You've Got Mail is one of the most accurate pictures of pre-9/11 life I've seen

So I never had the fortune of watching this movie until my fiancee showed it to me on Saturday. While it was surprising in many ways (including how easily the characters shrugged off internet infidelity) I think the most shocking was how strongly I was reminded of pre-9/11 life. It's not just the nostalgia factor of dial-up or AOL screen names or the concept of chatrooms (which I never realized completely disappeared). It was that the Yuppie lifestyle was in full-speed-ahead mode. Starbucks was still trendy; that little bit about defining self through the coffee you order? That was true. Hipsters have absolutely nothing on the 1990's high-powered executive. Back then, Starbucks introduced the very idea of your coffee being a part of identity Now we're so saturated with personal choice that no one cares what monks picked your coffee beans from which mountain range under what cycle of the moon. It's almost passe now.

There was no weary cynicism towards capitalism. In fact, it reads like a love letter penned to it. The executive gets the girl in the end. He steals her from a pointedly leftist columnist who in turn finds HIMself attracted to a philanthropist that is part of the New York bourgeois. This is after Hanks shuts down a shop that was her family's business so his father's superstore can cut a tiny sliver more profit. If that plot doesn't seem like a Libertarian fantasy, I don't know what does.

It just struck me as odd that this was life only 15 years ago. While technology has obviously advanced I think the culture of American life has changed as much, if not more.

Submitted July 12, 2016 at 12:11AM by Fire_away_Fire_away http://ift.tt/29zGFkf