So the thing about Jonathan Larson’s work – and this is most visible and central in tick, tick…BOOM!, but also very important to Rent – is that it is 100% about the zeitgeist of the ‘90s.
Which means something more than “a lot of people are dying of AIDS.”
Watching Mallrats on the bar TV and the sexual politics are amazingly ‘90s
“thinking you, who stayed to have a day career at the mall, outrank a college slacker enough to exploit his girlfriend’s latent materialism and steal her for anal sex” is DEFINITELY the offense
and “fucking a 15-year-old on camera” is DEFINITELY the pretext to bust him on, ironic comeuppance ‘cause HE’s the one who tried to weaponize normiedom
Office Space and Friends were such perfect suburban/urban versions of the 90s promise - by maintaining self-awareness and resolutely refusing to sell out, a stable and fulfilling life are yours, young white college-educated man, complete with a similarly young Jennifer Aniston type (or in less polished versions of the legend Janeane Garofalo) to be better than other people with, not only a reward but an assurance after the 70s-80s divorce era.
Because given a fair chance who could outcompete you, someone who DID sell out, someone who indulged their neuroses and flawed personalities without any buffering self-awareness? (And thus lacked the distance to properly appreciate and accommodate hers?) C'mon.
At one point, 50% of the CD’s produced worldwide had an AOL logo on it. We were logging in new subscribers at the rate of one every six seconds.… The profitability of each and every disk and promotion effort was tracked and analyzed. We conducted approximately 2000 different tests each year and used these results to develop future programs. Despite the label ‘carpet bombing,’ there was actually a very high level of marketing sophistication and almost all decisions were data and results driven.
The Burger King Kids Club, representing all the ‘90s identities:
Black
Hispanic
Nerd
Tomboy
Disabled
Stacy
Geek
Dog
Technically I think the short butchy-looking guy is the nerd and the guy with the backwards cap is a “coolkid”, which is a distinct genus. This may seem like splitting hairs, but it’s important that we recognize the cultural distinctiveness of coolkids in order to honour their sacrifices during the Cola Wars.
The coolkid was a kind of cyber-Fonz, a
“women want him, men want to be him” archetype as targeted toward twelve-year-old dorks with chunky white sneakers.
It was a laboratory-designed hybrid of nerd and greaser engineered to target the market sector of the former using the charisma and popularity of the latter. Toward the late 90s there was some further crossbreeding with rappers in order to counteract the diminishing relevance of greasers, but in the early 90s that was still too threatening for mainstream white suburbanites with money.
Anyhow, I went looking for some more vintage examples but it’s surprisingly hard to find ones that aren’t later parodies so I’ll just link this fucker.
i’m all for making america great again. boo-yah, let’s do that exact thing.
my question is, when exactly is the chronological reference point for “again”? because i’m looking through our yearbook pictures, and none of them are very flattering.
Sitting at home in Pennsylvania, reading some of the things I left behind in my childhood bedroom.
First off, Gen13. Wow, was that ever the ‘90siest '90s that ever '90sd. Also, even though I knew well that Image comics were poorly plotted cheesecake knockoffs, for some reason I had thought this one wasn’t that bad.
Second off, Spin magazine from June 1997. The writing actually holds up well, and there’s some really good photography and layout. But the ads, oh man. Pentium MMX! Protease inhibitors! Cigarettes! Waterproof AM/FM Walkmans! Geocities! Like, Geocities! I really wish I had a scanner here, but in lieu, capitalization and oddly precise imprecision (33+ ?) intact:
Geeks, Nerds, Hackers
[hard to explain image of motherboard-as-city]
…people like us.
Hang out with us in SiliconValley, www.geocities.com/siliconvalley, one of 33+ GeoCities neighborhoods of people like us who have “homesteaded” free Home Pages in the community of their choice - Personal Home Pages, in a friendly environment, rich with content, that allows them to find, and be found by, people who share their interests and passions.
If you’re not already one of our 500,000+ members, please visit us at www.geocities.com and set up your own free Personal Home Page. We’ve supplied all of the most popular publishing tools (simple and user-friendly) with plenty of bandwidth and disk space. And if you are into java and shockwave, visit www.geocities.com/researchtriangle.
Or, simply visit our neighborhoods, meet another Geek, and join in a Chat Session with a Nerd, or a Phreak, or a Hacker… people like us.
The gang controlled areas have become known as free fire zones
So, Vampire: The Masquerade vs. Shadowrun.
vs.
I submit that between these two RPGs you have the entirety of the (mid) ‘90s.
Like on the one hand goths and on the other techno-pagans, that’s obviously the '90s right there.
Like on the one hand the world keeps on going but there’re no causes to believe in. You’re one of the special ones, though, so even though your games don’t matter they’re the best games. There are special ones older than you, and other factions, but you’ll tear them down eventually. There’re unspecial ones all around, and to thrive you ultimately have to consume them, and isn’t it tragic, but I guess you’ll find a way to deal.
And on the other hand, the world has fallen apart, there’s no cause to believe in, so you keep taking corporate jobs, but use the money to buy cool badass electronics and hang out with environmentalists and street punks, that’ll bring the system down, right?
