My Thoughts on: 90's Nostalgia

Ahh! the 90's, the clothes, the hair, the shows, the movies, the era that most of my friends and family members were born in... boy does that get annoying real quick. Now I'm not talking so much about the fashion or culture; oh no, I love 90's fashion & I love how it's is coming back into popularity in the 2010's. I like how some women go out and get long braids a la Janet Jackson in Poetic Justice. I like that snap-backs are now the most dominant head gear for African American males, a big difference from when dudes would only rock fitted with du-rags. I'm loving the fact that Afroscentricity is slowly coming back, (despite the current state of hip hop) young black people becoming more conscious and more vocal on black issues and black culture as problems still continue to arise.

I like going to Late 80's-90's themed parties and you have guys and girls dressed up like Run DMC, Aaliayah (Sic), Fresh-Prince Era Will Smith and other dominant trendsetters of the 90's. I like hearing those 90's nostalgic beats, that you see people like J.Cole or Tyga use in their productions. I don't hate that the culture is coming back, but it gets annoying quick when some people become incredibly nostalgic when it comes to the 90's.

I can admit that there were a lot of things in the 90's that were better, (especially since we all lived in a post 9/11 world) but to say things like "Life was so much better in the 90s!" is a bit of a trip. First off if you weren't 16 or older in the 90's I don't think you should be saying things like that. I was a kid during that decade, a kid who had no idea about the first Iraqi war (A.K.A. Operation Desert Storm), the "first" World Trade Center bombings in 1993, The "War on Drugs" that carried over from the previous decade. I even had no idea who Tupac Shakur or The Notrious B.I.G was until I was about 14 years old. I was just a kid watching his favorite Disney movies. Even crazier, I had no who people like Howard Ashman was, let alone the fact that he died from a disease during an epidemic I had no idea even existed until the early 2000s. Truth is; life in the 90s was just as bad as life in the 2010s.

But like I said before, there were a lot of things the decade had that you rarely see anymore in 2010s, and alot of those things don't come from the technology or stuff that we had, but the strong relationships and connections we formed.

Cellphones were luxury items that only the wealthy had, it was a giant bulky behemoth that costed just as much on a contract as a smartphone off contract. (and God bless you if you had to text with that thing) You didn't see any 5 year old kid with Nextel phones, texting friends, going on Facebook, and playing Angry Birds. Systems like the Super Nintendo or the Sega Genesis lacked the ability to play online (As the internet was still fairly new then) so kids would have to run to their friend's houses to play multi-player games like NBA Jam or Street Fighter. Most homes had at least 2 TVs in their and one PC that had to be shared between all members of the family. As a results families grew closer to one another, and formed unbreakable bonds that have survived the test of time. People in general communicated much more better with each other, mostly due to the fact that verbal communication was the only the way we had to express ourselves and our thoughts.

To say that the 90s was better is, without a doubt; a partially true statement for me. Not for the technology, (seriously) nor the TV shows, or even the movies. But its the fact that we communicated face-to-face, voice-to-voice, modes of communication that were more to the heart than the modes most people currently used. Its rare to see a young person these days who prefers calling over texting, who would rather meet a person face-to-face than to just "add" him/her on Facebook, who socializes with people she doesn't know, rather than a friend via text messaging. We call it the new way of communication; but the generations before us (even those in our own age group) look at us in disapproval of our social awkwardness and the methods that cradle it. Maybe its more of that human interaction that we need; not just in the workplace, but between people in schools, universities, at home, in churches, anywhere. When you really think about it, its not the stuff or the events that made the 90's memorable; but the personal memories & relationships we made that makes the nostalgia all that powerful.