Over at Good Reports I’ve added a review of Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties. I found this a real nostalgia trip, leading me into all sorts of reflections on what the meaning of that decade might have been.
I’m sure everyone who lived through the nineties will have a different idea or impression of them. If you try to stand far enough back though I think the big changes had to do with the coming of the Internet (social media came later). That would literally change everything, and I think most people understood that, at least somewhat, at the time. I still find it a point of wonder that I’m a member of the last generation to have grown up without the Internet or computers in the home. And overall I consider that a blessing.
In fact, I’m hard pressed to think of things that have gotten better since the nineties. We’re more aware of environmental issues, but nothing significant has been done to address any of them. Politics has become angrier, stupider, and far more polarized. The economy has become more dysfunctional. Culturally the nineties were not a golden age, but they stand up well against what we’ve seen in the twenty-first century.
Sure, this is an old guy grumbling. But I don’t have any complaints about young people, who I like pretty well. I think people my age, and even more the dreaded Boomers, have to answer for most of what’s gone wrong. And I don’t think ignorance is any defence. We knew what we were doing.
Alex Good 
I certainly didn’t know what I was doing in the 90’s. Not even sure who to ask. Remember Studs Terkel phoning into the office in the 2000s saying the only google he knew was Barney Google. Like the atomic bomb, we hoped the internet would be used for good, but it blew up in our faces pretty fast. Like you, I’m glad I knew the world before online life threatened to overwhelm reality, but that only happens if you let it. Everyday life is better now than it was in the 90’s, it’s just that the worst of life is laid right out before us on a daily basis these days….
LikeLike
Not sure everyday life is better now. A lot might depend on who you ask. I’ve certainly found some things are far more inconvenient, in large part because of the phones etc. that we just assume make life easier.
I remember thinking the Internet would be big, but I didn’t think it would feed into all the cracks of life so deeply.
LikeLike
Argh the nineties. Can’t remember a thing. Think I got divorced at some point early on, and I was working in operating theatres. Had to laugh at “Nirvana’s Nevermind (“the last truly canonical album of the rock era”)” pfft!
LikeLike
I’ve forgotten most of it too. Reading a book like this helped bring some of it back to mind . . . and made me realize that none of it was worth remembering.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We’re supposed to remember more of our young years as we get older I think, but that doesn’t seem to be happening for me!
LikeLike
I suspect we start making more stuff up. As Disraeli said, “I’ve seen more than I remember, and I remember more than I’ve seen.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sometimes I wish I could remember more, would be sad to get to the end and think WTF happened there?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well you take a lot of pictures! Those will help.
LikeLiked by 1 person
True. If nothing else I’ll know how many cats I’ve had!
LikeLike
Journals
😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
I tried those, but ended up with shopping lists and what I had for dinner!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thats right, I remember you talking about that when I did my journal posts. Hmm, the search for the elusive memory aid continues!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ve got these posts. But who knows how long they’ll last.
LikeLiked by 1 person
For me, I’ve nuked too many blogs to trust myself online. I could easily see myself deleting everything in a fit of rage or despair 🙂
LikeLike
Yeah, and that’s *you* hitting the delete button. I have even less confidence in the platforms-that-be. We’re writing on water here.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yep! Xanga is gone. MySpace might be alive, but not sure. LiveJournal turned into something else and then shutdown.
Which is why I made such an effort to get all my book reviews into calibre. That will last my lifetime anyway.
So do you have a backup plan? Turn your blogs into books or something?
LikeLike
I have things backed-up. But no back-up plan. Might decide to just call it a day if WP goes down. Might try to migrate.
LikeLiked by 1 person
If WP does something really bad, I’ll limp over to blogspot, where I have my original book review blog. But I suspect my spirit would be broken at that point…
LikeLike
I still have some juno email accounts from those days. Ahhh, dial up free email. Now those were the days.
The days when we still believed that more Star Wars could be good. Oh, how innocent and naive we all were….
LikeLike
Time is the great destroyer of illusions.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It really is.
LikeLike