For me it’s holding a VHS in the store and looking at the cover.
The feeling that things might get better.
There was so much hope, everything was exciting and new. The world was getting better. Though I was <10 for most of the 90’s so maybe it was just being a kid.
Don’t you have any dreams?
What’s to dream about? Living these days feels like being in a game of monopoly where someone started with hotels on every property. The fascists are winning, the planet is burning, we’re in the middle of two wars, the capitalists are talking about putting shock collars on their vault slaves when the apocalypse begins, and all signs point to everything getting worse as time goes on. In light of all this, my dream is dying peacefully in my sleep before the water wars begin and I get pushed into Nestle’s torment nexus to make the stock price go up a fraction of a penny.
Big box games with proper manuals.
Omg remember riding home reading the manuals and your fantasy going wild?
Hope
Climate change was still a “this will be a big problem and we need to do something about it sooner rather than later” issue instead of “actively experiencing and watching the damage and misery on a near daily basis and knowing it will be getting much much worse” reality.
No amount of Captain Planet telling me to separate my recyclables is going to fix this shit.
The water here in the Netherlands has been way too high for weeks now, and we’ve had some crazy ass storms. Even a cyclone or something? I don’t even know what it’s called.
Anyway it’s going to require some crazy engineering if the Netherlands is to move into the 22nd century.
The Netherlands is in an interestingly unique position when it comes to rising sea levels. They’ve been fighting the sea (and winning) for centuries. I’m sure they’ll be at the forefront for engineering future sea incursions.
My wife and I are increasingly convinced that we, humanity, peaked in the 90s. We had conquered acid rain. We were removing CFCs. The internet was coming in, so were mobile phones (but only to call and text, so you could stay in touch but escaped the trap of a million cameras around us), the music was so incredibly broad (Brit pop, grunge, spice girls, dance … it was like the world’s biggest buffet), the high street was still doing fine, TV had great shows (Seinfeld, X-files etc) and everyone just seemed a damn sight happier than today since misery-communities hadn’t formed on the internet to celebrate and refine their misery.
It was a simpler time. And all powered by a healthy western economy and the declaration of a (naive) victory in the Cold War.
Peak delusion as well. We basically believe everything on TV. I think the 90s in western countries were just more mild, but not objectively better. Now everything is extreme, both much worse and much better.
