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Generation Y

Slack: Young adults’ preoccupation with 1990s must be limited

Unpopular opinion alert: I’m tired of hearing about how great the ‘90s are.

The Internet these days seems to be the tool used by our generation for basically three purposes: funny pictures of animals, writing papers off of Wikipedia and waxing poetic on the halcyon days of the 1990s.

And Buzzfeed.com is capitalizing on our obsessive need to prove “Spongebob Squarepants” was the greatest cartoon ever, or decide which Topanga and Cory kiss from “Boy Meets World” was the steamiest.

Right now, on Buzzfeed.com, I see the following articles right on the front page: “A Very Serious Review Of Clarissa’s 1994 Rock Album,” “This 90s Motorola Commercial Lists Every Argument You Gave Your Parents For Needing a Pager,” “The 10 Qualities That Made a Great Nickelodeon Champion,” “31 Hunks From 90s Bands Then and Now,” “10 Sketch Comedy Shows You Probably Forgot Existed” — spoiler alert: they’re all from the 90s — and “35 Reasons Ross Geller Is The Worst.”

There’s also “15 Animals With Better Mustaches Than You Will Ever Grow,” but you see where I’m going with this.



Why are we, as children of the 90s, so hell-bent on showing everyone how great that decade was? Everyone now posts things on Facebook like “You Know You Were A Kid In The 90s If…” ad nauseum.

In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that my cover photo right now is Bill Murray and Larry Bird sitting next to each other at the end of Space Jam. But that’s more because Bill Murray is awesome and Larry Bird is awesome-r and less about the fact that it’s from a 90s movie.

Seriously guys, we need to move on from this.  Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future, and the moment has come to let go of the past — if only so our children don’t murder us for continuing to post insufferable crap about the 90s a quarter of a century from now.

Did you ever enjoy listening to your parents talk about “the old days?” When gasoline only cost a bushel of apples per gallon and the tales told in the movin’ pictures weren’t full of all of this unnecessary sex and violence? I didn’t think so.

We probably have the same amount of longing for the memories of our childhood as any other generation, I just wish we weren’t so obnoxious about it. I don’t need a complex online analysis of Legends of the Hidden Temple. I remember seeing it and laughing at how inept the kids were during the final round. I remember it just fine.

Also, it’s on the Nickelodeon 2 channel constantly.

So let’s just all agree that our childhood television shows and toys were great and get over it already. The cartoons of today are vastly inferior to “Spongebob Squarepants,” “The Fairly Odd Parents,” “Kablam!” and all the rest. Well, except “Invader Zim” — that was like, very disturbing.

We all know the 90s were great. Now let it go. As your little cousin watches some terrible new Nick show, silently laugh at them for missing out on all of the sophisticated wonders we got to experience from 1990-2000.

 Kevin Slack is a senior television, radio and film major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at khslack@syr.edu and followed on Twitter at @kevinhslack.





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