A few things I can definitively say were absolutely superior in every way in the 90s: the genders weren’t at fucking 24/7 war with one another, attraction was seen as completely natural (which it is), and all men were not viewed as default original sin rapists.
That all was much, much better.
She doesn’t do much actually dance as she does choreography routines that seem largely disconnected from the music. Which whatever, go for it, but there’s still a disconnect, but what precisely that is can be hard to articulate.
— Analytic Valley Girl Chris (@ChrisExpTheNews) October 19, 2026
Tate is just completely graceless; what she is doing has nothing to do with the music and it looks mechanical. Doing the moves is not the same as dancing and with her it really shows.
And I say that as a terribly hopeless dancer — so I know exactly what it looks like. She’s as fun to watch as a wind-up doll, and not even as gracile as that.
Correct. This incarnation of revealing gym outfits is designed to be a trap (as opposed to what it was during the last time this was common, during the 1980s). And by that I mean women wear incredibly revealing outfits in the gym in an attempt to have some man look at them for a fraction of a second to “prove” that all men are creepy perverts. Then they leverage that for even more attention online.
In the 1980s, the same outfits were worn for a completely different reason: to show off and to attract men. This time, however, it’s about being weird and antisocial. Much worse and destructive of community and civilization itself.
It’s strange to think revealing outfits can be a sign of prudishness, but in this case that’s what happening. OnlyFans can also be explained similarly.
It was not before my time, and I do have some insight. This was not their primary purpose. It’s just that the entire sociocultural milieu was completely different. Meeting someone in person at work, at school or at the gym was not demonized; it was expected. Men weren’t seen as default evil and attraction itself was not condemned ceaselessly. Flirting was not equated with sexual assault and everyone did it. Yes, even women.
I simply cannot explain to those who were not there how different things felt in the 1990s and early 2000s as compared to now. It was a world completely antithetical to ours now, a world that younger Millennials and Gen Z insist could not have existed, that it was not possible. But it was possible and it did exist; I was there and I remember.
Neoliberalism demands that everyone be as disconnected, rootless and asocial as possible.
The trans movement as promoted by the contemporary left is the natural and expected intrusion of fetishistic neoliberalism into Rawlsian and Lockean individualistic liberalism.
Israel is the only country I’ve ever been to where women who were strangers to me would come up to me and talk to me in the street and in cafés. I wonder what exactly makes that place so different?
It was a welcome change, I have to say. It shows women do not “have to be” the way they think is necessary. Much is just inertia (also true of men).
Well, of course. Most fashion models and those women omnipresent in magazines are chosen by gay men and other women, not by straight men. Cindy Crawford never was most men’s fantasy woman. She is a gay man’s idea of a straight man’s perfect woman.
OnlyFans women are chosen by actual men, and thus more closely represent what men want — which is far more tolerant of flaws and not being a perfect 10 than supposed narratives about the “male gaze” would have you believe.
The “male gaze” is mostly the “gay male gaze” and has absolutely nothing to do with what most men want or appreciate.
Going to the mall in the 90s wasn’t just about shopping—it was a cultural phenomenon.
The height of malls was actually in the 1980s, not the 1990s. Mall culture peaked then and began a slow decline, as even in the 1990s malls were already introducing anti-loitering and anti-young people rules and regulations to keep anyone who wasn’t immediately purchasing something out.
There were more total malls in the 1990s, but it didn’t feel the same as it did in the 1980s. There were already more options for entertainment and malls were evicting their own customers by that point (as mentioned above).
That is the case. I knew entire families in North Florida who had been on welfare since welfare had existed. They didn’t really understand nor care that it was intended to be something temporary.
And yes, they were all white.
That’s the Windows on the World restaurant that was on the 107th floor of the North Tower of the WTC in NYC. Judging by the hair and lapels, that photo was taken between 1976-1978 (the restaurant itself opened in April 1976).
At that time, this would’ve been an extremely high end restaurant. In today’s money it would’ve cost at least $165 and more realistically around $200 per person to dine there. So of course these people were dressed up; this was something special to them. This would not have been their typical attire.
That said, I do tend to agree. I think we do owe it to others to not look like dumpster slime in public. This is one of the main reasons I always despised the Fat Acceptance movement. I firmly and fully believe that there is a duty to others to not go around looking like Jabba the damn Hut. And a duty to one’s self.
How long did it take for things to go back to normal after 9/11?
Here’s the thing: it never went back to normal (as the currently most upvoted-comment also says in different words).
The 90s and the dreams gestated by the end of the Cold War all died that day. Nothing was the same after. Much freedom was lost by all Americans and the world became a far more dangerous, less trusting place.
Essentially, the terrorists won. Everyone else lost. Now we just accept ubiquitous surveillance and intrusions into every area of our lives. We do not deserve freedom because we did nothing to keep it.
But I remember how it was before 9/11 and it was better. Far better.
I think everything seems like AI and CGI to Gen Z; they do not believe even experiences they have themselves. They live in a full simulation world.
I was considered pretty socially inept and clueless in my youth. As I’ve mentioned before, I find it exceedingly strange that Gen Z is now so socially incapable that even in my incapability were I that age again contemporaneous with them, I’d be in the top 10%.
That is not a good change.
As with the below, the best novels about men are almost always written by women. It turns out that neither gender can see itself all that well.
See Middlemarch and Gilead for examples.
And the ur-example is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.