What Did you Love about the 90s?

Music.

I still listen to mostly 90s music.

Music.

Pop culture (generally.)

The sense that socially and otherwise things were constantly improving instead of heading back to the Dark Ages.

MTV’s The Real World.

The music and TV sitcoms. You had Frasier, Golden Girls, The Nanny, Absolutely Fabulous, Keeping Up Appearances

All the while I Love Lucy, Bewitched, All in the Family, Laverne and Shirley were in constant rerun.

Also, the excitement of the millennium.

Trashy talk shows

The explosion of grunge and alternative music, the beginnings of house and techno.

Lots and lots of juicy scandals to follow...all the way up to the Oval Office!

Fun and creative TV shows after the bland sitcoms of the 80s, like Twin Peaks, Melrose Place, Roseanne, etc.

Dial-up modems weren't great, nor was AOL, but getting online and discovering Usenet was a big deal. And nobody was addicted to smartphones.

People were far less shallow, in every sense.

The anal sex.

Cell phones did not abound

Erections.

We didn't spend every fucking moment online. Remember talking to people? In bars and other places? Not needing to know everything right away?

The stock market

Being young! I was 21 when the 90s kicked off and 31 when they ended. Discovering the brand new Internet halfway thru was also fun.

I was in my teens at the beginning of the decade and full of unfailing optimism.

I was able to go to college in Nashville and enjoy the city before it got tedious and tacky.

Great music. Even the stupid songs were fun.

Having no real hangups about sex.

XFiles. Northern Exposure. SNL dropping off and then slowly improving.

My grandparents meeting me at the gate when my plane arrived.

Computers when they were kinda chunky, useful appliances.

I liked that Bill Clinton was president for most of the decade.

Cute little pop songs like “Kiss Me” as well as gorgeous rock like “Black Hole Sun”.

The sky that was so blue that decade.

The dream of the 90s is alive in Portland.

And there’s this one, too.

I agree with the optimism. The late 80s - early 90s, seemed so dark: crack, AIDS, economic depression, it all seemed to disappear when Clinton came in.

A President who played the saxophone? The internet connecting all of us? Socially conscious hip-hop? It seemed the world was progressing.

9/11 ended that. We went toward aggression, ruling the world, not aligning with the brave new world Gen X Had envisioned.