The 1990s

In My Humble Opinion
21

There is something wrong with the dates at Rottentomatoes.com. For instance, clicking on a random example, the review by Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal–which RT says was published on November 16th 2015–gives the real publication date of May 19th, 1999. Maybe you should learn to look before you snark.

I thought then and continue to think now that I was proving that there there were a large percentage of people in 1999 who thought the movie was rancid weasel vomit and that it isn’t a modern “cool kids” revisionism.

22

Even aside from some dates being wrong, if you simply look at the linked page it’s obvious that the dates are in descending order. The top and bottom of the page both say “Page 1 of 11” and have back/forward links. 2013 is merely the oldest date on page 1. Page 11 has a (pretty negative) review dated “May 19, 1999”.

There are a whole lot of items dated January 1, 2000 which is also pretty obviously a bug.

23

We had a baby in 1990 and another one in 1995, so I mostly remember changing diapers.

It was also the decade of my last Square Job, so I had the income to collect rare books, but felt guilty anytime I bought one because we were putting aside every nickel into college funds. After 9/11 and the Bush Years my revenue streams dried up precipitously. At least we had enough by that time to educate the chilluns.

24

A baby in 91 and 94 for me. And by 99 my marriage was over. Changed jobs 4 times, including an unsuccessful foray into a different field altogether. The decade is a bit of a stressful blur, but I did enjoy the little ones.

25

I loved the 1990’s, especially the latter part of it. I think a lot of middle-aged people today are going to start thinking of it like much older people do for the 1950’s.

I started working in IT because the signs and opportunities were obvious to me and many others. I had already been on the web since it was an infant but it was just gaining mass adoption. The job opportunities were ridiculous at least in the Boston area.

I could and sometimes did post my then 20-something year old modest resume online and the phone would very literally start ringing within 5 minutes with job proposals and would not stop for days. I changed jobs a number of times and gave myself a hefty raise each time by inflating my previous salary. I worked for a company that was sold and they just gave me enough stock options out of the blue to put a nice downpayment on a very nice house. It was like tens of thousands of dollars just fell out the sky. They didn’t have to do that but that was the kind of money people were throwing around casually back then.

I thought it would last forever. Then…the early 2000’s hit and everything came crashing down very quickly. The job market collapsed followed later by the housing and financial markets. Things seem to be going just fine today but you can never tell. I learned my lesson and work in a very niche job that can’t be offshored in a stable industry. It isn’t the most exciting thing in the world but it pays the bills and suits me just fine.

I still yearn for that 1990’s atmosphere that I was originally spoiled under though.

26

Do you look back on the 1990s as a good time, both for your life, your country, and for the world in general? Not for my life, but for the world in general, yes.

Do you remember the Multimedia Revolution? I remember seeing a demo of Wing Commander II in a store and being blown away that computer games could “talk” now, with proper mouth animation and everything! Didn’t buy that game because it was way beyond what my computer could handle, though.

Jurassic Park when it came out in theaters? Yes, but I was in no hurry to see it. I did see it eventually on video, though.

Titanic? Never saw it, but feel like I have because it was so heavily written about and parodied for months and months after it came out.

The Phantom Menace? I saw two months after it came out, at a closed showing for the company where my parents worked. I had read all about it on the internet so I was braced for the disappointment.

Doom, Quake, and Myst? Yes, only played the demo that came with a gaming magazine, and yes.

Sonic, Super Mario, and the Bit Wars? Only at a friend’s house, yes, and yes but I drifted away from video games after I went away to university in the late '90s.

Trips to Blockbuster…or your local family oriented Video Store? Yes, but I think I was in the local Blockbuster only once. The mom ‘n’ pop video stores were where we rented video games.

Mall photo booths? The mall in my present city still had one until pretty recently.

When did you first get a cell-phone? Not until way after the '90s.

When did you first log onto the Internet? Could you ever imagine it would become as big and important as it is today? December 1994. A lot of what I hoped to see back then has come to pass, namely wide access to educational resources plus the ability to watch almost any music video one can think of.