It was a great time for a certain group of people, but if you happened to be black, or gay, or trans, or Muslim, or had a pre-existing medical condition, it was not so rosy.
I was in my late teens / early 20s at the time, and not in any of those groups, but I did not find the late 90s/early 2000s to be particularly "amazing" or objectively great. I wanted to make movies, but film was incredibly expensive, and digital video wasn't yet good enough. I wanted to make ambitious software, but absolutely everything was harder and lower-level back then.
It was harder and more expensive to get something delivered, and before you say that was better and we're all spoiled by Amazon, the net result was that you had to drive all over the city to pick stuff up.
We knew high-speed internet would change things, but it wasn't there yet. The internet kind of sucked (sorry). I remember spending hours on Excite and AltaVista searching for obscure information that now wouldn't be considered obscure in the slightest, and when I finally found something, it was rarely helpful. Don't get me wrong, I have nostalgia for the early internet, but at the time, we all knew it would get better. I wanted every video to look as good as Apple's movie trailer site, and it took about 10 years for that to happen.
There were plenty of good things about that time, but this "good ole days" thinking is dangerous. It's the antithesis of gratitude. It gets in the way of having vision and imagining a better future.
One last thing: all the stuff we "lost" is still here. You can still hand-write a letter. I still play CDs and take photos on 35mm film. People wax poetic about the time before phones, by typing these nostalgic thoughts into their phone. If you hate Instagram, get off Instagram.
Comments
Every generation has their “good ole days.” Unfortunately the old days never were that good for people who were around at the time.
You say that but people of a few different generations in my family all agree the late 90s / early 00s were amazing.
Some romanticise how things were in their childhood, but most would say that the late 90s / early 00s were objective a great time to be alive.
It was a great time for a certain group of people, but if you happened to be black, or gay, or trans, or Muslim, or had a pre-existing medical condition, it was not so rosy.
I was in my late teens / early 20s at the time, and not in any of those groups, but I did not find the late 90s/early 2000s to be particularly "amazing" or objectively great. I wanted to make movies, but film was incredibly expensive, and digital video wasn't yet good enough. I wanted to make ambitious software, but absolutely everything was harder and lower-level back then.
It was harder and more expensive to get something delivered, and before you say that was better and we're all spoiled by Amazon, the net result was that you had to drive all over the city to pick stuff up.
We knew high-speed internet would change things, but it wasn't there yet. The internet kind of sucked (sorry). I remember spending hours on Excite and AltaVista searching for obscure information that now wouldn't be considered obscure in the slightest, and when I finally found something, it was rarely helpful. Don't get me wrong, I have nostalgia for the early internet, but at the time, we all knew it would get better. I wanted every video to look as good as Apple's movie trailer site, and it took about 10 years for that to happen.
There were plenty of good things about that time, but this "good ole days" thinking is dangerous. It's the antithesis of gratitude. It gets in the way of having vision and imagining a better future.
One last thing: all the stuff we "lost" is still here. You can still hand-write a letter. I still play CDs and take photos on 35mm film. People wax poetic about the time before phones, by typing these nostalgic thoughts into their phone. If you hate Instagram, get off Instagram.
That isn't a universal statement. I personally loved the late 90s. Everything was legitimately great.