I miss the '90s

Anonus · 2017-11-15 14:40:55

You're not going to be surprised that I made this thread, but still, it's true.

The attitude everything had.

How TBS and TNT were not deeply boring walking corpses.

How it was basically an entire decade of the first half-hour or so of The Lion King, before Mufasa is killed.

Princess Alice · 2017-11-15 14:42:14

I feel like 9/11 did a number on American culture in general, so it's hard not to look at the last decade or so before that as a golden age...

vtk · 2017-11-15 15:08:35

So are we now at the part of the movie where Scar is letting the hyenas run rampant and everyone's starving?

Princess Alice · 2017-11-15 15:14:44

That seems about right, yeah.

Salix Babylonika · 2017-11-15 15:27:14

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhyhgghhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Klinotaxis · 2017-11-15 15:30:21

i concur that hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhyhgghhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Imipolex G · 2017-11-15 17:27:58

as somebody who actually lived through the 90s, all of it, I call bullshit.

Bee · 2017-11-15 23:56:47

As someone else who also lived through all of the 90s, it's a tradeoff. We've made some big steps for stuff like LGBT rights, but also tanked the economy for literally everyone, got mixed up in a bunch of neverending wars, eroded a lot of critical protections against corporate and law enforcement abuse, enshrined dark money and paid-for legislation in politics in a way that'll be nearly impossible to turn back, and let the political situation get so far out of control that it basically runs entirely on naked spite without even a token attempt at bipartisanship.

Much as I hate to say it, yes, we were better off in the 90s.

Obā-san · 2017-11-16 00:03:57

As someone who is allegedly alive, we were best off from 480-524 AD

Obā-san · 2017-11-16 00:05:36

As someone who is, I think we are best off right now at this exact moment because I'm currently on a bus and it's kinda nice and warm but also it's not toooooo cold outside

Obā-san · 2017-11-16 00:07:08

As the emperor of dreams;
I crown me with the million-colored sun
Of secret worlds incredible, and take
Their trailing skies for vestment when I soar,
Throned on the mounting zenith, and illume
The spaceward-flown horizons infinite.

Imipolex G · 2017-11-16 00:17:33

Bee said:
As someone else who also lived through all of the 90s, it's a tradeoff. We've made some big steps for stuff like LGBT rights, but also tanked the economy for literally everyone, got mixed up in a bunch of neverending wars, eroded a lot of critical protections against corporate and law enforcement abuse, enshrined dark money and paid-for legislation in politics in a way that'll be nearly impossible to turn back, and let the political situation get so far out of control that it basically runs entirely on naked spite without even a token attempt at bipartisanship.

Much as I hate to say it, yes, we were better off in the 90s.

Possibly, but that's not what Anonus is referring to.

He's referring to being a small child then, since almost everyone thinks that things were super great and perfect when they were that age. Those who were older know better.

Bee · 2017-11-16 00:30:41

Oh. Well shit, we were definitely better off in the 90s then. If you think things are super great and perfect, chances are you're safe enough that it might be believable until you learn how workably flawed it is, and even then you'll learn to be optimistic or at least hopeful about future prospects.

These days you're much more likely to grow up with this constant overbearing sense of fear, futility, anger, and ennui, as well as a higher chance of being in poverty. That doesn't do wonders for developing minds, and they'll be holding the scars of that their whole lives. At least we got the chance at a decent childhood.

Imipolex G · 2017-11-16 00:32:08

Nah, kids are stupid, things weren't so great in the 90s but you just don't realize it until you're older.

Anonus · 2017-11-16 00:35:29

i think bee is right though

Anonus · 2017-11-16 00:36:07

i was six years old when bush took office, and seven when 9/11 happened

Imipolex G · 2017-11-16 00:36:52

It just irritates me when people say "things were so much better when [I was four years old or whatever]." If you were that age then you really have no basis for being able to say that, in my opinion.

Bee · 2017-11-16 00:42:47

I'm quite aware now of the problems we actually had in the 90s. It was the peak of the crack boom, after all, and violent crime rate was higher. But most of the other problems we had in the 90s -- fundamentalism, racism, corruption -- have explicitly gotten worse.

In a vacuum, a random person was generally more likely to come out the other end with a decently intact life. About the only demographic I can think of where that would even be in question is LGBT folks, and granted that's like half this forum so perspectives are going to be skewed.

You may not have been in a good enough position to say something like that when we were actually four years old or whatever, but presumably we as adults are capable of looking back and studying the socioeconomic problems of the day that we're now aware we may not have seen at the time. Half the reason I'm saying we were better off in the 90s is because shit's so fucked right now that that kind of ignorant bliss basically isn't even possible anymore. There's sort of a minimum bar of prosperity for that to happen, and we aren't hitting it.

Imipolex G · 2017-11-16 01:00:38

I do tend to give LGBT progress more weight than it possibly deserves. Possibly.

Actually, for me, this isn't about whether the 90s were better than today or vice versa. That gets quite complicated. What bothers me is the rose-tinted "everything was so great then!" that people sometimes get for the past. It really wasn't. Every era has serious problems, and even in the best of times people are still going to do all kinds of bad things to each other.

Also, the first half-hour of The Lion King is boring

glennmagusharvey · 2017-11-16 01:01:43

Bee said:
As someone else who also lived through all of the 90s, it's a tradeoff. We've made some big steps for stuff like LGBT rights, but also tanked the economy for literally everyone, got mixed up in a bunch of neverending wars, eroded a lot of critical protections against corporate and law enforcement abuse, enshrined dark money and paid-for legislation in politics in a way that'll be nearly impossible to turn back, and let the political situation get so far out of control that it basically runs entirely on naked spite without even a token attempt at bipartisanship.

Much as I hate to say it, yes, we were better off in the 90s.

Also, the Super Nintendo was still a current system.

Princess Alice · 2017-11-16 01:05:20

I see no reason you couldn't still play Super Nintendo games in the subsequent decades

Sure the consoles themselves had a tendency to turn super yellow, but that's nothing some hydrogen peroxide and UV light can't fix

Imipolex G · 2017-11-16 01:10:44

You can also play Super Nintendo games via emulator, which opens up some new possibilities.

The only downside is that new SNES games aren't coming out - but then, fans are still making hacks and stuff at least.

Bee · 2017-11-16 01:12:53

Okay, games are one thing I don't miss the 90s from. I can't play half of the SNES-and-back period without thinking "oh God this violates so many usability conventions" or at least cringing at the translation.

YOU MUST FIND A ROBOT NAMED HAPSBY

Obā-san · 2017-11-16 01:15:01

Tbh if I'm gonna be serious

There is hope now

And I can't say that about the 90s

Anonus · 2017-11-16 01:15:20

The '90s were the peak of the crack boom? My mom always told me that crack basically hollowed out Detroit when Reagan was in office...

Bee · 2017-11-16 01:16:47

IIRC it peaked in the early 90s. Definitely didn't end until then.

I wouldn't be surprised if Detroit was one of the ones hit first and worst though.

vtk · 2017-11-16 02:33:34

I was a senior in high school when 9/11 happened. That was definitely a turning point. And I still thought I was a straight boy for a full year after that.

glennmagusharvey · 2017-11-16 03:52:59

Imipolex G said:
You can also play Super Nintendo games via emulator, which opens up some new possibilities.

The only downside is that new SNES games aren't coming out - but then, fans are still making hacks and stuff at least.

[opinion] Gaming went through many many years of "dark ages" for me when it capitalized on trends i had no interest in and just made lots of games that I didn't care to play. and the people who played them weren't even the kinds of people i'd like to hang out with.

Bee said:
Okay, games are one thing I don't miss the 90s from. I can't play half of the SNES-and-back period without thinking "oh God this violates so many usability conventions" or at least cringing at the translation.

YOU MUST FIND A ROBOT NAMED HAPSBY

[devil's advocate]

things that were better in 90s videogames
* poorly documented games hiding lots of secrets, giving much more potential for explorative gameplay
* games that had bugs, leading to many fun exploits for speedrunning and other entertainment
* limited instrumentation meant more distinctive soundtracks as sound teams and composers had to choose their games' distinctive soundbanks
* less obsessing over realism oh wait, that was still present back then

Bee · 2017-11-16 04:17:45

Eh, I can agree with all but the first. I think we've had enough modern games packed with secrets to show that that's not remotely dead, while also being the right kind of secrets.

Like, I've been playing FFVII recently, and that game was full of the horseshit kind of "secrets". Stuff like "you can't finish the Condor sidequest unless you schlep all the way across the map multiple times at very specific points in the game, sometimes in the brief pause between two arbitrary consecutive cutscenes with only Cloud in the party".

glennmagusharvey · 2017-11-16 06:23:53

Bee said:
Eh, I can agree with all but the first. I think we've had enough modern games packed with secrets to show that that's not remotely dead, while also being the right kind of secrets.

Like, I've been playing FFVII recently, and that game was full of the horseshit kind of "secrets". Stuff like "you can't finish the Condor sidequest unless you schlep all the way across the map multiple times at very specific points in the game, sometimes in the brief pause between two arbitrary consecutive cutscenes with only Cloud in the party".

I was actually thinking about how people haven't actually figured out completely how LSD Dream Simulator works.

Also cool shit like the trainer fly/dig to mew glitch. Designers are just more capable of stamping out fun bugs these days. :P

Bee · 2017-11-16 07:24:28

Yeah those killjoys using type-safe languages and not accessing random-ass sections of memory! :V

lee4hmz · 2017-11-16 15:53:55

Wait, what was LSD Dream Simulator written in?

Fossilmaiden · 2017-11-16 16:00:45

lee4hmz said:
Wait, what was LSD Dream Simulator written in?

The vast majority of PS1 games are written in C and variants thereof.

lee4hmz · 2017-11-16 16:04:43

Oh, okay.

Bee · 2017-11-16 20:29:09

Yep, PS1 was the first console that was fast enough to consistently handle C.

I have such mixed feelings of the PS1. It had some great development, but I can't help but feel it shot too high for what it was. That shit was ugly as sin. I could never get over the jittering surfaces that plagued most of its games.

Calica · 2017-11-16 23:37:56

wasn't there even a dev that did PS1 games using some Lisp, or did they not do that until later console generations

Calica · 2017-11-16 23:38:24

Calica said:
wasn't there even a dev that did PS1 games using some Lisp, or did they not do that until later console generations

checked and it was ps2

Aliroz · 2017-11-17 00:59:22

I think Anonus is completely right about the nineties.

I was a happy little kid then, and many good people were still alive then.

I wish I remembered more of those years.

Bee · 2017-11-17 01:05:14

Oh yeah, we had one more David Bowie than we do now. \thread, nothing else really matters

Princess Alice · 2017-11-17 01:05:50

Also (The Artist Formerly Known As) Prince!!

Aliroz · 2017-11-17 01:06:23

And my great-grandma!

Salix Babylonika · 2017-11-17 01:25:05

but we didn't have Lil B The BasedGod, against whom all else pales

Princess Alice · 2017-11-17 02:16:04

On the other hand, the '90s also brought us the super-lame redesigns of the US dollar bills.

Just look at this. Clearly the old one is better.

Series 1995:

Series 1996:

Calica · 2017-11-17 07:43:07

imho the old one sucks

Calica · 2017-11-17 07:43:23

united states the of america

glennmagusharvey · 2017-11-17 07:44:21

united the states of america

Anonus · 2017-11-18 00:30:11

You know

I'm surprised that the anything-goes spirit isn't better thought of

Aliroz · 2017-11-18 03:53:29

Anonus said:
You know

I'm surprised that the anything-goes spirit isn't better thought of

You'd think that that would be a more popular idea than it is, given how freedom, diversity, and tolerance are underlying values, fundamental to our thought and behavior.

I guess the main reason I can think of is that it's easier to be truly free when there are some rules that everyone can agree to follow, in the same way that it's easier to drive and actually get somewhere for everybody when there are traffic laws than when there aren't, or that it's easier for everybody to not have polio when as many people as possible are vaccinated against polio.

I can certainly see the appeal of the carefree "anything-goes" spirit, though I can't say I feel that way about the world in general.

Or, in other words, Chaotic Good vs Lawful Good vs Neutral Good.

vtk · 2017-11-18 13:27:31

I like the new bills, but it's stunning to me that the redesigns started rolling out two decades ago

I miss the '90s

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