Why was 90's pop culture so edgy?

[mathew101281]

You had the Grim and Gritty era of comics. Wrestling had its attitude era. Gangster rap and Grunge had its hay day. trash tv became mainstream( Jerry Springer and his ilk). What happened in the 90's that turned everybody into an edge lords? I think it was essentially a backlash to the conservative 80's combined with the mainstreaming of cable(and it's looser standards) and the rise of the internet (the complete destruction of standards).

It's funny, looking back now, its crazy what kind of stuff was normal even in children's programing.

Even the commercials, were edgy. (or at least as edgy as corporate propaganda can be.)

[The Chou Lives]

They confused edgy with cool then.

[LordMikel]

They confused edgy with cool then.

Still do today.

[From The Shadows]

You know I thought about this a lot and I felt at least Marvel wasn't all that edgy (or dark) and that was more the 80s. 90's X-Men def had more of a family feel, so did the 80's but I think Jean and Scott were more like your mom and dad and Professor Xavier was more your grandpa during the blue and gold era post Jim Lee of course which was all of ten issues. 80;s Claremont cornered the market on dark and depressing and so did Spider-Man, Daredevil and Cloak and Dagger, etc. Then there is of course mid/late 80s Batman. I think the hype was all in the guns and the hair.

[OopsIdiditagain]

You had the Grim and Gritty era of comics. Wrestling had its attitude era. Gangster rap and Grunge had its hay day. trash tv became mainstream( Jerry Springer and his ilk). What happened in the 90's that turned everybody into an edge lords? I think it was essentially a backlash to the conservative 80's combined with the mainstreaming of cable(and it's looser standards) and the rise of the internet (the complete destruction of standards).

It's funny, looking back now, its crazy what kind of stuff was normal even in children's programing.

Even the commercials, were edgy. (or at least as edgy as corporate propaganda can be.)

I was thinking about this too this week and did some digging. It's actually the opposite to corporate propaganda. It was apparently a counter culture movement against bright and cheery consumerist 80s culture. But like all subcultures, it went mainstream and got commercialized.

[Scott Taylor]

Because of Nirvana. They boldly body-slammed the dwindling, corporate thing the 1980s pop culture had become and the rest of the 1990s didn't look back. Its ok, 1980s pop culture deserved the death sentence by the time the 1990s came along.

However I'm not convinced we all deserved the 1990s!

[CaptCleghorn]

This was part of the 70s top 40. Sorry, but the 90's were weaksauce.

[Sacred Knight]

I was thinking about this too this week and did some digging. It's actually the opposite to corporate propaganda. It was apparently a counter culture movement against bright and cheery consumerist 80s culture. But like all subcultures, it went mainstream and got commercialized.

Best explanation I've heard.

[The no face guy]

Without dissecting the the decade prior I think a lot of it just had to do with the rise of certain genres of music and film.

Musically speaking, the 90's saw the rise in the popularity of gangster rap, hitting its peak with Death Row Records, which turned the genre into a pop culture phenomenon that gave rise to movies like Menace to Society and Boyz in the Hood

This coincided with a nostalgic romanticism for 1970's mob culture films, which resulted from the release of Goodfellas, and Tarantino films (Back then the Italian mob was still a thing)

Finally, post punky grunge music went mainstream, and metal went extreme with the rise of Death Metal in Florida and Norwegian Black Metal.

Things had started to get gritty since the 1970's, I think it just finally hit its apogee in the 90's until enough people said i'm sick of this depressing bs.

[mathew101281]

This was part of the 70s top 40. Sorry, but the 90's were weaksauce.

That was in no way indicative of the era though. Every era had its transgressive artist. But to me the 90’s (and maybe the 60’s) was the era were edgy went mainstream and saturated everything.

[Username taken]

I was thinking about this too this week and did some digging. It's actually the opposite to corporate propaganda. It was apparently a counter culture movement against bright and cheery consumerist 80s culture. But like all subcultures, it went mainstream and got commercialized.

This is it basically.

The 90s was the age of "counter culture".

[ed2962]

I was thinking about this too this week and did some digging. It's actually the opposite to corporate propaganda. It was apparently a counter culture movement against bright and cheery consumerist 80s culture. But like all subcultures, it went mainstream and got commercialized.

[DrNewGod]

Aside from push back against the hyper-conformist 1980s, a lot of things were going on that motivated creatives to get very In Your Face:

• The Reaganomics economy began heading south
• Reaction to the non-response against AIDS had mobilized the LGBTQ community and allies who were questioning all status quo
• Rap and Hip Hop were providing expression for anger at the same time badly-designed laws were incarcerating record numbers of African-Americans
• The internet was creating new ways of distributing content, evading informal censors

As others have said, it made for a very anti-80s counter culture, but the second cable producers realized where sentiment was heading, they commercialized it, magnifying the only parts of it they could understand. Namely, the noisy, shocking parts.

[caj]

A lot of people credit Nirvana and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" for starting it all - and I'm not denying that one bit.

However, I always look to the song "Longview" by Green Day as perfectly describing the state of mind of young people in the 90s.

[Scott Taylor]

Aside from push back against the hyper-conformist 1980s, a lot of things were going on that motivated creatives to get very In Your Face:

• The Reaganomics economy began heading south
• Reaction to the non-response against AIDS had mobilized the LGBTQ community and allies who were questioning all status quo
• Rap and Hip Hop were providing expression for anger at the same time badly-designed laws were incarcerating record numbers of African-Americans
• The internet was creating new ways of distributing content, evading informal censors

As others have said, it made for a very anti-80s counter culture, but the second cable producers realized where sentiment was heading, they commercialized it, magnifying the only parts of it they could understand. Namely, the noisy, shocking parts.

Oh man the 1990s and the internet. Dial-up and no censorship whatsoever. Newsgroups. DWANGO. I never, ever want to go back to most of that. But Ebay was nice when it first started, I wish it was a bit more like that again.