We Left Something Good Back in the ’90s. Come With Us to Get It Back.

Join us for a six-week time-travel experiment in real-world connection. Sign up to get Party Like It's 1996 in your inbox.

Have you noticed that even though you are more in touch with friends than ever before, you’re not actually as close to them as you wish you were?

Have you noticed that even though your every whim—for food, for entertainment, for opinions that match yours—can be satisfied with the tap of a screen, you often feel unsatisfied?

Have you noticed that the entire world seems to be inside your head all the time, drowning out the people, places, and problems that are actually within your reach?

You’re living life in the 2020s. We’re all right there with you. But I’ve been thinking a lot about a different time, the decade when, coincidentally, Slate was born: the 1990s. Recently, I’ve been making a concerted effort to spend my leisure time just a little more like I did back then: an era when hardly anyone had a cellphone, when a six-CD changer and premium cable were the peak of entertainment technology, and when the inventors of Partiful were still in elementary school.

Back in the ’90s, I was in my 20s, and a lack of connectivity—and a dearth of options—required us all to organize our own fun and embrace serendipity as a kind of plan . While plenty of things about the ’90s sucked—you would not believe how difficult it was to buy hummus—I am firmly convinced that back then I was more connected to my friends and family, the people about whom I cared most, than I am now. And somehow my days and nights were more memorable back when I had to watch whatever was on TV, read whatever was in the newspaper, or go to whatever stupid bar my friends told my answering machine they were at.

I’m ready to recapture a little bit of that spirit. I’m ready to loosen the iron grip the out-of-control modern world has encouraged me to maintain on my social life and relearn how to go with the flow. It’s going to feel so good.

You can join me and feel this way too! Welcome to Party Like It’s 1996 , a six-week time-travel challenge in honor of Slate’s 30th anniversary. If you’ve recently been paralyzed by choice, felt overconnected but underinvested in your friendships, or simply been looking for a reason to wear your new tortoiseshell headband , then this series is for you.

If you sign up by Aug. 14 and are among the first 100 people to complete the challenges along with me, we’ll send you some fun stuff in the mail ! (If you’re tied up then, you can still sign up anytime afterward and do the challenges at your leisure.)

And no matter when you sign up, we have a gift for you: You can join Slate Plus for a special price of just $19.96 for the first six months . You’ll get even more of what Slate has to offer, plus members-only Party Like It’s 1996 perks, like secret Spotify playlists and games.

For six weeks, you’re going to receive an email every Monday offering you a challenge designed to bring a touch of that incandescent golden age to your cool-LED life. Together, we’re going to go out, stay in, hang out, keep in touch, and road-trip like it’s 1996. And we’re going to develop some practical strategies for incorporating all these techniques into your everyday, to make you more present in your own life and in the lives of the people you love.

Before we get started, though: a word about phones and their role in this newsletter series. While of course many of the contemporary ills we’re trying to address—frictionless satisfaction, shallow connections, the overwhelming sense that the world itself is crushing you at every single moment—are connected to (or even derived from) our smartphones, I am not really anti-phone. At no point in these newsletters am I going to urge you to throw your phone into the sea, for any number of reasons. For example, how would you find your way back home from the sea without GPS?

Cellphones are inextricably tied to our modern world, and I am not going to argue that they don’t make our lives better in many ways. I like being able to text my kids! Sometimes you gotta pay for ParkMobile, or call a Lyft, or Venmo a friend. But while engaging with the challenges in Party Like It’s 1996, I’d urge you to be conscious of when you look to your phone—and how you use it.

So often, the ease a smartphone offers is in direct opposition to the exact kind of connection we’re all craving so desperately. It’s great to listen to a podcast while you’re out on a walk. But what if, sometimes, you took a walk with a friend instead, and talked to them? It’s great to use Shazam to identify the artist whose song is playing at Chili’s. But what if, instead, you asked the person sitting next to you at the bar who it is?

(It is Supertramp.) Getting directions, depositing a check, playing a game, watching a video: For the next six weeks, when you think about reaching for your phone, I’d urge you to consider, Is there a less efficient, more connected way to accomplish this task? If so, pursue that.

And remember: Your phone is a wonderful tool, but it also always represents the alternative . I don’t mean only that it’s distracting. I mean that your phone opens a portal to all the other things in the world you could be doing rather than what you’re doing now. But those things aren’t useful to you! You’re not doing them. You’re doing what you are doing now, so do it .

And do it with friends! Because these challenges are all social in nature, my first recommendation is that you find a few friends or family members who might want to embark on this journey with you . Everything you’re about to do will be more fun in a group!

If you sign up now, I’ll email you tomorrow with Challenge No. 1 . In the meantime, drop me a line! I’d love to hear what you remember about life in the ’90s—or, if you’re too young to remember it, how you imagine it. What are you looking forward to about these challenges? And what are you dubious about? Email me at 1996@slate.com .