‘Was the UK in the 90s genuinely more fun and united, or are we just getting old?’ 15 reflections on the decade of Cool Britannia

Ah, the 1990s. The era of Britpop, Euro 96, proper clubbing, and more boy/girl groups than you can shake a stick at. At least, that’s what I’ve heard from my parents. Good for them.

Redditor JesusOnly8319 sparked a thoughtful debate on R/AskUK when they asked:

‘Was the uk in the 90s genuinely more fun and united, or are we just getting old?

‘Growing up in the 90s just felt different. Felt more optimistic and carefree than today. But I’m middle aged and think this may just be rose tinted spectacles.’

Opinions weren’t as unanimous as you might expect, with many users sharing nuanced takes on some of the less idyllic parts of life in the 90s. There was plenty of nostalgia for a time before social media, however, when the world seemed to be a bit friendlier.

We’ve rounded up a balanced mixture of testaments from the people who were there at the time (and there’s a good chance you were too) so let’s hear it from them.

1.

Nostalgia is always a powerful intoxicant but there was genuinely a period – roughly between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the twin towers coming down – that genuinely felt like a more optimistic time than the doom scape we live in now.
MalcolmTuckersLuck

2.

I listen to history podcast (Rest is History) and they did an episode on the 90s that they basically concluded the 90s was really the period you described.

From the fall of the wall in ’89 and the optimism that brought in to the twin towers in September 2001.

I was a teenager into my 20s and I must say, with no social media, improving living standards, the place feeling optimistic, it did feel like an incredible time to be young!

But… On the flip side…. Homophobia, objectification of women and misogyny, racism and the like were a problem. Mind you, with the rise of the Tates and the manosphere, plus ça change.
Swimming_Possible_68

3.

Although we’ve made social progress a bit from the 90’s back then it at least felt like things were mostly going the right way. Now there are large organised groups actively trying to push things backwards.

Over the past several years I’ve phrases that back in the 90’s and early 00’s you’d have only encountered in dark and obscure corners of the internet (like Stormfront message boards) coming out of the mouths of government ministers. It’s more than a little worrying.
Charlie_Mouse

4.

Thing is, having the internet is amazing. You can say that in the 90s you didn’t ‘miss’ having google maps or youtube etc. because you didn’t know how good they are, but makes it hard say it was ‘better’.
StrangelyBrown

5.

No, you’re not wrong. Multiple and simultaneous existential threats are kind of a bummer these days.
jinxiex

6.

This gets asked dozens of times a month.

It is rose tinted glasses – people retreat into the past when they give up on the future.

For you it is the 1990s, older people will say the 1990s were shit and it was the 1980s, even older people will say it was the 1970s.

Even if it was better, it is gone and not coming back so you fight for the future or you retreat into this mindset.
cgknight1

7.

No, there’s definitely a rising tide of just unpleasantness in the UK

The sad thing is I feel a lot of people are ok with it, so why try harder? Why try to be better?
dopexvii