There's a worrying trend going around the internet called "90s Kids Memes". Essentially, people take a picture off of Google of something that was prominent in the 90s, with two scoops of condescension. For example:
Apparently, by virtue of knowing what a fucking VHS tape is, that automatically means my childhood was awesome. I had no idea I fulfilled all of the prerequisities for childhood happiness with a single piece of knowledge, that's great news! If only others knew how simple it was, that the key to unlocking happiness was a rectangle with film inside of it. If only we'd reached them in time... Oh right, fuck you, I imagine there were plenty of kids who had shitty childhoods, who also knew what VHS tapes were. It's not like this knowledge somehow makes up for the misery and awkwardness peppered throughout your childhood. Thank god I can recall what a fucking VHS tape is, that totally makes up for the time I shit my pants at the parade, I can just omit that from my memory bank. Furthermore, who are these people laying down these rules for adequate childhoods? How do you know my childhood wasn't miserable despite knowing what's in that picture? Is this some kind of illuminati shit?
I'm seeing this kind of shit pop up way too much, far too often. "Back in my day, I had to shine a light on my Gameboy!", "I used to run around with my Walkman and tried to keep my Tamagotchi alive!", "Back in my day, we had 150 Pokemon!" Yes, it's great that you know what it means when someone places a cassette and a pencil infront of you. Yes, it's fantastic that you know where the save icon actually comes from. Here's the thing though: nobody gives a fuck. You know how new parents thrust pictures of their babies in your face, and you clearly don't care as much as they do? That's precisely what this is. You are the baby picture posting asshole. Nostalgia trips are great, but like talking about how great your relationship is, you need to keep that shit to yourself. Since people apparently don't have the capacity to shut their fucking mouths, or in this case, not upload stuff, I find myself wondering what the motivation behind all of these memes are.
I've come to the conclusion that the people posting this bullshit are trying to accomplish two things. One, you're trying to communicate with people who were alive at the same time as you, and that's the only thing you have in common, otherwise you wouldn't pay them any attention, like normal people do. Congratulations, you survived a childhood in the middle class, you were an effective whiner who hasn't earned anything for themself in life, and now all of that shit is a burden on your parents' garage! 90s kids unite! Finally, a sense of community with a group of people you have no tangible connection to! What a wonderfully subtle way to shit on the poor. If you had access to money, then your childhood was top-notch as a default. Two, it seems like you're attempting to teach the current generation something about life in the 90s, and how their lives are dreary and miserable by comparison, because you had access to technology that was a little worse than technology today. Tablets? HA! Well back in my day, mice had balls!
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| Missing from computer labs the world over |
Wow, life in the middle class is certainly fraught with peril. Dear god, at one time, we had to wait to see the pictures we took, and if you opened the back of your camera, all of your pictures were fucked! It was a time of true struggle and hardship, like life in the serengeti. Tell me, what kind of life lessons did you learn from having to point a light at your fucking Gameboy that your grandmother bought you for Christmas? What kind of life lessons does the current generation hope to glean from this profound, ancient time, that they could in no way possibly have an understanding of? It's great to brag about how awesome your childhood was in private, with your friends. Bouncing those types of memories off of one another is a great way to spend 30 minutes. But posting about it on the internet for all to see is unacceptable. Who is really looking at these pictures and going, "OH MY GOD, I REMEMBER THAT I HAD TO REWIND THE FUCKING VHS TAPE BEFORE I WATCHED IT!" Good for you, asshole. Now calm down and step off that dumbass high horse.
It seems to me that the people posting these memes, are trying to emulate the feeling of the stories passed down to them from their grand parents. At the risk of being hypocritical, I'm sure we've all heard the same fucking story from all of our grand parents, how they had to walk miles through five feet of snow to get to school, and fight off bears and shit with sticks. There's a reason why people who were old in the 90s told stories about their childhoods, because those stories came with morals, and the intention was to build character. I was born in 1989, and my parents were in their 30s at the time, meaning they lived through the 70s and 80s, which means they saw some shit. They were around when Kennedy got shot, they watched Nixon cry his ass out of the White House, they don't know what the hell happened to Jimmy Hoffa, they grew up with The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, they were around during the Chernobyl disaster, and when the Berlin wall came down. Their parents saw even more shit! My grandmother was around for the birth of radio and television. She was around in the second world war, and she saw mankind land on the moon.
When was the last time you had to deal with polio, or small pox, or fucking scurvy, or had to farm every day to feed your family, or slept on a bed of tires? That's right, you get to sleep on a mattress full of foam and goose feathers, and you got some injections, and now you aren't dead. There's a lot of dead people that would have enjoyed those luxuries. You could be telling meaningful stories about the 90s, because a lot of amazing things happened in the 90s. Nelson Mandela was released from prison, the Soviet Union collapsed, Black Holes were proven to exist, and we fucking gave the Panama Canal back to Panama, because that makes sense. You could be talking about how we are the generation that so beautifully connects the past with current technology. You could be telling those stories, but instead you're too busy talking about how your fucking monitor was cube shaped, how you had to flip open your phone, and how hard Bop-It was while singing the fucking Fresh Prince theme. Fuck off with this shit already, goddamn.
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