90′s kids are actually 00′s kids
Let’s be honest: there are only four things I really remember about the 90′s - Princess Diana, Monica Lewinsky, Seinfeld, and Pokémon. Everything else is a random mix of personal memories, like friends I made in school and the times I got seriously injured or sick. But the outside world was still a bit of a blur, waiting to be discovered.
A few years ago, my fiancée and I went to NYC Comic Con. They had these mystery boxes that you could buy. Each mystery box had a different theme, so Star Trek, Star Wars, DragonBall Z, etc. You would pay like $50 or something like that for items inside the box related to that theme. We saw a 90′s theme mystery box and bought it.
We opened it up, expecting to be excited about reliving the 90′s.
We didn’t recognize a single fucking thing in the box.
No idea what any of that stuff was.
My formative years were really the early ‘00′s. That’s when I was becoming a “person” and when I developed my emotions, for better or for worse.
For me, the real “nostalgia” is the GameCube, skinny jeans, drum and bass, Fatboy Slim, bad action movies with washed out colors trying to imitate The Matrix, Homestar Runner, Internet forums, and the final days of the true arcade.
The early ‘00s were truly a weird, transitional and liminal space between two worlds. It was a world of twilight, where two ends met. It saw the decline in physical copies of movies and music and the rise of the digital age. It was the final goodbye to the analog world. It saw the rise of hacktivism, and the early days of social media was the Wild Wild West before the corporations brought the hammer down with rules and threats of copyright infringement. The new millennium was unsure of what it would become, but storm clouds loomed in the distance. The 90′s didn’t end on December 31st, 1999 at 11:59 PM; they ended on September 11th, 2001 at around 8:45 AM EST. That was when “the fun” stopped, and when we all had to rethink our lives.
I remember Craig Ferguson (my favorite late night host), and a bunch of underrated celebrities who we used to make fun of (or loathed) who have now been vindicated. Keanu Reeves. Britney Spears. Guy Fieri. Robert Downey Jr. Cara Cunningham. Everyone you loved back then turned out to be a monster, but everyone you took for granted was really a good person all along.
I remember being mad at seeing open fields being taken over by cheaply-made, mass produced McMansions near my house. I vandalized one of the construction sites. When I confided in someone about it, they called my cause petty and stupid. Two years later, the Great Recession started because of the housing bubble. I tried, in a brief violent moment, to fight back something I didn’t understand. It was inevitable.
I saw the world transition and the storm clouds roll in. I felt the paradigm shift. I saw the party end as millions of people looked up and said, “I have a bad feeling about this.” I overheard thousands of conversations from the stairwell late at night as my parents talked worriedly with their friends about the Iraq War and the Patriot Act. I remember the start of the Bourne movies. In a way, they were a response to the Bond movies. James Bond was the 20th Century hero, the upholder of “Western civilization” and the status quo. Jason Bourne was the first of the 21st Century heroes - the hero who regretted and fought to change the status quo.
I remember movies trying to make bold, serious takes on superheroes. Some succeeded, like Batman Begins and X-Men. Others failed, like Daredevil and Ghost Rider. Everyone wanted to be serious then.
That, and so much more, is what I remember about my childhood - my real childhood.
In my heart, I am a 00′s kid.
