1990s Political Correctness

  • 🏰 The Fediverse is up. If you know, you know.
  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
Dom Cruise said:
And it all turned into an absolute fucking nightmare, it breaks my heart.
Click to expand...
Stupid Berenstain timeline.

The '90s ended with the start of the Iraq war.
Click to expand...
So at least in America, 9/11 and its' aftermath is what killed the spirit of the '90s? I can see that. Like I said before, it seems Current Year left the terminal at 9/11, started down the runway with Occupy, and took off with Trump Derangement Syndrome.

And now with coronapanic and riots, it's flying above the clouds.
 
ToroidalBoat said:
I remember you said that nowadays the "culture" of a decade doesn't really end until sometime after.

When do you think the '90s way ended?
Click to expand...

I'd say 9/11 was the big moment that killed the 90's, although the clusterfuck at Tora Bora and the invasion of Iraq snuffed out any remaining embers of 90's optimism.

9/11 shook us to our very core as a nation, but there were a fair number of people still held out hope that if we killed Bin Laden and fucked up Al-Qaeda quickly enough, things could go back to normal.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 more or less was the final nail in the coffin on those dreams, but I think if 9/11 didn't fully kill the spirit of the 90's, it mortally wounded it. Bin Laden escaping the NATO forces at Tora Bora was merely the coup de grace and invading Iraq in 2003 was poking it with a stick to make sure it was really dead.

Between Corona, the Floyd riots, and potentially the outcome of the 2020 Election, this could be the first time in a while that a cultural decade doesn't linger too long.

Sort of like the 1980's, in which the election of Reagan in 1980 combined with other big changes in culture more or less established the start of a new zeitgeist by the spring of 1981.

If Trump wins a second term and is more or less able to use his nuclear options (Section 230, Antifa as terrorists) without worrying about reelection, then a lot of corporate bigwigs will quit the wokeshit and throw the true believers under the bus.

Even weirdos like Zuckerberg will throw out useful idiots and pay lip service to whatever the new cultural zeitgeist of the 2020's will be in that scenario.
 
Most of the time, the 90s were a decade of deideologization and moderate centrism, so I would rather say no one was taking political correctness seriously back then. There was however a mild shift in the late 90s, I think some people still remember the controversy with the Jynx character from Pokémon or how Warner Bros tried to censore their own "racist" cartoons from the 40s-50s. Thankfully, these were isolated cases. I mean, just try to remember, the country had a president who wasn't bothered with the media too much and the Democrats were still sane people, although not for long, unfortunately, and their lack of control over the country was caused by the Republican Revolution of 1994.
 
Last edited:
ToroidalBoat said:
Stupid Berenstain timeline.
Click to expand...

Real talk, do you think those CERN experiments monkeyed with the universe in some way or something crazy like that?

Syaoran Li said:
I'd say 9/11 was the big moment that killed the 90's, although the clusterfuck at Tora Bora and the invasion of Iraq snuffed out any remaining embers of 90's optimism.

9/11 shook us to our very core as a nation, but there were a fair number of people still held out hope that if we killed Bin Laden and fucked up Al-Qaeda quickly enough, things could go back to normal.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 more or less was the final nail in the coffin on those dreams, but I think if 9/11 didn't fully kill the spirit of the 90's, it mortally wounded it. Bin Laden escaping the NATO forces at Tora Bora was merely the coup de grace and invading Iraq in 2003 was poking it with a stick to make sure it was really dead.

Between Corona, the Floyd riots, and potentially the outcome of the 2020 Election, this could be the first time in a while that a cultural decade doesn't linger too long.

Sort of like the 1980's, in which the election of Reagan in 1980 combined with other big changes in culture more or less established the start of a new zeitgeist by the spring of 1981.

If Trump wins a second term and is more or less able to use his nuclear options (Section 230, Antifa as terrorists) without worrying about reelection, then a lot of corporate bigwigs will quit the wokeshit and throw the true believers under the bus.

Even weirdos like Zuckerberg will throw out useful idiots and pay lip service to whatever the new cultural zeitgeist of the 2020's will be in that scenario.
Click to expand...

9/11 was the beggining of the end of the '90s culture but it wasn't an overnight thing, 2002 was still a very '90s year.

It was only with the Iraq war did the cultural zeitgeist of the '90s fully go away.
 
I personally put the end of the "extended '90s" in 2005, when Kitzmiller v. Dover was decided.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District
This was the final nail in the coffin for the religious right being able to get their material into public schools - and by extension their ability to dictate policy at the state or national level.
Once this culture war ended, culture warriors started looking around for new targets, sowing the seeds for the SJW era.
 
Dom Cruise said:
Real talk, do you think those CERN experiments monkeyed with the universe in some way or something crazy like that?
Click to expand...
They did say the world would end on December 21, 2012...

(I don't really think we're in some parallel universe, but things have gotten more and more insane. I've heard that what's really going on is that scummy assholes in power want society to break down so they can rebuild it as a technocratic state. A world over which they have absolute power. A dark, broken, hopeless world where people are more and more connected and merged with tech. I don't know how reliable that theory is, but it sounds feasible.)
 
Last edited:
Dead baby jokes were traded like pokemon cards among children. In primary schools here, it was common to have a 'gay pole' and if you touched this magical metal post you were henceforth doomed as a gay.

Racist jokes were more commonplace and comedians could be funny without getting cancelled.

Could go years without seeing a black person locally irl. Entire education, from nursery to college, every single student was white (though it became cool to declare yourself half-caste because your dad had a fair tan on him).

Also, you could say "half-caste" without being a racist. And coloured.
 
It was more mellow, in my experience. But that could be due to the response to Ronald Reagan's presidency, for Americans. Not sure for other countries, but the 90s felt like a big fuck you to the right. Something that shifts back and forth every decade or so, but, anyway...

There was a rebellious fun to cartoons, like Ren and Stimpy. Growing up in the 90s, I saw reruns of Looney Tunes or GI Joe, while Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Batman: The Animated Series were crushing kid culture. Variety existed, there wasn't this idea of identity first, enjoyment second. Sitcoms were pretty run of the mill, though they loved having A Very Special Season/Episode about somebody being gay, all the time. Dawson's Creek was the peak of that.

Video games and movies were neat to see evolve. More gaming, less loading screens and even less trying to be a movie or indoctrination.

People bring up Captain Planet and The Burger King Kids Club, and to me they were more corny than preachy. I think that was the major difference, people tended to mean well but came off dumb.

Finally, the internet. I miss it. Kiwi Farms is close enough to that experience.
 
"I think that was the major difference, people tended to mean well but came off dumb."


@Stardust nailed it. This right here sums up the difference perfectly. 90s PC culture could get kinda preachy at times, but most of us would just roll our eyes and either ignore it or joke about it with friends. It really did mean well, but just came off as bumbling in a "how do you do, fellow kids?" way.

You would occasionally see it go further like with screechy third wave "kill all men!" feminists, but I recall they had potshots taken at them on sitcoms. Even the Greenpeace hippy save the rainforest types would occasionally get made fun of on kid's cartoons. For every Captain Planet or Burger King Kid's Club, you'd have a Darkwing Duck or Seinfeld annoyingly looking at the camera after encountering one of these dopes and asking where they found these clowns or what loony bin did they break out of.

You were never in fear of having your life ruined for wrongthink, you didn't have to worry about someone exposing you as absolute evil trying to get you fired or harassing your family because you said nigger or faggot decades prior. PC culture was mostly just finger wagging rather than the cult like mentality it is today. Sure it was annoying, but I'd much rather deal again with a bunch of bumbling, annoying but generally well intentioned hippy boomers than the psychotic SJWs of today.[/QUOTE]
 
I was too young to pay attention. I think it never actually left but sensible people realized something can be pushed too far and it was generally mocked, like in the skit above.
Other TV examples that mocked SJW thinking:

Malcolm in the Middle: Lois tried to get the store to remove a cut out of a Black man buying Malt Liquor because she thought it was offensive; Hal's Black friends made fun of her for overreacting over a non-issue.

King of the Hill: Bobby goes full SJW about Native Americans in a Thanksgiving episode.

The Simpsons: Lisa: "I'm for diversity but this is pandering", said when they're watching a TV show that has Bumblebee Man play a foreign exchange student.

Syaoran Li said:
I was a small kid in the 90's, but a lot of the PC culture of the 90's did hang around into the first half of the 2000's.

Granted, this is from the mind of a small kid, so I'm mostly going to be bringing up stuff like kids' shows and the like.

Most of the PC culture of the 90's was just politeness, sappy PSA's, and diversity via tokenism like the Burger King Kids Club or kids shows like The Puzzle Place and Captain Planet.

But the token diversity of the Burger King Kids Club and similar kids cartoons was different from the woke forced diversity of today, with blackwashing, ugly gender blobs, and utterly unlikable "strong wahmmen" of 2010's pop culture.

Like, the white males weren't portrayed as inferior to the minorities and females, with the noted exception of Captain Planet, which was pretty mild compared to the stuff you see today.

They were all on a mostly equal footing and sometimes you'd have the white guy be the leader of the group, but it was mostly a coincidental thing.

Looking back on the media, especially the more ephemeral stuff like commercials and old sites or archived news articles and footage, the PC culture was mostly just "don't be an asshole" more than anything else.

Like, gay rights wasn't a new thing per se, but normies viewing it as a legit movement was very much a new thing.

Gay jokes were still very much a thing in pop culture, and teenagers often used gay as an insult all throughout the 90's and 2000's, but true and honest full-on homophobia and gay bashing was condemned, especially after Matthew Shepard got killed.

"Casual homophobia" of jokes and ribbing was acceptable, but was also kind of seen as childish and immature as you got older, especially as the 90's gave way to the 2000's. Like, it was okay and expected if you were a kid or a teen, or even in your early 20's in some areas.

But once you hit your late 20's/early 30's, being openly homophobic was seen as pathetic unless you were an outright redneck or hood rat. Everyone had a more "none of my business/you do you" mentality for most of the 90's and 2000's, barring the fundies or fringe groups like the lefty proto-SJW's and OG Antifa punks or Neo-Nazis and Militia spergs.

Actual homophobia involving physical violence or threats was a huge no-no even back then.
Click to expand...
The Puzzle Place definitely did diversity better than what we have now. I remember an episode where the kids were mocking the White kid for doing a dance, I don't remember what it was, Dutch? And he called them out on it and told them they wouldn't like it if someone mocked their culture. Try doing that now.
 
Last edited:
John Titor said:
The Simpsons: Lisa: "I'm for diversity but this is pandering", said when they're watching a TV show that has Bumblebee Man play a foreign exchange student.
Click to expand...

Fucking lol, that's especially ironic as hell today.

But you're right, back in the day it wasn't the end of the world if someone made the statement that PC culture could go too far sometimes.

Today to question the SJW mentality in literally the smallest possible way makes you a literal Nazi.

It's fucking insanity.

The thing is, while the 1990s version was preferable to today political correctness has always been bullshit, 1980s culture had the best mindset where nothing in mainstream culture was blatantly hateful against blacks, gays, women etc but people did not at all walk on eggshells either.
 
The Last Stand said:
That wasn't Warner. That was network TV (ABC, CBS, WB, Nick. Also, would that consist as network TV?)
Click to expand...
I was talking more about the VHS/DVD releases of old Warner Bros cartoons, some of them have been either cut or restricted from being released on physical copies by Warner Bros themselves, that was solely their own decision. As for TV broadcasting, I am quite sure that the Warners approved this censorship and they probably co-participated in it.
 
Last edited:
People talking about the 90s like they were the bygone years of a utopian society need to settle down.

Yes, racial and political attitudes as a whole were infinitely better than the absolute garbage that is the modern zeitgeist. PC culture had very little power and was mostly benevolent. This is true, and I miss it. God do I miss it. Most of you probably don't remember a world where open racism wasn't not only practiced by the media and mega corporations, but rewarded. I do. One could say that in the 90s, it was okay to be white.

But we also need to remember that the 90s had a fucking lot of crime. Like, a sixfold increase from before the 60s and about 50% higher than we have now "a lot". Almost every city was a giant no go zone thanks to massive, violent gangs that everybody pretended didn't exist. Hm. Sounds familiar.

Most people here, if they were even born yet, were probably like 4 years old in 1999. The MTV retrospectives and 9gag memes lied to you, kids. It may have been rad, even bitchin', but it was not peaceful.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom