Anyone ever notice this?  Or is it just me?

But during the 90s it seemed like the media was constantly harping on some tragedy.  Not that the things they reported on weren't tragic, but it just seemed like a very integral part of the "90s experience".  Waco, Oklahoma City, Somalia,  Rwanda,  Bosnia,  all of the tragic celebrity deaths like JFK jr, Chris Farley, Kurt Cobain, Selina, 2 Pac, Biggie etc. and also the school shootings, and murder cases like where the woman pushed her car into a lake with her kids inside(anyone remember that?), and the OJ debacle..

Not that the 00s is absent of it(its not!),  but tragedy just seemed pervasive in the 90s.  Which is odd because in many other ways it was a more prosperous, "happy" time for our nation.

There did seem to be alot of tragedies in the 90's and it was all over the news.  Mostly, it was killers and terrorists like Ted "The Unabomber" Kaczynski, Paul Bernardo, Amy Fisher, and Eric Rudolph, the guy who bombed Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Games in Atlanta...  Events like these and many others were pretty much plastered all over the news.  It was quite a depressing time  :\'(

I think perhaps the most depressing as far as celebrity deaths had to be Selina.  Her death was so pointless and it came at such at an awful time(considering her career was just really taking off).  I wonder how big and influential she would have become had she lived..

This was a lot of what was in the news in the '90s. In the '00s we have terrorism and war and they try to alarm us over SARS and the bird flu (which doesn't concern me one bit). The news is always negative.

[quote author=whis

This was a lot of what was in the news in the '90s. In the '00s we have terrorism and war and they try to alarm us over SARS and the bird flu (which doesn't concern me one bit). The news is always negative.


Well, the last 20 years it's gotten alot more that way because of 24 hours news networks.  They need to sell enough advertising to carry 24 hours of programming, so they care about pulling in as many viewers as possible first.  And fear does that.

Yeah, it DID seem like the '90s was a succession of constant tragedies and high-profile crime cases and trials. Probably the focus on this was due to insecurity-in a prosperous, happy time for the nation, people refocused their fear and insecurity on "national-scale" media-promoted tragedies and moral panics. Now, there is more to worry about in real life, so we need less massive media tragedies. Not that they still aren't around, there's the Natalee Holloway and Lacey Peterson cases, which are huge media-promoted things, and some child neglect in the families of foster parents cases which point the finger at DYFS.

Yeah, it DID seem like the '90s was a succession of constant tragedies and high-profile crime cases and trials. Probably the focus on this was due to insecurity-in a prosperous, happy time for the nation, people refocused their fear and insecurity on "national-scale" media-promoted tragedies and moral panics. Now, there is more to worry about in real life, so we need less massive media tragedies. Not that they still aren't around, there's the Natalee Holloway and Lacey Peterson cases, which are huge media-promoted things, and some child neglect in the families of foster parents cases which point the finger at DYFS.
I remember the first WTC bombing,in 1993(?), The OJ Simpson debacle(I still think he DID kill Nicole and Ron, and that the prosecution screwed up bigtime)and that dumb slow-mo chase, Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, and Clinton with his 'other women' and the Whitewater deal, also the savings and loan mess....and most people know how I feel about NJ's DYFS. They are understaffed and underpaid, the DYFS caseworkers have so many kids/families on their caseloads...and the State does not hire more caseworkers to ease the burden. But those mean foster parents are just plain sadistic...some adoptive families here have also been cited for abusing their kids.

I remember the first WTC bombing,in 1993(?), The OJ Simpson debacle(I still think he DID kill Nicole and Ron, and that the prosecution screwed up bigtime)and that dumb slow-mo chase, Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, and Clinton with his 'other women' and the Whitewater deal, also the savings and loan mess....and most people know how I feel about NJ's DYFS. They are understaffed and underpaid, the DYFS caseworkers have so many kids/families on their caseloads...and the State does not hire more caseworkers to ease the burden. But those mean foster parents are just plain sadistic...some adoptive families here have also been cited for abusing their kids.


The DYFS in New Jersey stinks. Ever noticed that it seems like a third-half of national horrible DYFS neglect happens in NJ? Hopefully, Corzine will fix it.

:\'(    Davey Allison and Alan Kulwicki both were killed in the 1990's..and not during a race. Getting to the track.  :\'(

I always associate the 00s as the 'tragedy decade', but you're right, since the 90s (probably since Chernobyl) tragedies don't seem that big anymore, almost commonplace. Let's hope the next decade will take a turn for the better. Though if that happens, the next 'tragedy' might mean a certain famous pop singer revealing a singer part of her anatomy at a certain event.

I always associate the 00s as the 'tragedy decade', but you're right, since the 90s (probably since Chernobyl) tragedies don't seem that big anymore, almost commonplace. Let's hope the next decade will take a turn for the better. Though if that happens, the next 'tragedy' might mean a certain famous pop singer revealing a singer part of her anatomy at a certain event.



Yeah every decade has its share of tragidies and the 90's had alot of them but the 2000's(2001+) seems like a much more depressing time overall than the 90's(of course that could be because I was a kid in the 90's).

Yeah every decade has its share of tragidies and the 90's had alot of them but the 2000's(2001+) seems like a much more depressing time overall than the 90's(of course that could be because I was a kid in the 90's).


Yea things do seem happier when you are a kid because you don't know as much. I was a little older in the late '90s and more aware and I know they were more upbeat than the early '00s (post 9/11). The dark period was 9/11 to about 2003, after that I think things have gotten more positive.

I would not call tragedy as a defining word of the 90s for tradegies do happen all the time, look through history the middle ages had the Black Death, the Great Fire of London in 1666 or the Influenza that hit Britain and Europe during the late 1910s, which in fact killed more people that the Great War.

Yea things do seem happier when you are a kid because you don't know as much. I was a little older in the late '90s and more aware and I know they were more upbeat than the early '00s (post 9/11). The dark period was 9/11 to about 2003, after that I think things have gotten more positive.



Yeah I remember the late 90's like yesterday(middle school,those were the days ;)) and it was defidently upbeat even though there was a slight panic in 1999 with the whole Y2K thing(anybody remember 9/9/99?) but that still didnt effect the mood a whole lot.

i rather thought the defining term of the 90s was "crisis," everything was a crisis. (although yes, there were a lot of tragedies too.) i think after 911 you don't hear that so much, since that actually WAS a crisis.

In the '90s everyone was thinking "this is too good to be true" and harping on every crisis, in the '00s everyone is trying to forget all the real crises.

None of those events in the '90s come close to the effect of 9/11.

rwanda and the wars in the former yugoslavia were both far, far worse than 9/11. by orders of magnitude. so was the first gulf war, for the iraqis. and then there was the aids epidemic in africa. the 90s were very bloody, just not here.

rwanda and the wars in the former yugoslavia were both far, far worse than 9/11. by orders of magnitude. so was the first gulf war, for the iraqis. and then there was the aids epidemic in africa. the 90s were very bloody, just not here.


Yea I was kind of talking from an American perspective, around the world the '90s were bloodier.

Yea things do seem happier when you are a kid because you don't know as much. I was a little older in the late '90s and more aware and I know they were more upbeat than the early '00s (post 9/11). The dark period was 9/11 to about 2003, after that I think things have gotten more positive.


Yeah that time (from september of 01 to mid 03) did seem really dark and morose.  I guess the immediate aftermath of 9/11 did it.. plus our government seemed to FAN the flames of fear at the time and make the situation seem even more dire and depressing.. Plus for people who saw through Bush way before Iraq ever went wrong, it seemed like such a helpless time.  The entire nation seemed to be marching towards war with Iraq, and noone seemed to care about the objections people had. Infact the attitude at the time was really McCarthyite..it was someone uncomfortable for anyone to express discontent.

I remember in school i made anti-Bush remarks and I actually had some people try to physically intimidate me over it.  People were whipped up into a scared frenzy pretty well for a couple of years.

The Asian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, cyclones right now in N. Australia...tragedies from 2004 onwards seem to be mainly natural disasters.

Yeah that time (from september of 01 to mid 03) did seem really dark and morose.  I guess the immediate aftermath of 9/11 did it.. plus our government seemed to FAN the flames of fear at the time and make the situation seem even more dire and depressing.. Plus for people who saw through Bush way before Iraq ever went wrong, it seemed like such a helpless time.  The entire nation seemed to be marching towards war with Iraq, and noone seemed to care about the objections people had. Infact the attitude at the time was really McCarthyite..it was someone uncomfortable for anyone to express discontent.

I remember in school i made anti-Bush remarks and I actually had some people try to physically intimidate me over it.  People were whipped up into a scared frenzy pretty well for a couple of years.


Yeah, the "early '00s" period when I was in say 6th and 7th grade had a very miserable feeling to it. I just have this memory of everybody seeming very troubled and disturbed and worked-up then, oftentimes in personal life, which may have been an effect of 9/11. And I live near NYC, so the effect of "depression" was very severe. Five or six residents died, and lots of people had parents who worked at the WTC but by "fate" escaped (were at another building that day or decided not to go into work...one person even had car troubles that day.) It really makes you believe in fate.

The Asian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, cyclones right now in N. Australia...tragedies from 2004 onwards seem to be mainly natural disasters.
And there are some fools out there, Jerry Falwell included, that think it's all "punishment from God for sins" supposedly committed in places like New Orleans..

Oh yeah, New York and New Orleans...supposedly the new Sodom and Gommorah (they pbly said that about L.A.), I think the fundamentalists that about the Tsunami, that God was punishing them due to their idolatry.

It really makes you believe in fate.


They could have been hurt or killed just as easily.

Two guys are riding through the desert, and a bullet comes out of nowhere,  bounces off a rock, and hits one of them in the head and kills him.  To the guy who didn't get shot and killed, it was a miracle.  To the guy who died, it was just bad luck.

I spose, at humans, it natural to attribute supernatural events/miracles etc to mundane coincidences. It's actually more amazing how PLAUSIBLE so called 'amazing' coincidences are. But I won't go into it. It's called statistics (unfortunately the Lottery is not one of them  >:().