# What was life in the 1990s like? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 25, 2014, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913 "2014-04-25T00:52:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913/122 "2014-04-29T01:54:01Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > You also have to take into account the amount of loans you’ll take out along with expected lifetime earnings. > > “College” does mean higher earnings, but a large portion of the higher earnings college graduates get comes from a few degrees. Plus you also have to take into account the fact that you might not finish, plus how many years of earnings you’ll get out of your degree. The math is different for a 40-year old than for a 20-year old. > > Taking out loans to pay for college is a huge financial decision that I think most people just consider automatic these days. And that’s why it’s a bubble. The return on the investment is assumed to be a sure thing. It’s just not, and that was a big motivator for the Occupy Wall Street protests. You got all these people with degrees and the salaries turned out to be disappointing, or jobs in their field are simply not available. And they took out massive college loans. Obviously, this state of affairs is someone else’s fault. Rather than hijack the 90s, I would invite you to debate the topic further in a new thread I opened: [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=17330982#post17330982](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=17330982#post17330982) Although I will say that in the 90s, I feel like my generation would have been too cynical to start an OWS movement. ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913/123 "2014-04-29T02:05:02Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Rather than hijack the 90s, I would invite you to debate the topic further in a new thread I opened: > > [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=17330982#post17330982](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=17330982#post17330982) > > Although I will say that in the 90s, I feel like my generation would have been too cynical to start an OWS movement. Yeah man, like, I totally can’t be bothered to _care_ that much about stuff. Pssshtt. ---
**Author:** ![BrianJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/54ee81/32.png) [@BrianJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrianJ)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913/124 "2014-04-29T02:18:47Z")
The 90’s brought the ‘downfall’ of PC gaming with online MMO’s like Everquest. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913/125 "2014-04-29T11:42:48Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > I called home precisely once from China during a year of travelling, and I had to book the call a day ahead and turn up for an appointment with the phone. It all seems so antiquated now, but it really wasn’t that long ago. Travelling with the internet is a huge improvement, though the idea of being contactable all the time is perhaps a little sad - but I believe the practicality outweighs it. Yeah, I remember having to book an international phone call in the central post office in Nairobi so I could phone home - in 1995! Just six years later I went off travelling round the world and had a tiny mobile phone in my pocket that I could use to text home from just about anywhere, even on a tropical beach, and get a reply back in moments. I went to university in 1994, encountered the WWW a few months later, and graduated in 1998. Today’s connected world pretty much started while I was there. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913/126 "2014-04-29T13:15:44Z")
It wasn’t that much better domestically. Any time you made a call, if it was like 20 miles away it was long distance. In the brief period between nationwide long distance and the long distance services we had from the beginning of the phone until the 1990s, we were inundated with various long distance services that you could just dial up instantly, like 10-10-321. David Arquette used to push that stuff a lot in some pretty wacky commercials. Phone cards were also a big thing during that transition. If you stayed in a hotel in the 90s, you were best off buying a phone card rather than using their overpriced services to call home. ---
**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:** [April 29, 2014, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913/127 "2014-04-29T13:53:41Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Phone cards were also a big thing during that transition. Oh, wow, I’d completely forgotten about those. Yeah, that was a thing. ---
**Author:** ![GreenElf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@GreenElf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenElf)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913/128 "2014-04-29T16:10:13Z")
Also in the 90s, people would buy new books and music in actual brick & mortar bookstores and record stores. The price range for a brand new audio CD was typically $17+ for new releases and $12-15 for older bargain-priced CDs. After people started buying on Amazon and other online stores in the 2000s and switched to other options such as downloading online, most of these brick & mortar stores closed. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913/129 "2014-04-29T16:18:51Z")
> [@Arcite](#): > > I was born in 1976, and started college in 1994. Here’s something that’s changed pretty significantly for today’s high school seniors looking at colleges: the commercialization of college. > > For me and my generation, the way you chose a college (and this ties in with the fact as other have mentioned that the internet wasn’t a household thing yet) was to go to a bookstore and buy a copy of Peterson’s, the phone-book-sized college guide…But there were no radio or TV ads for colleges and universities. There were no billboards on the Interstate saying “University of Toledo: Your Future Starts Here” or “Boost Your Career With Our Convenient Night and Weekend Classes!” or whatever…I guess there was still just enough of the vestigial pretense that the purpose of college was to obtain an education for its own sake, not vocational training. It seems strange that it’s changed that much since I graduated. Good point. Back about 10-20 years ago, college advertising was pretty much limited to the for-profit “career schools” such as DeVry and ITT Tech that were considered to be “bottom feeders” who took students that nobody else would take. Nowadays, you can’t live without bumping into ads for solid, middle ground colleges that used to be above advertising. E.g. seeing a transit ad telling you why choosing _Michigan State_ will help your future. ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Rosetta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Green\_Rosetta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Rosetta)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913/130 "2014-04-29T17:00:10Z")
I think that sex was discussed a little more freely with young people. I was a young teen, and I remember reading in Seventeen and other teen magazines some full page spreads about sex and contraceptives. I obviously haven’t picked up a teen magazine in awhile, but somehow I can’t imagine that they regularly feature tables of birth control options with their risks and benefits. My mom is a doctor and I remember how her having a cell phone literally changed her life. Before that, when she was on call, she could barely leave the house because you had to make sure you were close to a payphone in case she was paged. Amazing! If you didn’t tuck in your shirt, especially if you were a guy, you were ridiculed. See Seinfeld for reference. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913/131 "2014-04-29T20:45:22Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > Oh, wow, I’d completely forgotten about those. Yeah, that was a thing. That’s just reminded me. When I was at university I had a thing called a BT Chargecard (had to look up the name on Google) which let me call home (and home only!) from payphones, via an access number, and the cost went onto my parents’ phone bill. There was usually a big queue for the payphones in my hall of residence, so most of my calls home for the first year were made from [this draughty phone box](http://goo.gl/maps/YfgQb). Ah, memories! (Actually, I think it was a classic red phone box in those days…) ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913/132 "2014-04-29T21:45:40Z")
> [@GreenElf](#): > > Also in the 90s, people would buy new books and music in actual brick & mortar bookstores and record stores. The price range for a brand new audio CD was typically $17+ for new releases and $12-15 for older bargain-priced CDs. After people started buying on Amazon and other online stores in the 2000s and switched to other options such as downloading online, most of these brick & mortar stores closed. While brick and mortar stores had always existed, in most places they were pretty boring affairs. When Borders and Barnes became nationwide brands in the 90s, it actually put most of the boring book stores like Waldenbooks out of business. Borders and Barnes had cafes, they actually encouraged you to have a seat and read some books before buying. It just became the stylish place to buy books. Too bad those two companies didn’t peak earlier, because they only had a few years at the top of the book selling heap before Amazon rode in and destroyed them. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913/133 "2014-04-29T23:24:08Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > In the brief period between nationwide long distance and the long distance services we had from the beginning of the phone until the 1990s, we were inundated with various long distance services that you could just dial up instantly, like 10-10-321. David Arquette used to push that stuff a lot in some pretty wacky commercials. Chris Rock was in a few of the 1-800-COLLECT commercials as well, IIRC. ---
**Author:** ![ThisUsernameIsForbidden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b4bc9f/32.png) [@ThisUsernameIsForbidden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThisUsernameIsForbidden)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913/134 "2014-04-29T23:32:41Z")
I can remember back in 92, when ATT and another company (probably Sprint, I don’t remember) kept sending me checks to switch back and forth between telephone companies. And this was just a landline in my apartment. The checks got progressively larger until I moved. It was something like 3 or 4 checks. Odd. ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913/135 "2014-04-30T00:18:53Z")
> [@ThisUsernameIsForbidden](#): > > I can remember back in 92, when ATT and another company (probably Sprint, I don’t remember) kept sending me checks to switch back and forth between telephone companies. And this was just a landline in my apartment. The checks got progressively larger until I moved. It was something like 3 or 4 checks. Odd. And they would forward them with the rest of your mail when you moved, which required canceling your land line. ---
**Author:** ![GreenElf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@GreenElf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenElf)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913/136 "2014-05-05T01:54:12Z")
One more very 90s thing was the millennium scare. While some people feared the end of the world, most of this fear was based around the idea that our computer network would go haywire because it wasn’t properly programmed for the eventuality. ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913/137 "2014-05-05T09:24:52Z")
> [@GreenElf](#): > > One more very 90s thing was the millennium scare. While some people feared the end of the world, most of this fear was based around the idea that our computer network would go haywire because it wasn’t properly programmed for the eventuality. It wasn’t just a “scare”; it was a real problem that companies spent millions fixing. ---
**Author:** ![protoboard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/fbc32d/32.png) [@protoboard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/protoboard)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913/138 "2014-05-05T14:06:58Z")
I was born in 1990 and honestly I don’t feel like being alive then felt all that different. The pop culture was kinda similar I don’t know. Rap was big then and it’s big now, hipsters were already slowly becoming a thing and fashion for men was pretty similar to how it is now. During the second half of the 90s the Internet was already a huge cultural phenomenon, though people didn’t use it nearly as much. I think prior to about 1997 you can notice some major changes but the late 1990s are very similar to most of the 2000s and not vastly different from 2014. I imagine in China, Poland, Ireland, Vietnam etc though the 90s may seem downright ancient in some ways due to the changes in their politics and economies. ---
**Author:** ![GreenElf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@GreenElf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenElf)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913/139 "2014-05-05T15:15:24Z")
> [@protoboard](#): > > I think prior to about 1997 you can notice some major changes but the late 1990s are very similar to most of the 2000s and not vastly different from 2014. The late 90s had no War On Terror and airline security measures. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913/140 "2014-05-05T15:46:57Z")
> [@protoboard](#): > > I was born in 1990 and honestly I don’t feel like being alive then felt all that different. The pop culture was kinda similar I don’t know. Rap was big then and it’s big now, hipsters were already slowly becoming a thing and fashion for men was pretty similar to how it is now. During the second half of the 90s the Internet was already a huge cultural phenomenon, though people didn’t use it nearly as much. > > I think prior to about 1997 you can notice some major changes but the late 1990s are very similar to most of the 2000s and not vastly different from 2014… But rap in the early 90’s was good. Cf. MC Hammer. Rap today _sucks_. The observation about the Internet is good and lines up with what I remember. In the early years of the 90’s, people in the US knew about the Internet, but it was more of a wowie, quasi-SF thing that only college students and intelligence officials got to use. I first got to use it in 1994, I think, at a special after-school program or something, and we had to go to a different building to do so. By the late 90’s, the Internet was creeping and crawling into people’s homes at 14.4 kbps. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2014, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913/141 "2014-05-05T19:30:04Z")
I got on the internet in 1998. I’d started hearing about it enough to make an impression by 1996, but I was still a BBS guy then and saw no reason why the internet would be cooler(and it probably wasn’t really cooler at that point). By 1998, it was cool enough to pay for, IMO, but it wasn’t until high speed internet became widely available that it really started to meet its potential. Internet without streaming video is just extra reading material when you’re out of reading material in the house. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-life-in-the-1990s-like/686913.md?page=8)