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Here are 17 things people really miss the most about living in the '90s

Wouldn't you kill for a Friday night at Blockbuster and a pizza? No texts. No TikTok.

the 1990s, Kurt Cobain, Bill Clinton

Kurt Cobain, Blockbuster Video, Bill Clinton.

The 1990s was a sweet spot in American history. The stifling Cold War with the Soviet Union had just come to the end in 1989 and it would still be 12 years before a new era of fear after the 9/11 attacks.

The 1990s was also a time of prosperity that lifted up Americans across the socioeconomic spectrum and an era that saw unprecedented peace in the world. In fact, things were going so well in America that President Clinton managed to have a budget surplus four years in a row.

The '90s was also the last gasp of the analog era when people couldn't contact you 24/7 and did things for the pure joy of it instead for the likes and shares.

To say that the '90s was the last great American decade may be looking back with rose-colored glasses but it's obvious that as we've entered this new era dominated by technology, we left behind a lot of things that brought us joy. Many of us wouldn't mind having them back.

A recent Reddit thread asked "What do you miss about the '90s?" and the answers will take you back to a time that most of us remember fondly. Will people ever say that about the 2020s? Only time will tell.


1. You made plans without having to text people.

"Before we had mobile phones, my wife and I would plan to meet at a certain street corner at a certain time after work. We sometimes had to wait for the other person to show up, but we knew they would." — i_will_be_dead

2. The world was clearly changing for the better.

"There was a period between the Cold War and the War on Terror when it seemed like there was hope for the world." — igetasticker

3. Friday nights at home with the family.

"Blockbuster/Pizza Hut on Friday nights." — EdwardPackard

4. People left you alone.

"Not being contactable 24/7. Peace of leaving school/work and not having to deal with their nonsense till tomorrow." — Soma_Tweaker

5. Air travel without the stress.

"Did you know that before 9/11, it wasn't a massive pain in the ass to go fucking anywhere?! Loved ones could walk you right to the gate. You could bring snacks, sandwiches, and drinks onto the plane with you. The prices at Hudson News were perfectly reasonable, because if they weren't, you could just walk out of the terminal and grab something." — GavinBelsonsAlexa


6. The mall.

"Malls were awesome, and I hate that the strip mall style has taken over. Especially up in Canada, where it gets to -40 in the winter. Back in the day you could legitimately spend hours wandering the mall, indoors and warm. Now it is depressing. Maybe the big malls like Mall of America or West Edmonton Mall are still okay, but the ones in my city are shit." — Lexi_Banner

7. Following a scene.

"In the '90s I would walk to my local record shop and talk to the guy. He would recognize me and ask about my thoughts on the Offspring album I bought last time I was in, and then recommend something that just came in from some guys called Green Day.

I'd then give a listen on the wall-mounted headphone player and take it home. Then, the whole next week would listen to nothing else... It was kind of great." — Koro

8. A genuine good time.

"I think people are more concerned with posting something and going viral now. I really hate that you can just be minding your business, doing something with family or friends and enjoying yourself, and somebody will randomly record what you're doing so they can call you 'corny' and get likes and views." — Enviornmental-Bank81

9. Magazines.

"Everyone had their favorites for whatever hobby or interest you had. For me it was 'Guitar World,' picking up the issues with bands I loved and plinking along to the tab on my crappy electric guitar! For my wife it was 17, checking out the most recent trends!" — JackFairy80

10. Hanging out.

"Honestly the thing I miss the most, and the thing that is so hard to explain to modern kids, is 'hanging out.' Before cell phones, people used to just go to each other's homes, or to some public space, and just spend time together." — Vambot5

11. Making mix tapes.

"It was so much fun to make them, carefully trying to fit as much as you could in the limited amount of time that you had, but still making each song work with the next. Getting one was just as thrilling, especially if you just put it on without looking at the tracklist (if whoever made it included one) and being surprised by each new song." — Edgar

12. Music mattered more.

"Music felt more special because you kind of had to take some risks when buying a cd. At best you could listen to it at one of the stations in the store, but other times you might have heard a song on the radio or watched a music video on MTV. I bought some albums where only the song I liked was good, but still tried to appreciate it all." — plentyfunk66

13. Less pressure to be perfect.

"Nowadays due to social media, especially sites like Instagram, so many young people feel like it's necessary to always be dressed well, always wear a full face of make-up, etc. Sure, we had unrealistic beauty standards and plastic surgery before, but to me it feels like it's gotten much, much worse and also much more uniform than before." — Owezara

14. No 24-hour news cycle.

"Maybe I'm in a minority, but I for one REALLY miss NOT having a 24-hour news cycle. Once that became a thing, it basically prevented journalists from actually doing thorough research before splitting 'information' on TV to satiate their corporate owners." — Minerva_Madin

15. People talked to one another.

"I miss going to coffee shops or bars and being able to meet new random people. I made some of my best friends that way. Now folks just leer up from their phones more often than not." – Shiller_Killer

16. People watched concerts instead of filming them.

"Concerts weren't a sea of phones in the air. People are so concerned with people knowing they were at a concert via social media, that they don't even pay attention or experience the show. It's so dumb." — thebestmike

17. Brick-and-mortar stores.

"I still think this is underrated. Yes now we have a much much wider selection of stuff available instantly, but it used to be extremely fun to go out on a Sunday, go to a record store or video rental store with your friends, discuss options and settle on one." — Humble Shoulder

This article originally appeared on 11.19.21

Joy

'90s kid shares the 10 lies that everyone's parent told them

"Don't swallow that gum. If you do, it'll take 7 years to come out."

via 90sKid4lyfe/TikTok (used with permission)

90sKidforLife shares 10 lies everyone's parents told in the era.


Children believe everything their parents tell them. So when parents lie to prevent their kids to stop them from doing something dumb, the mistruth can take on a life of its own. The lie can get passed on from generation to generation until it becomes a zombie lie that has a life of its own.

Justin, known as 90sKid4Lyfe on TikTok and Instagram, put together a list of 10 lies that parents told their kids in the ‘90s, and the Gen X kids in the comments thought it was spot on.


“Why was I told EVERY ONE of these?” Brittany, the most popular commenter, wrote. “I heard all of these plus the classic ‘If you keep making that face, it will get stuck like that,’” Amanda added. After just four days of being posted, it has already been seen 250,000 times.

Parents were always lying #90s #90skids #parenting

@90skid4lyfe

Parents were always lying #90s #90skids #parenting

Here are Justin’s 10 lies '90s parents told their kids:

1. "You can't drink coffee. It'll stunt your growth."

2. "If you pee in the pool, it's gonna turn blue."

3. "Chocolate milk comes from brown cows."

4. "If you eat those watermelon seeds, you'll grow a watermelon in your stomach."

5. "Don't swallow that gum. If you do, it'll take 7 years to come out."

6. "I told you we can't drive with the interior light on. ... It's illegal."

7. "Sitting that close to the TV is going to ruin your vision."

8. "If you keep cracking your knuckles, you're gonna get arthritis."

8. "You just ate, you gotta wait 30 minutes before you can swim."

10. "If you get a tattoo, you won't find a job."


This article originally appeared on 4.26.24

Shoulder pain is a symptom of perimenopause?! Yep, can be.

Living in a female body is wild. There's the whole period thing to begin with. Then, for many of us, there's the pregnancy and childbirth thing that pushes your body to its limits. And then there's the menopausal stage where you get to say goodbye to periods forever. Yay!

But between those last two is a phase that has been woefully neglected by clinical research and is only now starting to get the attention it deserves. Perimenopause happens in the years prior to actual menopause. Filled with super special symptoms that seemingly come out of nowhere, perimenopause can make you feel as if you've moved into an entirely different body. Most women experience perimenopause in their 40s, though it can start as early as the mid-30s, and is something all women should be aware of.

Author and former news anchor Tamsen Fadal shared five perimenopause symptoms she wish she'd known about in her 40s on Instagram, and so many women resonated with it.



The symptoms she shared were:

1. Weight gain

It's very strange to suddenly have your baseline weight go up by 10 pounds when you didn't change anything about your diet or exercise routine. It's also strange to suddenly gain weight in parts of your body that you never previously gained weight.

"I suddenly looked in the mirror and didn't recognize my body despite changing nothing about my routine," Fadal wrote.

"I was probably in perimenopause for ten years and just thought I was going crazy. And that I was lazy and the weight gain was all my fault," shared one woman. "If only I’d known."

"Looking at food and gaining weight is not fun 😭," quipped another.

2. Sudden Anxiety

Even women who aren't prone to anxiety can start experiencing anxiety symptoms during perimenopause. And those who already deal with it can find themselves feeling anxious at a whole new level.

"I felt like I was losing my mind and no doctor was giving me a straight answer which made my anxiety through the roof," wrote Fadal.

"The freaking anxiety rocked my world 😢" shared one woman.

"I've always been anxious. What I'm noticing is now it's gotten worse and I'm feeling paranoid, crazy," wrote another.

3. Itchy skin

This one is weird and not something anyone talks about until all of a sudden you and everyone your age talks about wanting to scratch their skin off.

"Not only was my skin SO dry, it felt like I had little electric shocks underneath my skin at the most odd times," Fadal shared.

"The itchy skin is not talked about enough! Sometimes I just can’t stand it, I want to scream!"

"All.of.this!!!👏 add tinnitus, itchy ears and dry eyes to that list 🫠"


4. Irritability

Whether it's a symptom of its own or a side effect of the many other symptoms piling on is a legitimate question, but perimenopause can definitely make you want to bite someone's head off.

"The irritability isn’t something we talk about enough!" Fadal wrote. "It was like one day I woke up and suddenly I was moody over EVERYTHING and my patience was very, very low."

"I can be fine one moment then suddenly I hate everyone and want to go live in the forest by myself. Then that slides into sadness because we're all going to die. It's exhausting."

"Yes, I was very very irritable with most things that no patience whatsoever! My 15 year old son was like 'why are you always so angry?' That was something unusual of me and it was like a “wake up call” in a way that I realized I wasn’t just same and my body was always under fire with sleepless nights!"

5. Joint pain

Fadal shared that she had sudden pain in her shoulder and wasn't able to put her arm around someone for a picture. I went through about a year where I couldn't reach over to turn my bedside lamp on and off.

"The shoulder pain! So true."

"The joint pain! OMG. Started out of nowhere two weeks ago. Cannot lift arms up to get dressed and my hands are excruciating. It’s not a little bit sore… it’s a LOT sore."

"The shoulder pain out of nowhere is insane!!"

Of course, any symptoms that are concerning to you should be checked out by a medical professional and not just be assumed to be perimenopause. But what so many women shared is the same thing Fadal found when she started experiencing perimenopause symptoms—there's just not nearly enough information out there about it. That may seem shocking, considering the fact that women make up half the population and have been going through menopause for literally all of human history, but meaningful research on perimenopause really only began in the 1980s, and there's still so much that's not fully understood.

Fadal has been on a mission to get more and better information out to women about perimenopause and menopause since she had her first anxiety attack and hot flash live on the air in 2019, which left her shaking on the bathroom floor. Her book, "How to Menopause," is coming out in March of 2025 and she has co-created a documentary, "The M Factor," that will air on PBS on October 17, 2024.


Perimenopause feels impossible to prepare for, but knowledge is power and the more we understand about what's happening with our bodies and what we might expect, the more equipped we will feel when our time comes.

You can follow Tamsen Fadal on Instagram for more about menopause and perimenopause.


Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Joe Biden and Barack Obama all having a laugh.

Like it or not, we’ve recently entered the age of artificial intelligence, and although that may be scary for some, one guy in Florida thinks it’s a great way to make people laugh. Cam Harless, the host of The Mad Ones podcast, used AI to create portraits of every U.S. president looking “cool” with a mullet hairstyle, and the results are hilarious.

The mullet is a notorious hairdo known as the "business in the front, party in the back" look. It's believed that the term "mullet" was coined by the rap-punk-funk group Beastie Boys in 1994.


While cool is in the eye of the beholder, Harless seems to believe it means looking like a cross between Dog the Bounty Hunter and Kenny Powers from “Eastbound and Down.”

Harless made the photos using Midjourney, an app that creates images from textual descriptions. "I love making AI art," Harless told Newsweek. "Often I think of a prompt, create the image and choose the one that makes me laugh the most to present on Twitter and have people try and guess my prompt."

"The idea of Biden with a mullet made me laugh, so I tried to make one with him and Trump together and that led to the whole list of presidents,” he continued.

Harless made AI photos of all 46 presidents with mullets and shared them on Twitter, and the response has been tremendous. His first photo of Joe Biden with a mullet has nearly 75,000 likes and counting.

Here’s our list of the 14 best presidents with mullets. Check out Harless' thread here if you want to see all 46.

Joe Biden with an incredible blonde mane and a tailored suit. This guy takes no malarkey.

Donald Trump looking like a guy who has 35 different pairs of stonewashed jeans in his closet at Mar-a-Lago.

Barack Obama looking like he played an informant on "Starsky and Hutch" in 1976.

George H.W. Bush looking like he plays bass in Elvis's backing band at the International Hotel in Vegas in '73.

Gerald Ford looking like the last guy on Earth that you want to owe money.

"C'mon down and get a great deal at Dick Nixon's Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram, right off the I-95 in Daytona Beach."

"Who you calling Teddy? That's Theodore Roosevelt to you."

Grover Cleveland is giving off some serious steampunk vibes here.

Pray you never key Chester A. Arthur's Trans Am. If you know what's best for you.

Honest Abe? More like Honest Babe. Am I right?

Franklin Pierce looking like your favorite New Romantic singer from 1982. Eat your heart out, Adam Ant.

"Daniel Day Lewis stole my look in 'Last of the Mohicans.'" — John Tyler

Many have tried the tri-level mullet but few pulled it off as beautifully as James Madison.

Washington's mullet was like a white, fluffy cloud of freedom.

Find more cool, mulletted U.S. presidents here.


This article originally appeared on 3.1.23

Revealing the secrets behind "auramaxxing" the new Gen Z self-improvement TikTok obsession

Gen Z wellness gurus are mixing classic values with some very odd new twists.

Unsplash

When I first heard the term "auramaxxing," and that teenagers, mostly boys, were practicing it by getting into things like mindfulness, presence, and meditation, I thought — "Great!" Young men have a reputation for being angry and far more prone to violence than young girls, so this seemed like a positive development overall, even though the youths gave the trend an annoying name.

But as a father to two girls — and as an extremely uncool 37-year-old — I wanted to learn a little bit more about this surprising trend. So I fired up TikTok and got to searching.



What is "auramaxxing"?

If you're a Millennial or Gen-Xer, you can think of auramaxxing as trying to get as many "cool points" as possible.

It's doing things (and not doing other things) in order to cultivate a better aura.

Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines aura as a "distinctive atmosphere surrounding a given source," or "an energy field that is held to emanate from a living being." So kids who auramax are trying to have a better energy about them. I can see the appeal.

Urban Dictionary calls auramaxxing "The process of maximizing your aura so your presence can be felt before being seen or so that your presence is stronger."

In that definition, you can start to see that auramaxxing isn't really about self-actualization or becoming a better person, it's about appearing more powerful and attractive to other people.

"Auramaxxing is a limb or offshoot on the same tree as rizz. Both rizz and auramaxxing began primarily within audiences of young men, before spreading to culture more broadly," Tom Miner, a social media and trends expert with Gold Miner Media said.

"As a sports fan, I started noticing the term 'good aura' popping up in the last couple years to describe an athlete's hot streak (often times an NBA player). Auramaxxing seems to be an adaption of this."

I asked my 9-year-old (who's not on TikTok) if she had heard the term aura, if anyone in her 5th grade class was saying it. She said Yes and gave an example.

A teammate on her soccer team had missed a shot in practice, she told me, and everyone said "You're losing so many aura points!"

So whether or not kids that young are intentionally "auramaxxing," it's clear that the idea has spread far and wide — and even 9-year-olds know and are quantifying the fact that doing something embarrassing makes you look bad.

Auramaxxing videos on TikTok don't start off so bad. They're more corny than toxic.

The first thing I saw after searching for auramaxxing on TikTok was the account of a young guy named Drew Ford. He's a 24-year-old unshaven, t-shirt wearing guy who inhales spirituality books and doles them out in bite-sized amounts to his followers — and runs a free course called the Subconscious Mastery Challenge.

Drew's advice to grow your aura is simple:

  • Be present in the moment
  • Stop comparing yourself to others
  • Read books
  • Be authentic
  • Be open minded
  • Learn from failure

(And sign up for his email list, of course)

@drewxford

Auramaxxing 101 #thinkbetter #aura

Is he actually qualified to speak on this subject? Probably not.

But as much as it makes me cringe as an adult, it's not the worst advice I've ever heard. It's not going to hurt anyone to practice being more aware in the present moment.

If this was what auramaxxing was really all about, maybe I could get onboard.

From there, you get into the world of jokes and trolling.

In the auramaxxing world, there's this idea of aura points that's really prevalent.

Doing things that are cool earns you points, doing things that are uncool loses points. Most articles I've read about auramaxxing seem to be really concerned about these points. And I can see why. It sounds like a Black Mirror episode, but when I really started watching videos about aura points, it seemed more like Whose Line Is It Anyway — no one is actually keeping track of their score, and it's mostly for laughs. In fact, there were some videos that seemed to be making fun of the whole trend and idea of aura points — they had me cracking up. Like this one:

@dejaunsenpai

slight #fypage

As I went deeper, auramaxxing started to become heavily gendered toward boys, and it developed a lot of crossover with the incel world.

Further into my search, I came across creators who seemed to take aura a lot more seriously. To them, having a strong masculine aura was essential to getting dates and having success in life. This is where you start to learn that to truly maximize your aura (as a man), you need to:

  • Lift weights and pack on muscle
  • Talk less
  • Be more mysterious
  • Get a better haircut and clothes
  • Learn the truth about "modern females"
Yikes. I miss when we were just reading Eckhart Tolle books with the boys!

It's not hard to see how this kind of content leads to extremely toxic ideas about masculinity, misogyny, and more. The whole concept that auramaxxing might actually help boys open up and be less angry was going out the window. Here, we're outright encouraging young men to clam up and suppress their vulnerability.

It's just Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson in a flashy TikTok package. Now I was started to get a little freaked out. But from there it only got worse.

To truly maximize your aura, I learned, you also had to optimize for the physical component of your presence. You had to looksmax, and heightmax, as well.

Yes, those are real terms.

Looksmaxing is exactly what it sounds like — looking your absolute best. But where I expected to see fashion advice, I saw videos about using supplements and doing eye-stretching exercises to "reduce upper eyelid exposure" and "achieve Hunter Eyes" — which is a narrow, intense eye shape you see in models and famous actors.

persons blue eyes in close up photography Photo by Egor Vikhrev on Unsplash

In addition to diet and exercise, I learned you should also sculpt your jaw with mewing and using weird tools, and you should dunk your face in ice every morning to reduce puffiness.

And though it looks like TikTok has cracked down on it, I learned there was a whole genre of looksmaxxing related to "bone-smashing" — or intentionally hitting yourself in the face with heavy objects to reshape your bone structure.

There's even a popular app called Umax that scans your face and tells you how hot (or ugly) you are, along with how much potential you have to be hotter if you follow all the looksmaxxing tips.

For short guys, there's heightmaxxing content, too — wherein random unqualified teens and twenty-somethings recommend exercises, diets, and supplements to make you grow taller. I saw a lot of videos about "banded sleeping," which is binding yourself in a stretched position overnight.

(To be fair, young girls have been under intense pressure to "look their best" forever — but now the expectations have been cranked up to 11 for just about everyone.)

It really frightened me how quickly we got from just wanting other people to think we're cool — which every generation of teens that has ever existed has worried about — to "self-improvement" tips that are extremely dangerous.

The only thing that gives me solace as a parent is that I don't get the sense most people actually take this stuff seriously. Kids talk about aura with a sense of sarcasm and playfulness, for the most part, and a large majority won't follow the trend all the way to the extremes.

And though this all sounds absolutely terrible, it's still easy to find plenty of examples of young people not picking each other apart, but picking each other up.

"A few months back, we saw Gen Z women posting their embarrassing moments, asking how many aura points they lost with each story," says Sallie Stacker, an associate creative director and emerging trends expert at Edelman.

"But instead of being dragged, the community rallied behind them, gifting points for sharing their vulnerability. It seems like what really loses aura points is acting against the nature of who you are."

Let's hope that sticks, and the rest fades away quickly – as fads and trends usually do. But if you notice your teen meditating or suddenly getting really into skincare (or buying a jaw-sculpting tool), you might want to double check where they're getting their advice.

A demonstration of the Satellite Shelter.

When blizzards line up to rip through the Northeast, schools close, flights are canceled, and people even board up their houses. Though missions and homeless shelters do what they can to provide safety to those who have no homes to go to, thousands of people still have to weather the cold outside.

At Carnegie Mellon University's 2015 Impact-a-Thon, students were challenged to provide a temporary low-cost shelter for homeless people during the winter.

One team of students came up with the "Satellite Shelter," an insulated sleeping bag that converts into a tented structure. The students used mylar, a reflective material frequently used in greenhouses and space blankets, and wool blankets to ensure the shelter would keep anyone in it safe from the cold.

"We wanted to make sure it was super-portable and durable so that it's easy to carry," said student Linh Thi Do, who worked on the project. "We have wheels on it so it's easy to move from place to place."

Solutions like this one are handy in an emergency. Perhaps, however, other cities should take note of the city of New Orleans' success in providing long-term housing solutions for its homeless veterans. The only perfect solution to homelessness is giving people permanent homes to go to at night.


This article originally appeared on 01.26.15