Ah, the '90s—a decade that was essentially a series of collective angst punctuated by bad fashion choices, questionable hairstyles, and an abundance of cassette tapes that had a 50/50 chance of snapping in that glorious tape deck you hotwired from your parents' basement. This was the era when "being online" meant taking a long, painstaking minute to connect to AOL while you watched your parents shout at each other in the background over who forgot to pick up the pizza from Little Caesars. Spoiler alert: It was always Dad, and he was too busy playing with his new flip phone to notice.
The soundtrack of our lives was punctuated by the high-pitched wails of grunge music—because nothing like belting out Nirvana in your mom's minivan while trying not to spill your Hi-C Ecto Cooler. Seriously, how did they make those neon-colored drinks? It’s like they went into a nuclear lab, combined childhood dreams and pure sugar, and called it a beverage. And let’s not forget the infamous slap bracelets that eventually turned into weaponized accessories during lunch fights—a real testament to our innovative spirit. Who knew that papercuts could come with glitter?
Fast forward to today, when nostalgia is basically a billion-dollar industry marketed to us via social media. You know, the same platform that used to be filled with chains of “forward this to 10 friends or face eternal bad luck” emails. Yet here we are, scrolling through endless memes about how we survived dial-up connections, and cursing the kids who mistake a cassette tape for an ancient relic. Newsflash, kids: that’s not a phone charger—it's a mixtape; and yes, they are responsible for making our high school crushes *just* that much more dramatic with all the right feels (thanks, Ace of Base).
So here we stand, the dwindling generation that witnesses the glorious rise of reality TV—cue the eye rolls—and the existential dread that comes with "adulting." Our rad childhoods were forged in the fires of playground politics and the fierce rivalry between Tamagotchis and Giga Pets. Those were simpler times when your biggest problem was whether you would be the last one picked for dodgeball, not something catastrophic like trying to understand how taxes work in a newly blurred economic world. But hey, at least we can still rock our flannel shirts and remind you that we didn’t have smartphones or apps to tell us how to live, because we were too busy living our best lives in front of the TV with a bowl of Cookie Crisp, with just one more episode of "The Fresh Prince" left to binge-watch.