As someone who spent their childhood creating their first memories in the 90s, it is hard for me to reconcile the fact that they happened 18 to 28 years ago. It’s a cliché at this point that people from the 90s think of it as maybe 8 years ago, since not a lot happened between 2000-2010 culturally. In that short time, we have seen technology and the people who utilize it change by leaps and bounds, exponentially getting weirder and weirder. I mean that in the best way possible, since list articles were completely different in the 90s, and we love what we do. And since we are flawed human beings who always think they are the darned coolest thing since sliced bread and hula hoops, we always like to deride anything different than us.

I personally, can’t stand my fellow 90s kids, because they are always quick to tell you exactly what they are all about. I never understood the appeal of bragging about a decade of time you survived, as if that is somehow a badge of courage. Can’t we all just agree that every decade has something cool about it? I guarantee when we live in the future, kids will be mocking Pinterest and Selfie Sticks while they zoom around on floating Gorbleborbs.

But everyone getting along doesn’t make for good memes, so instead let’s stoke the fires of enmity between 90s kids and literally everyone inferior who came afterward. By the end of this, everyone will be admitting that POGS are cool.

29 The Modern Blight

It should be easy for you to guess that as a gamer I hate pay to win scenarios. It isn’t fair that an inferior player gets to just jump into a game after shelling out $100 just to get the biggest sword. It makes for an unfair playing field, where skill doesn’t matter and money is the only way to actually get ahead. If I wanted a system like that, I would go outside into the actual job market, not jump headfirst into a zombie apocalypse.

But what is the alternative?

On the other hand, it isn’t fair that a working stiff who only gets to play a video game once or twice a week should get instantly wrecked by some stay at home lowlife who does nothing but level up all day instead of contributing to society. Shouldn’t someone be allowed to parlay their time spent at work into money, and spend that money to be able to smash a jobless snot into the dirt?

28 Community Spirit

I would offer my neighbors a cup of sugar or something, and that would be the extent of how good of a neighbor I could be. I wave and say hi when we both take out the garbage at the same time, but besides that, I don’t really need or want to interact with them. We decided to live on the same street, how is that material worth bonding over? For all I know, they don’t play video games and think plaid pants are cool. I don’t need that kind of darkness in my life.

And as neighborly as it is to give people around you free Wi-Fi, that is a huge danger to your online presence. That is seriously one step away from getting your identity stolen. If they were so neighborly, they would have a password and give it to you, not make it so that any old goofball will have access to their banking.

27 Say Hi To Your Everyone On The Otherside For Me

I’d guess that most younger people today only know Mark Wahlberg as either a film star or the partial owner of a burger chain. Either way, they have no idea that he used to be in a musical group called Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch. And as much of a joke as that band name sounds, they were actually immensely popular, with an actual number one song.

And now he’s been nominated for an Academy Award.

Sure, that nomination came way back in the day of 2007 for the awesome movie The Departed, but it’s still more nominations than most 1990s hip-hop artists have ever been nominated for. He also managed to translate all of his antics into a loosely based television show Entourage so pretty much everything about Marky Mark’s life is awesome, which can’t be said of most 90s celebrities. I’m pretty sure Vanilla Ice is building houses now.

26 Unbreakable

OK, I’ll concede that phones were way tougher in the 90s. True story, my mom accidentally had her Nokia run over by the family car, and the thing still ran. I’m somewhat convinced those things were made of Adamantium. And now, if I roll over on my phone in the night, I wake up to a pile of dust in the vague shape of my hopes and dreams. But even that is kind of a silly complaint, considering what we have.

It’s like comparing a ham radio to a supercomputer.

Modern phones can do everything from play movies to calculate time travel, so I think that is an alright tradeoff. We sacrificed the hard outer layer of rhino skin so we could now have a handy little screen with which we can play Candy Crush while in the bathroom. Yes, we are truly living in the future, and we have emojis.

25 Better Than Space Jam

I guess it is kind of sad that kids don’t remember amazing sports superstars of the past, but I doubt that 90s kids could name some big names that were huge in sports from the 70s. Some stuff just doesn’t become legendary, or what seems to be immensely important at the time ends up being a footnote in history. Most people know Ronald Reagan as a President, not an actor. That isn’t the fault of the next generation for not knowing stuff that doesn’t seem relevant to them.

Blame the memes.

Memes will always find the most perfectly captured single moment to best use to describe an incredibly relatable feeling. Showing Jordan tearing it up on the courts or barely acting while next to Bugs Bunny isn’t something people will ever find super relatable, but showing him stone-faced weeping is an image that all of us can get behind.

24 Attack Of The Fuzz

To be totally honest, both of these pictures look completely ridiculous to me. I can’t imagine your identity being so fragile that you desperately need to define yourself by the clique you hang out with. And then, to so painfully need to be a part of that clique that you all dress alike. How do you not look at each other and realize that you have sacrificed all independent thought just to fit in with the people around you?

I still think fuzzy boots are kind of cool, though.

They’re just so impractical and weird, they look like you hunted a Muppet and wore their pelt as a trophy. Every time I see people in them (which happens with decreasing frequency) they remind me of those half human, half goat creatures from Greek Myths. Satyrs, I think they are called? Anyways, anyone who has the bravery to look like you kind of have hooves instead of human feet is a winner in my book.

23 Pagers Were Never Awesome

Growing up, I never actually knew anyone who had a pager or beeper. They were always relegated to people in movies or TV, and whenever I saw them, I thought they were silly and pretentious. Yeah, they are as good of an idea as a cell phone, since people are now able to get in contact with you any time and anywhere. But something about them just beeping out a small little sentence, where you had to run off to a payphone or something seemed redundant.

And they were kind of expensive.

Again, I never owned one, but I remember adults talking about how expensive they were, and how only Doctors had them. And Doctors really do need to be at beck and call at all times, so it makes sense for them to have one. But most people are useless and unimportant, so to have one was to grossly overestimate how badly people will ever need to get in contact with you.

22 All Gussied Up

Those dang kids, wearing their makeup and pumps and carrying purses and trying to be adults. I wish there was a phrase that summed up how I felt about this whole argument. Oh, yeah, I believe there’s an old proverb that suits this mindset perfectly: who cares? There have been child brides throughout history, not to mention kids signing up for the army. Comparatively, I would rather have my kids playing dress up than storming a beach or working in a sweatshop.

Kids will always want to be adults.

Are you telling me that you never dressed outside of your age? Grew an ill-advised mustache? A regretful tattoo? Almost every decision a young person makes is them trying to emulate what they think adult life is like. Kids of yesteryear had Daisy Dukes, we had pointlessly baggy pants, now they have makeup. It’s literally one of the least harmful things a kid can do to express themselves.

21 Maybe A Step Backwards

The decision to ever include a single player mode that needed Internet connectivity is the most baffling choice any video game company has ever made. You can show me the Power Glove or E.T. and I will still suggest that forcing people to connect to a company’s servers in order to play the story of the item they just bought is still more stupid. If people are dependent on your servers to get use out of the product they just paid money for, ensure that your servers are NEVER down.

This wasn’t a problem in the past.

Back then, the single player was on the game disk or cartridge, and you could lend it to your friends. If we were arguing the merits of modern multiplayer, it’s easy for me to admit that online play is intensely better, even if it is dependent on an Internet connection. The ability to be beaten by a nine-year-old that is in a different time zone is incredible. But single-player should be just that, for you to play, alone.

20 The Sound Of Silence

One of the best things about modern life is the fact that we need to do way less socially awkward things. No longer do I need to call the pizza place when I don’t feel like cooking, I enter all my gross toppings online, meaning that my human interaction time is reduced to quickly opening the door in my Chewbacca pajamas, The same can be said for when you hang out with friends, and you pull up to their house, ready for a night of partying.

Doorbells are horrible inventions.

They fill your entire house with an evil shriek, and sometimes some very unwise and boring people will get a doorbell that plays some loser song that nobody actually knows the name of. You know the one. It clearly sounds like the chimes of a funeral, signaling the passing of your soul from the mortal coil. Somehow that is the most popular doorbell of all time.

19 As Long As You Are Getting Them

Really? Are 90s kids so desperate to prove their superiority that they are now bragging that they used to be able to talk to their beloved family members less frequently while consuming more resources? Why aren’t we celebrating that some old fogey is savvy enough to actually still be using the internet, which is awesome! This is a person who saw the invention of the horseless carriage (presumably) being so open to new ideas that they stay in contact with their descendants via email.

When you follow this kind of logic to its’ extreme, you realize that our ancestors would be bragging about contacting their loved ones twice a year before dying of consumption. When paper was invented, was some jerk bragging about how back in his time he just didn’t contact people and never knew where most of his family was at any given time? Because then you’re just bragging about your life being worse.

18 A More Innocent Halloween

I’m going to ignore the fact that those are pictures of vastly differently aged girls. Ignoring that HUGE detail, I do have trouble arguing against the notion of Halloween costumes being less wholesome. And I don’t even want “wholesome” Halloween costumes, since I want to see kids running around like rotten corpses back from the grave to steal our souls. Halloween is the one time of the year that the gross, weird and scary stuff of life is celebrated instead of tucked away into the shadows.

I’ve just seen a surge of “cute” costumes during the Halloween season. This was a thing in the 90s, sure, but it was mostly teenagers who decided to start wearing out there costumes, whereas nowadays kids want to start wearing less spooky or charming stuff, and more cutesy or attractive stuff. Does that make sense, or am I just becoming the exact thing I’ve been complaining about this whole article?

17 What Do You Want From Me?

I kind of like this one, because I was definitely told to go out more as a kid. And my parents definitely relayed stories to me of being told to stop going out so much, and to be in by when the street lights come on. All this really tells me is that parents don’t actually have an investment in what is best for kids, but instead have an arbitrary set of social stigmas they must adhere to.

They’re worried about what other parents will say.

If your kids are out roaming the streets like dogs , you are a bad parent who is raising future delinquents. If your kid is glued to a screen instead of playing field hockey or catching fireflies or some other folksy nonsense, then you are raising a nerd. And there is nothing worse in a stuffy parent’s eyes than raising a nerd.

16 I’m Not Sure I Understand

I’m next to certain this comic is trying to say the same thing as the last comic, that we spend more time indoors than out, but I can’t be sure. Are these both the same character, one as a child, one as an adult. That seems to be the case, since only one of them seems to grow stubble. And what is up with the eyes? Is that to let us know that they stayed up way later than they should have playing video games? Because kids did that back in the 90s too.

Maybe they aren’t the same person, since their hair color is different. So maybe this is just saying that the ideologies of today are different, where you could both enjoy going outside as well as staying inside and gaming. Which is sound advice, I suppose. It is always a good idea to stay a well-rounded individual, if that is indeed what this thing is trying to tell us.

15 The Darkness Gets Lighter

There has always been an unhealthy obsession with liking things before they became popular. If someone read a book that became a movie, they will be sure to announce that to everyone within earshot. If you owned a band’s album before they hit it big, that somehow means you are a more legitimate fan. Somehow, if you were a member of a fandom before it became acceptable to like it, that makes you the gatekeeper of that fandom, free to criticize anyone who comes after you as being a faker?

This isn’t exclusive to Goth’s either, you can see this with punks, mods, skaters, rockers, rappers, gangsters, literally anything that has become a subculture our counter-culture believe that they have the right to exclude people. It’s a strange phenomenon, where you push so hard to have something you love be accepted, but the moment it does, you hate that it is now consumed by more than your handful of friends.

14 Guilty As Charged

I’m literally doing this as I write this article. I have Netflix showing me something I’m only half absorbing while I am mainly focused on my laptop. Even when I’m not writing an article, when I have the television on, the laptop is open as well. It isn’t my fault that dialogue-heavy scenes tell my eyes to wander into something more visually engaging. And I know that multitasking isn’t a real thing, and that every time you divide your attention, you are actually just flat out ignoring one thing for another. I just can’t help it.

It gets so much worse when you factor in phones. Sometimes, I’ll be doing an article, and if my back starts to hurt from being hunched over the keyboard, I’ll pick up my phone for a hot minute. All this while a Netflix original goes sadly unseen in the background. The only exception is when I’m playing a video game, which gets my full attention.

13 Television Got Weird

I think I can actually explain this one. I’m not going to argue against it, either, the costume and makeup department in modern shows have been doing increasingly more intense work on teens, which makes it feel like they aren’t depicting a relatable high school experience. This is compared to the 90s where most shows would at least attempt to emulate what kids were wearing, albeit on the higher end of the price scale.

We have been in a recession as of late.

We watch teen shows to relate to stuff and escape, so we don’t like being reminded that everyone around us has been forced to tighten their purse strings. We like to watch tv so it can show us that opulence and looking nice aren’t a thing of the past, and it might be possible to reclaim some of our former glory as a nation. Or maybe I’m over analyzing it and television producers have lost touch with their audience.

12 Hardly A Fair Comparison

Tupac was one of the most talented lyricists in the history of rap, and to compare him to a flash in the pan like Lil Uzi Vert is like comparing The Old Man And The Sea against Curious George. Both have merit and serve the purpose they were made for well, but they are in vastly different leagues. It’s ok to enjoy a song for its musicality and then enjoy another song because it contains a deep and resonating message.

It’s apples and oranges, really.

It isn’t like there aren’t a slew of modern rappers making songs about social injustices left right and centre, and it isn’t like the 90s was immune to people using rap simply to make themselves wealthy. By comparing the highest high of one decade against the lowest low of another, you are skewing the data in your favor, and if you rely on that to get a point across, you don’t really have a point at all.

11 Kids Will Be Kids

Do not let this graphic fool you, kids still very much draw on their own faces with makeup in this day and age. I’ve seen it, and it was one of the motivating factors for me to never have kids. When you see a screaming two-foot terror round the corner looking like a nearsighted Pennywise, you realize this whole “kid” thing might not be for you. So children being stupid and making a mess is a universal constant through the ages, despite what some alarmists might tell you.

That second image is clearly an example of someone APPLYING makeup to a kid, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Maybe you are practicing your makeup skills on the closest thing you had handy, which is a baby’s face. Or maybe the kid asked to look as pretty as you, and you offer the harmless suggestion of doing their makeup for them.  Or, more likely, it was photoshop, you dummies.

10 The Evolution Of Fashion

I’m genuinely not sure what I’m supposed to be taking away from this image? As far as I can tell, the people who look more stupid due to what they are wearing is the 90s, and as someone who lived through it, I can attest that we did not know what we were doing, fashion-wise. We thought that it was cool to frost our tips, and having flames on your bowling shirt made you the pinnacle of being awesome.

And it’s only going to get worse.

If you are young right now, dress however you want and tell old people to go build a deck or something. They looked stupid when they were young, and your kids are going to end up looking like complete idiots. Time marches forward, and you can’t stop yourself from doing the things that feel right and fun to you because someone out of touch tells you it looks stupid. Objectively, all of the human race looks stupid.