Following | -1998-

Following 1998, irony took over. Grunge died. Nu-metal and boy bands fought for the radio, and the cynicism of the late 90s gave way to the pre-traumatic stress of 9/11. We stopped dreaming about flying cars and started worrying about the backup of our hard drives.

1998 was the last year of the old world. It was the final moment you could be a kid riding a bike without a leash (a cell phone) to your parents. It was the last time you could get hopelessly lost and discover a diner by accident.

I don’t want to go back permanently. I like having the sum of human knowledge in my palm. But I miss the silence. I miss the waiting. Following -1998-

Here is the thing I miss most: The naivety.

Following 1998, we entered the long now. Everything is recorded, archived, and optimized. Following 1998, irony took over

Looking back at media produced before 1998, there is a relentless optimism. We thought Y2K was a technical glitch, not an existential dread. We thought the internet would be a global coffeehouse, not a global colosseum. We watched The Truman Show (1998) and thought, “Wow, what a creepy concept,” not “Oh, that’s just Tuesday on Instagram.”

October 5, 2023

Following 1998, silence became suspicious. If you didn’t reply to an email within 24 hours, you were negligent. If you didn’t have a mobile phone, you were eccentric. We traded the inconvenience of absence for the anxiety of availability.

I miss when “following” just meant the next page in a book, not a metric of your worth. We stopped dreaming about flying cars and started

I remember the summer of 1997 vividly. You could be unreachable . If you drove from Boston to Maine, you simply vanished for three hours. No cell signal. No texting “I’m 5 minutes away.” You just... arrived. It felt like magic.