Far and away the 90s and it’s not even close. We had the internet but it wasn’t stalking us. We had cell phones but your parents couldn’t drop a tracker app on it to see if you were actually at Doug’s house. Gas was cheap. Airports were better, flying was better, fewer people, god I miss the 90s.
It’s an interesting idea, though, that one’s preference for a particular design or aesthetic, especially when that design or aesthetic is emblematic of a particular historical or cultural moment, is never wholly isolated to its visual or material components, but also innately tied to our memory and understanding of that moment. I personally don’t think you can extricate a particular aesthetic from the psychic background noise surrounding it. Our minds don’t work that way. It’s always forming these subconscious or unconscious connections, binding events and memory to abstract signifiers.
We don’t like the 90s aesthetic because it’s “better” or even attractive. I mean, nobody has wallpaper in their home with those pastel and neon triangles. Many of us like it because it reminds us of childhood, of not having responsibilities other than waking up early enough on Saturday to catch all your cartoons and of not complaining too much when you have to go visit your grandparents who can never remember your birthday and who always ask you how old you are this year, of finishing Super Mario on the SNES before your friend does so you can brag about being better at video games than him. It’s of a simpler time and place, because we were simpler. And it was, in retrospect, of an America briefly sandwiched between the end of the original “Forever War” that was the Cold War, and the beginning of the 20th Century’s new “Forever War,” that is the War on Terror.
Give me the 90s with today’s safety standards (for things like car/aircraft/etc)
Don’t forget about the banning of indoor smoking in public places. God the 90’s were a horrible time for that although it was winding down.
It wasn’t so great if you were gay, either. Racism was mostly passe, but everyone thought Columbus was a cool guy and the natives disappeared on their own, which is not ideal.
Not being poor and the blissful delusion that history is over sound lit, but there are some hard edges to the era I hear about occasionally, as a Zoomer. And WTF is up with that song about rubbing your boner on people?
That, and internet in the late 90s started to get really fast. Some blokes sat in their rooms for days on end, downloading music or movies, as there were no laws against it yet. Or at least they were not enforced. In other words, those were the days when average Joe could still be one step ahead of The Man. You know, before he turned against us with a vengeance, everywhere, 24/7.
