The 1990s is a long time ago

BrianD3

Like many here, I'm middle aged and the 1990s were my formative years. Hard to believe that it is 23 years since the most recent year of the 1990s.

23 years from now I'll be an old fcuker if I'm even alive. In 23 years, every family member that I cared about will be long dead.

1990 is 32 years ago. 32 years from 1990 is 1958, the fooking 1950s.

Massive changes between 1990 and 1999, I think Ireland experienced bigger changes than many as we were coming from a low base and gained more from the internet than other countries. I think this may have contributed to something of a golden era in Ireland running from about 1995 to 2003.

erlichbachman

Why do I feel like this is a maths exam?

thefallingman

Thanks Brian I feel like a dinosaur now ! In 1999 I was living in Sydney with most of my friends like a lot of Irish 20 somethings back then, now I’m just old

Gregor Samsa

Given that 1990 was one of the most significant years in events regarding the end of the Cold War, the Warsaw pact, the beginning of the demise of the Soviet Union, and was the year of the declaration of Ukraine's state sovereignty, hopefully we'll see another 1990 very soon.

Captain Barnacles

Summer 1999 I went to Cape Cod on a J1, had a blast ... I found 2 disposable cameras from there a few weeks ago in my parents house in a box and got them developed ... wow such memories.

RayCon

My mate sent me a Whatapp the other day with a screen shot of his TV ... he was watching the rave episode of the RTE Series My Tribe and there I was in the Mansion House @ Altern8 in 1992 ! Whats the world coming to when you can't go for a night out, only to pop up on TV 30yrs later ...man I felt old.

When I think of the 90's all I can remember is Oasis and Jim Carrey movies.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118757008#Comment_118757008

In 1999 I was 3 years away for retirement. Who is the dinosaur now?😶

bb12

there was a moment there in the early 2000s when life was golden...i like to call those the camelot years...before the real effects of 9/11 started to kick in...and then it all went downhill from there!

Sonics2k

You shut up. Just shut up. 2000 was only 10 years ago, and 1990 was only 15 years ago.

Stop it this madness.

Mad_maxx

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118757051#Comment_118757051

So was 1990

Hyperbollix

A great time to be a teenager or 20 something...

Economy here gearing up for the start of the Celtic Tiger and jobs becoming plentiful. 3rd level education opened up to people who previously would never have thought about it, with the abolition of fees and introduction of grants. The last days of the Troubles and the signing of the GFA....

Pre "financial irregularity" Bertie Ahern riding high in the polls.

Pre "my pal Jeffrey Epstein" Bill Clinton cleaning up in the old America of before 9/11 and all the shít that brought...

Pre "there's definitely WMD's in Iraq" Tony Blair sweeping to power in Britain on a tide of Cool Britannia and Britpop.

Mainstream music, film and pop culture all still vibrant and uncontaminated by the Internet and Social Media. People were less narcissistic. Climate disaster was just something in Scifi films set in the far future of the 2030's.........

The world was at a high water mark period of peace and prosperity. Optimism abounded.

Take me back...

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058236568/the-1990s-is-a-long-time-ago

In reality, not that much has changed since the 1990's. There's certainly not the differences that the changes between the 1960's -> 1990's made. Probably the biggest absolute change is the internet and how it now pretty much governs a lot of people lives, both private and working. Our immediate forms of remote communication through (so called) smart phones is probably the single most obvious thing one can point to in that regard. But that is really just the result of logical steps forward.

The cost of certain things have certainly taken a bizarre leap (even without factoring in current events). Buying something as simple and necessary as a roof over your head is a pipe dream for many. But other stuff, like certain electronic items are actually cheaper in the grand scheme of things.

But the changes between 1965 and 1995 feel much more radical than the changes between 1995 and now. And the changes between 1935 to 1965 even more so.

I look back at photo's of the 90's and they could be taken a couple of years ago. When I look back at photo's of my parents, it's like looking at a history book.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118757008#Comment_118757008

There's alive and there's dead.

There's no such thing as old 😁

Ray Palmer

The 90s were really fast moving. My brother is 2 years older than me and when he finished education there were no jobs about and he emigrated. When I came out of education there were tons of jobs and I was offered practically every job I applied for. The companies were willing to train people up from scratch too no matter what you studied.

It also had a a strange effect on the generation just behind us. When we grew up nobody really had money and shows of wealth were sort of frowned upon as it seemed like gloating. Teenagers made a lot of their own clothes or at least modified them. People a few years younger were now loaded with money it seemed and were buying and wearing a lot more named brands. Reality was the parents had more money so gave more to their kids.

House prices were rising at this point but people didn't pay much attention as wages were also rising but it was a significant increase and it didn't stop till 2007. I always think people talking about the peak and the plummet miss that when they fell it was still significantly more expensive to buy a house after the crash compared to 20 years earlier. So even when prices stop rising or even crash the price is still way more than before in real terms.

landofthetree

Pint of Guinness was around 1.90 in the cheaper pubs in Dublin in 1996.

The % change in the CPI from Sep 1996 to Jan 2022 is 58.0 %.

A basket of goods and services that cost €2.27 ( which was 1.90 punts) in Sep 1996 would have cost €3.59 in Jan 2022

Beer was a lot cheaper. Every Thursday evening in first year in college in Dublin I could comfortably afford a good night out.

Ubbquittious

There was a sense of optimism in the 90's and early 2000s that is now gone.

Now we're all loaded up with environmental doom & gloom, nuclear war on the horizon, orwellianism, doomscrolling and any pastime that carries a bit of risk is only one sob story away from being banned.

The West had a great run of it from about 1945 until 2007 but even in the 2000s the cracks were starting to show. 1990s were probably the last clean decade of that massive period of expansion

Flinty997

My old man grew up with gas lamps, ploughing with horses, cycling everywhere, almost no cars. Steam powered trucks, engines and cranes. No telephones, etc. A world war.

Changes in his lifetime were massive.

For me its computers, mobiles, internet and easy cheap travel. The world shrank is more comfortable but isn't that much different.

Flinty997

One thing I realized my parents didn't have Xmas trees in their childhood. It just wasn't a thing. That blew my mind.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118757928#Comment_118757928

Only in the late 90's was there a sense of any optimism here. We had plenty of jobs and people thought it was going to last forever. It lasted approximately 5 or 6 years until the reality of outsourcing came along and a lot of our jobs (which were outsourced themselves) started to disappear to China and India.

In the early 90's, there was no difference to the mid 80's. Lots of unemployment and people thinking they had no future. Today we're kinda back to that because the cost of living here (see: buying or renting a gaff) is so, SO, ridiculous.

As far as doom and gloom over nuclear war is concerned, there is absolutely nothing going on today that even comes close to the fear that people had of that in the 80's.

dxhound2005

The Famine was a long time ago. But someone born say in 1905 could have been alive in the 1990's, and spoken to someone alive now. When they were 10 in 1915, they could have spoken to someone born in 1835 who lived through the Famine.

In an extreme case, someone born in 1840 could have spoken to someone in 1935 who was born in 1930, still alive now. A direct link back to Famine times.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118757928#Comment_118757928

Ah to have missed the 80s and not realise the 90s were the anomaly. You also seemed to have missed the issues in the 70s with their fuel crisis and mass unemployment around the Europe and the world. You just don't remember earlier times when things were really grim. The quality of life is amazing now and truly are living with future tech dreamt up decades and centuries ago.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118757993#Comment_118757993

Parts of Dublin looked like a WW2 bombed out city in the 1980s.

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118757993#Comment_118757993

I remember early enough in the 90s all the yummy mummies were buying Corollas and Carina E's. The equivalent of a Tucson CRDi today. They were everywhere. Lots of new houses going up, getting planning permission wasn't a problem. When Gorbachev lifted the Iron Curtain a lot of the doom vanished rather quickly.

Strumms

Hassle free time, I finished school, did a college course, moved to live abroad for a bit to live in Paris in ‘98 and got myself to a World Cup semi final as well as a few more games….

joined the workforce, had jobs I liked, started traveling, socialising, earning… my formative years for gaining an appreciation for all different styles and genres of music…

went to a lot of gigs, pubs, traveled extensively, horizons expanded…no negatives about the 1990’s… was really good.

music was decent, only a tiny percentage of the manufactured pap we have to endure now…there were loads of bands and acts actually creating, playing as opposed to ‘performing’..

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118758061#Comment_118758061

Now they are implementing the dystopian tech future that was indeed dreampt up decades ago but it isn't a good thing. The ugly side to tech is massive. The 20-yearly recessions have been a thing throughout the past century or si but the 2008 one was probably the worst

dxhound2005

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118758086#Comment_118758086

It's a sign you're getting old when you denounce modern music. In the 60's it was old people shouting "turn that rubbish off" when the Beatles came on the radio. I take a benign view that every month new music, films, books etc are being produced, and they add to the choices existing already. No need to complain about them, when everything from the past "golden ages" is still there to enjoy.

French Toast

Born in '93 so on the young side of who is posting here. Remember having a happy childhood through the late 90's and early 00's. Mobile phones were new, think my Da got one around 2001ish.

World seemed a lot bigger, brighter and slower.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118758098#Comment_118758098

Not at all. You weren't there for sure. The dystopian future hasn't come unless you see a T1000 about that I missed. Tech has been way more beneficial than people thought. What is the ugly side of tech that is a new thing?

I don't know about the 2008 being the worst the recovery was very quick in comparison to other huge events.

The 90s is the anomaly for Ireland and we may never see the like again. It set us up for 2007 where we crashed before the world did a year later. Cheap credit and optimism are not a good foundation for stable economics.

You are doom and glooming yourself with a faulty rear view

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118758138#Comment_118758138

No, First sign of getting old is taking a viagra to stop yours yourself piśsing on your slippers…

live been denouncing it for a while, that means I’m old, a while…

El Gato De Negocios

If Back to the Future was made today and Marty followed the same time lines he'd be journeying back to 1992.

Fcuk

My

Life

😭

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118758165#Comment_118758165

Privacy is gone out the window, everything is far more monitored and controlled. Big tech companies are vying like mad to monopolise the feck out of everything. Lots of jobs now being threatened with automation and robot overlords. The boom/bust cycles will continue to happen as long as capitalism exists. Optimism is good, for some reason we have never really got back the pre-2008 sentiment, only the high house prices

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118758196#Comment_118758196

I dont either. Doesn't make sense to be skimping on a few drops of petrol where Pewtin is blowing up whole storage facilities. Got meself a boat with a nice smelly 2-stroke outboard a few years back. Mighty job. I am all for renewable power but I'm not going to sit around being miserable & depriving myself. The only problem is that people generally appear to be hung up about these things, they no longer feel free to enjoy themselves to the extent that they did in the 90s.

I think 1990s were peak Ireland. We should be striving to bring the 90s back.

The Carina E should be put back into production.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118757948#Comment_118757948

The leaps in technology during the war years probably dwarf anything that has occurred in the last 30. Today, we have become more efficient and our computer tech has become more powerful and smaller. But a PC is still a PC.

Suckit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118758183#Comment_118758183

Would you at least have still been in school to see him?

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOUiC_RsprA

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118758075#Comment_118758075

True.

I remember they'd used to knock down a derelict building and put bracers up on the building beside it so it would fall down too. It was a common sight. I think half of Mary Street and Parnell Street used to look like that. But it was like that in the 70's as well. A lot of Dublin buildings were built long ago and they'd been falling apart since Larkin's time. A lot of the old Georgian and Victorian tenements were still around and they were in a very poor state.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118758165#Comment_118758165

Cheap credit and optimism are not a good foundation for stable economics

The problem is we're back to that exact place now. We learned absolutely nothing from 2008.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118758197#Comment_118758197

Privacy is exactly the same once you choose not to have social media accounts even then who do you think is monitoring it and how are they controlling anybody? Monopoly attempts and movements are nothing in anyway what make zip have you got and if you have a glasses of any kind they were likely made by one company. The actual Luddites opposed technology on the same grounds they were losing their jobs to technology. How is that different to automation and use of robots now. Name one robot overlord.

We haven't gone back to an unrealistic level of optimism because we have more sense and it will last in the living memory. Optimism is great but if unfounded and not back it is just gambling

whatchagonnado

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118757051#Comment_118757051

The best year for pop music was the year when the person making the statement was about 18 years old. You old g*t.

Tony EH

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118758183#Comment_118758183

It would make for a really dull movie cos there'd be fuck all difference.

Thelonious Monk

Was a good time to be a teenager alright. You have to feel for kids now, covid, biodiversity and extinction crisis, pollution getting worse and worse worldwide, climate change and now what is probably the starting phases of WW3. I don't remember having any existential worries in the 90s.

silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118757738#Comment_118757738

I'm sure Rwandans and people from the Balkans won't be pining for the 90's anytime soon. But yeah I done the leaving in 1995, wasn't a bad time to be going into college and then coming out of it in the early 2000's.

Flinty997

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118758138#Comment_118758138

It's manufactured music produced by engineers and computers not musicians or artists. It's just the same stuff reheated to a formula. It's why it's all sounds similar.

If you want original authentic music you have to move away from the mainstream and seek it out.

silliussoddius

Regarding music, the old men yelling at clouds may be in to something

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/old-music-killing-new-music/621339/

Itssoeasy

Was born in 1985 so I became a teenager in 1998 and turned 18 in 2003 so got a bit of the 1990s as a teenager. I have fond memories of going on holidays here in Ireland and just going out in the morning and being out all day. I think for people my age 9/11 is a point in history where we measure things pre and post 9/11. I’ve watched the news coverage back and even twenty years later it’s bizarre to watch.

I think TV shows and cartoons used to be way better when I was growing up because nobody was trying to imply some other meaning into a cartoon like they’ve done now for Disney stuff from the 1990s. Anyway yeah I’m happy I got to experience the world pre technology overload.

dxhound2005

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118758289#Comment_118758289

That does not chime with the complaints that mortgages are too hard to get. Because of the rules which are designed to avoid negative equity. So at least we learned that much. Negative equity was never a feature of any recession except the one after the Tiger.

Ray Palmer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118758289#Comment_118758289

We really aren't. Banks are way more strict on lending criteria now so while credit is cheap it is no way as easy to access. The main curtailment has been mortgage deposit requirements which we learnt from 2008. I don't think Ireland or the world feels optimistic at the moment.

Are you saying this because house prices are high?

ceadaoin.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118758183#Comment_118758183

Dazed and confused was released in 1993 and set in 1976. It seemed like 2 completely different eras, but if an equivalent was released today it would only be set back in 2005 😱 maybe for people born in 2000 or later, 2005 would seem like a different time but its hard to imagine that being the case

thefallingman

It was all hash and no grass aswell, the really long ten spots !! Blokes all dressing grundgy like Kurt Cobain or pearl jam before Oasis came along, but at least the girls didn't use fake tan or have trout pout lips !! It was pretty easy to get served in most pubs underage aswell and there was lots of drink driving going on at the time

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118758291#Comment_118758291

It's not just social media now they are dragging people further onto the grid now with cashless society and smartphone apps that are becoming difficult to avoid. We are also running out of unskilled jobs to redeploy people to once they get automated. It would be great if they let the good times roll. The economy, political correctness, environmental worries and general risk adversity are hampering everything now.

igCorcaigh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118758183#Comment_118758183

The difference between Western societies of the 1950's v's the 1980's seems way bigger than those of the 1990's v's the 2020's. Why is that? Even the clothes we wear now, or the music we listen to, are not so different than those of the 1990's.

Why is that? Maybe the 60's youth generation really did shake culture up (even if it took many years for Ireland to catch up)?