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.

Rates of violent crime: twice as high in the 90s.

There's so much 90s nostalgia pop culture right now - like The Crown and Pepsi, Where's my jet? on Netflix. They're captilising on a mood. There's also been lots of nostalgia from New Labour era politicians - like Alistair Campvell's podcast.

It's a sure sign that we Gen Xers/ older millennials are becoming ancient! Soon we'll be on those old codger 'memory lane' Facebook groups where everyone's reminiscing about 'proper bin men' and life before health safety ruined all the fun playground equipment.

Got married and bought our first house in 1991. For me the 90s was when life got serious. Money was very tight for most of that decade as we were early in our careers then starting a family.

My teen years were early/mid 80s. Grew up in a home counties town which closed at 5pm, almost no night life. My parents loved it, I couldn't get out fast enough. I have never wanted to go back.

I came of age in the 90s. I'm a baby gen x so not even an elder millennial. It was a great era. My MIL disagrees and swears that the 60s were the best. I think we both thought our generation had something special in terms of culture. I think the same is true for every generation.

I do think music now is not as good though!!!

I miss it so much, particularly the mid 90s (I’d say 94-97). The recession caused a low mood in the early 90s and the very late 90s had a different feel (more early 2000s) but the kid 90s felt like perfection. I would love to go back.

you all need 90steenmagazinearchives on instagram in your lives. It’s more 1997 onwards than mid 90s but it still brings me endless joy.

It's essentially because we had an analogue childhood but a digital adulthood. Everything was simpler.

We were the last generation to grow up without social media and mobile phones. Even at uni only a few of us had mobiles. Yet when we joined the workforce we were early adopters of all that stuff

I remember that feeling of waking up... And just being. Smartphones have taken that away from us. It’a terrible! The freedom was amazing. Going down the pub to see if your mates were there. Maybe the bloke you fancied would be out that night. You might even snog him! And then not see or hear from him for weeks... Everything was spontaneous & exciting! I miss that...

As a teen in the nineties I completely agree!! Whilst the internet has many good points it's also brought about anxiety, stress, fomo. Teens are not teens in the way we were. I'm so glad not to be a teen now.

That list of movies is so macho! I've seen them all and sort of enjoyed them at time but there are no female protagonists there? I don't miss that side of the 80's/90's

That message about the macho was in response to this list of films.

YABU. If you were twenty years older you’d have been saying the same about the 70s.

The clothes were terrible!! The makeup OTT and the hair styles - red and blonde streaks. Come on.

Britpop and dance music were great, but some of the pop was awful and naff. I remember the 90s well, and remember thinking at the turn of the millennium that it didn’t seem to be a very “up there” decade in comparison to what was always said about the 60s/70s. And 80s music was far better.

And I can live without cigarette smoke in pubs too.

I don’t miss it. I’m still enjoying music - love it more now tbh

Dc are at an age where life is more opportunity, they’re in a big city already and it’s all normal to them

SM - you can shut down what you don’t want and use what you do

No hankering back here although being young at time of raves was fun. Sure dc today will do their versions

In the early/mid 90s I was living/working/partying in Camden, at the epicentre of Britpop. It was wonderful at first, seeing all the young bands getting their first successes, watching it all blow up (Britpop-referencing pun intended). But it did get quite dark as time went on. It was a horribly misogynist scene and I knew lots of girls in their early teens who were basically groomed and abused by much older men in bands/the wider music industry. There was a lot of entitlement - young men flush with success and surrounded by yes men, thinking that everything was theirs for the taking, including girls and women. And members of the bands who weren't utter bastards often were affected in other ways - I knew so many who ended up with severe MH/addiction issues.

The 90s are thought of as a very innocent time but where I was, it was anything but. The behaviour of some of the bands which soundtracked everyone's innocent carefree 90s was so shocking that if people found out about it, I think it'd colour their own memories of the time too.

The 90s were fabulous!
I can’t imagine being a teenager/twentysomething at these modern times and enjoying it. How can you enjoy being on social media and having to compare yourself to others all the time? How can you enjoy living in a sterile, woke world where you can’t crack a spontaneous joke (let alone post it on social media) in case you upset someone from a minority group? The constant virtue signalling? Growing up on crap music like Dua Lipa, Taylor Swift, Billy Eilish and thinking they are great?
Poor youngsters don’t know what they are missing..

I’m 46 so was 14-24 in the 90s. I remember the HUGE amounts of awful sexism - it was horrendous. Men grabbing you in clubs, posters of women naked all over the walls of their houses at university. The massive pressure to look like Louise from Eternal and want to have loads of sex every single night and if you didn’t you were ‘frigid’. Being shouted at in the street by blokes was totally commonplace. Terrible - all the ‘ladette’ culture was horrible too.
I loved the 90s, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t necessarily the golden age for growing up - way too much blatant sexism.

Late 20s early 30s was a late starter getting into stride...pure hedonism for me.😛 then early menopause I was robbed! 🤬

There's a lot to be said for a 'woke world' where people are called out for their actions, and where as a young woman/teenager you don't feel the pressure to shut up and put up lest you be seen as a party pooper or shit stirrer. That was very much the case back then. Sexism was absolutely rife and young women didn't feel able to speak up about it at all. Miki Berenyi from Lush talks about it very eloquently in her autobiography.

Exactly this.

You could go out and make a tit of yourself without the fear of it being all over the internet the next morning.

Having your drink spiked just didn’t enter your head.

People didn’t cancel with no good reason because they’d have to ring you up and tell you, not just send a text.

I miss the 90's too, I was in my teens in the early to mid 90's.

There was a freedom and spontaneity to life back then and it wasn't just because we were younger then and didn't have the sort of responsibilities we have now.

I miss the music and some, not all, but some of the clothes.

The 80s was my hey day, I had my first child in the mid 90s so also remember the 90s with much fondness. Unlike now, and the 80s, there was a real sense of optimism. The 80s had been scary with the Falkland war and Cold War, miners strikes and real sense of a divided angry country. When Blair and Brown got in it felt amazing - I am Scottish and went to a huge celebration on Calton Hill in Edinburgh. It felt like a new dawn and for a while it was. The Union Jack became cool, pop stars in Downing Street, massive investment in public services, support for young families, in crease in maternity provision. It felt like a country on the up again.

I feel my children are reliving my 80s youth - graduating into a bitter recession and a divided country on the decline. Time for a change - things can get better.

Twas ever thus OP!

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

A. E. Housman - 1859-1936

I recommend watching ‘My big fat Diary’ (channel 4) for some 90s nostalgia. It took me right back watching that.

I had my best job in the early 90s, where you could still banter. People weren't walking on eggshells. I agree about pub life back then as well. The days where people would still stand at buys to drink, before most pubs became restaurants.

I don't things have changed that much to be honest