My 90s TV and the Healing Work of Joey Cato
Picking Back Up Where We Left Off, Part One
I have been watching My90sTV every evening while I do my admin (it's now officially my homepage), and it has become one of the kindest parts of my day. There are emails to answer and ordinary things to organise, and beside them there is this little television, made by someone who cared enough to make it properly. Over time, I have begun to recognise what the experience is giving me: a steadier relationship with media, a little more agency over my attention, and the feeling that an evening can belong to me again. Joey Cato (who designed the site) is helping me recover something I had allowed to become difficult. I want to thank him for that, and to explain why his work deserves support.
For roughly twelve years, I became increasingly media addicted. I have started using the word "mediaddict" for myself because it brings the two words together in a way that feels honest. I love media.
I love the people who make it, the conversations around it, and the worlds it opens. That affection became tangled with a habit of continually checking for the next thing. Interest could turn into obligation without my quite noticing the transition. There was always another update I might have missed, another conversation to follow, another reason to return. After enough years of this, I wanted to recover the ability to enjoy something without feeling responsible for keeping up with everything surrounding it.
My90sTV has become a tool in that recovery, almost a small part of my own rehabilitation. I mean that in the ordinary, personal sense of practising a healthier way to do something I still care about. I can choose to spend time with media and remain aware of the rest of my evening. I can enjoy what arrives and let other things pass. The improvement I can describe is my own, and it has come through repetition: returning to a format that feels calmer, getting used to its pace, and remembering that my interest does not require constant supervision. Joey has made something I can use in daily life, at precisely the point where daily habits are what I am trying to change.
The premise of MyRetroTVs, the wider project that includes My90sTV, is wonderfully straightforward. You open a virtual television and change channels through clips associated with an earlier decade. The familiar controls make the experience immediately understandable. In the default mode, a channel can begin partway through a clip, creating the impression that you have arrived while something is already on. Joey also provides filters and optional viewing modes. The selection has an author and a collection behind it, and there is room within it for the experience of encountering something you had never thought to request.
That last part matters to me enormously. I can know that I would like some television without knowing which exact piece of television I want. I can make the broad decision and leave the particular encounter open. A familiar face might hold my attention; something I have never seen might turn out to be lovely. Something might simply be uninteresting, and I can change the channel. There is permission in that ordinary act. I do not have to make every selection express my identity or confirm a preference I already have. I can discover what I think about something after encountering it, and a little uncertainty becomes part of the pleasure.
Personalised recommendations can be useful, and the way they work is quite explicit. YouTube explains that viewing and search history, liked videos and other account activity can influence what it recommends. After years of following recommendations, I have become more conscious of the feeling that a screen is anticipating me. Sometimes I want to step outside that relationship and look at a selection that has not been presented as a prediction of my next desire. My90sTV gives me that feeling. I arrive with my interests, but I am allowed to meet things beyond them. The experience makes room for curiosity that has not yet become a searchable intention.
When I call the channel surfing random, I am describing that openness. Joey's own viewing guide distinguishes the usual progression through years from a Shuffle Mode that randomises it. The distinction is useful, but the emotional experience starts earlier than a particular setting. I am not being asked to identify the perfect next item before I can relax. I can turn the television on and see what is there. For someone trying to loosen a habit of searching and checking, that is a practical kindness. It removes a little of the work I had begun to mistake for leisure, and leaves me with the much simpler business of watching something if I feel like it.
I grew up with the familiar warnings about television: too much of it, homework done in front of it, the suggestion that any background screen must be making us less attentive. I understand why people worried. Television could absorb an evening then, too, and its programmes and advertisements were selected by people with their own commercial interests. The quality I want to recover is the everyday freedom I associate with it. There could be something on in the room while life continued around it. You might glance up, become interested for a while, and return to what you were doing. That arrangement is useful to me now. I can value it without making an argument that every part of the decade was better.
In my evenings, the admin still gets done. I have something enjoyable beside it, and the evening feels less dominated by the need to seek more material. I am learning to distinguish enjoyment from the restless work of arranging enjoyment. That distinction can be difficult to notice when both happen on the same device, through the same movements of a hand. Joey's television helps me notice it because the invitation is so legible. I have put something on. I can attend to it when I want to. The task in front of me remains a task I can finish, and the entertainment beside it can remain entertainment. I have room to be an ordinary person getting through an ordinary night.
The more time I spend with the site, the more grateful I become for the judgement behind it. A virtual television could have remained a clever visual joke, something to open once and send to a friend. Joey has made an experience I want to return to. The controls and presentation support an activity I already understand, and I can settle into it without learning a complicated new routine. There is considerable generosity in making a thing feel that simple. The person using it gets to enjoy the result without continually thinking about the effort required to build it. I have begun to think about that effort more because I want Joey to know that it is appreciated.
Recently, I donated and suggested a feature that would make my own viewing experience more comfortable. Joey replied to thank me, told me the suggestion sounded great, and said he had implemented it. Pressing the I key now toggles Immersive Mode, which brings the television into focus and hides the surrounding controls. I felt honoured by his response. An idea I had offered had become something other people could use. His reply was friendly and direct, and the change was there to try. It made the project feel even more personal to me, because I could see a straightforward exchange of goodwill turn into a practical improvement.
I also suggested Pocahontas in the Park (which I’ve written about here before), and Joey very awesomely added it too. That gave me another way to contribute to a place I was already enjoying. A remembered piece of television could become available for somebody else's unexpected encounter. I like the thought of that person coming across it without having set out to find it. They might recognise it immediately, or see it for the first time, or continue past it to something else. The possibility is enough. I was able to put something I cared about back into circulation, and Joey was willing to make space for it. There is a modest, satisfying form of participation in that, and it makes me want to keep helping.
Those exchanges explain much of what I mean when I call My90sTV a site of collective healing. I am speaking from my experience and from the kind of relationship the project makes possible. A viewer can enjoy the collection, remember something worth sharing, and offer it to the person maintaining the site. The next viewer benefits from that care without needing to know the whole story behind it. People using the site in different places can help sustain the same generous idea. There is something reassuring about contributing to an experience whose value I understand so immediately. I know what it has brought to my evenings, and I want that possibility to remain available to others.
The healing I feel is sustained by those ordinary returns. It happens when I choose a calmer format again and find that I still enjoy it. It happens when I remember that I can appreciate an unfamiliar programme without needing to become an expert on it. It happens when a piece of media has been pleasant company and I can leave it there, with no further task attached. These are small adjustments, but they reach into a habit that took years to establish. I am grateful for a project that makes practising them enjoyable. Joey has given me something to return to while I build a relationship with media that I would like to keep.
I think we sometimes make it unnecessarily difficult to acknowledge this sort of contribution. We have plenty of language for the scale of a platform or the success of a launch. It can feel harder to describe what happens when somebody's independent project makes ordinary life more bearable. Yet that is the effect I want to recognise here. When I tell Joey that his work is helping my mental health, I am telling him about the use I am making of it. I want creators to hear that kind of response when it is true. They deserve to know when the care they have put into a project has been received as care by another person.
The premise of this series is that the enjoyment we call nostalgia can be a continuation of a life already in progress. The affection has stayed with us, and we can give it a place in the present. A way of spending an evening can remain worthwhile after the equipment and distribution around it have changed. An old programme can become part of a new routine. A format we remember can still meet a present need. I experience this as picking back up where we left off. There are things I am continuing to enjoy, and there are things I am learning how to enjoy again with the life I have today.
The goodwill I associate with the nineties is something I can practise in the present. I can recommend a site because I think it might make somebody's evening nicer. I can thank the person who built it. I can contribute a clip or an idea and be pleased when it helps. Those are available actions, and taking them gives the feeling I remember somewhere to go. The year on a recording does not confine the use we can make of it. Whatever was kind, companionable or worthwhile in the experience can continue through the people who choose to make room for it. That is the continuity I want this series to follow.
Joey's work makes that continuity tangible. He is using the web we have now, including videos hosted on YouTube, to let people enjoy a familiar way of watching. The archive and the new work belong together. Every improvement he makes becomes part of the experience someone has today, and every contribution can give the collection another point of interest. I admire him for keeping the project open to that kind of growth. My own experience of suggesting Immersive Mode has made me especially grateful for his willingness to listen. He is building something with a recognisable personality, and he has made room within it for the people who use it.
I intend to keep using My90sTV as my relationship with media becomes healthier. Part of the recovery I want is a lasting way to enjoy the things I love. I would like to be able to trust my interest again, to spend time with a programme or a film and feel that the time was mine to spend. Joey's site is already part of that practice. It can continue to be part of an evening when the habits I am working on have become easier to manage. The pleasure is worth keeping. I am happy to have found something that helps me now and that I can imagine enjoying for its own sake for years to come.
Please visit My90sTV, explore MyRetroTVs, and have a look at Joey Cato's other work. You can follow his public updates on Bluesky, and his official Buy Me a Coffee page accepts one-off and monthly support. I have donated, and I would encourage anyone who gets something worthwhile from the project to support him if they can. Sharing the site and offering a thoughtful suggestion are worthwhile contributions too. There is a person doing this work, and I want the appreciation it generates to reach him in ways that help him continue.
Thank you, Joey. I am grateful for the television, for your response to my suggestion, and for the ordinary evenings that have become a little easier because you made it. Your work has helped me recognise that I can choose a different pace and still feel connected to the things I love. It has also given me a way to contribute something of my own. I hope this article brings a few more people to the site and a little more support to you. You have made something lovely, and I am very glad it is part of my life.
Picking Back Up Where We Left Off begins here, with Joey and My90sTV. Later in the series, Part Three will turn to TechTV and Adam Sessler, and the recordings I play each evening for my daughter. I want to write about the affection and curiosity in those programmes, and what it means to bring them into a home and a generation that are still taking shape. The life around those recordings is new. The enjoyment can carry forward with it.
Next, in Part Two, I want to write about Earth Kid's I Filmed the Zelda Midnight Release With a 90s Camcorder…, recorded at a Best Buy launch for the Ocarina of Time remake. I recently watched it and felt so happy for the man who went out and made it. He took an old camcorder to a new occasion and shared the experience with the people who were there. I am so glad he did. I want to spend more time with the feeling his film gave me: the pleasure of recognising something I love continuing in the present. Watching him brought the title of this series into focus. Picking back up where we left off is how I experience Joey's television too. I am making room for that enjoyment in the life I have now.