What happened back in 1989/1990?

reply to post by okamitengu


The calm before the storm

I was born in 1988 Oct 1st to be exact, so I have little memory from the 80's

I like to think there has been something that changed signifcantly though

In 1989 they had the earthquake in SF during the world series... Anything else that happen is irrelevant to me

Originally posted by dayve
In 1989 they had the earthquake in SF during the world series... Anything else that happen is irrelevant to me

I was there, kind of. My mom was 6 months pregnant with me and we lived there.

Did you guys who were actually old enough to remember the changeover from 1989 to 1990 notice an atmosphere shift? Like it literally seemed like the pre-1990 world had been destroyed and the post-1990 world was only some kind of replica of it with a different essence? Or am I just being silly?

This is a very unusual and interesting thread. I always felt there must have been something notable about those years. Mostly because nobody ever talks about them.

Originally posted by lampsalot
Did you guys who were actually old enough to remember the changeover from 1989 to 1990 notice an atmosphere shift? Like it literally seemed like the pre-1990 world had been destroyed and the post-1990 world was only some kind of replica of it with a different essence? Or am I just being silly?

I was in the eighth grade that year. I was very glad to leave the eighth grade as I hated middle school passionately. Computers took about half-an-hour to boot up, we used a modem to connect to a local BBS, Windows didn't exist, we all could navigate in DOS, people had pagers and not cell phones, we mostly still used tapes as CDs were quite new, every girl in America used massive amounts of hairspray on bouffant fringe/bangs, leggings were extremely in, I absolutely could never miss an episode of Star Trek TNG every Saturday evening, everyone was gaga over Billy Joel, and the Berlin Wall came down that year. Those were interesting times.

Actually, I think the change you recognize began with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I have a thought as to what has been happening to the world. But what is happening goes back farther than "90" however. So here goes.

Did you know the Christian Apocalypse started in 1948? And it was supposed to run approximately 70 to 80 years? 1988 would have been the halfway mark.

Here's my reasoning. Per Matthew 24 and the fig tree parable end time events were supposed to be fig leaves on the tree. Early warnings that the end times were coming. But a birth of a nation of Israel is a end time event predicted in multiple places in the bible. So while Matthew 24-14 is the first event of the end times the creation of a nation of Israel would be the second event.

Essentially the "generation" of Matthew 24 is at least 64 years old as of May and possibly as much as 67 years old.

Now here is another disturbing parallel from the bible. Book of Daniel chapters 8 and 11. Supposedly end time prophesies according to Daniel. Much of which happened once back in the BC era. But the problem with bible prophesies is sometimes they have dual or even multiple fulfillments. So taking Daniel and putting it as simply as possible What you have is this.

The very first end time event according to Daniel is that a group of middle eastern powers strike out against another power that looked Greek. If you assume that Washington DC would look like a 21st century Athens to a well educated person of 500 BC then you could say that the very first event of the modern times that resembles Daniel 11-2 was the hostage crises of 1979.

And then it gets worse. You could say Daniel 11-2 culminated in the 9-11 attacks. Then it moved on to subsequent events. Daniel 8 states that the nation that looked Greek attacks the middle east and conquers 2 nations. So far so good. It would appear that Daniel is 3 for 3 with end time events over the past 11 years.

But what is extremely disturbing is the next 2 events that will happen according to Daniel. The 4th event of the end times per Daniel is that "Persia" is conquered. Which seems likely if you are keeping up with current events.

It's event 5 that has me worried. It's when the nation that looked Greek fractures into the 4 republics.

Then the kingdoms of the north and south form and the 7 year agreement of Daniel 9 is signed. Based on Matthew 24's generation that would be signed between 2018 to 2021.

So I hope you enjoyed that big can of crazy. As for me I always thought I might be interesting to wake up one day and realize you were living in a novel. I just never thought the novel was going to be Left Behind.

Originally posted by m1991
...Many people of course, anyone over 28 years old, can remember when the 80s turned into the 90s ---- am I crazy? Were the 80s actually pretty much the same as today's world aside from things like the Internet, or did people and the world seem different in a metaphysical way in pre-1990 times?

I graduated High School in 1990.

Gas was $.99 per gallon. I could afford to drive a 68 Camaro.
We had beepers instead of cell phones.
There was no call waiting, no caller ID, no email, no internet, no GPS.
MTV played music videos.
There was 1 HBO, 1 Showtime, 1 Cinemax, 1 Movie Channel.
Tecmo Bowl was the best video game...on a Nintendo. Bo Jackson could run anybody over.
Crack coc aine was the drug that would ruin your life.
Mothers Against Drinking and Driving started the first of many brainwashing crusades against children that they would accept today's world when it came.


More innocent I think because less media content was available.

oh...mullets and big hair.

IMO, right around 1989/1990 is the time America, and perhaps the West as a whole, seemed to enter a kind of Orwellian perpetual war that went beyond all the 'rhetorical wars' (wars on drugs, crime, drunk driving etc...). Funny thing was, it was supposed to be a time when peace was breaking out all over the place! The Berlin Wall fell, the Russians had pulled out of Afghanistan and then the Soviet Union dissolved.

And then (or within a matter of 12 months):

Panama

Iraq in Kuwait

Constant Air presence over/around Iraq (enforcement of a no fly zone is still a combat mission, and as such, we have been at Iraq's throat since 1991)

Somalia

Does anyone recall the butchery in Rwanda?

Balkan mission (now occupation)

Supporting/funding Ethiopia's war with Eritrea

Second Balkan mission

Post 9/11 Afghanistan invasion

The Australians had a bit of a ruffle with someone some where

Israel get hit with rockets and suicide bombers en masse

Supporting/funding a proxy war between Ethiopia and Somalia

Invasion of Iraq

Proxy war with Iran

Israel got pissy with its neighbors and invaded (again)

The US launches drone missiles against targets world wide, to include in non combat areas, in the "War on Terror"

And all this without even bothering to mention things like FARC, Sudan, Kashmir and a whole host of other flashpoint conflicts which existed before the dates you mentioned, a few of which - like Iran-Contra - in some ways feed into the more modern conflicts.

Frankly, ever since 1989/1990, the whole world has gone to #! So, what happened... again... I feel a state of Orwellian perpetual war has been created. And I would add one small point here... technically, if you take into account giving aid to Iran so they could fight against Iraq (even though we were funding the Iraqi side of the war as well)... technically... we have either been at war with, or supported war against Iraq, since 1980 with only a small break between 1988 and 1990!

So # what the media tells you about the Afgan war being our longest war and Vietnam being our longest conflict... we have been going at with/in/around Iraq for 32 damn near consecutive years!

Maybe it has something to do with the end of the Soviet Union, the advances in computing, and the spreading of home computers...

Since the 90's, people became much more obsessed with "design" and "image" than they were in the 80's.

Maybe the advances in graphics computing have something to do with this, with Photoshop, and also the new softwares for industrial design.

1989 - the age of the Internet just started:

1989-1990 The Internet, World Wide Web & Tim Berners-Lee: Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau propose a 'hypertext' system starting the modern Internet

then a bit later:

1991 The World Wide Web: The World Wide Web is launched to the public on August 6, 1991

The impact of this technological progress is greater than inventing the printing press back in the 1500s, we still adjust to the change generated by it.

I'm soooo glad this topic popped up again because I was just thinking about this the other day.

I was born in 1989 like I said. When I think back to the year in my mind, for some reason I see shadows on an afternoon lawn in my mind. Then my image of 1990 is black, like a light being turned off.

I'm still convinced something special (besides my birth lol) happend in 1989.

Originally posted by SilentThundersGF
This is a very unusual and interesting thread. I always felt there must have been something notable about those years. Mostly because nobody ever talks about them.

I was born then and I have always felt like it was a fundamental transition between the 'old' and 'new' worlds if you will.

Originally posted by Partygirl
I'm soooo glad this topic popped up again because I was just thinking about this the other day.

I was born in 1989 like I said. When I think back to the year in my mind, for some reason I see shadows on an afternoon lawn in my mind. Then my image of 1990 is black, like a light being turned off.

I'm still convinced something special (besides my birth lol) happend in 1989.

Are you telling me you remember being born? That's amazing!

This thread just keeps popping up.

I did have this discussion with a friend of mine, "did anything special happen in 1989" - we went all over the place with it, but most of it was only personally relevant. At the end of the discussion we both agreed that the 80's didn't end until 1992, and the 90's ended in 1997. Short decade


Otherwise, I have been reading the thread here and there. A lot of you have some good ideas (some are crap but you know... ), and for the most part I agree with my original comment still. Which essentially was, "nothing ever changes, it just gets recycled and repackaged for the next generation." And I'd like to add (from another thread), my opinion that, "The only reason we think its interesting, is because we're witnessing it personally." For example, starting in the 1920's-ish till ??? people were paranoid and scared of communists. Fast forward 80-ish years and people are scared and paranoid of terrorists. Same damn difference. Just recycled, relabeled, repackaged. A new "boogeyman" if you will, with the same idea driving it. Fear.


Growing up in the 80's, I felt the same way about the 60's as the OP felt about the 80's. Different world. Different time. Yes it totally was. What changed is that the world kept moving forward. Nothing more, nothing less.... not really.


I think we should narrow it down though if you really, really want to find a change. I'm leaning towards the beginnings of easy access internet myself. While it largely wasn't available to poor people until like 1995, it certainly was a major factor in the technologically driven society we live in today.

If thats not enough for you, the first episode of the Simpsons aired on December 17th, 1989. Can't deny that changed us!!!

I just feel like 1989 is somehow a forgotten year, very mysterious. The year that slipped down the crack in the sofa. It like 1988 and 1990 just overlapped and 1989 got lost in the shuffle. Or we could say it happened, and we lived it, but it wasn't really part of either time, in a sense. It is its own time. I have a really strong feeling about this, its so weird.

Although I was quite young. It is not a memory, like somebody else asked, but a feeling that developed later, when I think back and try to imagine the spirit of the time. I guess everyone develops distorted memories of times they can't remember clearly (and times they can remember, too). But what is funny is my impression of these years seems to be echoed by so many here, so there may be something to it???? It seems "shadowy," like something overlapped, like I said. I can't explain beyond that, its poetic not logical.

I find it interesting that the early 90s is still considered quite 'current' but the late eighties is considered like, ancient or something. both are 20+ years ago now.

reply to post by Romanian


Yes, the age of the internet started, but it wasn't until 93 that people in my high school knew about it, and only a few got to play around with it. Our computer team went to Oregon to a competition and our school got to have an internet connection for one whole year. Those students were the only ones who got to use it. By 94, when I started college, I had an e-mail account and the internet didn't have a lot on it. We loved IRCs and MUDs though. Between 89 and 93, most people connected to a BBS, and that wasn't the internet.

As I said before, 89 was fairly significant due to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It wasn't a forgotten year. It was a huge year.

The world in 1994 was radically different from the world in 1988.

That's what I have to say.