The Late Nineties: Were they Good or Did They Suck

I, as someone who feels a great lingering sense nostalgia for the late nineties, always assumed that everyone else felt the same way, until recently. You see, the other day, I was talking to someone about the artistic merits of the song "Millennium" by Robbie Williams, when he chimed in with "Man, the late nineties really sucked". Naturally, such a sacrilegious statement caught me off guard. The late nineties, suck? Preposterous! Anyway, I wonder if my nostalgia is merely a regard for my childhood (I wasn't particularly old in the late nineties) or if I have an actual appreciation of the era. 
 
What do you think of the late nineties? Were they good or did they suck? 
What time frames do you feel nostalgia for? Do you like the time period that you were young in?

I, as someone who feels a great lingering sense nostalgia for the late nineties, always assumed that everyone else felt the same way, until recently. You see, the other day, I was talking to someone about the artistic merits of the song "Millennium" by Robbie Williams, when he chimed in with "Man, the late nineties really sucked". Naturally, such a sacrilegious statement caught me off guard. The late nineties, suck? Preposterous! Anyway, I wonder if my nostalgia is merely a regard for my childhood (I wasn't particularly old in the late nineties) or if I have an actual appreciation of the era. 
 
What do you think of the late nineties? Were they good or did they suck? 
What time frames do you feel nostalgia for? Do you like the time period that you were young in?

I love me some Friends

Was the late 90s great? 
It was:

What time do I get nostalgic for? The mid-80's. Good cartoons on Saturday morning (Looney Tunes, Dungeons & Dragons, The Littles, The Amazing Spider Man) and even better cartoons weekdays after school (Transformers, He-Man, GI Joe). Plus, we had REAL alternative and punk music: Black Flag, Dead Milkmen, Janes Addiction, etc.
 
Movies were the best: The Goonies, Stand By Me, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Breakfast Club...shit that actually had more than big names and CGI.
 
The Early 90's were pretty good, too. Good after-school cartoons (Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, Batman the animated series, Tailspin), music going everywhere, etc.
 
I say everything changed when I went to see Independence Day. The world I left when I walked into the theater is the not world I walked back out into. 
 
The late 90's didn't have much new and interesting outside of a few video game releases (two thumbs up for Ultima Online before the carebears ruined it). The music went all dance and/or bubblegum. Except for Saving Private Ryan, most of the movies were over-hyped CGI bullshit (Armageddon, Deep Impact, Godzilla, etc.) and the Internet began to become overly commercialized.

I DECLARE THAT THE LATE 90'S WERE  . . .  . .  alright.

Late 90's were boring, can't really remember what was happening besides the preparation for the Willenium.

Late 90's were ok. Early 90's though. AMAZING!!!!

I was a growing boy in the late 90's, and when I look at stuff from the those few years I feel no nostalgia for them. They kind of sucked.

The 90s where like... the teens. Some of this shit seemed coo THEN, but most of it is LAME looking back. Toys, for instance. Skippits and Pogo balls and the like.

I thought I had a lot of nostalgia for the 90s, but I went and re-visited a lot of that stuff this years and it's pretty shitty. I'm pretty sure the 90's suck (Not from an economic standpoint, but from culturally.)

Better president. But worse hair. But it all evened out, because we got jiggy with it. Big Willie style.

3 words: Ocarina of Time.

Everything after 1996 or so sucked ass. Some would argue that everything after 1989 sucked too, especially with music.

POKEMANZ

i feel the 90's as a whole were a weird cultural hodgepodge.  is was like every fad had one more shot before the end of the century . i mean come on, there was even a short lived swing revival.  

Early nineties were good, late nineties had Chumbawumba and Smash Mouth. 'Nuff said. And Nu Metal became big in the late nineties, I still remember Limp frickin' Bizkit becoming big. Hacks. Damn, 1996 onward sucked, and the 2000's were nothing to look at either. Yikes.

Late 90's were just okay.  I played a lot of PC games and watched The X-Files and Sailor Moon on TV.  I remember listening to a lot of new country then, too; Dixie Chicks, Faith Hill, Shania Twain, etc... that and "Closing Time" from Semisonic over and over again.

The 90's were great but you have to classify that statement with what particular things were great in the 90's. Some were great like cartoons and teenage shows like All That, Keenan and Kel, Clarissa Explains it all, Animorphs, Pete and Pete, those were great shows. Even a bunch of more mature shows were doing great, Buffy and friends for example. Music was going decently which started to really take a turn for the worst in the late 90's early 00's with the whiny angst driven rock, and the slow move to making Rap something of a joke of what it was in the earlier 90's.

If we look at this objectively, people wanted to party like it was 1999 before 1999, but after 1999 they didn't want to nearly as often. We can infer from this that most people did not think highly enough of 1999 to hold it up as a shining example of how to party.

I'm bummed that people are nostalgic for the late 90s.  I'm not old enough to feel old but Goddamn.

the late nineties sucked

@Fajita_Jim said:

What time do I get nostalgic for? The mid-80's. Good cartoons on Saturday morning (Looney Tunes, Dungeons & Dragons, The Littles, The Amazing Spider Man) and even better cartoons weekdays after school (Transformers, He-Man, GI Joe). Plus, we had REAL alternative and punk music: Black Flag, Dead Milkmen, Janes Addiction, etc. Movies were the best: The Goonies, Stand By Me, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Breakfast Club...shit that actually had more than big names and CGI. The Early 90's were pretty good, too. Good after-school cartoons (Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, Batman the animated series, Tailspin), music going everywhere, etc. I say everything changed when I went to see Independence Day. The world I left when I walked into the theater is the not world I walked back out into. The late 90's didn't have much new and interesting outside of a few video game releases (two thumbs up for Ultima Online before the carebears ruined it). The music went all dance and/or bubblegum. Except for Saving Private Ryan, most of the movies were over-hyped CGI bullshit (Armageddon, Deep Impact, Godzilla, etc.) and the Internet began to become overly commercialized.

Pretty much this.

When did the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles happen? Because... then.

The late 90's were marred by me growing up and realising the world was not as magical as it once seemed.

I feel like all decades for always have been just about as good as any other, it all just depends on your perspective. The people who hate the late 90s were probably not of that formative age that you were at the time or had a bad life situation at the time, etc. so they see a different time period as their days-gone-by golden-age.

I loved the late 90s, I loved the 80s (even though I was only marginally alive for them), and right now is pretty awesome too.

Everything worthwhile that happened in the 90s, happened in the second half of them

The late 90s had some amazing games, but everything else was kinda meh.

Does anyone else remember Charmed? I was trying to remember obscure shows from those days that everyone seemed to forget about, and then I saw that on Netflix.

To this day, I have no idea what the hell that show was about.

If we look at this objectively, people wanted to party like it was 1999 before 1999, but after 1999 they didn't want to nearly as often. We can infer from this that most people did not think highly enough of 1999 to hold it up as a shining example of how to party.

They were the last time in my life I was happy, so they were good for me.

I look back on the late 90's fondly because of graduation from High School, and all of the other activities that one partakes in at the age of 17. I do remember the mainstream music on the radio was at an all time low with Chumbawumba, Macarana, Spice Girls, Ricky Martin, Nickelback, Default and other shitty musicians poisoning the airwaves.
 
Oh and Crazytown Butterfly. Fuck me was that shitty song overplayed!

they were alright.

@JasonR86: I understand completely. Isn't it just terrible when someone has an affinity for a specific period in time?

I was in high school in the late '90s. It was hell.

Nah they sucked just as much as every other point in human history.

3 words: Ocarina of Time.

it's all about the 1890s up in he-a!!

'99 was Half Life... so there's that.

The late 90s were AMAZING for videogames. For everything else, not so much. But VIDEOGAMES, man.

The late nineties had some awesome music, and if you include the entire 90's, there was that much more. To name some of the more popular ones. PearlJam, Faith No More, Primus, Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, just to name a few. I know the people that said the 90's music sucked weren't including all bands, i believe they had MANY, MANY, more good bands than are around today. If i were old enough to go to these concerts in the 90's i would have killed to do so.

Good video games, terrible music.

Everything was much newer to me in the 90's so of course I'm nostalgic for it. I can never have a moment again like playing FF7 for the first time which was my first RPG (not counting a few minutes of Secret of Mana on the SNES).

Pop-cultural bollocks aside, we didn't have the unending war on terror, global economic collapse or DRM in the late 90's.  And the Dreamcast was still a thing.  Truly, it was the best of times to be a young man ('cos we'd already forgotten about AIDS, and nobody had heard of chlamydia.)
 
Seriously, right now is always better. Things move on but that old shit is always there. And now we can bring it right back with a quick youtube search.
 
(I was going to link to a video about the 90's but I couldn't find anything that was less painfull than being stabbed in the groin.)

@Bribo said:

Pop-cultural bollocks aside, we didn't have the unending war on terror, global economic collapse or DRM in the late 90's. And the Dreamcast was still a thing. Truly, it was the best of times to be a young man ('cos we'd already forgotten about AIDS, and nobody had heard of chlamydia.)

Seriously, right now is always better. Things move on but that old shit is always there. And now we can bring it right back with a quick youtube search.

(I was going to link to a video about the 90's but I couldn't find anything that was less painfull than being stabbed in the groin.)

Uh, Oklahoma City Bombing and Columbine ring a bell? The OJ Simpson trial? That nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway?

The '90s were just as filled with shit.

Romeo + Juliet.

neutral milk hotel's "in the aeroplane over the sea" and radiohead's "OK computer"
 
... I guess the late 90's were ok

@Bribo said:

Pop-cultural bollocks aside, we didn't have the unending war on terror, global economic collapse or DRM in the late 90's. And the Dreamcast was still a thing. Truly, it was the best of times to be a young man ('cos we'd already forgotten about AIDS, and nobody had heard of chlamydia.)

Seriously, right now is always better. Things move on but that old shit is always there. And now we can bring it right back with a quick youtube search.

(I was going to link to a video about the 90's but I couldn't find anything that was less painfull than being stabbed in the groin.)

Uh, Oklahoma City Bombing and Columbine ring a bell? The OJ Simpson trial? That nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway?

The '90s were just as filled with shit.

I was 0-5 during the late 90's, so pretty much everything seemed cool to me.