Opining about the 1990s is all the rage in the internet salons these days. If you haven’t been following the debate, it may come as some surprise that nostalgia for the final decade of he twentieth century is now a subject of controversy.
The disagreement arises between those who want to use political means to wind the cultural clock back to the 90s. Behind these types’ avowed Conservatism lies a sensualist consumer streak that makes them long for the material richness of bygone days.
Related: The High 90s
The picture above, which has become celebrated as something of a temporal icon, condenses and crystallizes the 199s’ profile in the zeitgeist. But were the 90s really the way nostalgia-poisoned Gen X-ers and Ys remember?
Well, since that decade took place after the advent of electronic recording media, we have ways of comparing our warm, fuzzy memories to the genuine article. Just yesterday, author David V. Stewart shared an archival home movie shot in the early 1990s. If you thrill to the thought of watching the 90s watch the 90s, the following video is for you:
Did you enjoy your nostalgia trip?
Here are my main takeaways from the video:
The reality is not the ideal
Those expecting a home furnished in minimalist style yet plastered in Star Wars, Mario, and Marvel Comics posters were no doubt disappointed. Instead of a then-contemporary movie set, the real 90s house was chock full of elements David and I have mentioned before. Yes, the brother had a Genesis, and an unplugged NES makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo. But for the most part, it’s all leftover 1980s furniture and general decor—a far cry from the nostalgia shrine Gen Y misremembers.
Related: Nostalgia in Light of Generation Theory
Spiritual poverty; material wealth
That’s “wealth” in relative terms. The family in that home movie would have been considered low class by 1990s standards. And that’s not a dig; they’d be in the top 1 percent today, well above most Millennials’ aspirations. Yet nowhere did I see a crucifix, plain cross, or even a simple “Faith, Hope, Love” sampler on a wall. The sister makes a reference to Easter vacation, and there’s a dcommissioned Christmas tree in the garage, but neither the house nor its occupants show many signs of faith playing a central role in the home.
And while that house screams “Struggling HVAC business owner married to a part-time CNA,” the documented fact that a family of rather modest means could afford a split ranch of that square footage in the exurbs and four kids is mind-boggling today.
Speaking of which …
It shows what a functioning economy looks like
The footage itself speaks volumes about the postwar gravy train that was still chugging along in the 90s. So here are a few highlights:
- You could get a fast food meal for less than $2.00
- The Gen X videopgrapher owned a decent used car, which he probably could have afforded mowing lawns or delivering papers
- Every room shown on screen (except the bathroom) had a TV.
That last point is a red flag that the 90s weren’t as idyllic as most people think, because …
Kids were already addicted to mass media
And even back then, regime propagandists were already using TV to warp kids’ minds.
Related: The 1990s: Decade of Despair
The video gives proof of an even more disturbing social disease.
Gentlemen, it is with a heavy heart that I inform you that TikTok girls are not a new plague on civilization.
Because contrasting the boys’ behavior in that home movie with the girls’ yet again demonstrates the truth of this meme:
The next time you’re tempted to pine for the 90s, remember that even the sight of a clunky Marty McFly style camcorder was enough to make 1990s girls go full attention-seeker mode.
That video was shot in April of 1990. And it comes off as pretty much like now, but with less to do.
So it’s ironic that Back to the 90s bros, who are driven by a deep desire to consoom in the Current Year fashion, but next door to Christians, would be bored stiff if they did go back.
The human memory is designed to show us the “best of” the past. So what everybody forgets is how much more of the 90s consisted of waiting compared to now.
You got up and waited for the schoolbus.
Then you waited through stultifying clases for lunch.
After which you waited some more for the final bell.
Whereupon you went home and waited for your folks to get home.
Even on weekends, you spent hours waiting for friends to call back or for your favorite TV show to come on.
Fruit fly attention span digital citizens would have cracked up within an hour of going back.
Which is why, if watching the 90s watch the 90s has shown us anything, it’s that trying to go back is the height of folly.
The only way out is forward. You won’t find the 1990s there. But with hard prayer and serious effort, we may find a confessional Christian state. At lesat it will be richer spiritually. And under an intergralist system, a single wage-earner will be able to afford a house and feed a family of four.
Related: Pay a Living Wage—Challenge Impossible!
Now it’s your turn. What did you take away from watching the 90s watch the 90s?
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This looks like so many of my friends’ houses growing up in almost every way, even in the general attitudes and dress, though it being 1990 instead of later in the decade means the hair styles are a bit more 80s than 90s. But yes, this is a very fair assessment as to what it was generally like. Also another point that Gen Y kids were not Millennials–no Millennial had a life anything like this growing up unless they were on the extreme fringe. Phones and social media made about 75% of what is shown here extinct.
You also touch on probably what I did like about the decade that even nostalgia hounds wouldn’t (if they remembered it in the first place), and that is the quiet moments.
“So what everybody forgets is how much more of the 90s consisted of waiting compared to now.”
I still like doing this, but I’m a weirdo. I like the quiet moments between activities. I liked walking home through quiet neighborhoods. I liked spending some recess periods (not all, of course) just lying on the grass looking at the sky, which I even once did during a summer afternoon for like three hours one time.
Part of the experience of life that has been lost is that ability to just sit back and appreciate and take in what you have. The constant presence of noise, social media, and endless phone usage, is an unavoidable issue today we didn’t have back then. That said, this atmosphere was also not exclusive to the ’90s. That was just an advantage the analog world in general had. The constant TV usage is one sign of what was to come a decade from this video. Any future worth striving for is going to have to have some kind of straitjacket on the noise we love so much, because it truly is a mind killer.
Anyway, that’s a great video. Says something that it has so many views despite its short time uploaded.
You make a vital point People’s inability to be alone with their thoughts for 5 minutes is the cause of many woes.
“You make a vital point. People’s inability to be alone with their thoughts for 5 minutes is the cause of many woes.”
I’d argue this happens for numerous reasons. One is that many people have basically become dopamine junkies who need this constant emotional high. It’s that craving for ‘the kicks’ which is affecting their ability to slow down and actually take in their environment.
Another may have to do with the general societal decline, in the sense that they actually view all the noise as a welcome distraction from all the nagging anxiety in their minds about the general state of things.
I often see a combination of this when people are talking about attempted subversion of their favorite hobbies. Many say they ‘just wanna do X’ (of course, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that), but it often reveals that they’re not merely seeking an escape from reality, but a reality to escape into. Mentally, they’re basically retreating into a de-facto dreamscape where the real world is completely ignored.
I have no issue with escapism, but you can’t let your adult life degenerate into an endless retro-nostalgia trip, because sooner or later you’ll reach 1999 (or 1997) and you’ll have to acknowledge that that time is now over. I’ve found personally that you’ll enjoy those things better when you enjoy them for what they actually were, and treat them the way they should be treated.
Sometimes, you just have to move on…
There’s a strong argument to be made that the Millennial and Zoomer behaviors older generations complain about arose from younger gens withdrawing into their hobbies to delay facing the real world.
Especially young men. One of the things that most of my early Gen Y group was really looking forward to was joining the Men’s areas. The local bars or other areas that had a masculine presence.
Unfortunately, by 1995, most of those areas had been sued out of existence for being Men’s spaces. You could delude yourself that those spaces still existed, but for the most part they were gone.
Every public sphere had been feminized in such a way as to drive off men. If you were good at sports, you gained a reprieve from the lack of male space until your talent failed you.
Why wouldn’t young men retreat into there hobbies?
“The constant presence of noise, social media, and endless phone usage, is an unavoidable issue today we didn’t have back then.”
Thanks to technology, everyone, anywhere, can now have the experience of a big inner city from the comforts of their own home. I say this harkening back to David V. Stewarts comments (maybe a blog post out there or video) about how the city makes people crazy. The lack of pause make silence the most disturbing thing a person can mentally endure.
Like you, when I’m out in public, I do my best to keep the phone in the pocket. I’ll just stand there and retreat to my nothing box. I usually feel better about it later compared to being on my phone. Mainly because I still associate being glued to your phone as a female activity.
It probably helps that I have hated phones my entire life, to be honest. Being unavailable is sometimes very freeing, especially when it’s for silly nonsense you can do without.
Amen.
Reflecting on my 90s childhood, I often think about how I spent way too much time watching TV, but you raise an important point in this comment, reminding me of similar tendencies I may have overlooked until now.
Yes, I did watch a lot of TV… but I also spent sometimes hours a day riding the swing in the backyard, daydreaming and letting my mind wander. I think my present-day creativity and literary ability is directly rooted in the “skills” developed during those free intervals. I think this also resonated to some extent to more effort-intensive play activities, like building stuff from my imagination out of Lego bricks, or drawing imaginative things.
At the time, I had no idea that unstructured play time would prove so significant.
Politically speaking, we haven’t been able to move past 19th century politics. Culturally, we are still stuck in the 90’s.
Listen to a few Fulton Sheen talks and you’d think he was talking about the problems of today. Read St. Eziquiel Moreno’s ‘Either Catholicism or Liberalism’ and you realize the plague of liberal politics has been with us for far longer. Same issues, but a different pint in time spanning further back that the cultural break of the 60’s. I gander, the 60’s was just when liberalism finally won the culture, at least in the West after centuries of trying.
The 90’s wont end because we keep remixing, rebooting, and rehashing popular 90’s entertainment to milk nostalgia just to buy time before we admit we are creatively bankrupt and creative cowards. I don’t doubt it if in the future of art studies, referencing anything from the 90’s will be frowned upon.
The 90’s felt nice when I was a kid, but I was also a kid who didn’t know the ways of the world. I just want to move forward past this looping cultural-political nightmare. A good first start is to move toward a confessional Christian nation and the rest will fall into place.
You get a similar impression listening to current Catholic apologists. In contrast to Ven. Fulton Sheen, they bend over backwards to adopt Liberals’ frame – one suspects for a pat on the head that will never come.
It’s a great consolation that everything about Clown World discredits Liberalism, and the coming social order will reject it wholesale.
I forget who said it recently but the attitude of us “meeting people where they are” has led to such matching of the non believer’s frame.
A while back another Catholic blogger used the metaphor of the hierarchy riding in a limo and deciding to roll down the windows to dialogue with the Modern world just as the car entered a tunnel full of poison gas.
I’m Orthodox rather than Catholic but that is a wonderful and hilarious analogy which I just might roll out myself when necessary in regards to some noisy modernists in my own Church.
“A while back another Catholic blogger used the metaphor of the hierarchy riding in a limo and deciding to roll down the windows to dialogue with the Modern world just as the car entered a tunnel full of poison gas.”
The powers that be are in full freak out mode when anything remotely not pozzed is said in public by the Church or someone even remotely credibly Catholic. I have my own conversations and disagreements with traditionally minded Catholics, but they are extreme inside baseball. To the world at large, we are all Catholics.
Every time an even vague attempt to reassert a temperate minded, reverent, but entirely Catholic view of the world in public occurs, the globalists are beside themselves. That includes a recent football player all the way up to Pope Benedict when he expanded the Missal of 1962. It wasn’t okay for Bad Think Things to be said in Latin to tiny audience. The surprise has been that we have not had open demands to edit the New Testament on several points.
Personally, I tend to believe the hierarchy’s and frankly most of the laity’s amnesia on certain points is temporary and protective. Jesus was whisked away to Egypt as an infant. Taking on the PTB publicly for points that do not appear to affect salvation is a bad idea. Yes, it feels lukewarm and it probably is. Nobody was going to be impressed with the fully Divine and fully Man infant of Jesus either, not especially when the choice was to run in the middle of the night. But God does work that way, depending on the time period.
For the sake of the argument, I will give that the analogy is correct. However, we have the promise of Christ that even poison gas will not kill, even if it might make us confused for a short while. They tried with Christ and it didn’t work either. The gas will clear and the Church will stand.
“Every room shown on screen (except the bathroom) had a TV.”
“So what everybody forgets is how much more of the 90s consisted of waiting…”
These points are connected. There was also a TV in your doctor’s waiting room, in the break room at work, in the teachers’ lounge, in the hotel lobby, in the store window or behind the cash register, and in giant banks of screens at the airport. If the person responsible for the space couldn’t put a TV in, there was probably a radio instead. If neither could be managed there was a stack of magazines, even beside the toilet.
Good job noticing that connection. TV was a more effective propaganda tool than social media. Just look at the Boomers.
This is one thing that has been improved, though it isn’t as noticeable if you can’t unplug. If I don’t bring a phone to any of these places, there is no longer anything there to distract me. At some point over the past decade, the TVs and radios got removed from a lot of these spaces. It’s one thing we can take advantage of that we couldn’t do so much before.
Boomers seem to dislike it, but no one else even notices because they’ve got their phones glued to their faces. This actually is an improvement everyone could take advantage of if they can gather the fortitude to change their phone habits.
I notice it the most in airports. Being unable to escape CNN was a form of torture.
I know right? The CNN airport thing was so awful. The worst was when the TVs showed up in the MD’s offices.
A few random points.
The biggest difference between the actual 90s and the idealized 90s is the presence of faux wooden paneling. Not just on the walls, but on things like entertainment stands and even electronics (though since that’s more of an 80’s thing, new electronics in the 90’s tended to favor beige plastic.)
When it comes to kids being addicted to mass media in the 90’s that’s of course true, but that phenomenon had been going on since the 50’s. I guess you could argue that radio played a similar role before the mass adoption of TV, but since the radio is something you can listen to passively and which requires your imagination if you want to listen to actively, I think that the effect it had was very different from that of TV. I don’t say this to absolve the 90’s but instead to point out that solution is not to merely go back earlier.
Lastly, I don’t remember where I heard about this (maybe it was even here), but this site is the best way to use TV to see what a decade was really like vs. what people think it was like:
https://myretrotvs.com/
That retro TV site is a terrible wonder. Thank you.
Wow, that’s pretty impressive. I suspect we’re going to see a lot more of this sort of thing as Gen X gets older.
Rudolph Harrier – https://myretrotvs.com/
Well, there goes the next three weeks of my life. Thanks a bloody lot!
Then again, I saw the Thompson Twins on some UK TV show, so that was cool.
Looking forward to watching that video – just the first minute of it reminds me a lot of how last year, I transcribed my family’s voluminous collection of VHS home videos to the computer. I think it was something like fifteen hours of content, much of it new to me.
My dad was an early adopter of the VHS camcorder, getting his in late 1987, I believe – months before I was born. Our family home videos were an excellent record of what life was like for a young family growing through the 1990s in middle America, especially the first half of the decade where we really recorded a ton of stuff. Since we were young kids, it’s probably of less interest to nostalgists than if we’d been teens at the time.
There’s not a ton of pop culture, comparatively speaking – we didn’t have game consoles until I was in middle school, for instance. But there’s a lot of everyday life mixed in with occasions like Christmas and birthdays. The experience left me feeling wistful about my childhood and family experience, more than wanting to go back to the 1990s. It was my family life that made it special, in the end – not really the entertainment or cultural milieu. I was a bit spoiled in that regard, I guess.
What’s funny is that in almost every one of our videos, there’s a TV blaring in the background. We just never turned the darn thing off. Feels strange now, but as a kid I just didn’t really think about it.
Yes, the endless TV’s in the background were very much a thing. We were poor enough to only have one TV for a long time, but it did get upgraded pretty regularly. By the time I was in high school, there were two in the house.