The Nineties, Chuck Klosterman

The nineties—the last period in American history when personal and political engagement was still viewed as optional. The 1990s was a period when the world was starting to go crazy but not so much that it wasn’t unmanageable or irreparable. We controlled technology more than technology controlled us. The concepts of selling out; the internet; Jordan’s baseball run; the Biosphere; US involvement with helping get Yeltsin elected; the beverage industry; consumers and consumption; racial divide; introspection and emotional uninvestment; commercialism; movie and TV (escapist type of filmmaking); culture… Chuck covers it all. A time when someone was comprising the values they originally espoused in exchange for something superficial they would get looked down upon. Personal brand and influencer were a joke. While the industrial revolution unspooled over 50 years, the Internet revolution only took 10. The full spectrum of social and psychological consequences that accompanied the advent of the internet is too profound to explain or understand. It exponentially expanded the parameters of external existence while decreasing the material size of interior existence. It’s a reminder that when you didn’t like something currently on TV, the only options were to watch nothing, watch something you didn’t like, or leave the room. All the litany of shifts… all of these things had antecedents that explained their materialization. Chuck’s comprehensive and enlightening viewpoints will entertain and disturb.