I will fully admit that I have a slight bias towards the ‘90s if you admit that things really have only gone downhill since. Deal? In all fairness, I haven’t completely transformed into an old man yelling at clouds…yet. There are a few blemishes on the ‘90s that were objectively bad.
Rather than just sing the praises of our beloved ‘90s to a generation that will never experience them, which would only further inflate my ego, I thought it would be more fun to balance things out a bit. After all, there’s nothing us older folks like more than telling kids how much harder we had it, right?
I’ve done the hard labor of sorting through my mind palace to pick out five of the best and worst things from the ‘90s that kids today will never experience.
Bad: Getting kicked off the computer because your mom wants to use the phone
I won’t pretend to know how the internet works, but what was going on in the ‘90s that made it so the phone stopped working when you were online. That’s like saying you can’t take a shower when the oven is on. It makes no sense. I get that it was called dial-up internet at the time, but were our computers literally calling other websites to get the information?
Kids today probably don’t even know how to disconnect from the internet if they had to. Granted, nobody really calls anybody today anyway and just texts. Now, if kids had to go offline in order to text each other, THAT would cause riots.
Bad: Rewinding VHS tapes
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There’s an entire lost culture revolving around movies in the VHS era that would baffle kids today. Now that we’ve gone to pure digital distribution and streaming, the idea of a single movie being on a physical black rectangle is strange enough. I’m sure kids could understand renting movies, but rewinding must sound like a joke.
Imagine if after every movie on Netflix or YouTube video you had to have it roll backwards through the entire thing at 2X speed or something all the way to the beginning before watching something else. Or, better yet, starting a video that someone else DIDN’T rewind and having the ending spoiled for you immediately. I say good riddance to rewinding.
Good: Meeting family at the gate at the airport
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The ones who suffered the most from the heightened TSA security at airports had to be TV and movies. How many climactic moments from RomComs of the ‘80s and ‘90s ended with a rush to stop a lover from getting on the plane at the gate? Try that today and you’d be sent to Guantanamo Bay.
However, that was possible back in the day. You could drop someone off right at the gate or pick them up as soon as they stepped off the plane once upon a time. Now, you’re lucky if you can even park long enough to give them a hug in the parking lot before security comes and kicks you out.
Good: Snow days
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I love the internet as much as anyone but I will never forgive it for killing snow days. I get that not every kid lives in an area where they’re possible, but for those that do, these are the most precious days of the year. It’s the only time kids would give a single shit about watching the weather to see if there was a big enough storm that school might be closed. It got to the point where we’d force our parents to wake up at the crack of dawn to check the closures on the morning of.
Now, snow days are just school-from-home days thanks to teachers being able to essentially do everything online. I couldn’t imagine the torture of being a kid stuck inside by myself doing school work instead of having a bowl of my favorite 90s cereal and then going sledding or starting snowball fights in the fresh powder.
Bad: Waiting for commercials to go to the bathroom
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In the ‘90s, you didn’t control the TV, the TV controlled you. It wasn’t up to you when you could or couldn’t watch your favorite show or 90s anime, but worst of all was that you couldn’t pause anything. God forbid some emergency started while in the middle of a new episode of your favorite show. If you missed it then, you may never get a chance to see it again.
Timing your bathroom breaks was an artform. You had to know which commercial breaks were long enough and not just those bumpers that lasted a couple seconds, then keep an ear out the entire time to make sure you got back in time. If there were multiple people watching, planning who could go during which break only made it more complex.
Good: Parents can’t call you 24/7
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I was one of those kids who begged their parents for a cell phone when they started getting more common and affordable. Did I need one at the time? God no, but who doesn’t want the newest toy? Our biggest selling point to parents was that we could call them if there was an emergency, but man has that backfired on us.
Before cell phones became as essential as an organ to most people, we’d all tell our parents we’d be back at a certain time, miss that time, and get yelled at whenever we eventually got home. Now our parents can get on our case 24/7 over anything and everything. There’s no escape!
Bad: Getting lost
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Do kids today even know that sick, heavy-gut, sweaty feeling of being hopelessly lost? I doubt it since we all have video game mini-maps in our pockets with waypoints and a friendly voice telling you exactly how many steps you are away from your own front door.
In the ‘90s and before, the best we had was printed directions from MapQuest or, get this, handwritten instructions from someone else. If you made a mistake or they were unclear at any point, well, you’re SOL my friend. Time to check a map at a gas station or find a friendly stranger who can hopefully help you out (but more likely get you even more lost).
Good: No spoilers
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I can’t remember the last movie, TV show, or game where at least one thing wasn’t spoiled for me. This is the only time in history where spoilers find YOU and not the other way around. You can just be browsing a website or social media and see a screenshot or GIF of the end of a movie that isn’t even out yet.
Spoilers moved so slowly without these platforms shoving unsolicited pictures and opinions in our faces 24/7. The only way you could get spoiled was if you were talking to someone face to face who had seen/read/played something themselves, and even then we had the common decency to ask before spoiling anything.
Bad: Not being able to listen to your favorite song
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Who else remembers praying that one song you really liked would come back on the radio so you could finally hear the name and artist? This was worse than missing an episode of TV because there was no rhyme or reason to what songs came on the radios. You just had to pray you caught it.
Now that radio is basically dead, we all get our music streamed or online where it is impossible to miss the name and artist (but still way too easy to misunderstand the lyrics). Plus, you’re one button away from putting it on repeat until you run it into the ground and start to hate it.
Good: No one was filming everything
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If everyone had a phone camera in the ‘90s, so many of us would be cooked. Look, kids are supposed to do stupid stuff. It’s part of growing up, and we just hope to not hurt ourselves too badly or do something embarrassing in front of too many people.
Today, every embarrassing moment is captured in 4K from five angles and uploaded online forever so you can never escape it. Even employers are Googling applicants and finding cringy or embarrassing videos from years ago and judging you for it.
