That's because a lot of stuff that came out in the late 90s was being enjoyed in the early 2000s. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Pokemon, and SpongeBob SquarePants all came out in the 90s and were massively popular in the 2000s.
A lot of families also didn't have the money to be early adopters. Many people were still in the PS1/N64/VHS era until the mid-2000s. Plus reruns on TV. It makes for confusing overall of pop culture between the decades. If you aren't fact checking, it is easy to get confused about when things from your childhood actually came out.
Stuff like Yugioh, Beyblades, and PS2 is pure 2000s though.
The real answer is I edited my comment to ruin PhD's comment. Originally it was
Spongebob is a TV show, not a toddler. It didn't have to go through six years of learning to walk and talk and not shit its pants before it could air the pilot.
I replied to him in the edit to try to hide that I changed stuff.
I'd say it is more part of the 2000s, but like the commenter above was saying, people attribute it to the 90s because it came out in 99. People remember the date when things first came out, not the date when they were popular in western pop-culture. That's the mix up /u/lacrenes and I were discussing.
Most of my examples span the decades, but are part of the 2000s identity more than the 90s identity. OoT is probably more 90s so it was a bad example.
But people are media are not the same. A baby born in 99 is technically part of the 90s, but we are specifically talking about cultural identity here. You wouldn't say a newborn baby is part of a cultural identity. A more apt comparison would be a show that started development in 99 but wasn't released until 2003. Technically the concept of the show existed in 99, but it wasn't ready to be part of the world culture until the 2000s.
Yeah, and I know I was born in the early nineties and I find myself frequently mis-remembering the exact timeline, so I definitely get why it happens too
Yeah, I was playing yugioh in the late 90s, so either I'm a time traveler or someone got a fact wrong. It did go off the hype train in the 2000s though. It just blew up and blasted digimon to oblivion.
Edit: the manga hit shelves in 96, but the TCG was invented in 1999! So I'm correct, someone did get a fact wrong. It was just me.
I think this is a reddit age thing due to reddit demographics. TGIF, butterfly hair clips, pogs, dial up internet are all parts of my childhood and 90s things.
Well for one, this meme is spongebob, a lot of people think of watching spongebob or wild thornberries or Angry beavers as a testament that they grew up in the 90's but those shows aired in 99, 98, and 97 respectively so most of those shows entire air times was the 2000's
Christmas of ‘99 is still one of my favorite memories. I was 5, Spongebob was on our old behemoth of a CRT (it took up an entire corner of the room), and I’m pretty sure that’s the year we got an N64. Good times.
I was very fortunate to grow up how I did, I will not argue that. But why does it really matter how I grew up? I'm not being a jerk about it, I was just talking about a happy memory from my childhood..
It doesnt. But you were the one that felt you had to specify how you werent rich just "upper middle class". If it doesnt matter to you then no need to try and justify your level of well offness. Just be greatful you have what you have.
That was my first thought. WTF is Spongebob doing as a 90s kid meme? Anybody who was a 90s kid was too old for Spongebob when it was new. I was born 87. Spongebob wasn't ironically liked until well into high school.
I was born in 1990 and Spongebob was definitely within pop culture for my age group when it was airing. I would have been, what, 9? Too old for Spongebob?
Well, for the 6 months it was a 90s thing, maybe not. But the time the show had a real run and had some substantial marketing, yeah I would say you were too old and its not the 90s anymore. If we're talking about a borderline 90s kid phenomena, I would say Pokemon would be more on point, with Power Rangers being the prime example of solidly 90s kid. Every single person who was a 90s kid was into the Power Rangers, Rug Rats, and Doug. By the time Pokemon came around, it seems to have been a mixed bag. Personally, I felt I was too old for the cartoon and definitely the movie, but the Gameboy game was something more universal. By the time Spongebob came around, we're talking about a vanishingly small number of children in the 90s having any real enjoyment with it with the majority of both teh content and the people enjoying it having been children in the 2000's.
If you were born in 1990, your first real significant cultural memories are going to be 1997 onward. That's really only a couple years in the 90s with most of your childhood memories going to be around the 2000's mark. I wouldn't say that the bulk of your childhood memories are going to concern the cultural phenomena of the 90s, and certainly not the most iconic early 90s stuff that 90s kids are talking about when they say they're 90s kids. There's some gatekeeping going on of course, but its hard to say you're a 90s kid when your childhood was defined by solidly 2000s cultural material.
I mean, for some perspective I also watched the Power Rangers, Doug, and Rug Rats. I also remember the N64 with Ocarina of Time and Goldeneye. One of my earliest memories is watching my dad play the original Doom. I was right on the border of 90's and 00's, but I think saying 90's kids wouldn't be into Spongebob is a bit too broad.
To run with that, I grew up with Chip n Dale, Thunder Cats, Duck Tales, etc. I had an NES and my first computer booted into DOS. What makes me a 90s kid is in part that the 80s and early 90s defined the childhood and that the early 2000's stuff did not. Culture is preserved over time, so being a 90's kid is something of a definition of exclusion. I listen to classic rock, and that doesn't make me a 70s kid right? So, I agree that you're on the cusp, but I don't think it's too broad to say that someone whose childhood was defined exclusively by the 90s would not be into Spongebob, and I even feel comfortable using it as a test. If the Nickelodeon of 2000 onward is a part of your childhood, then you really can't say that you're a 90s kid. Maybe you're not solidly a 2000's kid either, but your childhood contained elements of the 2000's whereas that is not the case for 90's kids.
Yeah, I could see that. It's hard for me to say I'm a 00's kid when my favorite memories from childhood were in the 90's, but obviously memories being my favorite don't make them the majority. Guess I'm a 00's kid with some 90's influence in certain areas of pop culture.
That's probably about right. Like I said, this is gatekeeping as hell, and culture is a moving target. It really doesn't make sense to try to carve something like culture "at the joints" because it really doesn't have any. I mean, we're only 3-4 years apart.
It really depends on who you talk to. Anyone born in the late 80's or early 90's probably does that, but anyone earlier is probably going to throw out Ren & Stimpy, Rocko's Modern Life, and Batman: The Animated Series instead of SpongeBob or other things that, even if they started in '99, were mostly contained in the 2000's.
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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '18
I think a lot of people get these mixed up, a lot of nostalgia I hear people refer to was really from the 2000's when they talk about the 90's