To a very narrow group of people, perhaps, but many of us don’t get it. Plus whatever they were emblematic of hasn’t really gone away.
Some of us felt that way about the 70s…
That didn’t stop it. :dubious:
Big, baggy shorts below the knee. Oh, wait…
I’ve been seeing Nirvana t-shirts everywhere…on a table of “nostalgia” t-shirts at Target, for instance. Saw one at Macy’s today, and laughed to myself because it was $58. Kurt would never approve. 
Yeah, Nickelodeon is showing 90s Nick shows again, for example (All That, Rocko, etc.). I think the target audience is, as Lamia points out, people who were kids/teens in the 90s.
Right. It’s stupid to think you can define history or cultural environments by the numbers that end in 0. It’s also stupid to think that distinct cultural phenomena last for periods of ten years exactly.
And it’s grossly generalizing to think that cultural trends apply to all sub-cultures across the board in the same way. While some people, for instance, might actually get nostalgic for raves or something like that, in reality there were much better things happening.
But there are identifiable cultural periods, even if they don’t quite sync with the calendar. “The Sixties” refers to a period that lasted, by general consensus, from the Kennedy assassination of 1963 to the Nixon resignation of 1974, more or less. And it is true that that period was amazingly different from those just a couple of years before or after.
I think the 90s were great.
The Internet and computers in general were still mysterious and alluring; this was before all the “Web 2.0” shit or whatever they call it, with “social networking” sites and Farmville and ads everywhere and all the other bullshit. Yes, the internet is more convenient now, but back then, it was just more fun.
I could turn on the local hit radio station - not an “alternative” station but the mainstream 18-25 station that now plays Lady Gaga and Sugarland - and hear The Cranberries, Better Than Ezra, The Cardigans, Weezer, Fiona Apple, etc. Yeah yeah, I know someone’s going to come in here saying "all that music sucked! It was just as bad as the autotuned, produced-by-committee ‘music’ today!’ Right. Keep dreaming.
There was no specter of TERRORISM and HOMELAND SECURITY issues hovering over everything.
The president was extremely likable and the economy was going very well. There was general optimism about the future.
I have been nostalgic for the '90s for the past ten years. I’m most nostalgic for the late '90s because that’s the period that I remember best. The first half of the ‘90s with the grunge and everything is far less clear to me because until the age of 11 or so, I did not really consume popular culture; I mostly watched kids’ shows and movies, and I listened to the classic rock stations and records that my dad played. It wasn’t really until 1996 that I started listening to the radio, buying albums, watching MTV and generally started becoming aware of what was “cool.”
I take it from the 90s hate, most of you are under the age of 30. When I was in college (1991-1995), we thought the 80s were totally lame. But then 80s became “retro” in the 2000s. It usually skips a decade so.
With the “90s” culturally lasting from 1991 (release of Nevermind by Nirvana and Ten by Pearl Jam) to 2001 (9/11/2001 to be precise), 90s nostalgia should be starting right…about…now.
Singles, Reality Bites, Empire Records, Swingers, Pulp Fiction, Chasing Amy, Clerks, Before Sunrise, Waynes World, Trainspoting, Office Space, Friends, Seinfeld.
90s culture is defined by angsty 20-somethings wearing flannel and long Ethan Hawke haircuts. Music starts off with grunge (Nirvana, Soundgarden), jangly alt rock (REM, Gin Blossems) and jam bands (Blues Traveler, DMB) in the ealy 90s. Later moving into more radio-friendly post grunge (Goo Goo Dolls, Match Box Twenty) and nu-metal (Limp Bizkit, Korn) to let you know when things got X-Treme! Or early Snoop Dogg, Dre and Naughty by Nature.
Of course any nightclub would be playing some sort of generic thumping trance/techno. Sandstorm by Darude or Insomnia by Faithless would be a staple.
No My Super Sweet Sixteen spoiled rich kid Meatpacking District bottle service culture in the 90s. Flaunting wealth was decidedly uncool in the 90s and Carrie Bradshaw was still a struggling newspaper columnist in 1998.
Everyone worked in some sort of tech job, underemployed as a waitress or bartender at a cool coffee shop or bar or in a struggling band.
YOU’VE GOT MAIL!!
Watch The Adventures of Pete and Pete, which is the single most '90s-est kid’s show. God, the nostalgia kills me. I practically cry when I hear the first chords of the theme song by Polaris.
The other thing about '90s is that gaming (video and pc) hadn’t been taken over by MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER yet. There were tons of great PC games that were centered around single-player play. Playing a game was an experience between yourself and the game. There was none of this Call of Gears of War of Duty BLACK OPS EXTREME DELTA RAVEN FORCE ULTRA EAGLE SMASH etc bullshit.
And what ever did happen to the rave scene? Here in Tampa, it went away because local authorities cracked down on it, but I don’t know whether that happened nationwide. “Peace, pot, and microdot!” A great age! 
If retro-“rave” clubs ever emerge, I assume they will stay open no later than 2am and search everyone for drugs at the door. Just like a retro-disco club is likely to have a far lower cocaine content than Studio 54.
I think it’s already here – remember that F/X show “Portlandia” (“The dream of the '90s is still alive…in Portland!”). I’m nostalgic for the 1990s myself, not to mention having spent through 1990-1994 in Portland. Good times. The pop music was stupid, but jazz was still in swing (and I don’t mean those neo-swing bands – the real stuff), and people just seemed a lot more chilled out than all these little sunflowers yearning for a sea of douches which might wash over them and enfold them in their bags.
The pop music of the '90s was not “stupid.” There was good music played by good musicians on real instruments on mainstream hit radio stations back in the '90s. I also liked the swing revival of the late '90s, as well as the Under the Table and Dreaming era Dave Matthews Band. By the way you talk about music, I assume you’re one of those jazz geeks who looks down on everything else, but a lot of people are with me on the '90s music.
“Jazz geek”? I don’t know what that is. I’m talking seeing living legends ten feet from you, sipping strange liquids from paper coffee cups put on the piano. Maybe romanticizing, but jazz to me is about communicating directly, with the audience providing active, audible feedback to the performers, without little lyrics and front-man emoting getting in the way. I’ve played rock and roll for years, and country and western, and funk, but it’s only when the music is happening that I really care too much at all.
Stupid was harsh and overly broad – but I just can’t get excited about music with vocals when the lyrics tend to be pretty confessional in nature, which is how I view the trend in 1990s music.
I loved the cocktail scene and its music in the 1990s, too – I just don’t have much of an opinion about the swing revival. Don’t care about dancing, just want to hear some good music with soloists who stretch out and with hip arrangements. Some of the neo-swing bands were tight and packed with people who could play rings around me, no doubt.
I don’t know if you can really put a bead on music during the 90s for the simple reason that it marked when audiences where getting increasingly fragmented (a trend that has increased exponentially during the last 10 years). Also, I think there’s the sense that a lot of artists didn’t during the decade didn’t seem to live up to their potential artistically or commercially.
That being said, I thought the state of popular music was generally pretty good from 1991 to 1994. It actually seemed better than when I was in high school ten years before. However, I think we kind of paid for it because by the end of the decade, with rise of the pop tarts and boy bands, everything seemed to be in ruins.
People just remember the boy bands like Backstreet Boys and all that shit from the late '90s and they forget about the other music. I think there was solid pop rock on the radio towards the end of the '90s. Third Eye Blind, Semisonic, Fastball, etc. Not everyone is a Matchbox 20 fan but I thought they were good. Ben Folds 5, also - fantastic band. And as I said before, Under the Table and Dreaming by Dave Matthews Band. Ants Marching was all over the radio. That song is a masterpiece, despite the fact that DMB might be totally lame now. I say again, the late 90s had great music on the radio.
Even if that weren’t the case, all of the generalizations in this thread seem to let the tastes and preferences of one demographic represent the whole cultural spectrum for the time period.
So? No doubt there was country music being made in the '60s, but that means fuck-all, and should, WRT Sixties Nostalgia.
I can definitely agree with this one… if you want a decent single-player experience nowadays pretty much your only bet is RPGs. Having said that, Fallout 3/New Vegas is pretty much the evolution of things like Deus Ex, so it’s not all bad. 