worst generation

I took computer classes in high school and at university, so I sent my first electronic mail way back in 1984 (if you called it "email" nobody would know what you were talking about). My email address was something like uunet!university!lastname!firstname, with the explanation points pronounced "bang" when read aloud. I used FTP to send electronic files back and forth. I recall if you knew enough about the computer at the other end, you could download stuff using "internet protocol". I don't recall hearing the network of computers thus connected referred to as "the internet" until 1989 or so, and even then it was primitive pre-Web stuff like Telnet and WAIS. For me in the late '80s and early '90s, Usenet *was* the Internet as far I was concerned.

I remember Mr Veg trying to send me a song as an attachment...holy fuck was that ever an ordeal. I think we gave up and he sent me the whole cd in the mail instead.

lol 90s

haha I remember emailing someone during my freshman or sophomore year of college whose email address was an indecipherable mess of bangs, hashes and percent symbols

i'm an old gen xor, so to me 90s music mostly seemed like a ripoff, a watering-down or at best an outgrowth of the "real" late 80s shizz, but same diff, really. evol is to goo as goo is to whatever smashing pumpkins record some kid liked.

then again, i was all over pavement, GBV, shit like that, so 90s = me, i guess

I remember distinctly feeling relief in the 90s that finally people were dressing in a sensible way (Gap, J. Crew) that surely would never go out of style. Also, I was mostly very high.

i was appalled looking at an old yearbook that mullets had lasted well into the 90s.

if you like kubrick movies, i think you can say that every single one of them would have been diminished by the introduction of a mullet on the main character.

well, maybe not eyes wide shut.

i was just glad to be rid of non-stop hair-metal on the radio.

The 90's sartorially for America had as little panache as any since the 40's.

yeah, i think my generation looked askance at sartorial panache. it was for yuppies, don johnson and whoever had decided that women needed big hair and shoulder pads.

wasn't 90s this big zoot suit swing revival thing though?

There's shitty clothes in every generation but the 90's largely eschewed dressing up or over-dressing, except for me of course.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_QllY1bVc1us/SvM1SsDjAzI/AAAAAAAAAB0/3e4dwO0PEOA/s320/amt+pic1.jpg

wasn't 90s this big zoot suit swing revival thing though?

― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, May 2, 2012 5:51 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if you're asking seriously, this was really only a niche thing that only lasted for a small sliver of the 90s

I guess 90s "funky" dress was kind of a thing.

in 1996 I had my heart set on a pair of MASSIVELY wide/baggy mustard-colored jeans

sanity prevailed

I had blue-and-white vertically striped below-the-knee denim shorts that I always wore with a stussy t-shirt

http://www.thefashionpolice.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/90s-fashion-trends.jpg

I remember distinctly feeling relief in the 90s that finally people were dressing in a sensible way (Gap, J. Crew) that surely would never go out of style.

Right before I got my own job and was able to buy my own clothes, my mom bought me four pairs of khakis and threw all my other pants away. This strain of fashion was the #1 reason I hated the '90s. I made up for it by borrowing some vinyl pants from my friend, which were too short for my legs and which snow would melt onto and just sit in droplets for up to an hour after going indoors, making me damp every time my arm brushed against my leg. STILL BETTER THAN KHAKIS.

yeah, the arrival of funky alternative fashion was the point at which i thought maybe i was no longer on the same generational boat as my peers. did at one point own a pair of bright orange jnco sneakers though.

I feel more than ever like I dress as a "person from the '90s," meaning I dress like a slovenly slob who still buys novel shit at thrift stores.

band tshirts, jeans, vans. the only thing that has changed about my wardrobe is the sizing, lol

Unexpected '90s nostalgia: we have two small kids, both girls, and when my wife looks around and sees all the middle and high school aged Children of Britney dressed slutty-chic, she thinks back to the heyday of grunge, when she and her friends all wore baggy, sexless, second-hand flannel shirts and thinks, wow, my own parents lucked out in the kid fashion department.

(Waves fist, complains that Gen Y and Millennials dress like hookers)

maybe if everyone's parents were patrick duffy & susanne somers...
http://mortystv.com/showcards/step_by_step.jpg

wait, is that a white urkel?

the worst problem my Mum had with my dress as a teenager was worrying that in addition to wearing men's tshirts and shorts that I was going to start wearing men's underwear too

hold on, Gen Y: late ~1970's-2000 makes me the same generation as my progeny . confused.

But that's true of early boomers too.

Oh I know, I just thought it was funny that my son and I just fit into either end of that time range

I don't know about Gen X, but Generation ILX is def. perennially obsessed with the early 90s.

ilX

wait, is that a white urkel?

― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 2 May 2012 22:20 (34 minutes ago) Permalink

No, but as part of a cheesy ratings stunt Urkel did make a guest appearance on that show!

He literally took off in a homemade jet pack in an episode of Family Matters and landed in an episode of Step By Step.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Miller-Boyett Productions.

^

If you don't mind my asking, zachlyon, what makes you sure of this, considering that you were five years old when the WWW first became freely available to the public and only started high school after high-speed fully-graphic Internet was completely pervasive in our culture? As far as I can tell, you don't have much pre-Internet experience to compare. I'm just old enough to remember the pre-Internet world - when I was not be able to access JUST ABOUT ANY PIECE OF INFORMATION I WANT AT ANY TIME or to communicate nearly instantly with anyone anywhere as long as they have a hookup - and it seems pretty fundamentally different to me.

this is all true; i started living on the internet when i was about 10, which i don't think is that far off from kids born ten years ago. i just don't think it's as big of a factor as people like to make it out to be. my sister is six years older than me, still a millennial, but she definitely remembers time before the internet better than i do (tbh i've always thought early 80s was the end of Gen X, so i've always seen her as being on the generational edge). but she and i still have a very similar experience with the internet right now and i don't think our lives are too different because she spent more of her youth without it. i guess my point is that the internet is such a huge, defining force that pretty much everyone under a certain age has been affected by it similarly, even if it came to them at different times. i don't think the relevance the internet has much to do with how old everyone was when it hit, because we've all basically ended up in the same place anyway.

*of the internet

my sister is six years older than me, still a millennial, but she definitely remembers time before the internet better than i do (tbh i've always thought early 80s was the end of Gen X, so i've always seen her as being on the generational edge). but she and i still have a very similar experience with the internet right now and i don't think our lives are too different because she spent more of her youth without it. i guess my point is that the internet is such a huge, defining force that pretty much everyone under a certain age has been affected by it similarly, even if it came to them at different times. i don't think the relevance the internet has much to do with how old everyone was when it hit, because we've all basically ended up in the same place anyway.

thing is, of course you're not gonna see much cultural difference between siblings born six years apart, no matter what generational group they ostensibly belong to. distinctions like boomer/genex/millennial/wired make more sense when discussing the differences (real and/or imagined) between people born 20, 30, 40 or more years apart. sometimes these differences are obvious, and sometimes they're quite subtle. like, i don't think we'll have a real grasp on just how different internet-saturated "generation text" is from the generations that came before them until we get another 20 or 30 years down the road, until we start to see the differences between them and whatever comes next. sometimes it's easier to define things in terms of what they aren't than what they are.

so i suppose this generational determinism is yet another boomer inanity -- by extrapolating from their own provenance in the immediate postwar, they force the young into procrustean categories even where no demographically epochal event exists

^^^

literally everybody who believes in "generations" is an idiot, fuck you Gertrude Stein

what did gertrude stein ever do to deserve underrated aerosmith bootlegs?

This, I'm guessing?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Generation

yeah shouldn't lose sight of that. it's like astrology but a tiny bit more legitimate xp

o i know, but she was a doll, really

http://www.observer.com/files/2011/07/3165786-220x300.jpg

apparently the american govt takes generations p seriously and floats a "report" around telling employees how to deal with ppl of different ages based on generational characteristics.

aero OTM

the american govt takes generations p seriously and floats a "report" around telling employees how to deal with ppl of different ages based on generational characteristics.

This is for real?

well there is some actualy importance w/r/t demographic bubbles and there is some evidence for political loyalties sticking so there's not 'nothing' but it is kinda funny how like 10 people in paris were 'an entire generation of americans'

the greatest generation: dead, perhaps in need of burial
silent generation: poor bowel control, buy vinyl chairs
boomers: remember to trim benefits and pensions before they retire
generation x: probably stoned, keep and eye on bathroom breaks
millenials: thank god for reduced expectations
generation z: they are the future, kill them now