I remember Slate before it was even known for “slatepitches”, it was just like one of two publications made for the Internet. Salon had the Condé Nast lush, well-paid name writer pieces. Slate, which was actually part of a Microsoft venture into media team-ups (that’s also what the MS in MSNBC was) was thinner, a major feature was “Today’s Papers” where someone just read The NY Times, WaPo, WSJ, USA Today, etc and summarized what was interesting in them. Sometimes this would be where you found links, before the Twitter/Facebook timeline (or even the Reddit/Digg front page). Sometimes the stories weren’t even available online yet.
Salon seemed to run out of money and implode in the early 2000s. They started a subscription program. I did, but unlike the (surely pricey) quality stuff before it was Bush Derangement Syndrome stuff they could get nobodies to turn out by the bucketload, I think some of the remaining original quality decanted to Slate.
If I could pass a message back to my ‘90s Salon/Slate-reading self… well, it would probably have to do with Mickey Kaus or Camille Paglia. But if I could send multiple, among them would be “You know how writers keep randomly invoking female Star Trek fans writing and mimeographing 'slash fiction’ in the 70s and 80s? That sounds kinda random but it actually turns out to be super important later, kinda crossed with– you know how they’re always doing pieces about how academics love analyzing Xena?”
I remember Slate before it was even known for “slatepitches”, it was just like one of two publications made for the Internet. Salon had the Condé Nast lush, well-paid name writer pieces. Slate, which was actually part of a Microsoft venture into media team-ups (that’s also what the MS in MSNBC was) was thinner, a major feature was “Today’s Papers” where someone just read The NY Times, WaPo, WSJ, USA Today, etc and summarized what was interesting in them. Sometimes this would be where you found links, before the Twitter/Facebook timeline (or even the Reddit/Digg front page). Sometimes the stories weren’t even available online yet.
Salon seemed to run out of money and implode in the early 2000s. They started a subscription program. I did, but unlike the (surely pricey) quality stuff before it was Bush Derangement Syndrome stuff they could get nobodies to turn out by the bucketload, I think some of the remaining original quality decanted to Slate.
soooo today i learned that back in the early 90s, coca cola tried making this thing called “ok soda” as a marketing stunt to beat out pepsi since they had way more of a hold on the “younger/rebellious” generation at the time, and their way of doing that was naming it “ok soda” so that they could copyright the word “ok”, the most popular word in the world, and at the same time brand it as an…ironic soda??? like the whole thing with it was that they tried to brand ok soda as a counterculture soda but instead of making it about typical 90s RADICAL EXTREME!!! fodder the theme of it was uh. unsettlingcapitalist brutalist dystopia. instead of being bright and colorful the color scheme was only stark whites, grays and reds and the cans looked like this. bold shapes and labels stating ominous, robotic things with a figure always staring dead into you on the front, no coca cola branding on it at all.
sometimes there would be “prize cans” of this stuff where instead of having soda inside it there would be hats. and they didn’t sell this option in boxes by the way they just put prize cans in random vending machines. and put like 25 cents in it so hey. you could get an actual soda that isn’t just hats. maybe.
did i mention that this soda also had a fucking MANIFESTO??? because yeah it sure had that printed on some cans and it goes as follows
and there’s these things called “coincidences”, which… yeah it doesn’t make it sound any less ominous
and you might be wondering how the soda itself tastes like does it taste good? ok? well apparently it was just a regular “citric” tasting soda but somehow they fucked it up so bad that it was compared to “carbonated tree sap”, and instead of trying to make the drink taste better they included that it tasted like shit, INTO THE ADVERTISING SCHEME ITSELF. they would literally advertise that it tasted like ass as a part of the ironic marketing, no i am not kidding.
but if you thought that’s where it ended there’s one more curveball and without any exaggeration, you will not expect what i am about to tell you.
take a look at this guy.
this guy is the “face” of ok soda, as in he was printed on the most cans and technically served as a mascot of sorts for the entire thing. his face was a major part of the branding, and this design for the cans was one of if not the most common.
okay. cool. no issue there right?
take a guess on who this guy is based off of.
the artist’s coworker? a generic guy? the artist himself? a relative? some random reference model they hired?
CHARLES MANSON. YES, THIS IS REAL. MEANING FOR A BRIEF MOMENT IN TIME, CHARLES MANSON’S FACE WAS USED AS A MEANS TO SELL COCA COLA.
the lead artist himself has even come forward to say this is the case. and now you may be asking wait. how’d he do this? how’d he possibly get away with this, years after the crimes had been committed?
well according to him, it was simple. apparently none of the contracts he signed said anything against putting a mass murderer on the can. so. there’s THAT.
unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it, ok soda never really caught on since *surprise surprise!* teens really don’t want to buy soda that looks like a brutalist art museum, and it never had a wide release so it was only a thing for like two years between 1993 and 1995. but from what i’ve heard there’s still people who are giving this soda a small modern following, collecting all the cans and merchandise and even coming up with stand in recipes for the soda formula itself.
so yeah! that was ok soda.
what the fuck
While OK Soda appears on retrospective lists of failed soft drinks and fluke ad campaigns, Analyst Thomas Flight posits that OK Soda may have been “ahead of its time” in its attempts at “brand disillusionment” through its subversion of traditional marketing.
I remember in the 90s the most head-in-the-sky cultural analysts were like “with the mainstreaming of homosexual relationships, maybe straight couples will come to pick up some gay relationship norms, like the lack of an expectation of sexual exclusivity!”
And I got the sense that was considered silver linings bait for horny straight allies, but looking around at the absolute explosion in idioms for straight nonmonogamy – “cucking”, “sharing”, “passing around”, “free use” – to say nothing of the whole “poly” thing, that was absolutely correct, wasn’t it?
I think a lot of people think of garbage as a grunge band. Most anyone under 30 and outside of the PNW just doesn’t split early/mid ‘90s alt rock into that many sub genres. PS: not the same anon, but you have to admit that “regional car dealer prima nocta” dig was pretty good wrt your whole “new gentry sex with teenagers” thing
You know, alternative music, like Stone Temple Pilots or Indigo Girls
Something I realized: for all you keep trying to claim grunge for yourself, the 90s genre that actually fits you and your ideology the best is the circa-95 wave of smutty club music (Outhere Brothers, 20fingers, E-rotic, Vengaboys even though they’re in 1999)
yeah, that’s basically the bargain, isn’t it? The party, through guys like gaetz, legitimize paying teens for sex, and in return libertine “local gentry” guys like you will acquiesce to basically unlimited brutality and venal corruption as long as it’s directed against blacks and poors
All else aside, you’d think that all the Epstein stuff and MeToo and tales of Trump’s Democrat-donating days would’ve got you noticing that this was exactly the Clinton-era Democrats if you swap in “urban megawealth and media professionals” (and sexual use of young nominal employees more than direct enjo kosai)
I'm writing a novel set (in part) in a suburban Florida high school in the 90s and if you're interested, what do you think are some non-obvious cultural differences (or similarities) to look out for?
90s high school fashion would be what, grunge, the dELiA*s catalog, spaghetti-strap tops, Abercrombie/American Eagle/Aeropostale, Hot Topic mallgoth, Old Navy, bellbottom revival into wide-leg raver pants, clove cigarettes, wicca vogue, navel, tongue, and nostril piercings?
…country music going mainstream (“Country Morning” on VH1, this weird Paula Cole/Shawn Colvin/Meredith Brooks/Lilith Fair processing of like, MichFest, 90210 then Melrose Place then Party of Five, Dawson’s Creek, Felicity (Felicity!), layered girls’ haircuts, wine-red dye (but not yet unnatural colors)…
antiheroes, that and dead-baby jokes got flattened together as “edgy”
National speed limits were just uncapped from 55 mph, minivans (Stephenson’s “bimbo boxes”) were a thing, pickups hadn’t gotten fuck-huge yet, the concept of the Hummer was it was fuck-huge…
band t-shirts. People forgot that’s what Hot Topic first made its name on, merch you didn’t have to go to a concert for or order out of a pulp catalog you found in the indie record store
Like I’m sure if I freestyle long enough you’d notice a few but “remember what would turn out to seem out of place 30 years later?” does not really correspond to how my understanding of the period was formed
Hm… “school shootings” were first a thing but had not yet been institutionalized as a thing, the anti-70s backlash that started setting in in the 80s was hegemonic and the decade was just remembered for regrettable aesthetic taste and otherwise forgotten, feminism was a joke and the “Cool Girl” notion that girls could be lads too was the future…
Less racially integrated than the 70s, let alone where we had expected to be from then, but didn’t notice that compared to all the progress we were making relative to the 80s
If it’s a “favored quarter” suburb it would be a mix of kids whose families were local and kids whose UMC families moved there in the past few years to Toll Brothers developments with 3-car garages, lofted foyers, and balconies with second staircases in the great room
@economicsofgender said: “Gay”/“Queer”/“Homo”/“Faggot”/etc. in mainstream usage as general negative words.
Oh yeah, before XBox lobbies we did that live
Oh jeez, “heroin chic” waifs. And eating disorders were huge
I'm writing a novel set (in part) in a suburban Florida high school in the 90s and if you're interested, what do you think are some non-obvious cultural differences (or similarities) to look out for?
90s high school fashion would be what, grunge, the dELiA*s catalog, spaghetti-strap tops, Abercrombie/American Eagle/Aeropostale, Hot Topic mallgoth, Old Navy, bellbottom revival into wide-leg raver pants, clove cigarettes, wicca vogue, navel, tongue, and nostril piercings?
…country music going mainstream (“Country Morning” on VH1, this weird Paula Cole/Shawn Colvin/Meredith Brooks/Lilith Fair processing of like, MichFest, 90210 then Melrose Place then Party of Five, Dawson’s Creek, Felicity (Felicity!), layered girls’ haircuts, wine-red dye (but not yet unnatural colors)…
antiheroes, that and dead-baby jokes got flattened together as “edgy”
National speed limits were just uncapped from 55 mph, minivans (Stephenson’s “bimbo boxes”) were a thing, pickups hadn’t gotten fuck-huge yet, the concept of the Hummer was it was fuck-huge…
Like I’m sure if I freestyle long enough you’d notice a few but “remember what would turn out to seem out of place 30 years later?” does not really correspond to how my understanding of the period was formed
Hm… “school shootings” were first a thing but had not yet been institutionalized as a thing, the anti-70s backlash that started setting in in the 80s was hegemonic and the decade was just remembered for regrettable aesthetic taste and otherwise forgotten, feminism was a joke and the “Cool Girl” notion that girls could be lads too was the future…
Less racially integrated than the 70s, let alone where we had expected to be from then, but didn’t notice that compared to all the progress we were making relative to the 80s
If it’s a “favored quarter” suburb it would be a mix of kids whose families were local and kids whose UMC families moved there in the past few years to Toll Brothers developments with 3-car garages, lofted foyers, and balconies with second staircases in the great room
@economicsofgender said: “Gay”/“Queer”/“Homo”/“Faggot”/etc. in mainstream usage as general negative words.
Like I’m sure if I freestyle long enough you’d notice a few but “remember what would turn out to seem out of place 30 years later?” does not really correspond to how my understanding of the period was formed
Hm… “school shootings” were first a thing but had not yet been institutionalized as a thing, the anti-70s backlash that started setting in in the 80s was hegemonic and the decade was just remembered for regrettable aesthetic taste and otherwise forgotten, feminism was a joke and the “Cool Girl” notion that girls could be lads too was the future…
Less racially integrated than the 70s, let alone where we had expected to be from then, but didn’t notice that compared to all the progress we were making relative to the 80s
If it’s a “favored quarter” suburb it would be a mix of kids whose families were local and kids whose UMC families moved there in the past few years to Toll Brothers developments with 3-car garages, lofted foyers, and balconies with second staircases in the great room
Like I’m sure if I freestyle long enough you’d notice a few but “remember what would turn out to seem out of place 30 years later?” does not really correspond to how my understanding of the period was formed
Hm… “school shootings” were first a thing but had not yet been institutionalized as a thing, the anti-70s backlash that started setting in in the 80s was hegemonic and the decade was just remembered for regrettable aesthetic taste and otherwise forgotten, feminism was a joke and the “Cool Girl” notion that girls could be lads too was the future…
Less racially integrated than the 70s, let alone where we had expected to be from then, but didn’t notice that compared to all the progress we were making relative to the 80s
Like I’m sure if I freestyle long enough you’d notice a few but “remember what would turn out to seem out of place 30 years later?” does not really correspond to how my understanding of the period was formed
Hm… “school shootings” were first a thing but had not yet been institutionalized as a thing, the anti-70s backlash that started setting in in the 80s was hegemonic and the decade was just remembered for regrettable aesthetic taste and otherwise forgotten, feminism was a joke and the “Cool Girl” notion that girls could be lads too was the future…
