How To Let Go Of Your ‘90s

by Alexandra Molotkow

– What were your ‘90s? Here are some elements of the ’90s to mix and match:

Underwear as outerwear
Fimo beads
Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number
One in a Million
Midparts
Reverb
Sunflowers
“I Wanna Be Down”
“Don’t Take It Personal (Just One of Dem Days)”
Power Rangers
Yikes!
Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing
JNCO Jeans
Archie Double Digest
Shabba Ranks
Lisa Frank
Urkel
Bonne Bell
Indigo Girls
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Mid-90s “Wacky”: cows, comic sans
“Big Bang Baby”
Kill Rock Stars foldout catalog
MS-DOS
Commander Keen
TLC
TLC Fanmail
Pretending to hate the ‘70s
Burgundy lip stain
Waiting to Exhale
Hair flip
Plastic headband with teeth
Sundress and combat boots
“Sittin’ Up In My Room”
“The Boy Is Mine”
There’s Something About Mary
Boys For Pele
Chokers
Charms
Parents Are Watching
Myst
Riven
Mason Betha
Foxfire
“Killing Me Softly”
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Rainbow sweater
“I’ll Be Missing You”
YM
Teen People
Donkey Kong
Earthworm Jim
Bust Magazine
Cat’s-eye glasses
“Cowabunga”

– The distance between 2000 and 2015 is the distance between 1959 and 1974.

– Your past is history now. Does that make you feel like a person? You’re old enough now to feel like a person. But you also grew up with video games. Your video games were sidescrollers.

– You are old enough to remember a time when you had to like one thing or the other thing. Saying you liked everything was just a posture. Some people liked “everything but rap and country.” You are old enough to have seen the end of that and young enough to have benefited.

– What do you like? Is that OK to ask

– What if the ’90s had integrity and now we’re all just trying to succeed as much as possible on our own terms? Wait

– Keep the ’90s, but only as a form of emotional insurance.

– It’s no longer cute to chant the Fresh Prince theme song.

– Can you remember your ICQ login? No one cares. Your memories are irrelevant because the things you loved most were only prototypes.

– Maybe they’re art though?

– Consider: there is no good reason to fuck with the worse version of a well-functioning thing.

– Consider: rock ’n’ roll should have died in the ’80s.

– Ace of Base had the thing Ottawan had in the ’70s (good thing).

– The ’90s drugs of choice made you get sick and die. Today’s drugs of choice make you work hard and feel good.

– Younger people have more fun than you did at their age and unlike the Boomers’ children they will not be convinced otherwise.

– Things that were hard for you are easier for young people now, but neither of you faced conscription.

– There was no conscription in the ’90s, but many, many people died.

– When you spoke, in the ’90s, only your friends could hear you.