended by the inhuman capitalist machine yet.
yeah I figured that out around the time my irl Daria killed herself at 19
while it nearly killed me too, it led to a rebirth of sorts and while I'm not fully there yet, I'm much more optimistic and invested in life than I was before
[spoiler]also Jane/Daria is the one true pairing[/spoiler]
>pol has the ctrl+s to spoiler tag shortcut
>but spoilers don't work
nani the fuck
Damn. She must lift weights!
That's dark brother, I hope you're coping OK.
You're absolutely right about the one true pairing.
It's mindblowing to me that I consistently find the wisest takes on a board 95% dedicated to antisemitic conspiracy theories. It REALLY makes you think.
Read the thread, there's some great posts in here.
>Bonus pic
Yas Forums is reminiscent of early 2000s internet culture, which is one of the few good things of that era.
90s where way better when it comes to irreverent content in pop culture
From 80s i can't comment, I don't remember anything. 2010s really sucked when it comes to internet, pop culture and social life in general
Fuck the 90s I'm forever in the 80s. Give me neon lights and synth over black grunge and garage bands any day of the week.
Daria was pretty boring. Sifl and Ollie was superior in every way.
good poast. kurt cobain was the pinnacle of american culture. music was still white, intelligent, interesting. now it's all jungle chant or overproduced sex pop. 90s culture wasn't lowest common denominator. 2010-2020s culture absolutely is. marvel movies are the cherry on the shit sundae.
This lunatic marxist has a point, the 90's for me were the decade of my carefree childhood, before all the stress of being a teenager/ adult.
Having said which, it's also the decade before 9/11, gay wars in the middle east, New Labour, SJW's, and all the retarded zealotry of open borders, feminism, etc etc etc.
1999 is also probably the best year in cinema history, objectively.
I do think it stands on its own merits.
god damn you are a man of culture my friend
90s and the birth of the internet were comfy as fuck
the pop culture zeitgeist was in a negative faze
Agreed. Gen X created the 90’s and killed the 80’s.
People who grew up in the 90’s were watching Gen X define culture.
They were more self-aware than we are today. Also, the exponentially smaller number of mediums, shows, tv channels, and networks resulted in a cultural cohesion we no longer enjoy today, mainly because there is such a huge array of entertainment mediums and options that we no longer have a universal field of reference or ‘zeitgeist’.
The 60s were tight as fuck man
>kurt cobain
Cobain predicted Current Year:
>It’s sad to think what the state of rock and roll will be twenty years from now. It just seems like when rock and roll is dead the whole world’s gonna explode. It’s already so rehashed and so plagiarized that it’s barely alive now. It’s disgusting. I mean, kids don’t even really care about rock and roll as much as they used to, as the other generations have. It’s already turned into nothing but a fashion statement and an identity for kids to use as a tool for them to fuck and have a social life. And at that point I really can’t see music being of any importance to a teenager, really. I think they’ll use sounds and tones for music and use it in their virtual reality machines. And just listen to it that way and get the same emotions from it. And then go to a party. There’ll be a virtual reality machine there with a whole bunch of headphones and if you wanna talk to people and listen to the virtual reality machine you can do that and go into the other bedroom and fuck and drink and… but actually I think virtual reality machines will get you high. Technology will be that good. And then there’ll be like virtual reality junkies lying there dead on their couch from OD’ing.
First of all, Austin Powers didn't spawn 3 films from the premise that the 90s were more greedy, selfish, and less cultured than the 60s. You lost the plot. It was a mockery of hippy culture. One that didn't and will never work out because it is based in idiocy.
As for the 90s....I mean, decent bands but realistic examination of political culture among them? Non-existant. It's "fux de man" with talented instrument players and obnoxious beta singers...in a simplified sense
See:
Applies to the UK too. The 60s were a real mixed bag in the USA, compared to the awesome promise and improvements of the 50's.
Not to mention it's the beginning of the end for the black community, they never recovered from the 60s, and nor did American cities(see: Detroit, Baltimore, NYC, Oakland, etc)
>It’s already turned into nothing but a fashion statement and an identity for kids to use as a tool for them to fuck and have a social life
Cringe as fuck. People have been using rock to get pussy since its inception. Look at the fucking Beatles.
makes me think your reading in the wrong places. try actual books. made of paper.
>I hope you're coping OK
yeah like I said, it didn't exactly catapult me into blissful happiness but it did shock me into appreciating life a bit more, once I stopped trying to drink myself to death
It's true, pop culture was a lot more cynical. You had shows like Daria and yes, on the episode of the Simpsons you mentioned, Homer thanking Billy Corgan for his gloomy music making his kids stop dreaming of a future he couldn't possibly provide them. There was also Married With Children, and movies like Natural Born Killers, and Fight Club expressing the alienation we felt as a culture. Clerks was a pretty cynical film as well, when you think about it, if they had gone with the original planned ending where Dante died it would have really been bleak; and what was that line in Reality Bites" "It's all just a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of neat escapes." In comic books, "1993 was the year Superman died and Venom got his own series. Just keep that in mind." In tabletop RPGs, AD&D was losing market share as Vampire: The Masquerade became the hot new property. And in the music scene we saw glam rock die as Grunge and Thrash Metal arose.
But while, as a society, people were more cynical, I don't think that means the 90s as a decade were a worse era than now. Things were still pretty good. Housing, education, and childcare cost less than they currently do, and the buying power of the dollar was higher than it is now. It was just easier to get by than it is now; I remember buying double cheeseburgers 2/$1 at McDonald's, when they ran special promotions. Getting your first job was easier, because retail was thriving; my older brother had a buddy in high school, who worked part-time at Blockbuster, just rewinding video tapes. That's it. Rewinding tapes, and then reshelving them. For 20 hours a week, he'd do that shit, sitting comfortable in the air-conditioning, free to read or play Gameboy or whatever as the tapes rewound, and he did that long enough he was able to buy his first car with cash. The US was still 80% white in 1990, with all that entails.
part 1
I mean takes on current events.
Go to your local bookstore and look at the books on current events. They're 100% left wing propaganda. Maybe, maybe they have one copy of Douglas Murray, or Jordan 'washyourpenis' Peterson, or some rant by Shapiro about how great Israel is. Everything else will be Washpo and NYT tier propaganda.
Paper books on current events have failed us. All the more testament to the point OP is making.
kurt was pretty hip on tech i liked the interview he did with the weird goggles that light up different colors and supposedly altered his mood.
The 90s isn't as good as you remember. Gen x'ers have literally nothing but cartoons as their claim for the 90s being superior. Any leftist demagogue the media wanted to make a celebrity of would rise to popularity without the internet there to knock them down a notch. The treatment of social autists then was worse than today. Women were still whores but it was not ok to acknowledge this although feminism was on a low burner then. Cynicism existed but it was cynicism of conservative institutions whereas today conservative institutions serve as a platform of cynicism against culture today.
There's a reason why movies like Falling Down and Office Space were so big then. They showed how dealing with people then just made you go mad.
Yeah he's famous for thrusting modern technology into his face, actually.
>tfw will never relive 1999
I just want to go back.
No. They aren't saying what the 90s was, and most people who try have a hard time, but anyone can see that they are better than today, just like the 80s were better than the 90s, the 70s better than the 80s, and so on. The limited scope of the people making the observation is irrelevant. They can still see a gradient across what small scope they have experienced. Maybe this is just a nostalgia thing. One thing for sure is that many people don't think the past was ever better than the present. These are people so drunk on all the amazing technology that they haven't notice the death of American culture. Such people aren't intellectual enough to even appreciate culture, and on top of that they were raised on propaganda mottos like "America has no culture". The fact is that it's difficult to identify your own culture because you are so close to it. It's not really until you have some life experience, or until you've visited other cultures that you can really put your finger on the essence of your own culture (It's like how you can't smell yourself). This is why it was so easy to brainwash generation after generation of children into the self-hating communist cult of "America has no culture [therefore we aren't actually destroying anything]".
wisdom is in old books. new books can only parody and rehash
fair enough but do you want to side with the people history elimnated, or the people that survived?
>the 90s were a more greedy, selfish, less cultured time
Disagree....we just wanted to be left alone. A very American notion historically. However, due to globalist reasons, we got involved in a train wreck....
...Old books discuss current events? Old books talk about the ramifications of COVID-19's spread, or automation, or Biden vs. Sanders? Which ones?
I actually have no clue what the fuck you're talking about, but you certainly sound retarded.
no, the trend has gotten worse. dont get me wrong the 90s were lame and killed heavy metal and shit, but still so far preferable to what has commenced since then its not even funny
Gen X dominated youth culture in the 1990s and they're jaded because they are completely dwarfed as a cohort by the Boomers. Literally nothing they could do would make a difference against the Boomers policy. As a result they turned to joking about it/ resigning to their inability to change things.
Not sure I understand your point. What do you mean by 'History eliminated'?
I'm just saying that the publishing industry today is mega-cucked. Practically every genre is overrun with SJWs and women. Editorial boards and editing houses are basically 100% female POC at this point. There are virtually no good books being published today. Something like LOTR would never make it past the editor's desk today, because it doesn't have any positive black characters.
Hence, I come to Yas Forums.