Did the nineties never end? (comedians, video games, 2005, movie theater)

[Randomdude]

Originally Posted by Lake County IN

Yes, Tyler Cowan is an economist and professor and Kurt Anderson is a Peabody winning journalist, but it's me that gets my opinions from "tabloids" , yet it's YOU and YOUR wife who see "old celebrities in tabloids all the time, right"?

Clearly, because somebody is a professor of economics, or won a Peabody award, that qualifies them to be a social commentator, and puts the value of their OPINION over someone elses.

Get real "guy".

By the way, looking at pictures in a tabloid does not mean a person is even reading it, forget about being influenced by it. Yet another straw man.

Originally Posted by Lake County IN

It's obvious you're too young to have an opinion about anything if you think sagging just got popular recently,

Strawman. My argument was that you have no comprehension what sagging actually is, and lack the ability to differentiate between degrees of sagging, as well as between sagging and baggy clothes.

Originally Posted by Lake County IN

Autotune is comparable to Disco, and

Strawman. Autotune, when reduced to a fad, is comparitable to Disco as a fad. You are reducing the argument without that qualifier, which, in fact, becomes a whole new strawman argument.

Originally Posted by Lake County IN

tattoos just got really popular, completely ignoring Lollapalooza.

Strawman. I said tattoos were not popular to the degree they are now. Ironically, you could not provide any evidence of face and neck tattoos, which are commonplace now, on anyone in the 90's but Dennis Rodman, who was a complete freak of nature. However, I can offer about 50% of the current NBA, as well as dozens of popular rappers, and even hard rockers to prove my case.

Originally Posted by Lake County IN

The only reason I brought up my hood is because your ass tried to play the whole "my hood is more dangerous than yours" card which was a DUMB card to play in the first place, but especially when mine is what it is and is world reknowned for being what it is.

Not only do you lack the part of the brain that allows one to construct a logical argument, apparently, you lack the part that stores memory as well, but Ill help you out, because I actually feel sorry for you.....

This is you on post 71

"1. No, YOU are the one who is confused about sagging. Me and EVERYBODY I knew and grew up with spent the entire '90s and early part of the 2000s sagging. I don't know where YOU grew up, but it obviously wasn't in the inner city like I did. If you think that sagging only means basically having your pants down by your legs then I don't know what to tell you. My life experience trumps your ignorance. "

You attempt to use your "solid empirical knowledge" by trying to claim you were a "tough inner city kid" who "knows everything there is to know street", and since my opinion differs, I clearly never touched an inner city.

The "card" I played was in response to this.

Originally Posted by Lake County IN

You wrote this, remember: "I grew up in more gang infested areas then you ever will see, thanks".

Just take the L and move on, guy.

You were thoroughly destroyed in this thread. Time to own it.

[ipod99]

Originally Posted by kelsius

Do you think the 2000s and the part of the '10s that has past are culturally distinct from the 1990s? Personally I think we're still in the nineties in a cultural sense and here is why.

I was thinking how the major tropes of the nineties, the things that made the nineties different from the eighties, for the most part are still going strong, and in some cases are actually even bigger today, 12 years after the end of the nineties, than they were in the nineties themselves!

Examples. Baggy pants. Skinny jeans have replaced them to some extent, but there's still plenty of people who sag like it's still 1992, people who weren't even alive in 1992.

The Simpsons. First aired in December 1989 actually. A 90s icon. Still on the air today, and despite the fact many people stopped watching it around 2000, it's still relevant to today's society and extremely popular.

Ditto with South Park, which started in 1997. There are 14 year old kids today who were only just born when South Park came out and love it. The show is still extremely popular, probably only slightly less popular than it was in 1998.

Reruns of Seinfeld and Friends beat most currently running sitcoms in ratings. People's taste in television in the years 2000-2012 is basically identical to what people enjoyed in the '90s.

Rap music has proven not to be a trend but a decades-long, multi-generational phenomenon that might enjoy extremely high levels of popularity well into this century. Same with tattoos and body piercings - not going away anytime soon most likely, if anything eventually it will probably become rare for a person not to have at least one kind of body mod. Even my 52 year old dad has been converted to the cult of the tattoo.

The decline of so-called 'polite society' also I think really accelerated in the early 90s and continues to this day. Before the '90s, only certain kinds of people used profanity, today, pretty much everyone does. Formal dress is only for valet and politicians. I think that in the '90s people became generally more sarcastic and aggressive too, as well as more depressed, and that has gotten even worse in the past 12 years.

And even though the '90s are now 20 years ago, well, the early 90s, the focus on nostalgia is still rightly the '80s because it's the most recent time that had a culture that does not extend into the present moment.

I think since 2008, something authentically new has been forming, but it's still overshadowed by the continuing tropes of the 1990s.

That's not to say the 1990s were exactly like today. They were actually quite different. But that's really just because the nineties still had so much stuff from the eighties that was still popular and relevant. I'm just saying the trends that started in the nineties are for the most part, still going strong. There's never been a backlash against '90s culture - we went straight from loving the 90s while it was still the present to being nostalgic about the 90s.

I completely disagree with you. As someone who grew up in the 90's, I can reassure you that the 90's are very different from today, and I miss the 90's like crazy.

You used the example of baggy pants. Yes baggy pants did emerge in the 90's, however I didn't notice them really getting popular until about 95 or 96. In 1992, it was still in fashion to wear pants that actually fit. Normal sized pants still being fashionable into the early 90's was spillover from the 80's that you mentioned.

Yeah a few shows that were hits in the 90's are still on like the ones you mentioned. Futurama started in 1999 and they recently revamped that. But for the most part tv as well as movies are a lot different today than back then. All they have on tv nowadays are crappy reality tv shows, boring dramas, and way too many cop/forensic shows that are all the same. Today they don't have good shows like they did back in the 90's like Fresh Prince, Family Matters, Hangin Wit Mr. Cooper, Boy Meets World, etc. Even cartoons in the 90's were waay better. Digimon and Spongebob Squarepants do not compare to 90's cartoons.

You also mentioned rap music. Anyone who's payed any attention to the hip hop scene in the past 20 years knows that rap while still popular is not the same as it was in the 90's. Back in the early to mid 90's, rap was more authentic, the music was better, and the artists were actually talented. Rap was actually music back then, in fact it was art back then. Now it's trash. Rappers just talk about the same thing. Bling, ho's, etc. Lil wayne, Kid Cudi, and Soldier Boy don't compare to Public Enemy, 2Pac, and most of the other prominent rap artists of the 90's.

I do agree with you that the decline of "politeness" has been around since the 90's.

[kwatanabe]

YAWN this topic is getting nowhere. It started out meaningful but basically became repetitive rants from there. Time to close!

[green_mariner]

I think this is how things are at the moment. I think the 90's nostalgia might be among people between the ages of 25-32. I think that the 90's were a time where things seemed simpler, alot less daunting than today. The 1990s nostalgia, in my opinion, might be a response to the events of 9/11. Someone mentioned this.

This is where I get into the meat of this post. Now I am going to get into my own personal thing with the 90s. I was born in 1986(I turned 26 on April 28). The 90's meant alot to me because I lived through them as a kid. I don't remember of 90s of grunge and heavy metal. What I remember of the 90s was that of Nickelodeon(particularly Nicktoons), PBS, Yikes pencils, Trapper Keepers, Toaster Strudels, Surge, Saturday morning cartoons, Super Nintendo, Ken Griffey Jr, Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, Home Alone, TGIF, The Travel Channel some of the 90s styles(moderately long haircuts, return of bell bottoms, etc). I knew nothing of the violent rap music. I was busy being a kid, holding on and embracing what bit of childhood I had(and at the same time, doing my own thing).

This is part 2 of why I think the 90s seem so well liked today. I am going to put this in layers. I will go to the 80s as a reference point. I believe the 1980s started when Reagan came into office. I think the 1980s were a time of confusion and at the same time, decadence. I don't know how to put it. The USA was going into de-industrialization even more so than the 70s. The computer age was coming in with the computer chip. In Central America, it was a very scary time, particularly in El Salvador and Nicaragua. In the USSR, the grip of Communism was slowly starting to loosen, with glasnost and perestroika, and the fact that the USSR was on a slow collision course, with events like Chernobyl. Stateside, Michael Jackson came up with Thriller and Bad,a sort of representation of the early 80s and the mid 80s. The 80s is when the drug epidemic would take on epic proportions. Rap music started to become more violent and to shy away from its original roots. It was on one hand, a big party era. On the other hand, things were about to take place that would sort of go into the 90s.

I think the end of the 80s started in 1989. A short time before, Reagan said "Gorbachev, tear down this wall". In 1989, the Warsaw Pact nations(East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary) were starting to shake off the shackles of Communism. The Berlin Wall fell. For the most part, the shackles were coming off willingly. For Romania, it was a violent coup that would end with the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife. The Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991 as the former Soviet republics declared their independence. I think 1989-1991 represented a slow end to the 80s. Walls were coming down, new issues were being on the forefront. I think there was sort of a new openness. Nickelodeon, the channel for kids, sort of represented this openness. PBS started to embody this for me. It was a time to deal with certain issues. There was a bit more moderation in the 1990s. It felt like things were on the rise. The computer age of the 1980s was leading to the dotcom era of the 90s. Even with a bit of a shake up in 1999, it is more bearable than what I'm seeing in these days.

Y2k scares did shake up some people in 1999. The economy wasn't as good as it was through the rest of the 90s because of the dotcom bust. However, when 2000 came, it seemed like there was a whole new era. There was a new frontier, a new openness coming. Or was it? All of this ended in 9/11/2001 with the attacks on the WTC. I think once this happened, things started to change, and not really for the better. Time stood still for a moment, and things, in my opinion, have gotten crazier. Nihilism and cynicism have basically grown exponentially since then. I think this is why the 90s are so beloved among the young. I think the fact that a really good time sitting next to a really bad time has made the 90s a really good reference for nostalgia. Part of this is the fact that so many of the people who are looking to the 90s with nostalgia(such as me) are the young.

[Enquiring Minds]

Originally Posted by green_mariner

I think this is how things are at the moment. I think the 90's nostalgia might be among people between the ages of 25-32. I think that the 90's were a time where things seemed simpler, alot less daunting than today. The 1990s nostalgia, in my opinion, might be a response to the events of 9/11. Someone mentioned this.

I'm in your age category as well but I think the OP is saying pop culture has not evolved much since then. Its hard to be reminesant about something that has still yet to go away.

Yes 9/11 changed the world forever and things will never be the same again but that really has nothing to do with fashion, music and movies/tv.

Some quick examples would be...

NBC is still cranking out shows that would be better suited for the Seinfeld/Friends/Malcolm in the Middle era. Law & Order is a very old show and they have quite a few spin offs of the franchise.

Mens and womens hairstyles have not evolved much since then. The majority of women still have those straight hairstyles that were popular in 1996 or so.

The only thing that is different is people got older and their perspective on life changed. Everyone will always feel "their era" was somehow better but thats only because they were having alot of fun at the time and everything seemed new to them. Thats all it is.

[green_mariner]

Originally Posted by Enquiring Minds

I'm in your age category as well but I think the OP is saying pop culture has not evolved much since then. Its hard to be reminesant about something that has still yet to go away.

Yes 9/11 changed the world forever and things will never be the same again but that really has nothing to do with fashion, music and movies/tv.

Some quick examples would be...

NBC is still cranking out shows that would be better suited for the Seinfeld/Friends/Malcolm in the Middle era. Law & Order is a very old show and they have quite a few spin offs of the franchise.

Mens and womens hairstyles have not evolved much since then. The majority of women still have those straight hairstyles that were popular in 1996 or so.

The only thing that is different is people got older and their perspective on life changed. Everyone will always feel "their era" was somehow better but thats only because they were having alot of fun at the time and everything seemed new to them. Thats all it is.

Part of what I was getting at was that 9/11 may have changed some things to the point where things may have stalled. It is just a theory of mine.

One thing I find is that alot of creativeness has gone away. People have run out of ideas. Why, I don't know for sure. Maybe the 90s are probably big right now because people are out of ideas.

As for hairstyles, I notice one difference. In the 90's, I never saw much of the faux-hawks. I see more of that today. Bowl cuts were more in back in the 90s. And for women's hairstyles, I have seen quite a few women sport curly hair.

[kwatanabe]

I wouldn't say the 90s are big right now, that might be a bit exaggerated. Heck 4 or 5 years ago the 70s were still big in pop culture. Just look at some reruns of shows from the 2000s you'll see a mixture of 70s fashions and bleed over styles from the 90s.

The baby boomers were able to evolve pop culture quicker than the generation x does. Music from the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s were very different as well as fashion. After that it started slower down with how quickly pop culture evolved. Yes things are evolving but they take longer now and are not as drastic.

[green_mariner]

Originally Posted by ipod99

I completely disagree with you. As someone who grew up in the 90's, I can reassure you that the 90's are very different from today, and I miss the 90's like crazy.

You used the example of baggy pants. Yes baggy pants did emerge in the 90's, however I didn't notice them really getting popular until about 95 or 96. In 1992, it was still in fashion to wear pants that actually fit. Normal sized pants still being fashionable into the early 90's was spillover from the 80's that you mentioned.

Yeah a few shows that were hits in the 90's are still on like the ones you mentioned. Futurama started in 1999 and they recently revamped that. But for the most part tv as well as movies are a lot different today than back then. All they have on tv nowadays are crappy reality tv shows, boring dramas, and way too many cop/forensic shows that are all the same. Today they don't have good shows like they did back in the 90's like Fresh Prince, Family Matters, Hangin Wit Mr. Cooper, Boy Meets World, etc. Even cartoons in the 90's were waay better. Digimon and Spongebob Squarepants do not compare to 90's cartoons.

You also mentioned rap music. Anyone who's payed any attention to the hip hop scene in the past 20 years knows that rap while still popular is not the same as it was in the 90's. Back in the early to mid 90's, rap was more authentic, the music was better, and the artists were actually talented. Rap was actually music back then, in fact it was art back then. Now it's trash. Rappers just talk about the same thing. Bling, ho's, etc. Lil wayne, Kid Cudi, and Soldier Boy don't compare to Public Enemy, 2Pac, and most of the other prominent rap artists of the 90's.

I do agree with you that the decline of "politeness" has been around since the 90's.

I get this, as I as a kid in the 90s. I actually enjoyed alot of things that were on TV. TGIF was like the big thing in our house. For us kids, it was Nickelodeon.

I will agree that hip-hop of the 90s isn't exactly the same as it is now. I can tell the difference. I'm not much of a hip-hop fan these days. Actually, I don't pay attention to rap music, so half of the time I don't know who made what. One of my friends, a teacher of all people, was shocked that I didn't know any of Li'l Wayne's music. I don't know it, and I don't care. One difference I notice is this. While there was certain alot of violence in hip hop back in the 90s, there were still some people rapping about things besides "bling, women, and killing". These days I don't even know what anyone is talking about.

Ah, the baggy pants. To say the least, I was not that keen about baggy pants. I do remember alot of kids wearing baggy pants in the mid to late 90s. In particular, I remember Jncos and other pants worn by skateboarders. If there is one part of 90s culture I didn't share, it was the skateboard culture, and for a long time, the baggy pants. I was still wearing pants that fit all throughout the 90s. I had maybe one or two baggy pants, and that was in the late 90s(1998,1999). I never really started wearing them until around 2000. Today, things are changing. Tight pants are in fashion, among certain subcultures at least, particularly hipsters.

I sum up 90s pop culture this way. I can't put my finger on it. It is a collection of so many distinct things. Distinct, and at least to me, having a bit more substance, a bit more creativity, than I see today.

[greenvillebuckeye]

Originally Posted by kelsius

Do you think the 2000s and the part of the '10s that has past are culturally distinct from the 1990s? Personally I think we're still in the nineties in a cultural sense and here is why.

I was thinking how the major tropes of the nineties, the things that made the nineties different from the eighties, for the most part are still going strong, and in some cases are actually even bigger today, 12 years after the end of the nineties, than they were in the nineties themselves!

Examples. Baggy pants. Skinny jeans have replaced them to some extent, but there's still plenty of people who sag like it's still 1992, people who weren't even alive in 1992.

The Simpsons. First aired in December 1989 actually. A 90s icon. Still on the air today, and despite the fact many people stopped watching it around 2000, it's still relevant to today's society and extremely popular.

Ditto with South Park, which started in 1997. There are 14 year old kids today who were only just born when South Park came out and love it. The show is still extremely popular, probably only slightly less popular than it was in 1998.

Reruns of Seinfeld and Friends beat most currently running sitcoms in ratings. People's taste in television in the years 2000-2012 is basically identical to what people enjoyed in the '90s.

Rap music has proven not to be a trend but a decades-long, multi-generational phenomenon that might enjoy extremely high levels of popularity well into this century. Same with tattoos and body piercings - not going away anytime soon most likely, if anything eventually it will probably become rare for a person not to have at least one kind of body mod. Even my 52 year old dad has been converted to the cult of the tattoo.

The decline of so-called 'polite society' also I think really accelerated in the early 90s and continues to this day. Before the '90s, only certain kinds of people used profanity, today, pretty much everyone does. Formal dress is only for valet and politicians. I think that in the '90s people became generally more sarcastic and aggressive too, as well as more depressed, and that has gotten even worse in the past 12 years.

And even though the '90s are now 20 years ago, well, the early 90s, the focus on nostalgia is still rightly the '80s because it's the most recent time that had a culture that does not extend into the present moment.

I think since 2008, something authentically new has been forming, but it's still overshadowed by the continuing tropes of the 1990s.

That's not to say the 1990s were exactly like today. They were actually quite different. But that's really just because the nineties still had so much stuff from the eighties that was still popular and relevant. I'm just saying the trends that started in the nineties are for the most part, still going strong. There's never been a backlash against '90s culture - we went straight from loving the 90s while it was still the present to being nostalgic about the 90s.

as someone who graduated high school in 1999 (end of the decade) I can safely say the culture of now is WAY different compared to the culture of then especially in media.


clothing is way different IMO now then 13 years ago when i graduated. some of it still the same. i will say high school girls now dress way different then girls in the 90s.

The Simpsons - ah the simpsons...my favorite. the simpsons went down hill after 2000 like you said and have some how managed the stay on the air....IMO b/c fox is afraid to pull them.

South Park - started in 97, was popular but didnt really take off until the early 2000s IMO. in high school south park was funny but not hilarious. in the late 90s as a teenager i always looked at south park as like a late 90s beavis and butthead. once i got to college in the early 2000s south park became more politically driven and way more hilarious IMO.

90s rap is WWAYYYYY different than todays. one of my social studies classes that i teach was having this discussion last friday in fact. literally R&B was the name of the game back in the 90s.....wheres the R&B today? if its out there its not getting any air play i'll tell ya that much.

I think shows like seinfeld stand the test of time because current TV is so awful and people yearn to remember a time when sitcoms were actually funny.

friends you gotta remember didn't go off the air until what 2002? a decade a go? i would consider that still relatively fresh in many peoples minds. I mean it's like we're talking about the final episode of MASH here. haha. although i do remember "friends" parties for the final episode lol.

you forgot to mention that goth "fad". i can remember gigs left and right sporting eye make up, black and just down right bizarre clothing when marilyn manson came on the scene. now kids still sport that look but for different reasons.

[green_mariner]

as someone who graduated high school in 1999 (end of the decade) I can safely say the culture of now is WAY different compared to the culture of then especially in media.

I would be more than happy to hear your perspective of the 90s. Your formative years were in the entire decade. I graduated high school in 2004. On one hand, we both know the 90s culture is different than today. We both know this because we saw it. On the other hand, I'm younger, and you saw more.

clothing is way different IMO now then 13 years ago when i graduated. some of it still the same. i will say high school girls now dress way different then girls in the 90s.

Oh yes, teenagers today dress different from back in the 90s. In fact children in general these days dress different from the 90s. I notice it too. However, I want to make a bit of a distinction. Back in the 90s, pants that actually fit, or that were tight-fitting weren't popular anymore. Baggy pants were popular. Pants were being made specifically for that. Both for White kids as well as Black kids. However, back in the 90's, FUBU was very popular among Black kids. It was actually founded in the 90s. Jncos were big among alot of White kids in the 90s. Basically, alot of White kids I knew wore Jncos, or something similar in the mid to late 90s.

Today, I think the fashion is trending towards pants that fit tighter than they did back in the 90s. That being said, baggy pants are still around, albeit, more associated with hip-hop or skateboarding.

Girls are dressing a bit differently. I would say modesty among girls these days is not as prevalent. I would say that is a big difference. One thing I notice is that back in the 90s, bell bottom pants were making a come back from the 70s. Nowadays, I don't

The style of shoes has changed since the 90s, big time, especially among women.

Hairstyles have changed a bit too. Among White male teenagers, the Curtained Haircut was very popular in the 90s, basically bangs parted in the middle. Today, it doesn't seem to exist anymore. For Black men, the afro was making a resurgence. I was shaving my head in the 90s and I never had an afro until 2007 and after a certain length, I still shave my head all the way down(got it from Michael Jordan).

The Simpsons - ah the simpsons...my favorite. the simpsons went down hill after 2000 like you said and have some how managed the stay on the air....IMO b/c fox is afraid to pull them.

I was watching one of the newer episodes of the Simpsons with a friend a few weeks ago. We were both complaining, me particularly, about how the quality of the show declined. I was particularly upset because in one episode, Tik Tok by Ke$ha was the intro song.

South Park - started in 97, was popular but didnt really take off until the early 2000s IMO. in high school south park was funny but not hilarious. in the late 90s as a teenager i always looked at south park as like a late 90s beavis and butthead. once i got to college in the early 2000s south park became more politically driven and way more hilarious IMO.

South Park, one show I never watched in the 90s. I never liked it much.

90s rap is WWAYYYYY different than todays. one of my social studies classes that i teach was having this discussion last friday in fact. literally R&B was the name of the game back in the 90s.....wheres the R&B today? if its out there its not getting any air play i'll tell ya that much.

Indeed. I was exposed "en passant" to rap music, but I never really seriously listening to it until I was in the 8th grade(1999). I remember Onyx, Naughty By Nature, and Criss Cross. Indeed it was different. I wasn't into hip hop that much until I was in the 8th grade. By the end of 10th grade, I stopped listening to it. I've been more into R&B, old school as well as some contemporary. I grew up on my parents' music. As far as 90s R&B, I was listening to Tony Terry, Brian McKnight, Boys II Men, Mariah Carey, Toni Braxton, and Whitney Houston. Nowadays, MTV doesn't even have music on it as far as I know. And I do notice that rap music gets way more airplay than R&B these days.

I think shows like seinfeld stand the test of time because current TV is so awful and people yearn to remember a time when sitcoms were actually funny.

friends you gotta remember didn't go off the air until what 2002? a decade a go? i would consider that still relatively fresh in many peoples minds. I mean it's like we're talking about the final episode of MASH here. haha. although i do remember "friends" parties for the final episode lol.

I don't have cable anymore. I spent the weekend watching episodes of Home Improvement on youtube. Sitcoms were alot funnier back in the 90s. I sense more nihilism and cynicism in todays sitcoms.

Friends got cancelled in 2004. I still remember because some of my classmates were talking about it.

you forgot to mention that goth "fad". i can remember gigs left and right sporting eye make up, black and just down right bizarre clothing when marilyn manson came on the scene. now kids still sport that look but for different reasons.

Oh man, do I remember that. This was big in the late 90s, particularly in middle school. I won't lie. The goth fad creeped my out in the 90s.