What do you miss the most from the 90s?
What do you miss the most from the 90s?
For me it's holding a VHS in the store and looking at the cover.
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Big box games, especially the ones with the "board game" style boxes.
CRTs (mainly because of what they represent).
Point-and-click adventure games (thanks Myst).
Game/movie rental stores.
Malls.
In general, I miss the fact that the 90s (and early 2000s) had the internet, but the internet wasn't developed enough to replace physicality. As we've grown more dependent on the internet, we're losing physicality. Our games are digital, our music is digital, our TV shows, movies, news, socialization, everything is becoming digital. We own less and less because companies don't have to offer a physical product anymore. We dreamed of 3d malls that we'd browse with friends in virtual reality; but we got text and images instead. Our malls have no form, neither physical or virtual, the worst of both worlds. We no longer have a chance at physicality, even in a virtual sense, because doing so is a waste of resources. Why build a virtual mall when a webpage will suffice?
Somehow music is fighting back against the loss of physicality and is winning with records, CDs and yes, even cassettes. I hope eventually we make a return to physicality and can learn from this obsession with the digital and non-physical.
What did you mean exactly with what CRTs represent? They just make me think of that electron gun thing and their weight and never fitting on a desk.
And about those 3d malls, can you tell me anything more about that fantasy? Did you mean you could buy physical products there or only digital?
CRTs are heavy and cumbersome. As such, they represent computers at a time when the majority of PCs were stationary and couldn't be hauled around. Sure, there were laptops and cellphones, but those were limited in functionality and weren't a real replacement for a desktop PC like they are now.
As for virtual malls, I remember there being lots of noise made, especially surrounding the internet, about virtual worlds where you could hang out with your friends or go shopping. The idea being that it was a virtual replacement for a physical location; you could buy physical and virtual goods at these imaginary virtual malls. They just... never came into being. Instead of 3d environments that let you socialize and shop, you have flat webpages that only serve to sell you goods.
Have you ever tried second life?
Yeah, but the fact that literally everything had to be bought was off-putting. I do like vrchat though, and I've been meaning to try out Resonite.