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Notes -
'Cause life is a game that no one wins
But you deserve a head start the way your life's goin'
So throw in the towel, 'cause your life ain't shit
No take that towel and hang yourself with it
Life's short and hard like a body-building elf
So save the planet and kill yourself
If you're feeling down-and-out with what your life's all about
Lift your head up high and blow your brains out
(Lift your head up high and blow your brains out)
Lift your head up high and blow your brains out
(Lift your head up high and blow your brains out)
Lift your head up high and blow your brains out
Suicide rates and murder among teens and the power of memes.
For those old enough to remember, these will be familiar times. Let me ask the '90s teenagers in the room, what was the dominant feeling of the age?
I would say that it was mostly a decade in which the youth aesthetic was of depression, sullen expressions, heroin chic, and underpinning it all, suicide. Suicide was in the air from the minute Cobain suck-started a shotgun. The music had song titles like “Hey man, nice shot” and “Lift your head up high and blow your brains out”. Subtle stuff. On the black side of the culture, gangsta rap was big. Drugs, murder, drugs, murder, booty. Still lighter than the white side.
Would it surprise anyone if I told you that the '90s were the only improvement in the teen suicide rate since the Depression? Murder rates peaked in '92 and dropped for twenty years.
Let's consider more recent history. The teen culture from 2010 to 2020. I'm not sure how those in it would classify that era, but to me it seemed like a decade of social media, politicization and gender. The Z discovered a giant pool of suicides (the lowest rate in decades) that they could save with hormones and surgery. They were the first generation to tackle racism and really make black lives matter. The aesthetic of the age is chipper, smug, vague, androgynous. Black culture has moved from the ghetto to the antiracism seminar. The result?
Suicide rates rose swiftly throughout the decade among teens, bringing them back into line with the already high rate before the '90s reversed course for twenty years. Murder rates started rising in 2013 and shot up in 2020. Mostly among young black men.
Death has a way of clarifying things, as it's tough to fake.
One cannot go back to the past, but we would do well to consider what sociopolitical norms and policies might have contributed to that massive achievement, and we absolutely must be extremely clear about which ones lead to the reversal. And no, I'm not talking about Lupus and Jimmy Pop.
I wasn't a teenager in the 90s but my memory is that it was sunny. The 80s grimdark/power breakfast power shoulders greed is good era was over, now it was Captain Planet, colour-blindness, and we can fix things. Economic issues were generally good, the Berlin Wall had fallen and the Cold War was over, things can only get better. I have a mental image of Hawaiian shirts and bright colours.
Grunge might have been there, but so was rave and the aftermath of late 80s acid house. Dance music took off. Speed and E (the love drug) are the era's drugs of choice.
I'd say that the 1990s were a confusing era since there was a combination of general belief in optimism and progress and "all the big questions have been solved" coupled with a pop culture characterized by Twin Peaks/X-Files/Matrix style ide that this is all just a fake exterior and below it dark and evil things were happening. Musically you had grunge, NiN, Marilyn Manson, nu metal etc. - and the idea that all these were just fake rebellion for suburban kids whose lives were so good they had to create imaginary angst for themselves. Even the rave/dance stuff seemed to attempt to go for the "partying in the face of the apocalypse" vibes, even if it was, in the end, partying for the standard reasons of partying.
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