When did the culture of the early to mid 90s end?

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I was 16 at the time and felt that this was going to destroy us from the inside out. I can't shake the feeling that they knew the physical attack was the domino that would alter and destroy us internally. Yes, we were unified for a bit but my teenage self saw the division waiting and growing. Flash forward today and everything happening now leaves me not being surprised. I was called extreme many times, yet here we are.

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Rasczak44@reddit

The day innocence was lost

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Middleage_dad@reddit

First day of my senior year of college. Graduated into a world where the dot com thing was over, Bush was president and war was everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

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Nauti-Grl@reddit

Same. My internship got canceled and everything changed.

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crazycatlady331@reddit

90s innocence died that day.

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tagehring@reddit

Yep. In the future, historians will say the '90s began November 9th, 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell and ended September 11, 2001 when the towers fell.

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karaloveskate@reddit

Nah, Columbine.

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CobraChickenNuggets@reddit

I feel that Columbine started the decline, but it finally ran out of runway, and crashed on 9/11/21. Nothing's felt or been the same since.

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SeaSkimmer2@reddit

What happened on 9/11/21? https://preview.redd.it/tdvaab24jdcg1.jpeg?width=819&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d2efed509d5e49648e6a8a58cf47347ae7e4c4d9

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CobraChickenNuggets@reddit

01 My mind now just automatically tacks 2 in front of the tens place for the year now. Thanks for pointing out my senior Xennial moment.

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Half_A_Beast_333@reddit

We had nuclear bomb drills, a few good years of no drills, and then school shooting drills.

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SeaSkimmer2@reddit

Hate to say it, but Columbine didn’t have much of an impact on the trajectory of pop-culture at the time. It was like looking at a bad accident on the side of a highway from a tour bus headed toward a pot of gold…”Yeah it sucked, but it was forgotten about 3 minutes later”. Then a few years later, thay bus flew into a skyscraper and all occupants became minced meat in the snap of a finger.

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Larry_the_scary_rex@reddit

I disagree. In retrospect, this is absolutely true, but at the time it was everywhere

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SeaSkimmer2@reddit

Columbine? It was about as everywhere as the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. And I don't believe that was mentioned even once in this thread until now. But we can agree to disagree.

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aerodeck@reddit

Nope

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misterlakatos@reddit

Agreed. That absolutely changed everything. 2000 still very much felt like the '90s, as is the case with the first year with any new decade. 2001 seemed like a gradual change until 9/11, which obviously brought the world to a screeching halt.

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ttw81@reddit

yup. like they say the 60s didn't really start until the kennedy assassination.

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misterlakatos@reddit

Yeah I can definitely see that. Whenever I see photos of my dad, uncles and aunt from the early '60s, they scream '50s.

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Angis3000@reddit

Came here to say this

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Inc-Roid@reddit

That was the late 90s

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CptnMayo@reddit

Exactly

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Weak_Radish966@reddit

Yep. Paradigm shift.

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FoppyRETURNS@reddit

The day the 90s ended, or more accurately the late 90s.

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thetraffic@reddit

Its been off since.

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Conscious_Drawer8356@reddit

The only correct answer

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MysteryMolecule@reddit

It was the advent of Oasis

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mattinglys-moustache@reddit

Culturally, I think it was around early 1997, this is when boy bands got very popular, a lot of highly commercialized versions of music that had been big in the early-mid 90’s broke out like Creed and Blink-182, styles started to look more manufactured, more showy, guys with frosted tips and so on, so I think late 96/early 97 was when we moved from amore genuine culture to a more manufactured one. So this is where late 90’s culture differed from early-mid 90’s culture.

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Clockwork-Armadillo@reddit

Exactly this. Younger Gen X teen culture died in 97 and older Millenial teen culture started in 98, which is also how I define Xennials I.e. People who were teenagers in both years.

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zoom518@reddit

Z100 was in an awkward position since 2 stations at the beginning of 1996 flipped (one to full alternative and one to dance) and that led to them going full pop rather than alt with some pop. But yeah, Hanson and the Spice Girls walked so the Backsteet Boys/N*SYNC/Britney could run.

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crazycatlady331@reddit

What station flipped to full alternative? I remember around that time (maybe 97) was when X107 went country. I'm still mad about that.

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zoom518@reddit

K-Rock.

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crazycatlady331@reddit

K-Rock was a great station.

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T-whizzy@reddit

This is correct. I am trying to think of one song that would specifically epitomize this. I remember when Bush came up and sounded like Nirvana it was already starting to sound more produced but that was more like late era early 90s. 😆 what was the tipping point?

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More-read-than-eddit@reddit

Also Bush idolized Steve Albini, Jesus Lizard, etc. They weren’t materially different from Nirvana in that sense. That vs the Spice Girls and Oasis are like night and day.

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strange_stars@reddit

I used to have a bus. In way, the nineties ended the day I sold it… December 31st 1999.

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tiredofeveryonesmess@reddit

When Aaliyah died.

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MrThouu@reddit

Early 90s, I'd say by 1997-8. For me the markers were music and video games. The N64 and Playstation era was in, and video games were 3d graphics mostly by that time. Grunge wasn't really a novelty anymore. I'd gone from really listening to grunge and alternative mostly, to that and dance music. The bands that followed up the grunge were more influenced by those who started it. Actually there's a term for it, [post-grunge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-grunge). So yeah maybe once Clinton's second term was in gear. The time the Lewinsky scandal happened, culture definitely felt different from when his first term started. But also, the culture of early 90s itself, felt like it more started in 1992. 1990 felt more like an extra year of the 80s. 1991 was an in-between because Terminator 2 was maybe the first 90s action movie in terms of feel.

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Impossible_Mode_7521@reddit

When normal people got on the internet

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dayman-woa-oh@reddit

It was so much better when it was just nerds online and the average normie didnt even know how to turn on a computer.

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Cinderhazed15@reddit

Same thing with social media - in the early Aughts, when it was college only, it was a great way to contact that person you had a group in class with, but forgot to get their name/contact details.

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crazycatlady331@reddit

Social media changed for the worse in the mid 2010s for two reasons. 1) Smartphones became the norm and people were using the mobile apps instead of their computer. 2) Algorithms. Instead of seeing a chronological feed of only who you followed, you saw what the tech broligarchs wanted you to see.

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Cinderhazed15@reddit

I remember that I used to ‘get caught up’ looking at all my friends and families info on my (linear) feed….. it did go to crap once they added the algorithm

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tagehring@reddit

Eternal September.

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CourtAlert8679@reddit

I feel like Clueless was the shift. Almost overnight the girls in my high school went from wearing Doc martens and flannels to wearing thigh high stockings and stack heels with plaid miniskirts. Grunge gave way to the overtly feminine style that would become the cornerstone of Y2K fashion, butterfly clips, bright colors etc. By the time Britney Spears and the Spice Girls blew up people were ready to move on from 90’s minimalism.

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BigPoppaStrahd@reddit

90’s culture ended in 1995?

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crazycatlady331@reddit

If you're talking about 90s culture as a whole. That ended abruptly in 2001.

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CourtAlert8679@reddit

I don’t say it ended, I said it started to shift away from what we tend to think of as 90’s cultures

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BigPoppaStrahd@reddit

I’m just realizing OP’s question was specifically asking when the early to mid 90’s culture ended. I jumped the gun and mistake them for asking when did 90’s culture in general end. Your answer is definitely the most correct and I apologize for my misunderstanding.

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CourtAlert8679@reddit

Holy shit, this might be the most mature Reddit post I’ve ever read. Damn. Well done, I mean that.

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BigPoppaStrahd@reddit

It’s funny too because the top answer is 9/11/2001 so at least I wasn’t the only one to misread OP’s question

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CourtAlert8679@reddit

Haha, for a split second I thought about responding “well the 90’s either ended in 1995 or 2001” but I didn’t want to be a jerk about 9/11 😂

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Tylerdurden389@reddit

In Brooklyn, a lot of guys in my neighborhood were doing the jersey shore look as early as 1999. By 2005 when the gotti show became popular, even if was going "guys are still sporting that look?". Then 4 years later jersey shore premiered and the rest of the country followed suit lol.

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awmaleg@reddit

Totally agree- great point about smaller cities being behind the times in a pre-internet world.

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SweetPrism@reddit

YES!!! This is a really good point. There was a time when certain cities/states were light years behind all the newest trends. I grew up in Northern MN, and in order to not be left out in the dark, we had to read all the various teen magazines to see what was happening in the trendier parts of the country.

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_Internet_Hugs_@reddit

Early 90s culture, definitely.

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BigPoppaStrahd@reddit

Definitely, I realize I misread the original question

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Tamuzz@reddit

Early 90s for sure, but I feel like 1995 was the mid 90s at it's peak.

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Sad_Training_1595@reddit

Yeah I think you are very accurate, the 90s changed a lot and late 90s kinda sucked. Even though it's much better than today in a lot of ways.

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FoppyRETURNS@reddit

I remember when flannel suddenly went passe and I was like "what the hell happened?"

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Mission-Concert-9575@reddit

I will agree that it started in 98 and 99 was the end. It coincides with the Columbine incident, Woodstock 99, Limp Bizkit Significant Other (loved that CD when It came out, but in retrospect... Dont know what I was thinking) Death of JFK jr. Only comes to my mind because I was In the FLorida Airport when I heard about it. Kosovo War. Sponge bob is aired. I think 1999. was it. And September 11 finished it off.

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amindfulloffire@reddit

I'd say 1997.

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SeaSkimmer2@reddit

What do you believe the culture of the early to mid 90s consisted of? Based on that, we can narrow it down better.

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Personal-Cattle-1737@reddit (OP)

GFunk rap grunge and early to mid 90s Gen X alternative culture

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SeaSkimmer2@reddit

Gangster rap largely morphed into a more melodic, flowing club-type sound by the late 90s (98-99) into the early 2000s. Grunge was really no longer a scene as the early bands mostly faded away/split up by maybe 95-96, which led to the rise of more commercially-sounding rock and then into Nu-Metal/rap-rock by 98-99 for about 5 years or so. That largely gave way to Emo (crybaby rock) and metalcore, but by that point, rock music as a *popular* genre pretty much faded out other than some novelty acts. “Gen X alternative culture” pretty much faded away with grunge into 96 or so as those genres above rose up and there was also a massive wave of sparkly-type pop and boy bands that you couldn’t get away from by around 98-99. That’s when Carson Daly and MTV’s Total Request Live (TRL) ruled the world. Then 9/11 happened and whatever stairway to heaven that was came crumbling down, and now over the last ~20 years we’re left with mumble rap and horribly-processed acts which sound like R2D2 screwed the blue diva alien singer from *The Fifth Element*.

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More-read-than-eddit@reddit

My only quibble here is your calling Sunny Day Real Estate and bands like Jeromes Dream “crybaby rock” or implying they came later in the decade. End of 90s culture kind of came in the middle of the 2 waves of very different “emo” genres (sdre in the early 90s, followed by my chemical romance hot topic stuff much later in the mid aughts) so not sure how it really applies. Do you mean the first American Football-related midwestern emo scene around the turn of the century? That’s a bit obscure.

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SeaSkimmer2@reddit

The emo stuff that came in the mid-aughts as Nu Metal was dying down. Sorry, I am unable to name any of the bands with that annoying, whining crybaby sound.

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More-read-than-eddit@reddit

Gotcha yeah I think that's all My Chemical Romance. FWIW you may get a kick out of the video that the band American Football made for the song Never Meant. It's Midwestern Emo (the version that appeared between early "screamo" and later "hot topic" and which is now very fashionable with the kids) and does a great job imo of capturing the collegiate "late 90s" radio station vibe many of us experienced after high school. Classically xennial in that it is neither the grunge that people associate with the 90s nor the neon deep-v scene that people associate with the aughts.

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Personal-Cattle-1737@reddit (OP)

When did the 90s era of sports end like Michael Jordan led nba

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SeaSkimmer2@reddit

His last championship was in 98, but sports seemed to be coming down as part of pop-culture by then with less jersey-wearing and dynasty teams. Then a few years later Kobe Bryant and Tom Brady happened, then Lebron.

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awmaleg@reddit

I always think 2Pac dying was the end of the peak rap music era. It had gotten pretty popular by then but that was one of those points in time you can look back as a milestone

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Impressive-Cattle-91@reddit

Sometime in the late 90's when Limp Bizkit and the like replaced grunge over the airwaves on the alternative stations. Vibe/culture was dead by Woodstock '99

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KelVarnsen_2023@reddit

The HBO documentary about Woodstock 99 is really good. There was a whole segment where they talked about how early 90's rock was things like Kurt Cobain performing in a dress and Eddie Vedder performing wearing pro-choice messages. Then by the end of the 90's rock got taken over by artists like Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit who probably wouldn't do either of those things.

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Skataneric@reddit

When TRL started around 97-98. There was now a central point every youth had access to that homoginized them around manufactured pop culture. The rap rock/boy band/solo females/techno/etc.. exploded which heavily influenced the culture.

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Diligent_Accident775@reddit

Britney and her clones + Boy Bands

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jdw1977@reddit

I’d say it was when the Spice Girls and Hanson broke in the US around 1997. Robyn’s early hits in 1997 sound almost exactly like Britney, because they were Max Martin produced. That softened the ground for Britney and boy bands imo.

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jacksonmills@reddit

Yeah, this is when the 90s started to end (and the beginning of the late 90s started) - 97 was the transitional year but by 98 we were definitely in full swing. Hit Me Baby One More Time was in September of 1998; that was my freshman year in high school. I was really hoping to get some of that mid-90s culture in high-school, but I basically just missed it.

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Comprehensive-Fact94@reddit

I think '95 is when the industry caught up with what up to that point had been a fairly 'organic' social movement. Designer brands started pumping out overpriced flannel and 'grunge' fashion. Pop bands started dressing/sounding like the big Seattle bands to the point it was hard to tell who was legit and who was an industry plant. Culture vultures followed. Cobain also left us around that time. He was the culture's north star in a lot of ways The scene didn't feel honest anymore and people started to move elsewhere. Then came boy bands, Electronic music, the Latin explosion and Nu Metal, and that was it.

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SmogMoon@reddit

The late 90’s. You know, when the culture of the late 90’s began.

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andyrocks@reddit

5th of April, 1994.

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govolsgo865@reddit

The good music started dying off around 97 or 98, but it was not an overnight death. The 90s vibes and good times died on 9/11. I can't speak for fashion and such, as I don't pay much attention to it and still regularly wear clothes that I had in 2006.

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Room234@reddit

It came to a screeching halt on Sept 11, 2001.

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Striking-Access-236@reddit

When Daft Punk released their debut album Homework in 1997...

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SensibleBrownPants@reddit

When Metallica released ‘Load’.

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JMDeutsch@reddit

When they started airing commercials for “Hit me baby one more time” The push to sell Britney and Creed was soooo hard. I don’t recall anyone having so many commercials trying to sell their albums.

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prix03gt@reddit

I think Right between MySpace and Facebook. Social media killed that vibe.

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arkveinynor@reddit

Release of Fight Club and the Matrix. We saw the peak, we saw the conformity and its consequences... And we did nothing about it.

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Door_Number_Four@reddit

When radio started playing Korn and Limp Bizkit. The dwindling of the national IQ started about then as well.

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ColbyAndrew@reddit

When the Y2K bug hit and shut down the entire world‘s computer systems.

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Impressive-Cod-7103@reddit

I think by roughly ‘97-‘98 we were transitioning to the millennium vibe/aesthetic.

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dayman-woa-oh@reddit

There were three moments that defined the slow death of 90s counter culture. Kurts death, Woodstock 99 and then the final nail was 9/11

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TrustAffectionate966@reddit

All the deaths - mainly Kurt Cobain, Layne Staley, and Shannon Hoon. 💀☠️

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Abidarthegreat@reddit

It was a bliss created by ignorance. The 90s had the highest crime rates, highest drug problems, dirtiest cities. But we pretended it wasn't true. Don't long for the happiness that comes from closing your eyes, ears, and mind; it's unearned and illusory.

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Swimming-Trifle-899@reddit

I feel like rave culture and more electronic music started really gaining steam leading up to Y2K. Things had kind of a futuristic, sci-fi vibe. Beastie Boys and Beck were kind of my entry level mainstream artists into a more electronic focus than the grunge I loved in the early 90s. But 9/11 2001 was truly the end of the world as we knew it.

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futilitaria@reddit

The mobile phone killed that vibe. The Family Cell Phone Plan, and the threat of getting kicked off it, ended th rebellious non-conformity. Now kids and their parents listen to th same music (Taylor Swift for example)

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FoppyRETURNS@reddit

When Soundgarden broke up. What I know about common culture is spotty after that point.

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