The 1990s were an intensely specific historical moment – the Cold War had just ended, everybody had landlines, and pre-internet peoples took to local forests to harvest their precious smut. This week, Cracked’s taking a look back at those artifacts of Nineties culture and how they shaped our present. Check out part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4.
The world wide web went from 26 websites in 1992 to over a million in 1997, and a huge number of those were about (in the parlance of that era) “freaking nerd crap.” Sure, the internet has had a profound impact on the way human beings live and work and relate to each other, but let’s focus on what’s really important here: the fact that it also reshaped entertainment. And it didn’t just change the way we consume it; it also changed the media itself in multiple ways. For instance …
In The ’90s, Fans Finally Had A DIRECT Effect On Pop Culture
We live in an age when, mere seconds after watching the latest episode of your favorite show, you can grab a device, open an app, and let the creators know exactly how much you think they suck. Truly, a golden era for fandom. But such expedience of communication is a relatively recent development. Back in the ’80s, you had to yell your insults/praises into the void and hope the wind carried them to the intended recipients’ ears (or, you know, write and mail a physical letter, but who has time for that).
In those days, the general approach of popular media toward fans was “shut up and watch it (and buy the merch, please!).” The creators were unreachable gods we could only glimpse at through the fog of promotional interviews; you were at the mercy of whatever Johnny Carson decided to ask them. The sudden popularity of the internet in the ’90s changed that — shows like Babylon 5 had Usenet groups and other online discussion avenues where fans could interact with the creators and directly alter the content of the stories. Other massively popular multimedia franchises wouldn’t even exist today if the early web hadn’t given them a push. If their shorts hadn’t become some of the internet’s first viral videos, Matt Stone and Trey Parker would still be trying to finance Orgazmo 2 and killing it at their local community theater.
The web allowed obsessive fan projects to grow into venerable entertainment industry institutions. IMDb started as a list of hot actresses by Usenet posters, while Rotten Tomatoes began as one man’s personal quest to collect Jackie Chan movie reviews. It’s like the internet was repaying its debt to the geeks that made it possible — after all, AOL evolved from a game download service for the freaking Atari 2600, and the Netscape browser was almost an online network for the Nintendo 64 before its creators changed their minds. Which is probably for the best, because those first browsers were clunky enough without an N64 controller involved.
Music fans rejoiced, too, as they finally found a way to connect to their idols that didn’t put them at risk of catching venereal diseases. When the band Marillion couldn’t secure the money for a tour in 1997, they asked the internet to pitch in and basically invented online crowdfunding. The next year, David Bowie launched his own ISP service that allowed fans to chat with him and watch livestreamed concerts … at stuttery 1998 resolutions, but still. In many ways, the internet grew and improved to accommodate the needs of fans spamming F5 to get their next fix. And that’s especially true when it comes to one highly influential industry in particular …
Porn Didn’t Just Become Easier To Find, But Also More Democratic
It’s been well established that the desire to watch people porking has been behind some of the greatest technological innovations of the past decades, from home video to digital cameras to online streaming. The internet as we know it owes a tremendous debt to porn, and vice-versa, but the sociological implications of cyber-smut go beyond that. It’s not just that it’s way easier for dudes to crank it — importantly, it’s easier for everyone.