George Hotelling quoted The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman
The Nineties: a wise and funny reckoning with the decade that gave us slacker/grunge irony …
In the nineties, doing nothing on purpose was a valid option, and a specific brand of cool became more important than almost anything else. The key to that coolness was disinterest in conventional success. The nineties were not an age for the aspirant. The worst thing you could be was a sellout, and not because selling out involved money. Selling out meant you needed to be popular, and any explicit desire for approval was enough to prove you were terrible.