If you could would you go back to the 90’s?

[Beaniebeemer]

The more I think about it the more I would love to go back to that time. I was too young to appreciate it fully (born 83).

I think it was a great time to be a kid and I’d imagine it would have been great to be an adult too. I really hate the world my children are growing up in

@BackforGood

Am AMAZED how many people would like to go back to a time pre smart phones, and pre wifi.

Because they were honestly the best times. People used their imagination and talked more. I can remember having to register for an o2 account online to send txts and who remembers Genie SIM cards? Less is definitely more!! We were actually kids and I’m grateful I experienced the 90s.

@Jalapinot

In a flash. I fee nostalgic for the 90's all the time. Music, tv, clothes, carefree teen years. Modern life is rubbish.

This!

Plus the 90’s felt like a time of optimism.

Would definitely go back.

Also would warn myself about a sliding doors moment in 2004.

I had a really shit time for almost all of the 1990s so I would definitely go back and do things differently

@wheresmymojo You've got it spot on love! Every generation thinks their youth/prime/teenage years were the best.

Honestly, we're all officially old now, wishing we were young again!

What's that line from the Baz Lurhman song about when you grow up you will fantasize about how when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders?!

I remember doing my work experience in 1999 in Year 10 at a company that had those colourful Apple computers, listening to Moby and designing myself some business cards. Everything seemed fun. I loved my school and my friends. It’s definitely a time I look back on fondly.

I’ve just remembered another classic 90s item - my Bang On The Door Groovy Chick folder

As a pp said, it was a time of relative stability and, once Blair got in, a more even handed society for few years. The Berlin wall had come down, Russia was opening up, the NI peace agreement happened, there was lots of genuine good news, British music was everywhere, London was buzzing and you didn't need money to take part in that particular scene - there wasn't really gentrification. Even the Tories weren't as bad - Thatcher had gone, and the dying days of the administration were genuinely hilarious - it was one sex scandal after the other, once they went down the back to basics route; the tabloids had a field day. I can remember going into college and telling my lecturer that the MP in my home town was having a rent boy scandal and he said "I wish mine would. I've wanted him out for years." It was that kind of attitude - sort of gung ho, optimistic, laughing at stuff because there wasn't really anything massively terrible impacting the UK.

Oh god yes. I was 15 in 1990.
Decade of the body shop, indie clothes and music. Students were still grungy rather than conventionally fashionable.
It was cool to do a few drugs, shag around without judgement, drink too much and vomit in doorways (well, in my circle anyway )
It felt like people cared and the world was going in the right direction.
A wonderful time to be a teen and young adult. So glad I didn't know what was coming and was a good age to enjoy it. I also had a lot if freedom as a kid. My own kids are never out of the garden unsupervised- totally different world/attitudes.

Most definitely

@Jalapinot

In a flash. I fee nostalgic for the 90's all the time. Music, tv, clothes, carefree teen years. Modern life is rubbish.

Blur told us that in the 90s 😉

Yes - and I agree with this:

Because they were honestly the best times. People used their imagination and talked more.

I bloody loved the 90s. I was born in 1978 so am a 90s girl through and through. The world was opening up in the 90s, now it feels like it's closing back down (and not just because of Covid).

Absolutely not. I was at secondary school and living with abusive parents. I don’t like much music from the 80s or 90s as it reminds me of horrible times. People seemed much poorer. Life was tough. My life much improved from the year 2000.

I feel so proud that my 'era' was the 90s. We had it all! I was 10 in 1990, I feel so painfully nostalgic for it too. Maybe not all the angst and difficult home life etc.... but the music. Oh the music!!! I remember buying my first copy of the NME when it was still printed on newspaper , I would pour over every word and get inky fingers. I earned £2.18p in my local supermarket taking a couple of shifts a week after school. We used to go to dark sticky indie clubs and lose ourselves. I loved creating my own outfits from charity shops and vintage kilo sales although I'm not even sure it was called 'vintage' back then. .... I feel terribly nostalgic about my first car. Would love to buy one again just for the smell 🤣. I'd love to do it all again but perhaps be in my twenties, going to.gigs and festivals and investing in property 😅

I loved the 90s - the music, the clubs, the clothes - I was a raver for 10 years and wouldn't change a thing!

However I've never thought about the whole smartphone thing and although I can't be without mine, life was great without one - I phoned my friends (no WhatsApp), the photos we took were spontaneous (no filters, etc.) and you could be stupid without the worry it would all be recorded and going around school the following day...

Also, really?

It's just nostalgia (and probably not that dissimilar to how the Brexit supporting old grumpy blokes feel about the 60s & 70s). At this rate you'll all be voting for a Nigel Farage character in 2030!

The 90s was also:

• The Rwandan Genocide

• The start of bigger high school shootings in the US with Columbine and then there is Dunblane in the UK

• Brixton riots, poll tax riots

• IRA bombings with many casualties

• Mass unemployment with more than 1 in 10 workers out of work at its peak (3,000,000)

• Recession for the first 3 years

• Massively high interest rates of 17% leading to many families being unable to pay mortgages and losing homes

• Lots of prison riots

• Jamie Bulger, Stephen Lawrence, Sophie Hook, Harold Shipman murders, Billie-Jo Jenkins, Daniel Handley, the Sunderland Strangler, Peter Bryan the cannibal killer, Rachel Nickell, Suzanne Capper, Jill Dando

• Lots of abuse since uncovered in children's homes, Rotherham, Jimmy Saville, etc

• UKIP formed and the BNP win their first seat

• Terrorist attacks kill British people in Egypt & Yemen

• Three London bombs targeting non-white communities and gay people. Kills 2 and injures nearly 100 people.

I'm not saying nothing good happened, I could come up with a compelling list of good stuff I'm just saying we should realise we have rose tinted glasses on.

It was probably okay if you were white and straight. Even then being a girl/woman was bloody tough...I'd like to think it's slightly better (or at least slightly less overt since the whole MeToo movement).

Yes yes yes - born in 62 so my decade was technically the 80s but the early 90s were fab 🤩

Also born in 1982 and there is not a chance in hell that I would go and live anywhere before ubiquitous internet ever again. So no more 90s for me!

Sorry to put a downer on this but the first half of the 90s were miserable for me. I was living with an alcoholic mother and taking all responsibility in the house while attempting to hide what was happening. I would turn up to school after not sleeping till 4 am and was pretty much friendless, I developed an eating disorder and ended up being hospitalised and then my mum died.

The second half was good, going back to education, the birth of my DD, getting my own house and making it a nice home, Nirvana, Tori Amos, going clubbing with £5 in my pocket then walking miles home at 2am in my Dr Martens, earning £3.10 an hour and feeling rich.

Brixton and poll tax riots were 80s, as was high unemployment and interest rates, ira campaign caused far fewer deaths in England than in the 70s and 80s and the peace agreement happened mid 90s. BNP were around for a long time prior to the 90s and at least during that decade there were organised counter demonstrations.

Internationally things were less rosey (you missed off Bosnia btw) but on the whole England itself was pretty stable and safe and the wealth gap narrowed post 97 election.

And there really was a major lull in tensions between the superpowers. Bloody hell, we all spent the 70s and 80s convinced we were going to be annihilated in a nuclear war. And not for no reason - the BBC even ran documentaries telling us what was going to happen when the bomb went off.

Yes please
My childhood was the 70s my teenage years the 80s and the 90s were the decade where I met my DH, bought a house got married, partied and had my wonderful DC.
I would make changes if I could have a do over, but not many, however reliving that decade would be brilliant, better than any other for me.

I loved the 90s , raving every weekend, not a care in the world, no phones ...a very simple life

@TheKarenWhoKnocks

Brixton and poll tax riots were 80s, as was high unemployment and interest rates, ira campaign caused far fewer deaths in England than in the 70s and 80s and the peace agreement happened mid 90s. BNP were around for a long time prior to the 90s and at least during that decade there were organised counter demonstrations.

Internationally things were less rosey (you missed off Bosnia btw) but on the whole England itself was pretty stable and safe and the wealth gap narrowed post 97 election.

They weren't. I'm happy to link to all the sources.

Yes, some of those things may also have happened in the 1980s but all of the things I listed happened in the 1990s too.

I was 20 in 1990 and at uni... it was fantastic! And I'm FULLY aware I'm incredibly lucky - all tuition fees paid and a maintenance grant to boot. Only got a job in the holidays. The music, the freedom, the lack of social media (the American guy in halls who had the misfortune to have his room next to the one pay phone... he was always knocking on doors and in a Southern drawl would say... 'Pebble... you got a phone call' and you'd run downstairs to take it!

Great time in my 20s in London... remember the day Blair got in and everyone smiled at each other on the Tube - it was like a new dawn! I even worked in an area which meant I met a lot of 90s Brit pop bands.

And before the end of the decade and before I hit 30 I was able to afford my own flat in London on a single income with a 10k deposit! Crazy! It was the same for loads of my friends too... Generation X ... we had it bloody good.

That said - as wheresmymojo pointed out... rose tinted specs are a wonderful thing. I'm gay and apart from a few trusted souls I was pretty closeted through the 90s as were most in my situation. One lesbian friend who was a primary teacher was terrified she would lose her job if anyone found out. Want to join the army? Male or female - not allowed! And that's just the stuff that affected me directly.

Swings and roundabouts!