Everywhere I go online I'm reading 90s nostalgia and people talking about how great a time it was and how the music and movies were back then. I'm like OK. I agree that 1995 was alot better than 2010, but were the 90s really that great or are we just far enough removed from them now that looking back @ them in fondness is just the new flava of ice cream?

I think it is all about nostalgia. That is the deal for me, anyway, as a mid-90's high school grad.

The 90s weren't great but what came after was much worse, so I guess it makes you appreciate what used to be.

All I know is that all these "I miss the 90s" comments on every music video from the 90s posted on YouTube is getting on my nerves. IA that the 90s were a lot better than the 00s....but don't get it twisted, they weren't great.

I'm a mid 90's high school graduate as well. And while I can't say I miss those days. Well I just don't miss 'em. Perhaps one day I will be reminiscent for the music but only because today's music sucks.

I was born in '89 so I was growing up during that time and naturally there's going to be nostalgia. But I also think about this...at just about any given time during the 90s, I could turn on the TV and turn to almost any channel, and there was something good on to watch. Today, I flip through 65 channels and half of the times I do per day, there is nothing good on to watch.

I mean it used to be in the 90's, Cartoon Network had on Scooby Doo, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, Dexter's Laboratory, The Flinstone Kids, A Pup Named Scooby Doo, Yogi's Treasure Hunt, The Addams Family, Beetlejuice, Batman: The Animated Series, Jabber Jaws, Richie Rich, the Cartoon Cartoon show, movies that were actually animted like Batman: Subzero, The Flintstones meet the Jetsons, Scooby Doo and the Ghoul School...today they have ONE good thing on to watch, on average, ONE, at noon, about an hour's worth of Tom and Jerry.

Nickelodeon: 8 A.M to 1 P.M. was Nick Jr., which consisted of shows aimed towards preschoolers, stuff like Muppet Babies, Little Bear, Rupert, Papa Beaver's Storytime, Eureeka's Castle, etc. Then it was Nickelodeon which had Garfield & Friends, Muppet Babies again, all the Charlie Brown cartoons, at night it was Nick @ Nite and there'd be Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, I Love Lucy, The Jeffersons, All in the Family, Bewitched, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Munsters. Saturday was Snick, and there'd be All That, Kenan and Kel, The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and Sundays used to be Sunday Night Muppets and they'd show the Muppet movies of the 80's. Today...the morning schedule for little kids is a joke and doesn't last very long, then the rest of the day it's a stupid talking sponge, or whoever the hell those kids are that're on now, and Nick @ Nite is okay, but it's not like you could watch it all night anymore.

Disney Channel, used to be another gold mine: the original Mickey Mouse cartoons, Goof Troop, Ducktales, Dinosaurs, Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers, Darkwing Duck, and movies like The Shaggy Dog, Heavyweights, Ernest Goes to Camp, Treehouse Hostage, and when we first had that channel, late at nights it was Vault Disney and they'd show Zorro and the old black and white cartoons and take us behind the scenes of stuff like Bald Mountain, and deleted scenes from Snow White. Today...I'm not even going to touch Disney with a 10 foot pole today.

In that regard, the 90's were definitely better than today and it's not just nostalgia speaking. For lack of a better example, take the Snick show the Mystery Files of Shelby Woo...I was 7, 8 years old at the time, and here was a show aimed at kids that dealt with REAL crimes going on, it's not like 'my shoe's missing...somebody must've stolen it! (25 minutes later) no, it was in the freezer and I forgot', it had a teenaged girl investigating arson, criminal assault, robbery, kidnapping, gambling, hit and run...somebody show me a kids show today that will have the balls to touch any of that. In the 90's, TV producers didn't treat young audiences like complete morons that just need something that lasts half an hour to keep them drooling in front of the screen. Take for another example, Jim Henson's Dinosaurs, a show that worked on two levels, jokes that kids got, and jokes that the older audiences would get, and the jokes that served on both levels as well.

Saturday was also when all the good cartoons and shows came on...Reboot, Power Rangers, Skeleton Warriors, Double Dragons, Garfield & Friends, etc., so there was actually a reason to get up early on Saturday mornings as a kid. I look at the stuff that shows early (ha ha! If you can call 9 AM early) on Saturdays and it seems to me all stuff worth going back to sleep for.

The music was better too back then, it might've been the beginning of the end but in the 90's there was still good music, that was when TLC was breaking out, Michael Jackson's Dangerous and HIStory albums came out then, Janet Jackson was coming out with harder stuff as well, Tom Petty was stealing Kim Basinger's body out of the morgue for a last dance, Queen Latifah was becoming well known at that time with her music, etc.

And, from a child's viewpoint, they had better toys back then too. Back then they were advertising stuff on TV like you'd never see today, a 3 in 1 game table of pool, ping pong, and air hockey that the table lit up to play in the dark, all those 'It's NERF or NOTHING' guns and blasters and bows and arrows, and anybody remember that one baseball ball and bat set they had on TV with a really short bat that made that LOUD noise whenever it hit the ball? And back then they were still advertising for games like Boggle, Don't Go to Jail, Yahtzee (all five versions of it), Trouble, and remember those other games like Forbidden Bridge, Grape Escape, Snaardvark, and the one with the dinosaur that you kept adding pieces to his neck and then cutting some off and trying not to make the whole thing fall? My brother and I wanted all of that stuff as kids, and I still see new things coming out now that I think 'I would've loved to have had this back then', so I think I still keep a fresh mind and eye to that stuff, but if I were a kid today, I would NOT be impressed with the stuff they're bringing out now. Most of the toys and games that come out now all come with DVDs so you have to watch the TV to play, or it's something you need to hook up to the TV OR the computer...in the 90's they were still about getting you off your butt and outside or up and doing something that amazingly enough didn't all require double A batteries.

From those points of view I'd have to say yes, the 90's were better than today.

Of course I have a lot of fond memories of the 90s, because it's when I came of age (being a teenager, graduating HS, going to college, becaming a dad, etc., etc.) but the decade itself had a lot of peaks and valley's. The hue of it tended to alternate too much from being upbeat to downtrodden/murky. The 80s were better IMO, even if it was an overtly Republican, quasi-conservative decade on the outskirts.

Conservative? The 80s?

I don't really miss the '90s, not really. Then again I'm an '70s baby/'80s teen. I'd give my right arm to have 1984-1989 back. Far as nostalgia goes, it's always 20 years behind. In the '90s, everyone was on a retro-'70s kick. Then in the 2000s, we started getting all of those "Remember the 80s" specials. If I mourn anything at all about the '90s, it's that they were arguably the last time general entertainment and daily life weren't strangled by the the Internet. Even though the '90s saw the uprising of it. It was the last time a certain type of protocol was followed, but even then it was transitioning to the way things are now.

I'll admit that I rock 90s music on a regular basis, I generally don't listen to anything made after 2002. So I guess I'm sorta in the nostalgia camp.

AtownPeep wrote:

I'll admit that I rock 90s music on a regular basis, I generally don't listen to anything made after 2002. So I guess I'm sorta in the nostalgia camp.

+1. I know people are mostly just savoring the memories from the 90's and prob. don't think it was that great while they were actually living it at the time, but I remember the living it in the 90's well and it was great for me. Can't think of too many bad moments during that era. So yeah, I'd love to relive '90-'96 especially.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm getting old because 75-80% of the music and TV shows I listen to and watch are pre-2000. But I really think general entertainment (movies are a possible exception, I'm not in love with 90s cinema) took a fatal plunge after 1999. So I don't know how much of that is a case of me just clinging to what I came up with in my teenage youth versus not connecting with what's out now because it's really BAD.

Trust me, what's coming out now is REALLLLLLLLLY bad in comparison to even what was coming out in the 90s. Today's stuff is not justifiable by any means.

The 90s were 10x better than the decade we just left. I really see why nostalgia is happening, it was the last time things were good on a commercial level, but some of that is probably does gotta do with people looking back at their coming up years.

I do feel a sense of nostalgia for the 1990s, but I know full well that I'm looking back on them with a slant. People in general tend to have a rose-colored fondness for the era that their 12-21 years fell in.

I had a lot of childhood in the 90's. In terms of video entertainment, IMO it provided more, but 00's for me was much better musically. I think in terms of a lot of things, the 90's outright sucked.

IMO, it's nostalgia. In a few years, the 00's will be fondly looked back on as the "good ole days." When times are tough, the times before you always seem better in hindsight.