You know that people in the '90's had cable TV and the Internet, back then, right? Although Internet access was always by sluggish dial-up connections, and we couldn't use our landline phones while online. (Cell phones existed and were considerably more streamlined than the old brick phones of the '80's, but they were still very expensive and chances of getting any signal were slim.)
I think every decade comes with a set of fads most would later consider weird. I lived through too many of them to list them all, but here are a few off the top of my head.
1970's: Urban Cowboy
1980's: Cabbage Patch Kids and then later Garbage Pail Kids
1990's: Spandex bike shorts for women, super baggy Hammer Pants for men. And then grunge burst onto the mainstream and made the thrift store ratty clothes I could afford fashionable.