To miss the 90’s so much it hurts

[Backonceagainwiththerenegademaster]

😫It was the best.

The Rachel green outfits post has reminded me of it all. I was 15/16/17 early-mid 90’s and it was just the best time. Just about scraped in for the times when clubs were good with house music etc, Blur vs Oasis and the whole Brit pop thing. Proper pubs with pool tables and drinking and smoking, great clothes, jobs more easily available, great music. I know we all probably hanker to the time that was our youth…but really, truly, weren’t the early-mid nineties an amazing time..freedom, no internet/mobiles..if only to go back for a bit.

I am the same age OP. Happy days!

Every generation is nostalgic for their teenage years. There’s a really good documentary on Netflix called ”The Mind Explained” that talks about the development that a brain goes through during adolescence. It’s fascinating.

YANBU. Gigs with people actually dancing, not just filming the whole bloody thing with their phones.

Yes totally agree- the 90s were awesome! Things seemed more chilled somehow and the music was great.

Nostalgia. You think it’s a word for the elderly looking back over their lives. And then you hear a tune on the radio that takes you right back to your teens and the 90s and that feeling hits you. I suppose it is sadness in a way that we’ll never get those times back. It really was the best time to grow up in.

I was listening to Alanis Morrisette Jagged Little Pill earlier, the first few notes just transported me back to my best friend's house and the teenage angst we went through!

I miss being so uncynical and optimistic and naive I suppose

YANBU, I’m in my early 30s but remember the end of the 90s and early 2000s as such an exciting time. There was plenty of ‘forbidden fruit’ as a teen, no access-all-areas via the Internet. Lots of great memories of snogging boys at the youth club and after school in the park 😂 the smell of chip fat and Charlie black takes me back!

It's youth you're missing, not the 90s themselves. Same way I got sick of hearing about how bloody marvellous the 60s were.

I thought my 90s were ace. Well, not the early 90s cos I was a weird looking swot and poor,so school was hideous; but the mid to late ones.

I saw an ad for a vintage bar opening near me. It was 90’s!!!!!!
It’s just like when I went out in my twenties, but the vintage tag makes me feel so old.

I was a student at Manchester 96-99. Such a great time and place to be young, no fees, i got a grant, the wave of optimism the 97 election brought.

As others have said, the Internet was opening up a world of information and opportunity without the toxic elements it now has.

It's the age you are ... I worked in a pub and after a few beers everyone tells you how the decade they were 14 to 24 had the best music, the best youth culture, the best of times.

It's partly because we were young and free, but also because it's the first time you experience that independence of life and thought, finding your tribe and your tastes, and it feels authentic and solid, it IS you.

There's no "this is how it was before, this is how it is now, things have changed and will change again, what I like, or respsct, or value has changed before and will change again, I have changed before and wil change again". There's no earlier version of you with passions that seem a bit embarassing or naive now, it's just "this is how it IS!" . So you throw yourself into that with no holds barred, whereas a bit later in life you've seen things (music, jobs, tech, cultural moments, whatever) come and go so you don't ever have that 100% commitment again.

I miss the 90s but I miss the 80s more!

@boobot1 I miss the 90's & 80's but miss the 70's & 60's more.. :-)

I was 15 in 1995 and man alive I long for those days.

Baby doll dresses and wishing I looked like Liv Tyler in the Crazy video.
House parties, 10 B&H, strawberry kiwi 20/20, watching Friends on Friday and queuing up for the newest CD by the newest band, sneaking up to Camden market to buy a band t-shirt, working in Woolworths over Christmas and earning £270 which I spend on Christmas gifts (from Woolworths naturally).

Brilliant movies, amazing freedom before social and internet. We were young, happy, and hopeful. I wish the teens if today felt the same but I suspect they don't.

Yanbu. I was born 1981 so I definitely came of age in the 90s.

Blur
Suede
Pulp
The Prodigy
Doc Marten boots
Fringed shirts with mirror embroidery
Charity shop velvet jackets
Flared cords
Bootleg tapes recorded at concerts
NME, Melody Maker, Select
Just 17, Mizz, Sugar, Bliss
More, Minx, 19, Company

The fact that mobiles, internet and social media didn’t exist is what made those times magical. I genuinely believe that.

Bridget Jones and Nick Hornby
Pride and Prejudice, This Life, Eurotrash, The Girly Show, The 11o'clock Show
CK One, Contradiction, Obsession, Escape, Eternity
Centre partings
Army surplus
Adidas Gazelles
Baddiel, Skinner and the Lightning Seeds
Portishead, Tricky, Massive Attack
Henna dyed hair
Elastica
Young British Artists
Camden Market/High Street being the height of cool

The cultural scene was amazing but for me personally the nineties was a shitshow

It was brilliant.
London was for adults and not an overcrowded hellhole. Globalisation hadn't hit yet - though protestors were trying to warn us by about 2002?

I wouldn't want to be young again - money worries, insanely long hours at work. But the surrounding world was so much fun. As a woman of colour, race and sex so much less of an issue.

People took drugs to get happy, not to get aggressive. Less commercialism. Having a drink after Monday - Thursday night, the Tube wasn't busy! So nice.

I remember a quote from a documentary that said something along the lines of 'the football, politics and music were all just right'

I used to walk in London to calm my nerves, I can't imagine doing that now!

and every other shop wasn't kebabs or just random tat. No cycle lanes! No congestion charge! You could drive round London and enjoy the view.

also no internet culture, no kind of snobbishness around whether you travelled a lot or knew about world politics. Local radio!

For anyone on Instagram knee deep in the 90s is def worth a follow! (the words are separated by underscores _ but the app won't let me type it out like that for some reason.

A friend of mine described the nineties as ‘sad, exciting times’ and it summed it up so wholly for me. The rawness of it all, and the optimism and the feeling that we were part of something. I don’t think we even knew what. I miss those days too, and I miss the person I was in those days before life spoiled me.

So interesting. I feel like this too, so nostalgic for my 20s. Do you think that's how all people feel or do you think life is actually worse, I too wonder if technology has ruined everything. It seemed a simpler time. I do feel for kids growing up now