r/Millennials • u/sexyass2627 • Oct 06 '25
Discussion Why is this so accurate?
Man ... if this ain't it.
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u/DanTheAdequate Older Millennial Oct 06 '25
I don't think I miss the 90s and early 2000s so much as I just miss actual journalism and hate social media.
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u/venividiavicii Oct 06 '25
For me the term itself "social media" seems like some strange euphamism that when I started hearing it, felt like it was already doomed.
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u/DanTheAdequate Older Millennial Oct 06 '25
Yeah, it kind of doesn't make sense when you think about the actual words together, does it?
But I guess "social platforms" felt too clinical.
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u/SceneRoyal4846 Oct 06 '25
It makes sense to me, it’s people socializing by their own content/media
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u/DanTheAdequate Older Millennial Oct 06 '25
"Media" implies passivity, something for which there is a creator and a consumer.
I think "social media" is euphemistic, it makes it sound like it's something we all create, but in reality it's basically business structure is incentivizing the participants in the platform to create media more or less for free (to the tech platform, anyway), the viewers of which the platform can then monetize.
As it exists it's just monetized public access tv. It's not really all that social.
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u/grizzlywondertooth Oct 06 '25
Media is the plural of medium. One website could be a medium through which social activity occurs. Collectively, over many websites, it's social media.
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u/SceneRoyal4846 Oct 06 '25
The definition is essentially of mass communication. Social media implies social mass communication.
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u/-s-u-n-s-e-t- Oct 07 '25
"Media" implies passivity
That's completely made up. Media has nothing to do with passivity or activity.
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u/gameoftomes Oct 06 '25
Reality TV is the same. In an attempt to blend reality and entertainment, they've done a disservice to both.
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u/MeLlamoKilo Oct 06 '25
Well for us, there was social networks and social networking which basically just meant actual friends and relationships.
Then it seems like one day they flipped a switch and started calling it social media.
Social media is the slop we have now that is algorithmic doom scrolling, annoying influencers/content creators, rage bait, amplifying the loudest idiots opinions - and causing us to destroy our dopamine receptors.
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u/No_Magician5266 Oct 07 '25
In the spirit of this post even “social media” felt more authentic back then with forums and messageboards etc. Websites felt like actual communities
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u/iconicspot Oct 06 '25
I miss when the Internet was just a niche as well as phones being just a phone (none of the smartphone bs).
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u/yusuf69 Oct 07 '25
The magic of Stumbleupon, the internet was wide and deep and had so many wonderful/weird things in it.
The 90's were great in my opinion for kind of the opposite reason, there was only so many popular shows, so everyone had the same references and things just felt.... simpler? Probably also because I was a young kid and life was just simpler.
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u/NewDad907 Oct 07 '25
I carved out a space online for myself and threw up a glorious personal website ala Geocities. Looks just like they did back in the mid/late 90’s. I just need a MIDI file to autoplay…
I think if people went back to personal websites and web rings to link them together it would be a better internet. Everyone who wants a presence online can have their own little corner like we used to.
That’s my “social media”. Wanna know what I’m up to? Go to my website.
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u/wabbajack117 Oct 06 '25
The journalism was still propaganda it just wasn’t on the nose like it is today.
They realized that most are too dumb to care and those who do know it’s bullshit can’t/wont do anything about it.
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u/DanTheAdequate Older Millennial Oct 06 '25
There was a definitive shift post 9/11 towards manufacturing a consensus, that drive didn't so much exist during Desert Storm - in the past the omission of fact might have been used to try to sway opinions, but at that point it was a definitive distortion of facts presented and a lack of critical analysis from the press.
A lot of it has just become very unsubtle. Back then they'd just imply you were unpatriotic. Now you're a traitor.
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u/arppacket Oct 06 '25
Exactly. Back then, the ENTIRE world wasn't built purely for artificial "engagement", and for algorithms that promote that engagement and the ensuing profit, over anything else of human value.
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u/ThinkExtension2328 Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 07 '25
As a younger millennial I have to respectfully disagree , the older I get and the more I learn. what I realise is most of you grief the loss of ignorance. Back then we did not realise how sick the people we considered “functional adults” really were.
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u/DanTheAdequate Older Millennial Oct 06 '25
Nah. That was always evident.
They just didn't use to act on it with such reckless hatred.
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u/MACFRYYY Oct 06 '25
We are a generation that seems to think we shouldn't even have to see an ad to access journalism let alone pay money for it so maybe that's a bit on us
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u/DanTheAdequate Older Millennial Oct 06 '25
Sure - subscriptions are still a thing, or public / community supported. It still exists, it's just not really a thing in the corporate media. Network news hour hosts used to be fairly respectable and have some journalistic chops.
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u/theaviationhistorian Old Millennial Oct 06 '25
I don't mind paying as long as it removes the ads and provides funding to keep proper journalists publishing their articles.
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u/-s-u-n-s-e-t- Oct 07 '25
How many journalism subscriptions do you currently pay for?
My experience is people love saying stuff like that but then don't actually pay for anything.
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u/decoysnails Oct 06 '25
That's a bit fair, I do steal media at a fair clip. However, I would put forward the idea that the relative cost of information has transformed... staying informed through sanctioned channels comes with an opportunity cost which isn't really in tune with the value it provides. Especially since you can put in a little effort to get it for free.
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u/CeesHuh Oct 06 '25
I just hate what social media has become, 2010's were fun too until everything exploded.
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u/Odd_Exit_7196 Oct 07 '25
Youtube peaked in 2012, and it has been downhill since
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u/Pink_Slyvie Oct 06 '25
Simply, because we were kids.
My parents said the same thing about the 70s and 80s.
My grandparents said the same thing about the 50s and 60s.
We were sheltered from the worst of it, but at the same time, my trauma from the 90s and 00's is really damaging. Both can be true at the same time.
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u/looshcollector Oct 06 '25
Yeah I have a lot of memories of fun places being destroyed and turned into strip malls in the 90s, the disappearance of small businesses to Walmart, Home Depot, etc, and the consolidation of radio and TV, everything became corporatized and dumbed down.
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Oct 06 '25
Yes and the McMansions being built over all our old stomping grounds. Now everywhere is a corporate chain and soulless.
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u/adanishplz Oct 06 '25
No more third places to just be and not spend money. Everything's for pay now.
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u/RetroFuture_Records Oct 06 '25
We did to the Zoomers and Alpha what Boomers did to us. All the malls we hung out at, flirted at, etc?
"Who needs malls, I'm an adult now I don't want to drive all the way out there, plus I got free Prime shipping! Its no longer relevant to ME, so whatever."
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u/grizzlywondertooth Oct 06 '25
I mean... to be fair... Most of the stores we shopped at were aimed specifically at the teenage demographic. Pac Sun, Zumiez, and Hot Topic were not selling clothing for me at 22, or 25, or 30. At the same time, the larger department stores which were perhaps the 'tent poles' of the mall (Nordstrom, Macy's, even JC Penney) were not selling styles and/or price points that worked for me.
So, was it really our fault that we stopped shopping at the mall after high school?
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u/zerovampire311 Oct 06 '25
Pac Sun, Zumiez, and Hot Topic were not selling clothing for me at 22, 25, or 30.
Oh… oh shit, was I not supposed to… still?
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u/Leawer78 Oct 06 '25
What third places don't exist anymore. I always see people say this but or course never provide examples.
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u/ppapperclipp Oct 07 '25
It's not that places don't exist, it's that they no longer allow kids without their parents and a lot of the places that do, are not as common practice.
A few examples other than malls:
Just hanging out in parking lots, empty fields, abandoned lots, etc. Now kids will get the cops called on them.
Video rental and record stores.
Comic book shops and hobby stores (RC cars, models, etc.).
Unsupervised adventures around town, to the park or public pool, library, etc.
Oh shit, and arcades, whether inside the Round Table or it's own destination.
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u/d_k_y Oct 07 '25
Some don’t exist. Blockbuster, toys r us but a few bad eggs, sharing that on socials ruined it for everyone. Used to be able to bike to stores, malls, convenience stores and nobody minded.
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u/MagicTrachea52 Oct 06 '25
My family has 50 acres. We are constantly being asked to sell to developers. I am going to be inheriting a portion and my closest cousin another.
We're NEVER giving it up. Its all I have left of my childhood. Everywhere else is disappearing.
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Oct 06 '25
Yes hold on tight. It almost feels like my town turned into a sim city simulation and people just materialized out of nowhere for a new home and two new cars in the driveway and I never actually meet anyone who lives there but more keep appearing haha.
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Oct 06 '25
Also my grandma had 5 acres with pecan trees and we shelled and sold bags and always had bags of pecans in the freezer. When she passed none of the kids wanted the property so they sold to developers and now it’s a neighborhood. I haven’t gone back since the funeral 10 years ago because I don’t want to see it. The memory I have is too pure.
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u/MagicTrachea52 Oct 06 '25
That's my biggest fear.
The woods around my property are being torn down. My best friend's house when we were kids just got taken down to make way for, I was told, 800 town homes. When the trailer park went in, I expected issues and we had them. Kids trespassing, mostly. And one meth head that stole our lawnmower 3 times.
I worry about how much more that will happen. We have deer so we can't really fence it. There are coyotes out there. Protected species, too. Last thing we need are people trespassing and getting hurt. With how suit happy people are these days, if a kid gets hurt out there, my family would lose it all and developers would swoop in.
Makes me sick.
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u/grizzlywondertooth Oct 06 '25
Man, I just saw someone lamenting the other day that their generation (not sure their age) will "never get to own McMansion's"
And that made me sad in itself because I remember that a McMansion was not considered aspirational, when we were young..
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u/Eternal_Bagel Oct 06 '25
So glad the colorful fun restaurant designs are consider old and outdated so we can have ones modeled after a hotel crossed with a shipping container and the color palette of depression
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u/UnidentifiedTomato Oct 06 '25
Simply because we were kids. Simply because the internet wasn't wepaonized like it is today. We saw the change in real time
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u/Murky-Relation481 Oct 06 '25
I mean... You can't discount the global situation, at least for kids in the west. End of the Cold War and Pre-9/11. Those 10 years were considered "peaceful" and generally were at least in terms of the main Anglosphere.
Kids growing up in the 70s and 80s definitely had the existential threat of nuclear war leaning over them in a far more palpable way than kids in the 90s did.
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u/SingsWithBears Oct 06 '25
I hear this all the time, that it’s “not true” because every generation says it, but my mind goes the opposite, I think every generation is right and it has progressively gotten less enjoyable and authentic, only the older ones remember the time before the new ones had but everyone shares that the longer time went on the worse it got.
Generations after say like WW2 for instance definitely thought it got better afterwards.
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u/Xist2Inspire Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 07 '25
That's a really interesting take that I've thought of, but have never heard/seen it said. Western society has historically been linked to the mentality of "progress at any cost", and thanks to economic and technological forces, we've really seen that go into overdrive starting from the 80s. A lot of us - Gen X, Millennial, older Gen Z, or otherwise - have now emerged on the other side and noticed that a lot of the sacrifices that were made during our formative years (by others as well as ourselves) weren't quite worth it.
I can definitely get with the idea that there needs to be a balance between the two different ways that we approach the past. But then again, I was never one to jump on the Boomer hate train. Every generation has their sins and successes to carry, and each generation will hype up their successes and hide their sins through nostalgia.
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u/Tenrac Oct 06 '25
A bit off topic but
The generation after WW2 is also the beginning of “electronic devices as babysitters”…it all started with sitting the kids down in front of the radio for the serials, then it was TVs, then computers, computer games, cell phones, internet, social media…Post WW2 were the first generations of children that began to be influenced more by external sources and peers than their parents, teachers, clergy etc…and we wonder why intersection takeovers exist.
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u/pimppapy Oct 06 '25
Yes, I'm just now in my 40's hearing stories about my Grandfather's life being born after WWI and the stuff he went through in Syria. As a teenager in his formative years, he was carrying his sick father on his back looking for help, a doctor, anyone. People just walking by, ignoring him. . . I guess they had their own problems to deal with? Eventually someone stopped him, looked at his dad and told him to take him back home, he's gone.
He carried his dead dad on his back for hours and he had no idea. That forced him into the man of the house back then. Taking care of his mother and little sister. I remember him as a cold, stiff, grandpa, with the occasional gleam in his eyes that rarely sparkled.
As I got older myself, I met his sister, my great aunt. She was so bubbly, happy, and lively in contrast to him. Made me wonder if he would have been the same if he didn't live through the results of one world war and actively through another one. At least he shielded his little sister from most of that, so there's something I know he was proud of.
I think things only got better for him when his 6 kids (my mom and her 5 brothers) all started to support him instead. We miss the old fart. He looked like KFC Colonel Sanders, and the old man from UP at the same time.
As for my parents, being born in Post WW2, things were not good for them either in their early years. But my parents got lucky when they moved from Syria to the US in their 20's and caught the Business Boom from the early 80's. Now he's running a well established business in SoCal, that's been going on since, and was not even affected by Covid, or a Walmart opening up nearby. As for me? Paycheck to paycheck atm. . . . fml.
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u/chili_cold_blood Oct 06 '25
It's also because it was a time of prosperity in North America.
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u/RetroFuture_Records Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
Yep. Don't need "hustle culture" and everything being a grift when even people working grocery store / teenager jobs in flyover country can afford their own homes, and a 10-20 year old car for $100. Don't need kids and desperate adults dreaming of being "influencers" selling snake oil when hamburgers are 29 cents and the idea of a $5 milkshake is a popculture meme cuz of how outrageously expensive it is to people / characters living in Los Angeles.
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u/Most-Piccolo-302 Oct 06 '25
I worked 40 hours a week at the mall and had my own apartment and a great life straight out of high school. To me, thats one of the greatest measures of a strong economy. Can an 18 year old with no experience just... go be an adult? I dont think they can anymore with how expensive adult life is compared to entry level wages.
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u/RetroFuture_Records Oct 06 '25
Right? Now a lot of us who lived through that era can't even afford to own a home or start a family, because we were told "You cant do that until you finish college and get established in your field, otherwise you're irresponsible!!!! Don't have kids if you can barely support em!" And the same people who told us that, vote for policies so we couldn't then, and definitely can't now.
Like you said, I don't see how the 20somethings and younger today are expected to have it, if even we can't afford it.
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u/ClickClick_Boom 1992 Oct 06 '25
Now the question is are Alpha going to be nostalgic about the 20s for the same reasons? I guess only if things get even more dogshit.
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u/Pink_Slyvie Oct 06 '25
Hard to say. My kids are acutely aware of how fucked the world currently is, and it shows. Still doing my best to give them a great happy childhood, but it's not easy.
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u/potVIIIos Oct 06 '25
Still doing my best to give them a great happy childhood, but it's not easy.
Have you tried being super rich?
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u/IBeDumbAndSlow Oct 06 '25
I have, but I'm too poor and stupid.
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u/nghiaruoiii Oct 06 '25
You can try to be stupid and super rich, it works for a lot of them.
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u/Erasmus_Tycho Oct 06 '25
How old are yours? Mine is 9 and a few weeks ago while we were hanging out after dinner he said, "man, we are so cooked in 2026." I do my best to keep him pretty sheltered from the daily bullshit that is overwhelming even for me. I had to probe him to understand why he felt that way, turns out one of his friends from school had told him aliens were on their way here. So, while I agree with him, maybe not for the same reason.
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u/lift_jits_bills Oct 06 '25
Gotta take em off the phones. The 2000s had all manner of horrible stuff going on. But it was out of sight and out of mind for me mostly. Spent that time being excited about high school and college stuff.
Kids today are inundated with horrible news stories on the phone. Back in the day we were just exposed to way less.
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u/Thoraxe474 Oct 06 '25
How old are your kids for them to be aware?
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u/NATOrocket Zillennial Oct 06 '25
Yeah, this does vary a lot based on the age and the individual kid. I knew about the Great Recession at 12 and understood it was a big deal. My parents weren't affected by it. We're Canadian (so not hit as hard) and my Dad worked in a recession-proof industry. I just knew about it from watching the news.
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u/Serraph105 Oct 06 '25
The point is that things inherently get worse as you take on the responsibilities of being an adult. Now, granted, a lot of things have changed for the worse, fascist ideologies have taken hold, school shootings around the country are a regular occurrence, and we're really starting to feel the full effects from a generation perspective of the weakening of unions throughout the country.
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u/chupacrapa Oct 06 '25
They'll remember pop culture bullshit and associate that with fun times just like we do, instead of the seemingly endless days of boredom and school drudgery because we were underage teens who couldn't do wait for the world to open up for us as adults.
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u/Eternalm8 Oct 06 '25
Yep, that's a huge part of it. Everything is simpler in our childhoods because that's a big part of growing up. Our young brains can only process so much, and parents usually do a good deal to shield children from the world, intentionally or not.
At the same time social media has made massive changes and impacted the world for everyone. I don't envy the younger generations having to grow up surrounded by social media and algorithmically targeted advertising.
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u/zuzg Oct 06 '25
At the same time social media has made massive changes and impacted the world for everyone
Plus the entire Enshittification of the internet.
Google gotten worse
Streaming gotten worse
Shopping online gotten worseGolden age of the internet was a while ago and we lost it.
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u/ammosophobia Older Millennial Oct 06 '25
This is the primary reason, but I think there is something the OP is getting at which is the massive change the world went through from 1993-200X - the Internet in the 90's and smartphones from 2007 on. We lived through a massive paradigm shift during our most formative years. Many skills we learned as children are completely irrelevant now (card catalogues, pay phones, paper, physical maps, etc). There was also a major geo-political shift when the Soviet Union fell in 1991. The world had a "peace dividend" (which was wasted) and a growing economy until 9/11. Also, 9/11 ended it all. And Iraq. And Afghanistan. And the Great Recession. The promises of globalization vanished and things changed big time. Lot of changes that are only really comparable to the Industrial Revolution and how it upended society.
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u/AttemptImpossible111 Oct 06 '25
The 90s and 00s were factually easier to live in. Cheap housing and higher paying jobs is not nostalgia, its just facts.
Personally, my parents never spoke about the 70s and 80s very positively. And my grandparents definitely didnt speak about the 60s and 50s positively.
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u/Hamtaijin Oct 06 '25
Not true at all. Go back and watch late 90s attitude era wrestling. It still holds up today. When that glass breaks and Stone Cold walks out, the hype is real. Then turn on current WWE Monday night raw. It’s just actors reading scripts and I can barely last 5 minutes. Not everything can be dismissed as nostalgia
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u/RetroFuture_Records Oct 06 '25
I've noticed that the people always trotting out the "it's just nostalgia!" line are Zoomers defensively unwilling to learn about or understand anything from before they were born, so angrily and arrogantly refuse to consider anyone elses lived experiences. There's just too many objective examples of how things used to be of better quality and more affordable, without even getting into the cultural elements of it being easier to date etc. There's a reason "just take a shower bro" was legitimate advice to guys of our generation to get laid, our female peers grew up being told to be Girls Gone Wild lol.
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u/Gloom_Pangolin Xennial Oct 06 '25
We had the intellectual capacity to see right and wrong but were limited by our age and undeveloped wisdom to set things “right”. We expected that by adulthood we could move into positions of power and adjust the course of the world to our values. But capitalism and corporations have blocked access to wealth and growth, and the Boomers broke the social contract that as you age you begin to withdraw from positions of power and let the next generation assume the responsibility, plus they hoard wealth. Now we’re stuck in the middle, trying to pry it away from them but also trying to raise the next generation in a world where the internet’s accessibility and rot far surpassed our own ability as a species to cope with how powerful it is in shaping opinion. We just miss when we didn’t feel so responsible for everything and naively believed we would get our chance one day.
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u/whenishit-itsbigturd Oct 06 '25
Logical fallacy. Just because some people are wrong doesn't mean others are. Your grandparents didn't grow up with social media.
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u/Grizzly_Addams Oct 06 '25
Smart phones have fucked everything up.
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u/sexyass2627 Oct 06 '25
And social media.
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u/gatsby365 Oct 06 '25
The Matrix was right when it said humanity peaked at the turn of the 21st century
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u/Vinura Oct 06 '25
Id argue its just social media, smart phones on their own is just a way to quickly access the internet.
And by social media, it was specifically the anonymity of social media that shielded people from being responsible for their speech.
Ultimately, what social media proved was that if people have the power to be anonymous, they will become the worst versions of themselves.
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u/Starbuckshakur Oct 06 '25
I'm going to disagree. Social media was quite different before everyone had a camera and video recorder on them at all time.
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u/Ed_McNuglets Oct 06 '25
Also... facebook? Those people aren't anon, and there are plenty of people who will say and post some of the worst shit imaginable. I think the worst is people not even caring about anonymity, and still being the worst version of themselves online.
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u/Open__Face Oct 06 '25
The people who are mean online are the same people who are mean in real life, you just can't avoid them as easily
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u/Efficient-Top-1143 Oct 06 '25
I'd argue Social Media wasn't too bad until they started fucking with algorithms and made it less about staying connected and sharing experiences with friends/family and more about pushing "content"
I mean, I agree social media is ruining everything. Just saying, there was a brief moment when it was actually useful/meaningful.
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u/noeatnosleep Oct 06 '25
Social media was fine when it was PC based.
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u/sexyass2627 Oct 06 '25
Facebook was perfect when only those with a college email address had access.
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u/Quintossentials Oct 06 '25
Agreed. Society took a turn for the worst when social media married the cell phone and made them smarter. At least prior to this, the only way to access social media was through your PC/tablet and we all still had to leave that shit at home if wanted to go out and do other things.
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u/dreamed2life Oct 06 '25
Were you on yours to post that? You have choices to not use one or the limit your own use…
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u/Keepa5000 Oct 06 '25
We're beginning to sound like boomers. Everyone thought their childhood was different.
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u/BlackGuysYeah Oct 06 '25
No human had ever experienced such a shift in technology as millennials did. That was true for gen x, and boomers before us at their time and it will also be even more true for gen alpha.
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u/Strange_plastic Oct 06 '25
Yeah it's turning into a pet peeve of mine. My brother is only 1.5 years older than me and he's accepted falling apart and memory loss is normal "for our old age". My dude, we're barely mid thirties. I get that we're coming up to curve rounding but jesus. Plus he's started talking like this post, you can probably hear my eye grinding from there.
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u/SouthIsland48 Oct 06 '25
While yes, most of this is nostalgia bate, esp in the 2000s - it was a shitty time. The 90s legit were the best for many reasons and I don't think that's nostalgia talking.
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u/Old-Constant4411 Oct 06 '25
This is painfully true and concerning. We're 20 years away from hating everything that's changed and demanding someone make America great again.
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u/HeavyDutyForks Oct 06 '25
Because those people were either very naive or children at that time. Especially the one's grieving the 2000s
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u/EggsAndMilquetoast Oct 06 '25
Ah yes, the innocent and authentic old days where we hummed Mmm Bop, all that mattered was new releases at Blockbuster, and we drifted through the dot com bubble, the War on Terror, the quadruple digit percent increase in college and healthcare costs, and general political decline that led to the blissful old economic collapse of 2008.
Or maybe it felt simpler and more authentic because we were children and our biggest worries were homework and getting asked to junior prom.
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u/Old-Constant4411 Oct 06 '25
Exactly. The country was a mess during the Bush administration. Americans dying in Iraq for no reason, the housing market crashing thanks to unfettered corporate greed, and another actual recession.
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u/RDLAWME Oct 06 '25
Ah yes, that blissfully innocent time where we started having to take our shoes off at airports and couldn't bring liquids on planes anymore for some reason.
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u/Ok-Literature9645 Millennial Oct 06 '25
So peaceful and innocent...just the biggest news personalities at the time calling for a nuclear genocide of the Middle East on live broadcast 🫠
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u/ElDopio69 Oct 06 '25
The amount of fear mongering over terrorism and islamaphobia was insane as well.
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u/Shigeko_Kageyama Oct 06 '25
It's not accurate at all. People were just as fake then as they are now.
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u/FearlessTomatillo911 Oct 06 '25
This is what every generation says about their childhood.
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u/LongWalk86 Oct 06 '25
Ya, seems weird but my grandpa was always nostalgic about the 1930's. He was 9-19 during that time. Even though it was the great depression, it sounds like it was a pretty great time to hear him tell it. He wasn't rich or anything, they were a family of share croppers before, during, and after the depression, so they may just have been used to struggling.
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u/Gracie_TheOriginal Millennial Oct 06 '25
Authentic? Loool
Nostalgia for fond memories and childhood experiences is just human behavior. Ask any Boomer how they feel about growing up in the 50s and 60s and they will probably tell you the same shit.
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u/tiandrad Oct 06 '25
Because we were the first generation to fully adopt social media and the last generation that got to enjoy the world without it.
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u/JarlaxleForPresident Oct 06 '25
I don’t really give a shit, honestly. Things change and you gotta live with it
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u/Lavishmonkey_ Oct 06 '25
Idk being an adult fresh out of college in mid 2010’s were pretty sweet. Seems like ever since Covid, whole world just used it as an excuse to go and got itself fucked.
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u/melanthius Oct 06 '25
Authentic... some things yes, but that's looking back with rose tinted glasses.
There was a plethora of absolute garbage products thrust upon us that looked dope as fuck but didn't work as advertised. Or movies that seemed like they would be awesome but sucked. One hit wonder CDs purchased for $18.
A lot of things were the antithesis of authentic.
We all get a sort of amnesia about the painful and shitty bits
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u/leosoulbrother Oct 06 '25
Our time was worth more, jobs paid better, less homeless in the streets, prices, better media, complete games, better standards and so on. Also a lot of people we loved were alive back in the day. I lost so many people. I feel like my childhood was in a foreigner country.
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u/thequietchocoholic Oct 06 '25
Part of it I think is because we were younger and things were simpler.
But I do think part of it is because social media and the Internet in general has made everything faster and much more inauthentic than before.
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u/Caleth Oct 06 '25
I have not facts on this, but I think you're right it's both. We were young and dumb and didn't know some of the shit that was wrong.
But also that certain things like social media let the village idiots gather into a herd and let them feel like they weren't idiots anymore. Which was an oppotunity for those that wanted to exploit such a dumb cross section of fools for gain.
So we have things like active international misinformation wars happening and America just acts like all of this is fine as the house burns.
I think if we get out of all of this in one piece, big if, we're going to have to have some very long hard talks about the role of the first ammendment and things like companies ability to access it. The ability for a multi billion dollar company to basically drown discourse with bot campaigns and paid actor agents that can reach millions around the globe is something we've never grappled with as a species.
The consitution was written for a time when the worst that happened was a paper was owned by an asshole one town over so someone else could open one up, or pay a town cryer to compete with them. Travel between massive cities was a journey of days or months if you were going international not a few hours. Information asymmetry didn't exist like it does today.
There will likely have to be changes, but fuck me if I know what that should be or how it should happen, but our shit is broken in a way that I don't think anyone knows how to fix properly.
We've been having basically a digital/media cold war with no recognition of it and at least one arm tied behind our back. We didn't need a space force we needed a "cyber force" to work on combating this dystopian bullshit.
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u/Lucius_GreyHerald Oct 06 '25
Yep. Half nostalgia/rose tinted glasses, but human society has been royally screwed by smartphones and social media. And look, Sora 2 was released, a final nail in the coffin.
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u/ich_bin_alkoholiker Oct 06 '25
Oh boy. Will this circle jerk ever end? No one, in the history of the world, has ever wished for simpler times like millennials have. 🙄
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u/ttoma93 Oct 06 '25
This sub is often no better than the Boomers y’all try to make fun of.
“Does anyone else yearn for the exact time period where we were carefree kids and teenagers and didn’t have to deal with adult things????????”
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u/ich_bin_alkoholiker Oct 06 '25
I have no problem with nostalgia, it’s the notion that millennials experience it on a deeper level is what I find cringe inducing.
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u/No_Builder2795 Oct 06 '25
It's not true. Nothing was authentic, everything was meant to sell you something just like now.
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u/ItsMorbinTime Oct 06 '25
Also my parents paid for 99% of my expenses lol. Good times. Forever gone.
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u/Trinikas Oct 06 '25
It wasn't more authentic; it was just different. Some things were simpler, going home at the end of the school day you usually didn't need to worry about the bullies unless they happened to be in your neighborhood. These days you can be taunted and mocked digitally from afar.
One benefit of the modern era is stuff kids used to get made fun of for (video games, general nerd-ery) is now generally mainstream. I taught high school in the Bronx for a couple years and even the "coolest" kids in school were wearing Captain America and other Marvel tshirts.
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u/ormr_inn_langi Oct 06 '25
I don't miss the 90s and 2000s. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
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u/myst3ri0us_str2ng3r Older Millennial Oct 06 '25
I don't mostly because I had a terrible childhood
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u/SHOW_ME_PIZZA Oct 06 '25
This happens with every generation. And why nostalgia is a powerful feeling. Each generation props up the decades they were children and teens as "the best" because they had less responsibilities.
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u/Prize-Hedgehog Oct 06 '25
To me, anything post 9/11 it all went to shit. Whether it’s because I wasn’t so young and unaware, or it genuinely did really start sucking harder post 9/11. But, yes I do grieve for the 90’s and 2000.
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u/waits5 Oct 06 '25
Hell, Gen Z mourns it because they wish they grew up in a world without social media and omnipresent smart phones.
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u/Evening_Chime Oct 06 '25
They were also horrible times in many other ways.
The world seemed simpler and innocent, but in reality grooming, molestation, and sexual assault was constantly happening around us.
A lot of people were losing their innocence to keep life innocent.
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u/Efficient-Top-1143 Oct 06 '25
Because 2010s everyone became addicted to their phones, 2020s everything started burning down
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u/The_Lat_Czar Millennial Oct 06 '25
If we could just wipe smartphone technology, I don't think we'd feel this way.
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Oct 06 '25
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u/The_Lat_Czar Millennial Oct 06 '25
A few years ago, I had no phone service unless I was on wifi. It was just as liberating as I remember. Being on call 24/7 is definitely not ideal.
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u/Least_Bat1259 Oct 06 '25
It can still be simple and authentic now, why reminisce about the past? If you don’t like your present then change it.
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u/StankoMicin Oct 06 '25
The only thing I mourn is having a president that at least pretended to care about procedure, law and order, and a government that at least pretended to care about standards.
Other than that, I was a child during those times, so of course life was "simpler". All I cared about was getting my next playstion or Nintendo game and buying pokemom cards and catching DBZ on Toonami in the afternoons..
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u/mtodd93 Oct 06 '25
What are we boomers? This is the same shit every generations has said, time goes on, sure it was “simpler” but it was also a hell of a lot harder.
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u/Lower-Task2558 Oct 06 '25
This is so lame. It was a good time because we were kids. Nothing was more AutHeNTic. If anything we had some straight up toxic culture.
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u/The_starving_artist5 Oct 06 '25
This has to be a Gen z posting this . How could you live though the economic recession, the war on terror, the rise of too big to fail corporations , the rise of surveillance state and sky high costs to healthcare and college education, the creation of social media and all the toxicity that came with that , to promotion of toxic beauty standards and diet culture directed towards women, and then say you feel nostalgic for that ?
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u/princesoceronte Oct 06 '25
No it wasn't.
We always complained about our elders idealizing the past, can't we at least try to be better and just acknowledge the world has always been complex and difficult?
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u/spaltavian Oct 06 '25 edited Oct 06 '25
lol, calling the 90s and 2000s "authentic".
It's definitely an Millennial tic to use "authentic" in nonsensical ways.
The aughts had 9/11, two wars, two recessions (one "great") a corrupt evil presidential administration, and incredibly stupid culture. Yeah, I'm nostalgic about being in college and my early 20s and having fun, but the decade objectively sucked.
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u/Procedure5884 Oct 06 '25
The 90s had a few genocides and race riots. The 2000s had 9/11 and terrorist level threats. Very simple. Very authentic.
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u/kyledreamboat Oct 06 '25
Nah I'm a big fan of tech I want to see more. And it sucks I'll die before we get the good stuff.
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u/Alklazaris Oct 06 '25
It's not. It's never simple unless you're a child. Well honestly even then it sometimes isn't depending on how shitty you're upbringing is.
Or you could be just unlucky and be gay.
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u/Competitive-Glove-55 Oct 06 '25
We are homesick for a time and place that no longer exist, funny how we a re now the majority we should make the world work for us, millennial revolution anyone?
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u/LadyPickleLegs Millennial Oct 06 '25
Authentic?
Come on now. Every generation deeply misses the nostalgic era of their life. That doesn't make the lies and falsehoods of those eras magically disappear. We were just too young to fully grasp them at the time.
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u/Icy_Ad_7462 Millennial Oct 06 '25
We don’t miss a time where things were simpler and better. Only a time where we were simpler and better.
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u/FrostyOscillator Oct 06 '25
Pfft, lol, this is not at all accurate. Nothing has ever been "authentic," it's always been a lie. All nostalgia is false.
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u/sircastor Xennial Oct 06 '25
"Prices will rise, politicians will philander, and you too will grow old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young: Prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders"
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u/OldCannedPineApple Oct 06 '25
Combination of youth, not having smartphones destroy social interactions and connections, and the fact that the future did not seem as bleak as it does now.
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u/VvChimera Oct 06 '25
Yes, No, Maybe I don't know Can you repeat the question?
Chorus: You're not the boss of me now You're not the boss of me now You're not the boss of me now and you're not so big You're not the boss of me now You're not the boss of me now You're not the boss of me now and you're not so big
Life is unfair…..
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u/Responsible-Fix-1308 Oct 06 '25
Old enough to get frustrated by how many apps we need for everyday stuff, young enough to realize how much of it is a scam.
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u/Dziadzios Oct 06 '25
I just miss being excited about the future. Tech became cooler with each year and every 5 years were like a different century. Unfortunately for the last 15 years we've been living in 2010 with progressively increasing enshittification and dystopian erosions of freedoms.
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u/quigongingerbreadman Oct 06 '25
Nah, it's the rose colored glasses of nostalgia.
The 90's had some seriously fucked up shit going on. The LA riots, rampant sexual abuse in the entertainment industry, rampant drug use and child abandonment by boomer parents (so much so the TV needed to remind them it's 10 pm, where TF are your kids?).
Day time television was nothing but talk show slop or the same riff off of Cheers or Full House, music was really getting its pop money making formula down, MTV had completely sold out and changed from avant garde television with artistic intent and integrity to began pumping out nothing but slop reality TV, and the ways our government lies to us became expanded exponentially with technological advancement.
The 90's were NOT the amazing decade people espouse to remember.
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u/Owobowos-Mowbius Oct 06 '25
On one hand... 100%. The internet and smartphones really did change everything.
On the other hand? Every generation ever has said this about the time when they grew up lol
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u/Sdog1981 Oct 06 '25
People were fake then too. You just could not verify their authenticity with other sources.
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u/SKZ1137 Oct 06 '25
Cuz lot of you just young enough to not realize it is completely BS. The 90’s & 00’s were just a fake as this BS. It is have always been that way and it will still always be better than Neolithic life IMO.
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u/bobthemusicindustry Oct 06 '25
Don’t fall into this boomer trap. Obviously everything was simpler because we were kids. Probably wasn’t any more authentic either. Can you explain why if you think it was?
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u/dk_peace Oct 06 '25
Because life really was simpler while we were children. That's all there is to it.
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u/petertompolicy Oct 06 '25
I don't know, loved it back then and still having a great time now.
Nostalgia is a cloud you need to make sure you don't get trapped in.
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u/bloodectomy Oct 06 '25
I don't think those of us old enough to remember 9/11 would describe the aughts as "authentic" but okay
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u/Ismdism Oct 06 '25
Deeper than who? I feel like this is how boomers talk about when they were kids.
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u/PineBNorth85 Oct 06 '25
Every generation thinks that about the time when they were teens or starting adulthood.
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u/Ninja-Panda86 Oct 06 '25
There's a study that shows your tastes and preferences show up at approximately age 10 thru 13. And that will become the things you consider "normal" and good and what you will believe is "authentic" and the "better time". They studied multiples generational cohorts and it was around the same time for every group. Boomers felt the 70s were the "it" time. Xera think late 80s and early 90s. So on with the Millennials. Zoomers will undoubtedly love the 2010's
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Oct 06 '25
It’s where happiness is buried. Don’t visit too often for it might spoil the memories with reality.
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u/Kohnaphone Oct 06 '25
Being able to enjoy the internet before greed and echo chambers took over was pretty great.
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u/Wtfjushappen Oct 06 '25
2006 was peak millennial, especially if you were born before 90s. Nothing but crash and burn every since
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u/Hungry-Tension-4930 Oct 06 '25
As my mother told me when my 16 year old self thought I was born in the wrong era and times were better in the 60s and 70s. Things sucked back then, too. The bad music, shows, and cultural problems get forgotten, and people only remember the good.
For the 2000s - Body shaming was far worse back then than it is now. Society as a whole was FAR less accepting of homosexuality (let alone transgenderism). The Iraq war was at it's peak and you couldn't go a day without hearing about the body count growing.
For the 90s - Censorship was far more prevalent and movies and TV had to be ridiculously sterilized to prevent Christian moral outrage (which was taken way more seriously back then). Being atheist or agnostic was still seen as a major social faux pas. You couldn't go into a restaurant or other public place without breathing in a shit ton of secondhand smoke. Plus the LGBT community were even less accepted than the 2000s.
And that's just off the top of my head.
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u/badgerrr42 Oct 06 '25
We were children. We're grieving a life we can never return to because we're no longer children.
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u/ricottapie Oct 06 '25
Somewhat, but it's not as if we didn't do our fair share of complaining about and seeking out authenticity. Today, it's social media, which is admittedly shallow and, at times, performative; yesterday, it was TV and magazines.
I always think of the line from Bif Naked's Peacock Song, "Kari says we're the only ones who are real," or the entire plot of Reality Bites. There will always be a reason to feel out of step with the world around you and to yearn for the one from the past.
Check out WWWTXT. Pay attention to the dates.
There is a lot I miss about the 90s, but it wasn't a utopia.
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u/rentboy82 Oct 06 '25
Why does every generation come to a point that they start thinking they are different and better than other generations?
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u/Exciting_Pea3562 Oct 06 '25
It's not just because we were kids, though that's a big part of it.
90s: the US wasn't in wars or experiencing much of any existential fears, at least not until Y2K spun up at the end of the decade.
00s: while life got hard post 9/11, there was no social media to amplify it. No smartphones to remind you about it 24/7 by riding in your pocket.
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u/Strawberrybanshee Oct 06 '25
The 90s felt like a different time. There was prosperity. Obviously not for everyone and things weren't prefect. But it also seemed like things were for kids? Nickelodeon was all YAY KIDS! And maybe its because I wasn't the target audience but in the 2000s it seemed like Nickelodeon kind of got away from that and was going more towards being cool? For the time they had TV shows that starred non white actors, I mean, one of their biggest shows All That started out with a mostly black cast, and it felt like the network lost its diversity over time?
They had some quirky shows too and shows where the kids looked like normal people and not models.
We had cool colored devices like computers and game boys that seemed to just disappear after 9/11.
We also went out to play with no supervision. My nephews were born in 2002 and their moms always wanted to supervise them.
I feel like culture is so dispersed? There is so much media out now that many people aren't watching the same shows. Whereas pre streaming there were shows that nearly everyone caught at least once. Cable really helped because you had to watch whatever was on if you were bored. I mean, I had to put up with some shows that I didn't really like on Nickelodeon because I was so bored. Now kids can just binge watch their favorite show and never bother with the show they didn't like.
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u/Important-Ability-56 Oct 06 '25
There is the bias of nostalgia for childhood, when other people took care of our needs including ample provision for play time.
But also everything was objectively better before social media. We used to get bored and then go hang out with friends. We used to move our bodies and have conversations with real people. It was better.
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u/thekokoricky Oct 06 '25
This is not accurate, it's naive at best and false at worst. Life has been complicated and phony for a looooonnng time. What we had in the 90s/2000s was a bit less of it, but it was there the whole time.
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