pop culture

The '90s are often depicted as a golden age. A time of less violence, more money, better music, equal rights, unprecedented technological progress, and Beanie Babies instead of Labubus. A time of peace throughout the land.

However, take a quick romp through actual history and we see that when we take the rose-colored glasses off, the '90s weren’t without its less-that-stellar moments. Furthermore, there was a lot more nuance to it than teens wearing a bunch of flannel and listening to grunge music.

Across several Reddit threads, people who actually lived through the '90s have shared some prime examples of how we get the '90s wrong and elements we have completely forgotten about, from recalling society’s very unhealthy obsession with thinness, to police brutality, to the questionable hunter green/maroon craze (remember that?).

Take a scroll down memory lane with our 15 favorites:

1."The early 90s and late 90s were two very different times culturally. I can't stand it when I see a picture of the spice girls with a 'So 90s!' caption."

“There’s a HUGE difference between the early 90’s and late 90’s. After 1996 it was more millennial, Pokémon, Britney Spears vs the early 90’s which was more grunge and smooth RnB."

2. "Not all Gen Xers were disinterested slackers in the 90s."

"I graduated from university in 1991. I spent the 1990s trying to get a decent job, pay rent and generally just getting my shit together. Most other people my age seemed to be doing pretty much the same thing, unless they had rich parents."

3. "Nobody seems to talk about all the maroon and hunter-green wallpaper strips that were added to the top of the walls in houses. Maroon and hunter-green everywhere. From cars to vacuums and beyond."

"My comforter set for my freshman dorm (Fall 1994) was maroon on one side, hunter green on the other. I realized it was dark and depressing so I got a girlie daisy print bedspread for the rest of college."

4. "Money was tight then, too. People were happy with fewer luxuries, because we could get by. And the very idea of giving a child a device worth hundreds of dollars was ludicrous! I still feel this way."

5. "A lot of people talk about the 90s like it was a utopian decade. Sure, a lot of stuff was awesome. But there was also the AIDS epidemic, the crack epidemic, the heroin epidemic, lots of police brutality, the sharp uptick in domestic terrorism, etc. plus the casual sexism, racism, & homophobia. The hope for the future that started in late 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the heating up of our economy in the mid-90s only lasted until 2000. It was a very brief window, in retrospect."

6. "Female celebrities were shrinking to child sizes and getting praised for it. 'Thinspo' was a thing. ALL my friends group from high school and college, including myself, had eating disorders — Marlboro Light and Diet Coke for every meal. Our idea of sports was extreme cardio only. We were SO unhealthy. Thank God we were young enough to bounce back to normal without major issues."

7. "That Nirvana ruled the 90s, and killed off all other forms of hard rock. They hit hard for about two and a half years, and then we were stuck with Tonic and the goddamn Spin Doctors."

"A lot of people mention grunge and gangsta rap, but country was very hot too. Country line dancing became a big thing, Branson, Missouri became a big tourist destination with its theaters, and artists like Garth Brooks and Shania Twain made tons of money."

"I don't think the Riot Grrrl movement gets enough recognition and acknowledgment as an extremely significant 90s cultural event."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

8. "I think one idea that's misrepresented is that we were already online, all the time."

"I mean, I was STOKED when I got into the dorm with LAN connections in 1993, but I was an outlier. Lots of kids at my college barely understood using computers, much less anything internet-related beyond maybe an AOL/AIM. Obviously this was an evolution of ten very fast moving years."

9. "That mom Jeans were cool. No one under 35 wore them."

10. "Not everyone wore Doc Martens back in the 1990s. Many people wore military boots as a fashion statement that were often mistaken for Doc Martens, while others wore sneakers every day, even in venues where they should have been wearing more formal shoes."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

11. "Cellphones were considered tacky and unnecessary unless you were a doctor."

12 ."Not everyone got around on rollerblades."

13. "Property was cheaper, not cheap as in affordable to all."

14. "If your family lived in a rural area and wasn't rich enough to immediately buy a computer, you could be lonely in a way that people can't even comprehend now. I spent the last two years of high school doing nothing, watching TV and playing 16-bit RPGs repeatedly because I couldn't get anywhere or do anything."

15. "Drunk driving didn't have the stigma it does today. It took a long campaign waged by MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) to shift public perception on how dangerous drunk driving is."