We all miss the '90s

I've been slowly going through Buffy the Vampire Slayer again and cleaning out some boxes that I've stored for a similar length of time, so I've thought a lot about the 1990s recently. Apparently so has author Glynnis MacNicol:

Had I gone to sleep on New Year’s Eve in 1999 and waked today, Rip Van Winkle style, much of the world I left behind that night would still feel familiar. Fast-fashion hubs like Urban Outfitters are peddling baby tees and baby-doll dresses. Point-and-shoot cameras, like the one I toted into the city, flip phones and even smoking are making a comeback. Perhaps most notable, I’d still recognize a shocking number of the people currently wielding influence over our lives, not least because so many of them were prominent in New York City at the time.

It’s not just pop culture. New Yorkers still have Chuck Schumer trolling the Senate; he took office in 1999 and never left. And, of course, our president: It was in the 1990s that Donald Trump became an avatar for wealth and excess. It’s as though Generation X, of which I am solidly a member, is wreaking some strange revenge. The people we put in power and the culture we created currently have an outsize influence on the world.

Apparently author Kurt Andersen had a similar idea back in February.

I do miss the '90s. Well, the late '90s, after law school, right around the time The Daily Parker began on a small corner of my company's Internet server. But still.