Millennial Energy
What’s happening, Internet? Jedda posted the other day about the millenial generation being huge on nostalgia, I’m all about certain types of nostalgia and I love being a millenail so I had to jump onboard this one. Even growing up in opposite sides of the world I see similar experiences and smiled at her memories. I’ll follow her format and throw in a touch of Aotearoa flavour.
Fashion
- Wallet chains on velcro wallets, luckily this didn’t make it past primary school.
- DAX wax spiked hair, that shit was impossible to wash out.
- Aluminum ball chain necklaces, went well with white World Industry singlets.
- DVS skate shoes, never school shoes.
Music & Media
- Movies at the theatre when they still an intermission halfway through.
- Waiting for RTR Countdown to come on to record music videos to VHS on the weekend in the early nineties.
- Channel 4 started in the late nineties, syndicating shows from MTV and Comedy Central, this was huge.
- Making sure to be home at 7pm to listen to Channel Z’s Top 20 countdown in the late nineties, early two thousands.
- Figuring out DC++ on IRC to download music before abandoning it for Napster.
- New Zealand Music! This was huge in the late nineties, early two thousands thanks to generous government funding.
Toys & Games
- Riding bikes, everywhere.
- Transformers, Ninja Turtles, GI Joes, everything had a cartoon tied to it. (I don’t think this has changed).
- Chatter rings, these things were insane and drove the teachers at school mad.
- Alex Kidd on the Sega Master System, this was more popular than Nintendo here.
- Pokemon on the Gameboy, Red and Blue, battling with link cables.
- Jonah Lomu Rugby on the Playstation, no bunts.
- Basketball cards, X-Men cards, rugby league cards. If it was collectible, I was collecting it.
Tech
- 28.8k external modems that sat next to the computer, internal 56.6k modems came later.
- $20 for 20 hours of dialup internet before ISPs started offering unlimited hours. We also got an extra phoneline by this point.
- As well as IRC, Instant Messaging was my jam too, and I’m still doing it!
- By highschool the Nokia 5110 was the phone to have, a local subsidary telco launched unlimited txting in our city and that was that for six months.
Lifestyle
- Being friends with all the kids in the neighbourhood.
- Paper run as your first job, paid nothing though.
- By highschool if we didn’t go away for the Christmas holidays we’d spend our days down the river.
- Getting our full licences by 16 and driving turbo charged cars. Seriously, wtf right?
- Learning to navigate relationships with each other, tragic love stories every other week…
I really enjoyed putting this post together. I might come back to it and flesh it out more later. Like Jedda asked, can you relate? Let us know.
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