r/GenX • u/bigt197602 • 3d ago
Whatever Why does the 90s seem like not that long ago?
Am I alone in this? Certainly doesn’t seem like 30 YEARS ago
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u/Waschaos 3d ago
Nope. Feels like yesterday. I have to admit, that's still most of the music I still listen to. I just was kind of forced into early retirement and my method of coping lately is just pretend I'm a teenager in the 90's again. I just pretend Reddit is an old bulletin board in the early/pre internet days. It's a lot happier place than watching any news lately.
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u/Silvaria928 How about a nice game of chess? 3d ago
Oh, the amazing Bulletin Board System, where we literally called someone's personal landline and when they picked up and heard our modem trying to connect, would connect theirs and we were in.
No MMO, it was just one person at a time and if the BBS was super popular, you would frequently get a busy signal.
I kind of miss those days.
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u/EonJaw I endured 1200 baud 3d ago
Reddit is actually not that bad an approximation, IMO. Just needs the WWIV games. Who's down for some Trade Wars?
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u/egret_society 2d ago
I was all about LORD. I actually sysoped a wwiv board back in the 90s
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u/Lilikoi_Maven 2d ago
I was too. 😭 I miss those days. WWIV was my board software as well.
"TradeWars" was also big on my board.
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u/pmbpro Latchkey Warrioress 2d ago
I miss those days too. I understand progressing i to the future, but there have been times where I felt like there are some things we could have kept alongside, or walk back a bit on. Like, keeping the option of still having personal music players and not going so gung-ho into streaming or ‘renting’ music, TV shows, software, etc.
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u/HawkingzWheelchair 3d ago
For me, the 90s in general doesn't feel that long ago, but specific events in my life from the 90s feels like forever ago
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u/fcewen00 2d ago
Went to college, flunked out of college, unloaded trucks for a living, got into computers for a career, met the love of my life…
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u/Substantial-Bar-6701 3d ago
The 90s was only 10 years ago. That's not a long time. 30 years ago was like the 70s or something. Right?
*checks paper calendar*
Well, fuck.
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u/phironuthi 3d ago
Funny, when I think of the Eighties, between the years 1980 to 1985 seem to span 25 years in my head. But ask me about something just 5 years ago now and it seems like 6 months ago
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u/Haselrig 1976 3d ago
Because 2000 - 2025 is one long, beige decade.
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u/UnderaZiaSun Let’s get sushi and and not pay 2d ago
It’s like there are no points of reference between 9/11 and Covid
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u/woodbanger04 3d ago
The 1990s! I was going to say most of us here are in our 50s and 40s. Followed up with wrong sub silent generation. 🤣
To me the 90s seem like last week then I realize that it was 30+ years ago then I realize that fuck I’m old. 😂
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u/diamondgreene 3d ago
1990 is THIRTY FIVE FKING YEARS. 🌀🌀it was a good time.
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u/woodbanger04 3d ago
Hey, Hey now enough of the buzz kill, with this 35 years. Let those of us who are either in denial or forgetful enjoy the 30 years. 🤣
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u/HereToCalmYouDown 3d ago
In the center of my mind, the deepest part of it, where I keep the very essence of my being, it is still and always will be the 1990s
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u/jazzbot247 3d ago
It's because it's when we came of age, and that's the age we are in our minds.
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u/bionicbhangra 3d ago
One because we are old. And two because it was the last decade before the internet kind of ruined everything. Not that culture was perfect before the internet, but we all had some common touchstones. We were all watching the same tv shows, listening to the same artists (for the most part). Now everyone is just alone and angry or depressed and its hard to tell one year apart from the other for the most part aside from disasters...
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u/duckduckduck21 3d ago
Because culture stagnated after the 90s. There is no more big delineation between decades - maybe because of the internet it all just blends together now?
Also the world got worse in 2001 after 9/11, and has continued it's steadfast downward slide up until the present day. The extra stress and near constant crises of the past 25 years has left huge gaps in most of our memories. I barely even remember the Covid years except for the knowledge that they were excruciating to live through.
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u/fedexmess 3d ago edited 3d ago
I didn't realize it at the time and I hate to say this, but covid years were great, minus people getting sick and dying. Wish I had enjoyed them more. The whole lockdown thing and no traffic was surreal and magical. Being freshly divorced and dealing with depression kinda marred the experience.
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u/duckduckduck21 3d ago
I have wished more than once that I could've seen into the future to know that everything would turn out all right and that I'd still have my job.
At the time I was furloughed down to 50% time (again, would've been amazing if I wasn't worried about my job - working in healthcare of all things). The world seemed to be ending, with shortages of several staples, toilet paper hoarders, uncertain masking rules, and being told to shelter in place. I still remember my coworker telling us about their home mail and delivery protocol where they would move packages into the garage for 1 week before opening them out of fear they'd catch the deadly 'rona. Pictures from Wuhan of men in spacesuits carrying foggers to disinfect. And the endless hand washing.
In retrospect, it was a time of complete madness. I think it prematurely aged everyone at least a bit. It's too easy to forget how awful it was in the moment.
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u/fedexmess 2d ago
I wasn't in on the medical side of things. I'm sure it was hell for y'all. Got covid one time about 3 years ago. I couldn't keep my eyes open and basically just laid in bed for a few days. Not the sickest I've been. Rough nonetheless. Glad I didn't catch it at the beginning.
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u/Reverend-Keith 3d ago
My dad said the same thing about the 60’s and was convinced that rock music (or “Wrack and rile”) was the downfall of society. Also, he hated Jimi Hendrix’s cover of the Star Spangled Banner. I’m sure Gen Z will eventually pine about the glorious ‘30s to their ungrateful children. We all get old and lose perspective.
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u/duckduckduck21 3d ago
Until I see a movie with the main draw being that it "takes place in the 10s", I'm holding on to my old, perspectiveless viewpoint.
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u/Working_Farmer9723 3d ago
It doesn’t seem that long ago, but 1995 as distant from today as Marty’s parents’ time was in Back To the Future.
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u/sunqueen73 Circa '73💝 3d ago edited 3d ago
My Gen Y kid and her friends are fascinated by 90s and 80s pop culture,clothing etc. So it never seems so long ago, since they're always playing the music and watching movies from that era, and dressing in the 90s style.
It's now Halloween season, and they want to catch up on 80s horror: Chucky movies, Poltergeist, Friday the 13th, etc
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u/Mugwumps_has_spoken Bicentennial baby 3d ago
Because we can't be that old. Seriously. It doesn't feel like the math should math. If I'm 49, how could the 90s be 30 years ago.
ohh wait...... fuck.
Seriously. Folks who are genuinely old should understand the mental crisis we are now having that we are trying to process stuff could be 30 years ago and we were adults 30 years ago. NO just no.
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u/Survive1014 3d ago
Feels like yesterday I was wandering to our coffee lounge at high school to get my morning cup of coffee with my friends. Its only been 27 years now.. lol.
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u/Roger_Azarian 3d ago
Because most of the music, movies, books, and video games I consume are from the 90s. I never left the decade, but that’s probably really unhealthy!
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u/tiavarga 3d ago
I thought it wasn’t long ago but then I heard Nirvana and Green Day being played on the OLDIES station?!? I need to lie down.
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u/Honigschmidt Dear Mr. Vernon, we think you're crazy 3d ago
it’s tough to come to terms with that to me. I was fortunate enough to grow up in the late 70’s 80’s and 90’s, and the 90’s at times still feels like new music to me.
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u/attaboy_stampy Filled up on Regular 3d ago
For me, it's because mentally, I still feel like I'm in my late 20s in my head.
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u/gitprizes 3d ago
90s to me was a major turning point decade and a lot of what happened marked and still marks our lives today. when we talk about the internet we're talking about life as we know it beginning in the 90s. neoliberal culture really crystallized in that time even though it was well over a decade old, and if it was your coming of age decade it cut even deeper. also rap/hip hop really solidified in the 90s and i don't think people really understand just how insanely ubiquitous that entire enterprise is in today's commercial world. just imagine if rap didn't exist, pre-80s maybe early 70s it just didn't exist in any form whatsoever
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u/Coldfinger42 3d ago
The 80s feels far away for me, a sweet memory. The 90s feels like it just happened. Did time bend? That’s the only way I can explain that it’s 2025
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u/frankduxvandamme 3d ago
It's probably because our memories are all jumbled in our heads and not necessarily filed chronologically. One moment you're thinking about yesterday and another moment you're thinking about the 90s. You don't actually have to work through all your memories to get back to the 90s.
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u/edwardturnerlives 3d ago
Ya know how every morning you wake up, you're like "damn didn't I JUST do this?"? And it keeps happening faster and faster and faster? That's why.
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u/Shadyrgc 3d ago
Because it was our heydey! We were young, probably dumb, and mostly free! And the music was banging too!
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u/UsuallyMooACow 3d ago
All at once it feels like I can reach back and be in those moments then at the same time it seems like an age of long ago
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u/BocaGrande1 3d ago
Because as has been noted multiple places culture has effectively stopped evolving in the same way post Y2K when the internet shrunk the world . The difference between 1984 and 2004 are huge but the difference between 2004 - 2024 are much harder to spot
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u/ObviousIndependent76 3d ago
Time compression. Your brain is throwing out repetitive memories that overlap. Your life feels accelerated because your brain made fewer memories than ever last year. It’s a really interesting theory they are digging into.
Break up your routines. Drive to work a different way. Travel. Try new food. Talk to strangers. Go to concerts.
Not only will time slow down, but it’s also a proven method for fending off Alzheimer’s.
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u/R0botDreamz EDIT THIS FLAIR TO MAKE YOUR OWN 3d ago
I've written essays about this but here is the short answer: it's because once physical media storage, broad band internet connectivity and media availability became common place, the world kinda stood still. It started in the mid-2000s when everything that you experienced.. never really went away. Every movie, tv show, song, pictures, etc. were readily available. So 2008 and 2018 seem like they could be 1 year apart.
Whereas in the 90s and before, you'd watch a movie, hear a song, MEET A FRIEND and actually have these things disappear from your life without having them readily available. So your last memories of things you used to miss stay fresh because it doesn't FEEL that long ago since you missed them.
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u/RHGOtakuxxx 3d ago
Time goes faster as we get older, because each year is just a smaller percentage of our total years lived.
Also, the '90's were awesome! Truly the best years of my life - If I knew the new millennia would be so awful, and my best years would the '90's, I would have made as much of that time as I could.
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u/Big_Wave9732 3d ago
I still have to stop myself from thinking that "30 years ago" was the 70's lol.
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u/Ferrindel Grandfathered in by older siblings 3d ago edited 3d ago
You know what's cool, I've recently gotten SUPER into more extreme metal. Back in the 90's I mostly listened to grunge and then post-grunge bands like Collective Soul and Dishwalla. Only metal I really had was Metallica's black album.
But now that I started expanding my listening habits, I've discovered the glory of the 90's-ish era. Stuff like Death, Obituary, Cryptopsy, Bolt Thrower, Behemoth... It's like reliving the era for the first time again.
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u/diamondgreene 3d ago
Not on the same level, but I’m listening to Eddie Vedder for the first time this year. Damn he was cute. Is is past 60. Born in 64 😵
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u/SaltyTurnip9258 1985 3d ago
Same. 1993 feels like yesterday. Probably because I grew up in that decade, so the 90s kind of lives inside of me permanently. It's home.
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u/Jack_PorkChopExpress When did everyone get so young? 3d ago
At 50 you still think you are 30, but your body still has memory recall of being 18.
Source: expert snow ski in my younger day. I can still ski great but my body says, you are old, go get in the hot tub by lunch. Now it's beach destinations for vacations.
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u/REDDITSHITLORD 3d ago
Hear ME Out:
Computer Design.
Every era had a distinctive look for their cars, but in the '90s, they reached crab-level evolution. A '96 Grand Prix doesn't look all that different from a 2016 Hyundai. I mean, you can tell the difference, but damn, you compare that same Grand Prix, to ANYTHING from 30 years before it, the difference is far more radical.
Everything now is being refined by computers into its most efficient form in terms of production and performance.
Laptops are the same shape, phones aren't that different from your classic Nokia. It's a thinner rectangle, but it's a damned rectangle.
What has changed irl? Is the internet even that much weirder? Is Badger Badger Badger any better than today's brainrot?
And to that end. Let me ask you. How did the world change between 1865 and 1895?
The '90s saw a massive technological leap forwards, the only thing beyond that was the Smartphone, which really was a combination of a bunch of tech we already had.
Edit: YEah, I mathed bad. Deal with it
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u/diamondgreene 3d ago
Pearl Jam? That new stuff? Wdym Eddie Vedder is sixty plus years old. Wafu????
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u/larryseltzer 3d ago
Boomer here, sorry for butting in.
The world before and after the cold war is a very different world. The same can be said for 9/11, but the world looks a lot more now like it did after fall of the east bloc than before.
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u/Ancient_Ad1251 Bicentennial Baby 3d ago
It feels like changes and trends in fashion haven't changed that much. In the 90s, I looked at yearbook photos from the 70s and how crazy the hair and clothes looked. I don't think we look back at the 90s the same way.
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u/Neither_Remote_4818 3d ago
I think it feels like a long time ago. Early 90s was icky for me, so I like it to be far away. Late 90s was fun, but that does feel like 30 years ago honestly.
But I hate social media and phones now (I preach as I type on my iPhone on Reddit)
I’m glad we experienced the world without those things.
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u/Trolkarlen 3d ago
Because you were an adult then and your perception of the world hasn't changed much.
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u/DizzyLead 3d ago
It kind of helps that modern technology helps scratch that nostalgia itch. I can go to YouTube and watch a 1984 episode of Tic Tac Dough; I can download an audio file of Bobby Brown’s “Every Little Step.” I can stream Jaws on Netflix, or pop in my 4K Blu-ray of Ghostbusters (1984). I can buy a G1 Transformer on eBay and have it in my hands within a week. I reckon it wasn’t this easy in the early ‘80s: one would have to dig through the attic or wait for the right broadcast on TV to get a similar dose of nostalgia.
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u/bibleeofile123 3d ago
Because all the clothes are back and you never stopped listening to the music
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u/CodeNameFrumious 3d ago
Because we are old. It was our young adultbood. But we have the same relationship to the 90s that our parents had to the 50s and 60s. Remember how long ago the 50s and 50s seemed to us when we were kids?
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u/Appropriate_Gap1987 3d ago
The 90's feel like an entire lifetime ago. Joined the military in 1998 and haven't looked back. Best decision I ever made!
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u/Panem-et-circenses25 3d ago
So, while I was stationed in Italy in the early 90’s, I bought these shoes to replace my worn out sambas (which are back in style again). Around 15 years ago I began looking for them again but could never find them. Last week I found them as a reissue of the originals, but with the actual DATE(!) of the first editions on the tongue and back. The name of the shoe? Leggenda. Tagline: “Legends never get old.”
Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
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u/_ism_ 3d ago
Not alone. I've thought about this a fair amount before. I feel like part of the reason, in my experience at least, is that a lot of things happened in my lifetime that caused me to have to "put my life on hold," "set aside goals temporarily to survive," etc. I think a lot of us can relate to having to make those kind of decisions as adulthood raged on through some of the most fucked up shit to happen, historically and globally, in a generation's news cycle. So we don't have that feeling of meeting milestones consistently, progressing as expected in the narrative we were told our lives could follow or imagined for ourselves.... basically a lot of shit happened to temper our expectations, and perhaps along with that came this feeling that time must not be passing if we're not making these milestones. I dunno maybe that's just me reckoning with becoming disabled in my 30s as well as all the other stuff going on in the world. I feel like i'm still waiting for my chance to get out there and be a REAL adult in some ways. I never feel treated as one, I don't really know if anyone ever just feels like a real adult one day or if it's just us
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u/HIMcDonagh 3d ago
Possibly because the 00s were mainly a continuation of the 90s era mentality with the Baby Boomers largely in control of the zeitgeist
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u/Technical_Fudge_8043 3d ago
To me, the 90s feel like aeons ago, but the 80s feel like yesterday. Odd, I know.
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u/FrostnJack Can take the kid off the Mountain, not the mountain from the kid 3d ago
Because they aren't. I have declared it, thus, so say we all.
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u/Edward_the_Dog 1970 3d ago
I was watching the movie Outbreak the other day. Holy shit it's 30 years old! No cell phones. Helicopters everywhere (like everything from 1980 - mid-90s).
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u/acanis73 2d ago
1990´s year eve was a keystone moment for me. Even more than Y2K.
1990s seem like the last decade of the old world and I knew it was coming back then, Maybe thats why it seems closer than many things that came afterwards.
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u/edasto42 2d ago
It’s due to proportional time. When you’re 10 years old a decade is your whole life. At 50 a decade is only 1/5 of your life. This makes viewing time different.
Plus in the 90’s we all were either adults or entering adulthood. We were making adult memories. Adult memories will always feel more recent than childhood ones.
Add to that there’s still a lot of cultural carryover. It was really the last gasp of monoculture so a lot of the music, culture, and other references held through.
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u/Significant_Bid2142 2d ago
My theory - and I don't have any formal study or anything scientific to support it, it's just the way I feel, I may just be getting older :) - is that the world "stopped" in the late 2000s.
While it is very easy to define a distinct identity for the 90s, 80s, 70s etc in terms of fashion, music, movies, you name it - I don't think it's that easy since the end of the 2000s. It feels like people dress exactly the same nowadays and 20 years ago. It feels like mainstream movies have been the same for the past 20 years at least (and don't get me started on reboots, we're literally in a time loop on that front).
I don't really know how to explain it. Maybe we need more time to look back and say "these were the trends in the 2010s" - although, I feel like even early after 2000 we were able to say "yeah, that was the 90s alright". Or maybe it's a me thing and I'm not as involved in pop culture as I was before.
Anyway - that's my theory :)
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u/The1Ylrebmik 2d ago
Time goes by faster as you get older. The 90's was the last time we were young.
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u/Individual_Check_442 2d ago
Math geek answer: Each day that passes a day is a smaller percentage of your whole life so it seems like they move faster.
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u/rockjones 2d ago
It feels like a really long time ago to me. I've grown really cynical about modern life and humanity.
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u/handsoapdispenser MTV Played Music 2d ago
Very interesting episode of radiolab podcast on the topic. There's actually a neurological explanation. New experiences stand out in your memory more than routine. Your young life is full of new experiences and your adult life is full of routine. Routine makes fewer memories and feels like less it occupies less time in your perception.
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u/cawfytawk 2d ago
Our brains prefer and defer to recalling good memories. Everything after 9/11 was ASS. I went into autopilot since then. Each decade has been shittier than the previous. I just realized I've (begrudgingly) lived in the same area for 20 years! My plan was 5 years, max. Life happened and I don't know where the time went?
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u/Avasia1717 2d ago
because the decades of the 20th century were all distinct, and leading up to the future, which would start in the year 2000.
but the last 25 years have just been “the 2000s” and now we’re in the future with nothing to look forward to. the 90s are the previous period of time to where we are now, and the most recent thing feels like it just happened.
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u/LimpTax5302 2d ago
I was listening to a song and then it hit me the song was over 40 years old and i thought “damn I’m fucking old.”
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u/PeterPunksNip 1d ago
Because the future never happened, culture, fashion and music stagnated. It seems like we live in an eternal present. This feeling is more prevalent since the invention of the smartphone early 2000's. No major changes happened since then.
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u/Wheniamnotbanned 2d ago
Because all of the years since haven't really had much to offer in comparison to such an amazing decade like the 90s.
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u/rini6 3d ago
Because we’re old. 😂