11 Things You'd Only Know If You Lived Through The '90s Because They're Very Much Forgotten About Or Completely Skipped Over Today
If you've been on TikTok or are around young Gen Z or Gen Alpha kids, then you know some of them really, really have an affinity for '90s culture — the clothes, the music, the movies, etc.
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And honestly, there are many, many things to appreciate and love about the '90s. However, if you lived through them then you know there are a lot of things that '90s nostalgia today gets wrong or just skips over completely.
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So, it was with that in mind that I put together a list of things that will make millennials and Gen X'ers say, "Yup! That was very much the '90s," and give Gen Z and Alpha a look into what life was like:
1.Most people did not own computers.
Many people associate the '90s with AOL, chatrooms, Oregon Trail, and AIM, but the truth is that most people in the US did not own a home computer. However, owning a computer did become more common as the decade went on, though it was still low — according to this report by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 1990, about 15% of Americans owned a computer, and by 1997, the number had risen to 35% (it wouldn't be until 2000 that 51% of households owned computers).
The internet was even less common. According to the US Census, in 1998, only 26% of US households had internet access. It did jump significantly by 2000, but it was still less than half of US households at only 42% percent.
The reality was that computers were very expensive, and unless your parents needed them to work at home or were early adopters of technology, you were likely not to own one. You also wouldn't buy one for just your kids to play on.
2.Very old people during that time were from an era before sliced bread, chocolate chip cookies, and television were invented.
There are a lot of jokes about how Gen Z and Alpha refer to the '80s and '90s as the late 1900s (and, by extension, naming that the era when millennials were born). However, in the '90s, if you knew a senior citizen in their 90s or older, then there was a likely chance they were born in the 1890s (aka the late 1800s) — like George Burns for example, who was born in 1896 (he died in 1996 at age 100).
Meanwhile, seniors in their 80s and 70s would have been born in the 1910s or 1920s. This also made it not uncommon to know/meet veterans of WWII, Holocaust survivors, and people who lived through the Great Depression.
3.Smoking was frowned upon but still very common.
In 1990, the CDC estimated that 25.5% of US adults were smokers. While that might not sound like a lot, smoking in public and indoors wasn't as restricted (it wouldn't even be entirely restricted on planes until 2000, when smoking was banned on international flights to and from the US), so you could be seated in restaurants that allowed smoking in certain sections or be seated next to someone at little league game who would be puffing away on a few cigarettes. Advertising for them was also everywhere, like on billboards and in magazines (not on TV though).
Yes, people knew it was bad for them (they'd known it since the '60s), but it was a holdover social thing/habit. There were also lots of PSAs aimed at kids and adults to discourage them from smoking throughout the decade. In 1998, California would be the first state to ban smoking indoors, workplaces, clubs, bars, and restaurants.
4.People watched the same TV shows.
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If you didn't live through the '90s, you might be saying, "Duh, of course, everyone watched the same shows!" or "What do you mean everyone watched the same shows?" Well, today in the US streaming accounts for nearly 40% of what's viewed on TV, while broadcast TV is just 22.5% (with cable at 28.3% and "other" being 10.7%). However, back in the '90s that competition just did not exist for broadcast TV — even cable offered few original things that could rival it.
Most people watched primetime shows from one of the big four networks: CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox, which meant they got HUGE audiences. For example, in the week of Sept. 22, 1997, the highest-rated show that week was the season premiere of E.R., which had 42.71 million viewers (and no other show in the top 10 had below 20 million viewers). By contrast, in the 2022–23 TV season, NCIS was the most-watched primetime broadcast (non-sports) show with 9.86 million viewers.
There also were no DVRs, so — unless you programmed your VCR to record it — you watched things as they aired live. Also, if you didn't watch something live you risked someone spoiling it for you the next day.
5.People didn't have huge VHS movie collections and did actually rent a lot of movies.
If you've ever seen a '90s BuzzFeed post or, frankly, seen a '90s nostalgia post anywhere else, Blockbuster always appears on the list. That's because it really was the spot to hit up on Friday nights to get a few movies to rent for the weekend.
Now, before everyone comes in the comments and says, "I owned movies!!!" Yes, people owned movies — especially if you were a kid, your parents would usually get you the latest Disney movies so you could watch them over and over — but unless you were an avid movie fan, most people had smaller VHS collections of movies that were their favorites and that they wanted to own so they could watch it at any time.
Renting movies was convenient because the selection was always bigger than what you could usually find at any store that sold VHS movies. They also sometimes had the exclusive rights to certain bigger films. This meant you couldn't buy them even if you wanted to because the studio had an agreement with video rental stores that there would be an exclusive window where only they had copies of them, and they wouldn't be on sale for the general public.
It wouldn't be until the early 2000s, when DVDs started to become popular that people really started building large movie collections. And because it became an even bigger revenue stream for the studios, they started releasing newer and older titles directly to retailers and loaded them with all sorts of extras. This eventually started to affect the rental market.
6.Not everyone lived in homes decorated with '90s interior design trends.
I know, I know, this is true of every decade. But, I say this for two reasons; first, social media has conditioned us to think that it's always been normal to full-on redecorate every year. Second, if you watch TV shows or movies from that era (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Clueless come to mind), the home interiors look, well, oh-so-'90s. However, there were also a lot of people who were still living with furniture from the '70s and '80s, had wood-paneled walls, shag carpeting, and old appliances (those things were truly built to last).
This was also especially true if you visited older people (like grandparents), who might live in a home they hadn't redecorated since the '70s, '60s, or '50s. They'd also have an old wood console TV that they hadn't replaced since 1973.
7.Celebrities from the '40s and '50s were still very much part of the cultural zeitgeist.
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Believe it or not, some people in the '90s still thought Elvis was alive and had faked his death. This had started not long after he died in the late '70s, but even in the '90s, there probably wasn't a month that went by without a front-page story about him in a tabloid (at the supermarket checkout) about somebody spotting him alive.
Elizabeth Taylor still acted occasionally but was a humanitarian who worked to raise money and attention for AIDS research (through her foundation). However, she was still in the tabloids (usually speculating on her health or who she would marry next) and was still a go-to punchline of late-night comedians' jokes because of how many marriages she had had.
Marlon Brando still acted regularly and, like Elizabeth, was a go-to for punchlines, but because of his weight (like on The Simpsons).
Frank Sinatra still performed in Vegas until the mid-'90s and was even the subject of a recurring SNL skit, "The Sinatra Group," where he was portrayed by Phil Hartman.
And these are just a few examples of Golden Age of Hollywood celebs that were still around and part of pop culture.
8.People did not take a lot of photos.
Today, everyone documents every second of their lives by taking photos or videos of everything from the outfit they wore that day to the dinner they made. Obviously, that was unheard of in the '90s and would seem excessive and strange. Most people would only take photos of birthdays, vacations, holiday get-togethers, or special things like the first day of school, etc.
Photo film was sort of expensive to waste on photos of "nothing." For example, in 1995, a roll of Kodak Royal Gold 400 (a go-to film because it worked in both daytime and night) would cost $8.82, which is about $18.14 today when adjusted for inflation (and that's not factoring in the cost of getting the film developed which would cost you another few bucks). That film also only allowed you to take 36 photos. It wasn't unusual to take film to get developed and get photos from three or four different events that were months old.
9.Titanic was an unexpected blockbuster movie; in fact, most people thought it was going to be a box-office bomb.
Now, I will start by saying that Titanic needed to be a big box-office hit given its cost. Before its release in 1997, many critics and Hollywood insiders predicted that Titanic would be a box-office bomb. And there were several reasons why it was predicted to be a failure. First off, at the time it was the most expensive movie ever made and was getting compared to the costly Waterworld — which had been released a couple of years before and, like Titanic, was the then–most expensive movie ever made. Even though Waterworld grossed over $200 million at the box office, it was deemed a failure/moderate success 'cause it barely made a profit, and it also became the butt of jokes.
Second, aside from the cost of filming, Titanic also took a long time to film. Going way over schedule also delayed the movie's release — as it was originally meant to be released during the summer (the blockbuster movie season). Moving its release date to December set off red flags.
Lastly, many on-set stories were reported throughout the film's production, everything from the difficulty of working with director James Cameron to the PCP poisoning of some crew members. All these things combined added to the "doomed film" narrative.
The movie had a very good opening weekend when it was finally released, grossing $28.6 million. However, that didn't scream blockbuster movie; for comparison, Men in Black, which was a blockbuster movie that had come out in the summer of '97, grossed $51 million on its opening weekend. What made Titanic different was that it actually grossed even more on its second weekend (grossing $35.4 million) because of word-of-mouth. Another unheard-of thing was that the movie would continue to gross between $21–36 million every weekend for the next two months, which was mainly due to people doing repeat viewings. The movie would go on to be the No. 1 movie at the box office for the next 15 weeks straight and ignite Titanic-mania, which turned the film into an iconic '90s pop culture phenomenon.
10.People refused to wear seat belts while driving.
The first mandatory seat belt laws weren't passed by states until the 1980s, and by 1991, 37 states had some form of it in place (some only enforced front passengers, while others enforced every passenger in the car).
While seatbelt laws continued to be enacted nationwide in the '90s, some drivers claimed that it was their personal choice whether or not to wear a seatbelt. Starting in the '80s and throughout the '90s, many PSAs aimed at both kids and adults (most iconically Vince and Larry, the Crash Test Dummies) ran on TV and on the radio to encourage people to wear seatbelts. Between the PSAs and drivers getting fined for not wearing them, people began getting used to buckling up. By 2000, 71% of front passengers wore seatbelts.
11.Lastly: We lived in a media black hole.
This wasn’t exclusive to the ‘90s, but it would the last decade that this existed. Now, if you’re someone who didn’t live through the decade and are wondering what I mean by “media black hole,” the best way I can explain it is that we couldn’t just access anything we wanted. For example, if you loved a cartoon or TV show and it got canceled and was not put into reruns, then there would be NO way you could watch it. It literally ceased to exist, and all you could do was reminisce with your family or friends and say, “Remember that…” and hope they knew what you were talking about.
If you wanted to watch a movie you had heard of and the video store didn’t have it available to rent, and the store didn’t have it in stock to buy, you just couldn’t watch it; you could only hope that it might pop up on TV.
Did you miss a new episode of a TV show you liked? Well, if you didn’t program your VCR to tape it then you were shit out of luck and would have to wait — sometimes until the summer — for the episode to be played in reruns.
Similarly, if you wanted to hear a new song that had just been released by an artist you liked from an upcoming album of theirs, you had to wait for the radio or MTV to play it — if you were smart, you’d tape it off the radio so you could hear it at any time.
Essentially, we had only some control over what media we consumed and were at the whim of whatever physical media we could access.
Okay, folks who lived through the '90s, do you remember these things? Did they sound right? What did I miss? Let me know in the comments below!!!
