Everything Was Better In The 90s

Everything was better in the nineties. You know it, I know it, even the Russian bots spamming your newsfeed on X know it - and they're not even real people. It was just a better time. There were no smartphones, no social media, and most importantly no social media influencers. Believe it or not, back then you actually had to talk to somebody (physically interact with them) before discovering they were a narcissistic sociopath. Now you just look at their Instagram filters, or whether they have pronouns in their bio.

To any Gen-Z readers still here, I promise I'm not making this up: There was a time you could attend a concert and enjoy it with your own two eyes and ears - not filtered through the phone screen of the twat in front of you recording the whole thing, thereby rendering his actual presence there pointless. 

Do you remember when we made memories? Enjoyed private moments? Took time for ourselves? Nowadays you can't take a piss in a public toilet without some gurning moron snapping selfies next to you. Because everything needs to be documented online. If you don't upload it to the ‘gram, did it even really happen? Perhaps a more pertinent question for some to ask would be: “Am I an attention-seeking, soulless vacuum with a desperate, all-consuming need for external validation?” (Though sadly, an influencer engaging in introspection is about as likely as me becoming an intersectional feminist). I doubt you could even bottle someone in a Wetherspoons these days without it being recorded and repackaged as a TikTok reel. What have things come to when even a noble British tradition like that becomes just another piece of co-opted ‘content’?Is nothing sacred anymore?

Even barely-functioning psychopath Andrew Tate has said Instagram makes him feel sad and he's sick of it. And remember, Andrew is a toxically masculine sigma lone wolf cold-as-ice stoic alpha male, or something. If social media gives even him the blues, you know it must be truly godawful. 

Discovering that Andrew Tate can feel sadness is akin to discovering that your pet hamster has a solid grasp of the long-term ramifications of Brexit. But unfortunately the Top G's tears haven't stopped him using every online platform out there to spew his Kool-Aid over millions of young men every day. That's the thing about influencers; they're everywhere. Delete all your social media, and you'll still find mainstream outlets like BBC News covering Tate's tweets as if each one is a major step towards a Middle Eastern peace settlement.

And this brings me back to how much I miss the nineties. Back in that blessed decade, Andrew Tate would just be a weird guy in a pub banging on about martial arts and his collection of nunchucks. You'd just avoid eye contact with him, sit in a quiet corner, and forget about the madness of the world for a few hours. 

Ah, the nineties. As the young kids love to say these days, #TakeMeBack.