Were the early 90's the last "real" Ireland

orangerhyme wrote: »

I'm not sure exactly what defines a subculture but Ravers had their own type of music, clothes, hairstlyes, accessories, lifestyle. You could recognize them on the street.

If you think about the subcultures of the 2nd half of 20th century. You had mods, rockers, hippies, punks, teddy boys, new romantics, punks, stoners. ravers, goths, grunge, emos.
I'm sure Im missing some.

Emos seems to be the last one.

It's definitely disappeared or else isnt recognizable anymore.

Someone said to me on college campuses everyone looks the same now, whereas before you could recognize different "tribes".

As regards the "real Ireland", we're definitely much more cosmopolitan now, we're influenced by many cultures of many countries.

I'm in my 30s and growing up I knew people in Kerry who ate potatoes with every meal.
Some people ate bacon and cabbage almost every day.
The only sport they watched was GAA.
The only wine I saw was "Blue Nun', the only coffee was instant like Nescafe.
They never travelled outside Ireland.
Clergy and the Church in general were held in high reference, like they really were God's representative on earth.

Dublins extremely multicultural now, every coffee shop is staffed by Brazilians, Pakistanis, Eastern Europeans etc
An african taxi driver told me he arrived maybe around 99 or 2000 and if he saw another black guy on the street hed wave at him cos they were so rare.

People didnt care too much about material goods. Fashion wasnt really a thing. I think lots of people lived very simple lives. Lots of bangers on the roads.
I used to see a guy bringing milk to the creamery on a donkey and cart. Im not kidding.

The cities may have been different but rural Ireland was very insular and parochial.

I think like with everything there was good and bad. Drugs didnt exist outside cities, now theyre in every village in Ireland.

I think people are much more broadminded, educated, well travelled now.

Young people in general now strike me as much more mature these days. Teenagers nowdays can converse about sexism, misogyny, and various other social issues whereas I was just into drinking and smoking hash. Twitter and social medias are great platforms for discussing social issues, obviously they have downsides too.
Also we have access to much more media. in bed on my phone I can read articles from every country in the world but as a kid we drove to the village to pick up the paper
Teenagers are the children of the generation which benefitted from free education, cheap travel etc, so its not a surprise theyre more worldy.


I think community and belonging is very important for the wellbeing of society, so maybe we've lost a little bit of that, but in general I think thats one area Ireland is very strong.
These are important human needs and can be undervalued as their worth isnt quantifiable.

The inflexion point is sometime in the mid to late 90s when all the various forces came into effect at the same time:
free 3rd level education, strong economy, internet, mobile phones, less emigration, more immigration, influence of church dissipates, cheap travel, satellite tv.

There's another inflexion point in the late 00's where social media and smartphones came at the same time but obvously not as impactful.

Free 3rd level education came in '96, unemployment was 10% in '97, 7% in '98, Nokia 3210 came in '99. Ryanair website launched in 2000. Bank of Ireland launched online banking in '97.
You could just say a nice even 2000 was the inflexion point. The difference between 1990 and 2000 was humongous. Whereas difference between 2021 and 2000 isnt so big.

but yeah, I agree with the original post, early 90s was last "real Ireland", for better or worse.

Flinty997 wrote: »

One big change from 90 to 00 is mobile phones.

https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/05/the-evolution-of-cell-phone-design-between-1983-2009/