# Is 2012 culture much different from 1992 culture? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 30, 2012, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207 "2012-01-30T17:29:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207/61 "2012-01-31T20:55:08Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > To be fair, I think the article linked in the OP is looking at the fashion and creative aspect of culture – haircuts, clothing styles, music, etc. But just as the author cherrypicks examples to fit his theory, it’s possible to cherrypick in the opposite direction too. Look at the leather jacket. Derided as something “hoods” and “greasers” wore in the 50s, by the 60s and 70s, it was a standard part of most men’s wardrobes. That has continued for 40 years. ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207/62 "2012-01-31T21:19:13Z")
I think it is an overstatement that nothing has changed in the last 20 years but I do agree that change seems to have slowed down. i think that is because of the ubiquitousness of video and the internet nothing ever has to go away. I can’t miss the great shows of the 90s because they are still on every day. The songs are still on the radio. New culture just ends up building on what came before instead of replacing it so nothing seems so different. ---
**Author:** ![Chopper9760](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cdc98d/32.png) [@Chopper9760](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chopper9760)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207/63 "2012-01-31T21:37:14Z")
I find it hard to put into words but sitcoms like Friends, Seinfeld, Mad About You - they all look _extremely_ dated when I see them channel surfing. There’s definitely been an appreciable change in fashion & hairstyles but, to the author’s credit, I can’t articulate these changes beyond a vague sense that people in sitcoms from the 90’s look funny. ---
**Author:** ![Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellis_Aponte_Jr)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207/64 "2012-01-31T21:37:39Z")
> [@Gagundathar](#): > > It is not as if I am going to go to a rave soon If you are, you’re definitely stuck in 1992! Regarding the article, British writer Simon Reynolds made many of the same points in his book _Retromania_, published last year. ---
**Author:** ![obfusciatrist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4af34b/32.png) [@obfusciatrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obfusciatrist)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207/65 "2012-01-31T21:42:02Z")
> [@Chopper9760](#): > > I find it hard to put into words but sitcoms like Friends, Seinfeld, Mad About You - they all look _extremely_ dated when I see them channel surfing. Part of this, for me anyway, is how quickly widescreen TV has become the norm. Really old shows it doesn’t bother me but stuff from the decade before the changeover just looks too current to be in that little square (or worse, stretched to fit the full screen). That’s how the world has changed. A 26" TV isn’t on the larger side any more. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207/66 "2012-01-31T21:59:31Z")
There are fewer places outside of the workplace where you can feel comfortable “dressing up.” ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207/67 "2012-01-31T22:25:33Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > But just as the author cherrypicks examples to fit his theory, it’s possible to cherrypick in the opposite direction too. Cherrypicking is one thing, but saying that the mood of the country has changed because of 9/11 seems to be addressing a completely different issue. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207/68 "2012-01-31T22:27:23Z")
> [@fiddlesticks](#): > > I grew up (and became of age in 1992) in Wisconsin so the weather wasn’t necessarily conducive for tank tops, but they certainly weren’t the default summer-time outfit for young women in those days. Visible bra straps? I seem to remember them as a fashion faux pas at the time. I’m quite certain if a girl had shown up at school in a tank top with her bra straps visible in May of 1992 she would have been sent to the office and asked to go home and change or find a sweatshirt to wear the rest of the day. So? In 1974 halter tops, which show a lot more skin than tank tops, were pretty common in Urbana, Illinois at least. I’d say clothing is more conservative now than it was then. In general, some things, like clothes, cycle and some things, like technology, progress steadily. It seems silly to assign an interval that means anything. My kids listened to the Beatles, but my mother liked Benny Goodman, and I still play the Carnegie Hall CD. Weird Al is Spike Jones with music videos. Frank Sinatra covered _Something_ and said it was one of the best love songs ever, so I’m not sure he’d agree he was that different from John Lennon. The bobby-soxers reaction to him wasn’t that far off the reaction to the 1964 Beatles. The internet changed everything, but so did television, the automobile, and the telephone. It might be accelerating a bit, but I wrote a (bad) story on the acceleration of technology for a high school magazine in 1968. Everything is new, but nothing is really new. ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207/69 "2012-01-31T22:38:37Z")
I think it’s not so much that the pace of culturual/societal change has slowed down, but that it has diversified, so that there are no longer obvious identifiers of a particular time, in the way that, for example, bell bottoms and huge collars are immediately identified with the early seventies. If you look back at media of that time, it’s surprising how uniform fashion was. Everybody was doing the flared trousers/big collar thing, even newsreaders. I’d guess it is down to increasing prosperity, greater consumer choice, and increased levels of communication. ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207/70 "2012-01-31T22:44:54Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Everything is new, but nothing is really new. > [@](#): > > Ecclesiastes 1:9 > > What has been will be again, > what has been done will be done again; > there is nothing new under the sun. Indeed 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207/71 "2012-01-31T22:51:13Z")
Is the argument just that “The way people dress hasn’t changed radically”? ---
**Author:** ![Two\_Dollar\_Tallboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Two\_Dollar\_Tallboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Dollar_Tallboy)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207/72 "2012-01-31T23:15:11Z")
One thing I don’t think anyone has touched on is how common place porn has become. Growing up in the 90s your options for porn was pretty much limited to adult bookstores and convienence stores. It still had that taboo with it too. Now something as simple as an internet search can yield countless porn sites as results simply because they share a word combination with what you were searching for and you hear stories about how people getting fired for emailing porn while at work. Or sitting down at a computer in a library and discovering that the previous user had been looking at whatever their particular kink is. Porn isn’t really something thats kept behind close doors anymore. ---
**Author:** ![santosvega](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@santosvega](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/santosvega)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207/73 "2012-01-31T23:21:13Z")
> [@GreenElf](#): > > A lot of early to mid 90s pop culture has become dated and subject to ridicule. Youth laugh at 90s video game music having that “Seinfeld” sound. Many youths won’t be caught dead in a pair of blue jeans. 90s jargon such as “dude” is nearly as outdated as “far out” or “groovy”. Crap. I have longish hair, wear blue jeans to the exclusion of all other trousers, and use the word “dude” more often than I probably notice. I also work alongside several kids in their early twenties. Now I’m gonna be paranoid that they’re all laughing at me behind my back. Totally serious here. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2012, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207/74 "2012-01-31T23:22:48Z")
> [@GreenElf](#): > > Many youths won’t be caught dead in a pair of blue jeans. What age are these youths? ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207/75 "2012-02-01T00:36:25Z")
> [@F.U.Shakespeare](#): > > I’ve often wondered why saggy pants are still popular with some teenagers - a fashion that was around more than twenty years is still considered current? I remember a colleague around 1991 complaining that his teenage son was wearing sagging pants). Back in the late '80s and thru the '90s, tho, the pants sagged because they were too big and they fell down. The trend now is skinny emo jeans that are too small in the waist for most guys to actually seat them properly on their hips; they can’t even get them up over their skinny asses. Here’s my theory on why clothes and hairstyles and color schemes have remained mostly the same for the past 20-25 years: we already tried and discarded a bunch of styles that looked like shit and/or were a lot of work. What we’re left with is the stuff that doesn’t look completely ridiculous or crappy. Bell bottoms? Stupid. Pastels colors? Barf inducing. Huge wide collars? Dumb. Big padded shoulders? Dumber. Jeri-curl? Looks disgusting. Beehive hairdos? Look retarded and are difficult to maintain. Feathered hair? Looks kinda dumb on both guys and gals. That’s why jeans and t-shirts, which was a fairly new combo in the '50s and sported often by people of lower-middle to lower class background (i.e. people without a lot of money for slacks and sportcoats) are still around and now pretty much the default dress for Americans: they don’t look ridiculous, are easy to match up color-wise, and are both reasonably devoid of stylistic elements that would clash. Styles have settled into grooves that are easy to maintain, comfortable, and don’t look generally freakish. It’s like evolution in action for fashion. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207/76 "2012-02-01T00:39:27Z")
They don’t look ridiculous because we’re used to them. I have no doubt that, a hundred years in the future, people will think it ridiculously old-fashioned that we all went around in a uniform sea of blue jeans, broken only by the occasional khakis. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207/77 "2012-02-01T00:51:09Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > They don’t look ridiculous because we’re used to them. > > I have no doubt that, a hundred years in the future, people will think it ridiculously old-fashioned that we all went around in a uniform sea of blue jeans, broken only by the occasional khakis. I disagree. We’re used to them because they didn’t get discarded; they stuck around (in part) because they didn’t look ridiculous when styles changed and in retrospect we realized that certain styles _did_ look ridiculous. Parachute pants won’t be making a comeback, nor will earth shoes, but jeans and sneakers are still common. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207/78 "2012-02-01T01:09:50Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > However, I will say that it seems odd to me how many of today’s teenagers seem to enjoy a lot of the same music as their parents. That ain’t right. Wouldn’t it be an terrible waste of music, though, if it was supposed to last for just one generation? ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207/79 "2012-02-01T01:57:24Z")
> [@Snowboarder\_Bo](#): > > I disagree. We’re used to them because they didn’t get discarded; they stuck around (in part) because they didn’t look ridiculous when styles changed and in retrospect we realized that certain styles _did_ look ridiculous. Parachute pants won’t be making a comeback, nor will earth shoes, but jeans and sneakers are still common. For the time being… Hat wearing was de rigeur for how many decades among men before it stopped? Longer than jeans and sneakers have been fashionable. People of a certain bent still wear ties, but it’s not because they’re objectively fashionable; they’re just the result of the caprice of history, some Croatians in a war off in the 1600s, and the fashion will turn on those too, someday. They’ll look so silly you would no more wear one than you’d wear a powdered wig. You invoke “evolution”, but the thing about evolution is that it never stops. ---
**Author:** ![GreenElf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@GreenElf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenElf)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2012, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207/80 "2012-02-01T02:44:07Z")
Remember in the early 90s when the family would gather around the table for a game of Pictionary? [http://nesguide.com/games/anticipation/](http://nesguide.com/games/anticipation/) Hardly anyone does that anymore with all of the entertainment options from our computers and cellphones. Also, eyeglasses have become less common due to surgical options and their lenses have been reduced in size. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-2012-culture-much-different-from-1992-culture/611207.md?page=5)