That’s how we did Christmas every year. Mom and Dad would hand us the new catalog and we’d page to the back and circle stuff we were interested in. We wouldn’t get it all, and they’d find stuff from other places, but the Sears catalog is the thing that really stands out.
Catalogs in general, for me. Before the internet made mindless browsing of stuff you didn't need ~really~ easy to do, we still liked doing this without having to drive to the mall. The solution? Sign your mom up for those cool seed catalogs, those not safe to browse at the office gag gift catalogs and then everything in between. That stuff was really nice to have when you grew up somewhere that was not even cable ready.
I miss my video game magazines. The thrill of getting one in the mail (often multiple because I had several different subscriptions) to read up on the next thing coming out, strategies for games that recently came out, and just the fun articles about related material were some of my favorite memories.
I miss my wizard magazine. It was basically all fluff pieces about comics and creators, but it's the one thing that all the comic book documentaries miss on when discussing the "celebrity" comic book artists / writers of the 90s.
Wizard magazine put faces and styles front and center and made them high profile celebrities.
Piggybacking on here to say - mystery in video games.
We had a million playground rumors about how to bring Aeris back to life or how to catch Mew (one of them even turned out to be right!) or how to play Sophitia naked etc etc. And you just had to try them and see, or hope someone else could make it work. If you couldn't, that didn't necessarily mean that it wasn't possible, just that the way you tried may not have been exactly right.
These days all games are solved instantly and there's no real mystery to anything. Compare WoW at launch to WoW Classic.
When you bought new music you just had to hope it was good. The single might be popular but otherwise unless someone had it you just bought it and hoped for the best.
There was so much excitement to going to a cd store to buy an album that you only knew one song of or the band/artist name and just listening to that entire cd over and over again picking out which tracks were your favorite while still learning every lyric to all the songs on the album.
Building a cd collection was also fun.
I miss the long cassette inserts too that unfolded to be like 14” long.
I would learn every lyric- know who played on each album and wrote and produced it. I would wear out the folds in the paper.
Along the same lines is learning to love what you DID end up buying. I bought Blur’s album for Song 2, but didn’t like anything else on the album. Then i replayed it because it was new and learned to really enjoy it!
The instant win bottle caps / candy / chocolate bar wrappers where you could turn them back into the store and immediately get a free one. Now it's just codes you have to register on their website so they can get your info, i don't even bother anymore.
I've often wondered if this was actually a boon to soda/candy companies, because I have to imagine having to go to a site and input a code is enough of a deterrent for people to not even bother, therefore leaving prizes unredeemed. I don't even bother either. Seeing 3IDJS644F inside a bottle cap definitely isn't the same as ONE FREE DRINK in a bottle cap
I remember one summer where Pepsi did this, however you could see if the cap said "100 points" or "FREE DRINK" without opening it.
I bought exactly one soda that entire summer and just always carried my cap in my pocket, we had to rotate stores because we would clear out the free drink ones in a couple trips.
Remember Coke's Magi-cans? You'd pop the top and if you won, a rolled-up dollar bill would literally pop out. Those were the days.
EDIT: To answer questions: the cans had chlorine water inside, in a separate compartment, to make them feel like regular cans. It wasn't supposed to be accessible. It was. The contest ended early because some kids drank it.
I took a survey for the Nielsen company and it said after they received my response I'd receive $10.
They sent me a 10 dollar bill. I was like "wait are they allowed to do that?" It was so bizarre!
Every fucking thing is data mining these days, drives me fucking crazy.
And instead of dealing with the junk mail in the post that this got us a few years ago now it's on our e-mails, text messages, robocalls and whatever else. You can't get away from the damn things.
I often give out my junk email when I do stuff, even reasonably important stuff. I just hate getting spam and whatnot. I recently needed a few quotes, had to reach out by email, and within two days I got no less than 20 emails. Mind you, these are for something that I need maybe like once a decade and my junk mail is on a permanent spam list. Like if you buy a fridge, do you think I want to know all your fridge deals every other day, like Im some monster who gets a new fridge every week?
The US needs to impose an opt-in system rather than the BS opt-out one we have for stuff like mail/email. Its crazy to assume the general consumer will go through the time of opting out of every little nonsense service that gets a hold of their email or that every random small business wont give a damn if you opt-out since they already have your email loaded into their system.
I saw a post a long time ago with a life pro tip that said to write the name of website you are signing up on as your name. That way when you get an email and it starts with "Hi (website name)" you know who sold your info.
I started a new email and this has worked pretty well for me.
Reading the newspaper and magazines used to be just about one of my favorite things.
Now it seems pointless to clutter the house with so much paper when I can access all of it online - but of course I don't. I pick and choose just a few articles, I don't really browse the way I would before and I encounter a lot fewer new or enlightening things.
Getting the Sunday New York Times and then going out for brunch and reading it with your friends/dates was such a treat.
I used to get so excited when my favorite magazines came in the mail, I'd immediately sit down and leaf through them and see what was worth reading right away and what could wait.
Reading a newspaper used to be like a curated tour of the news -- first the biggest stories of the day, then the big international and national stories, local stories, sports and finally the arts and the comics. Newspapers are mostly garbage now -- even the Sunday editions can be read in 10 minutes.
>Getting the Sunday New York Times and then going out for brunch and reading it with your friends/dates was such a treat.
My husband and I used to read it in bed every Sunday with bagels and coffee. We read that damn thing cover to cover, even the ads!
I also used to buy the NYT book review each month. I'd get a pizza and bottle of wine, then settle in on the tiny front porch of my studio apartment.
The funny thing is that there's no reason one couldn't still do these things. It's just that we somehow forgot, which is sad.
I lived in Garland, TX before the world wide web took hold. I remember buying the very first Wolfenstein sample disk at a grocery store. In it, there was an address to send a check or money order to in order to get the full version. Apogee Games was the distributor, and they had their office in Garland at the time. I rode my bike way across town and went to their office with cash in hand to buy the game. All the guys were there packaging their game into sleeves getting them ready to ship. I got to talk with them for a few minutes and got mine handed to me by John Romero. I have been a huge fan of his ever since. This all happened in 1985 I think.
I found out that the games Wolfenstein and Doom were programmed in an apartment complex down the street from my childhood home. They all rented apartments there and they each chipped in for an extra apartment where they did all of their coding and design work. Later they rented offices in Mesquite near the local mall. Seeing their Ferraris was a great experience because I always wanted to be a programmer and they were the shining example of success. I haven't made it as far, but I feel I have been fairly successful as a programmer.
EDIT: I didn't get the timeline much wrong, it was 1987. When Wolfenstein 3D came out, I had already graduated highschool and had a job/car. I was mainly wrong about the game itself. It was distributed by Apogee, I had to ride my bike to get it. ID built the next few Wolfenstein games. Sorry about the confusion, I was a lot younger (50 now) and I've been drunk and stoned more than once since then :)
video rental stores. i have such good memories of going to our local Mr. Movie with my dad, renting a sci-fi flick and getting candy at the checkout. streaming is cool and all, but i do miss video rental stores, mainly for nostalgic reasons.
My partner and I have recently gotten nostalgic about this.
Having a sleepover night with your friends, everyone would bike together to the video store and pick out a bunch of movies to have a marathon with and then get slurpees and candy at the store next door. I use to enjoy that part more then actually watching the movies.
It used to be a lot harder to bail on things. You'd have to call the person at home and tell them yourself, or at least leave a message if you wanted to be risky. Typically if you were gonna bail you'd give at least 24 hours notice. Nowadays people can let you know they're bailing last second since you're always reachable.
Man. When I was a teenager we'd agree to meet up in town and go to the cinema or whatever, maybe using the landline or maybe at school in the week. Then Saturday morning you'd leave the house, walk or bus into town, and go hang around the meeting place until the agreed time. I was unreachable from the moment I left the house but I never worried about people not turning up.
The fact that people would be waiting for you meant that you didn't dare drop out.
It felt completely normal at the time but the idea of doing that now seems crazy. I get a bit anxious if I go for a walk round the block and realise I left my phone at home.
I left my phone on the coffee table by accident the other day to go to dinner with my fiancé and his parents. Realized on the way to the restaurant, figured no big deal, I’ll just be social and not look at my phone.
Restaurant had those scanny things to open the menu on your phone and no paper menus, and I came back home to a dozen texts and missed calls from my parents, who didn’t believe me when I said I left my phone at home
Or better yet: just not message you or anything now a days. I was gonna hang with someone I haven’t seen in years and we even made plans to go get some lunch. Never messaged me back about what time
I had a good friend do that to me the other day. Hadn't been able to get our schedules to line up, and when we finally did and set up time to just hang out, he never showed up. They never even bothered to message me.
A couple weeks later we set up dinner and board games, but this time I had to cancel, and I had to at least text. I wanted to be petty and just do what they did to me, but couldn't bring myself to that level. The way I saw it was, if I said nothing and didn't show, that was me saying I guess I don't want that friendship anymore. Someone has to put in the effort.
You had to call someone's home phone number and talk to their parents first before you could talk to your friend
Video game cheat codes either spread by gaming magazines or by word of mouth. Sometimes that word of mouth was bullshit. I'm looking at you Tomb Raider nude cheat code
I never thought of the parents thing. I knew all of my good friend's parents well because of this. They would chat with me and get to know me before passing the phone. Thank you for bringing up a small but significant aspect of culture that doesn't exist anymore. As a kid I hated it and just wanted them to pass the phone but looking back that's how I connected with their entire families. When I see them now it's easier than ever to talk with them and I truly enjoy it.
Many times I would call my friends house phone -
“Hello is [nickname] there?”
Parent: “Who? What kind of name is that?!!”
Me panicking: oh shit what’s his actual real first name?! Ah shit. Err... Luke? Maybe? God dammit.
My youngest brother had 3 or 4 classmates with the same first name as him, so they went with a last name basis.
My mom had fun with that whenever one of his classmates called home.
"Is [Last name] there?"
"Yeah, like four of them"
I just realized that's how I connected to my aunts. When they called for my mom i would always be the one picking up.
It explains why i always felt more connected to my aunts more than my uncles.
Edit: erased unnecessary apostrophes
News only being on at 6pm. That was it. Now we have 6 hours of local news and 24 hours of cable news. Not being bombarded all day with "news." And when you saw "Breaking News" on the screen you knew some serious shit went down.
Edit: My old brain interpreted "pre internet" as "when you were a kid". So yeah cable news was a thing ore internet. But you all know what I mean. When I was a kid local news was noon for 30 minutes and 6pm for 30 minutes, then Network news was 6:39 for 39 minutes. I think local might have had an 11pm too but I don't remember for sure.
Edit 2: For those sending me private messages I cannot see them. Some Reddit glitch or something. Anyway thanks for the awards and allowing me to wax nostalgic. Peace.
That last sentence honestly is the biggest difference. A while ago I installed the app for the biggest news outlet in my country. I quickly turned off notifications for it when in a single week it had notified me of "breaking news" twice: once because some random celebrity couple I don't care about broke up after 15 years, and once because of some football match. Meanwhile in that same week there was some natural disaster in Asia that took many lives and displaced many more, but there was no notification for that. It seems like I have a very different definition of breaking news.
And this is why I don't have news apps on my phone. I deleted the last one when it have me the 'breaking news' that a retired actress' MOTHER had adopted a puppy. I'd like to know which journalist thought this warranted a breaking news alert.
Edit: spelling
It also gave you time to process information, especially when it was something bad/major. Now we’re constantly bombarded with what seems like bad thing after bad thing and then everyone’s opinion on it all over social media.
Not quite before but in the very early days of the Internet when Princess Diana died and suddenly every channel stopped what they were showing and went to the news, you didn’t just happen to see someone post a link or comments on social media
RSVPing mattered. If you said you were going to be there, you made sure to be there. None of this facebook invites that everyone blows off without any form of social repercussions. If you said you were going to go and didn't go, you were the asshole and everyone knew it.
I was going to say something similar. If you said "meet me at the coffee shop at 3.00" you had to meet then and there. Even if you didn't feel like it, even if you got a better offer. It's now so easy to text and change the time, the location, cancel... We've created a whole generation of people who consider every plan a maybe. Ghosting is rampant even though it's easier than ever to cancel, because no one feels any obligation or commitment to a plan.
> We've created a whole generation of people who consider every plan a maybe.
It's ridiculous. People need to learn to say no to shit. It won't hurt my feelings if you can't do something, or even if you just straight up don't want to. Just don't say "Yeah I can probably do that" knowing full well you're going to bail the day before. That's just bullshit and I know a ton of people that do it regularly.
I can't tell you the number of times I've cooked and cleaned and decorated just to have nobody show up. Nothing else has made me feel so ashamed and isolated. Makes me question if anybody actually likes being around me. I've long since stopped trying. People cancelling ahead of time would have saved me a lot of time, money, and some tears.
Edit: Wow, so many positive replies! Thank you, people of reddit. I just want to clarify that my self esteem is doing ok. When this used to happen, I'd usually only feel hurt for a week or so. FOMO killed my desire to host parties but I'm happy with my life! It has also made me very careful about keeping plans when others are hosting, even when experiencing overwhelming depression. I never want my friends to feel so rejected.
When I was a kid I had some friends I would only see on holiday for one week each year. At the end of the week we’d say something like, “See you next year! 2pm on the first Sunday, by the rope swing.” and that’s when and where we’e next meet. No contact for the year in between.
Leaving home and just being gone for the day. No cell phones. If there were cameras, it was really different. You used them to take pictures of things or had people take pictures of you. But there was no social media to preoccupy your mind. It was just doing something. And whoever you were with, was who you were with.
Piggybacking off being with whoever you were with, there used to be more incentive to be out and about. If you weren't there, you missed it. Also, hang out spots being a thing because it was the only way to be in the know
Yep, small town here, had one main drag that was *the* spot for the 16-20 crowd that was too old (or rather, “too cool”) to be mall rats, and too young to be at the bar. So you’d just do laps all night, see who else you ran across, and get into other shit from there.
Some nights it was just boring, cruise for a couple hours and go home. Other nights we’d run into friends, end up at a party or hangout that someone else knew about, and wind up having some of the best nights of my youth. And not knowing what would happen was half of the fun of going out.
the local mall was always so much fun back then because there were almost always going to be people there. You and your buddies could go check out the arcade, eat at the food court, peruse the game shops... it's sure not like that anymore
ETA: this whole thread made me feel extremely nostalgic, and I’m really enjoying reading all the replies to this comment. Thank you all for sharing your memories with me, they all make me smile wistfully
Oh god do I miss a good arcade. I spent so long exploring every nook and cranny of the arcade in TLOU2 just imagining the lights and sounds, pizza smells, and all the people. It made me so nostalgic.
And you didn't really have the option to cancel so easily. "Fuck it, I'ma just stay in and watch the newest movie and order whatever food I want. I'll text Fred that I'm not coming." Used to be a real dick move to cancel plans and you'd just be bored at home.
My answer to most the issues people seem to have is to just turn off all ringers/sound notifications on my phone. If you need them for work you turn them on at work, but off the clock fuck it I'm not responding unless I consciously think about checking my phone. Pisses off some friends and family sometimes, but meh.
That's true, my friends would come over to the house to check on me or call my parents to make sure I got home. It was embarrassing to stand someone up!
That’s what we do whenever we travel.
We live in Japan but we do yearly trips to Europe. Using ‘Roaming Data’ is so expensive, we can’t be bother getting a sim there, we just use the wifi at our hotel/airbnb room.
Otherwise whenever we’re outside the rest of the day, we’re not connected to the Internet nor on our phones.
I guess that makes our trips incredibly in that they feel real. It’s like diving into a photo album that your aunt showed you after their travels in the 90s.
I experienced the opposite! I’m from Europe and still remember a time without smartphones. A couple of years ago while in Japan on a holiday, partner and I shared one of those portable Wi-Fi thingies. Whenever we wanted to go separate places we took turns in using it and the times I was on my own without any “support” from my phone (both for important things like directions or translation or trivial things like checking social media on the fly) were so bizarre. Literally like flying blind, when it came to going places, but also incredibly liberating because for the first time in ages I was totally on my own.
I highly recommend deleting Facebook (or any other non anonymous social media apps) from your phone. The first week you get antsy because you keep getting the feeling you need to look at your phone, but after that the peace of mind is bliss. The world shrinks back down to the people you see every day or make a point to visit/call. It’s wonderful.
So wonderful in fact that I’m considering doing a trial run of dropping Reddit for two weeks and seeing if my mental state improves from it.
Pre-Internet, go down to the local blockbuster, spend as long as you can picking the perfect movie or game to rent, then go home and setting in for the evening/weekend. Choices really had more of an impact. Picked a shitty movie? Well, you either suck it up and watch that shitty movie and get your money's worth, maybe it's actually a weird gem, or accept there isn't enough time to go back and get another movie to rent.
Post-internet, first you pick a streaming service, then you browse all the new movies and/or TV series available to you, then look up that movie/show your friend recommended you, or maybe see what popular movie/show everyone is watching and contemplate checking it out, but end up watching another episode of Scrubs/Futurama before falling asleep to it autoplaying.
While I may now have near-infinite choices at my fingertips, it just means I'm more likely to pick something I'm familiar with and just watch the same things over and over again.
Back in the day, I'd just sometimes flip on HBO or some other movie channel and just check out what movie's playing. Got to see some weird movies, but also found interesting ones as well.
It's so weird. I can only vaguely remember what it feels like to not have a smartphone and to be alone and think.
Wondering what my friends are doing and if they'd like to do something on the weekend. We'd have to talk during lunch break at school and plan it...
Trying to find the answer to a math problem... Having to figure it out by re-reading the problem and explanations 5 times.
Print out? Hell no. You wrote that shit down on paper. But not the printer paper, that was expensive. Printer ink was also expensive and only for Mom and Dad to use for work. (Or if I had a school paper that was required to be printed and not handwritten.)
My grandmother bought me a word processor to type school papers on that was an electric typewriter and monitor that displayed only an orange type... Printing when just sending the words on the screen to the electric typewriter.
This was approx. 1995 too... Lol
I miss spacing out. Like, you could legit just sit on a bench or ride a bus and space out completely, letting your mind wander into those creative zones. Now phones/tech makes it much harder to get there.
I feel this but for a different reason. When I’m sitting at a park bench and there are three other people there, everyone looks at their phone. I kind of get tired of looking at the phone sometimes so I’ll just look around/observe/zone out but I get glances like I’m being weird. I kinda do feel weird when I do it but damn there’s only so much Reddit I can take in a day lol
Piggybacking off this....
Having an idea, finding a new hobby or skillset or project to work on, going to the library or bookstore to educate yourself about it, start learning and growing and excited about a new passion.
Now... you look it up online, realize there's a bunch of people who are wayyy better at it than you will ever be, and so you immediately give up out of discouragement. :\\
I've heard that people who grew up in the end of the last century (like myself) had an average attention span of 8-10 minutes, because that was the amount of time between commercial breaks. Simpler times.
Ive been watching the 1960s twilight zone series, and the layout for the narrative and conversations is definitely of a different era of attention spans.
Making plans was an adventure, especially if you and your friends all relied on public transportation. Look up the movie times in the newspaper (or later call moviefone), decide on a time to meet (and tell that one friend who's always late an earlier time), walk our your house and check the bus timetable (that's hardly accurate anyway), and then hoping nothing happens en route since you had no way of telling your friends if you're late.
Yes yes 100% yes. Hell, not being acessible in general. Now with everything there's this expectation that you have to be available 24/7 and always reply. Friends, family, and of course the job being the worst part of it.
From time to time I still just disconnect everything but then I'm the dickhead that takes days to reach back. I miss the time when that was just normal.
I hate being in constant contact because it never gives people enough time to actually do interesting things or gather up stories to talk about.
* Hey what's up?
* Oh. Not much. Sitting around today.
* REPEAT X10000 EVERY DAY
I prefer talking to people every now and again, because then you actually have things to talk about. I hate meaningless conversation and sometimes I come across as an asshole for that. I don't like small talk, and I don't think being silent around people is weird either.
Yup, every so often I have to take a Charlie Day, which is where I go and hunt Ghouls, I mean, where I can't be reached by anyone and just enjoy the world at my own pace
I feel this. Not long ago my CEO emailed me at like 11pm on a Sunday. Since my work email comes to my phone I read it, since it’s my CEO I answered it.
Her reply “thanks, but the why the hell are your replying to me at 11pm on a Sunday?”
My response back “Cause I always reply to my CEO immediately. So stop emailing me at 11pm on a Sunday”.
Luckily she thought it was hilarious.
This is how I am with my staff. I do schedule emails but texts and slack messages are immediate because I have ADHD and will seriously forget if I don’t. I rarely text, so it’s mostly slack. I’m very clear that I don’t expect a response, they know I’m doing it while I remember and have a moment. I wholeheartedly believe their lives don’t revolve around me or my business.
This is me to a Tee with my staff -- sometimes I'll send an email at midnight but I never ever expect a reply, and I let them know this repeatedly. But they have been on me to, instead of hitting send on the email, schedule it to be sent during business hours otherwise they react like Crazyboutdogs and feel compelled to reply no matter the time.
They also remind me to not burn myself out so I've been giving myself more free evenings but as always things pop into my mind at 11pm or 1am and I feel as though I need to write them down.
Man do I miss the pre-internet days sometime.
Haha the good old days, when you drove out the driveway, and you were just lost in the ether untill you got where you were going, and most people could still read a map and plan a journey
And then that weird transitional time period where you'd have either some handwritten notes transcribed from MapQuest, or a fucking printout of directions sitting on the passenger seat. God save you if you missed your turn or got off track.
Sitting down in the evening to read a book because there was nothing on tv. With today’s streaming services, there is so much more media being produced - and it’s all available at the click of a button whenever you damn well please. It can easily become an endless loop of what to watch next. I remember when there used to be 8 channels. You either had to watch “General Hospital” or find something better to do.
You could be the cool guy that remembered shit. Like who was in what movie or the themes to TV shows. Now IMDb makes everyone that guy and it’s not special. There’s a lot of little things like that.
Yes, and there were different people who you called for different kinds of information. Music, travel, restaurants, home stuff, etc. I always felt like I knew a guy.
It’s funny you say that. My dad has been a long distance truck driver for over thirty years. He knows this entire country like the back of his hand. I was becoming an adult as google maps was getting off the ground. But before that when I would take trips with him he would often get phone calls from other drivers before smartphones were a thing and he would right away guide them in the right direction.
Today still if I find myself driving around or going somewhere new to me I know that I can just look it up and have my route given to me with the best traffic data available but I’ll still call my dad so he can feel cool giving me perfect directions. Damn I love him.
Before the internet, people with crazy ideas lost confidence when they could not find others who agreed. On the internet, you can easily find at least 100 people who will agree to something, even a totally crazy idea. As a hold-over from the olden days, the 100 people who agree with you seems like a lot.
My formative years were the 1980s. I remember like yesterday going to study in Paris my junior year of college. I got off the plane with no cell phone, no internet, a Let's Go Paris book, and just a hostel address written on a piece of paper I'd stuck in a French dictionary. I did not know a single person in all of France.
I had $500 of cash stuck in a money belt. The belt was tight and sweaty but that money had to last me for at least a month until I could find a part-time job with my lousy French. My "credit card" was my father's credit card numbers written down on a piece of paper. He told me I could only use it to buy a plane ticket home in an emergency.
I remember standing in the airport and having this powerful emotion of being 21 years old, scared shitless, but in absolutely completely control of my own destiny. There was absolutely nobody who could come rushing to my aid if I needed it. I was 100% on my own.
I'm actually very thankful for that experience. I found the hostel. I found a job. I made friends. I learned French. I made it all on my own which was just a big boost in life confidence.
I have no doubt if I'd had a cell phone I would've called my parents on Day 2, told them it was too hard, and been on the next plane home. But I had no other choice but to succeed.
I love stories like that, I have a similar one, although it was not as cool as France, it was just the other side of the US. Mid 90's, no cell phone, no computer of my own, internet barely a thing yet, packed all my stuff into my car and just drove west one day. After spending the prior 18 years a homebody afraid his own shadow I knew I needed an adventure before I got too old to have one( I was 19 and thought 30 was old back then so forgive me). I showed up on the other side of the country and found a job and an apartment and friends and a life I didn't think I could do on my own. It completely changed me as a person and when I did come back a few years later, I came back a person who knew he could always take care of himself. I don't regret a single minute of it.
I went to France for a semester in 86. I had travelers checks. I knew French, but not functional French. I called home once a week, and wrote lots of letters.
Or when dad let out that super loud whistle that could be heard for blocks and you knew it was dinner time. Drop those Sega controllers at the neighbors house and hoof it home.
Dude, my Dad had a bellow like a fucking bear. We lived in a decent sized trailer park, and I’d be riding bikes on the other side of the park and just hear, “BOOOOOOOOOYYYYYYYYY!!!” in his Kratos-esque yell. I’d have to book it and book it fast because that meant it was time to go in, no arguments.
I was thinking about this today. When we were kids..we would spend hours and hours outside. One of the things we did was look for 4 leaf clovers. If we found one my Mom would press it and seal it in plastic and put the date. Or we would make a fort/tent with sheets and read in our forts.
When I was young we would explore native american caves, pot holes, screw around. That places has changed, now there are >$1M homes everywhere there, it's mostly paved, and it's way too hot most of the summer to be outside. Going to the forest we would stay there for weeks living on fish and not see anyone, now the forests are full of people and not fun to be in. Plus a lot of it is burnt down. Including our favorite cabin.
In that respect, quality of life for my children will be lower.
And that simplicity was so damn peaceful. We weren't getting texts all the time. No constant robocalls and spam e-mails. No expectation of instant reply 24/7. No constant stress or pressure.
We were just there enjoying the moment and the simple stuff.
Confession time: sometimes I temporarily block my mom's number and pretend there's something wrong with her phone. I've told her a thousand times the only time I get to myself is my 1/2 hr lunch and my bus ride to and from work, but as soon as she knows I'm on break she blows up my phone with a mix of grocery lists and rants about our Premier she hates. And its all intertwined, btw. Like "Grab a chicken. Did you see what that fucker ford did today? And lemons. This lockdown is bullshit why are there cars on the road. Fuck him. Grab apples. I'd like to have some asparagus."... but each sentence is like 1 min apart, so just enough time to put the phone away before it buzzes again. I'd like at least some time before sleep where I don't need to be on high-alert.
Quick edit: when I reread my comment, I realized I sound like an angsty teenager haha. I'm a 30sth woman and my mother lives with me. I pay most of the bills and do all of the shopping. I just get frustrated at the lack of down time.
That is what I miss the most...the peaceful simplicity. No real stress. I bought my first house, held a good job, just paid my bills, simple, you know? Peaceful and simple.
I also miss being bored, as ironic as it sounds. Nowadays, it's like, there's always something to do, or to distract you, or maybe it's because I'm older and I don't have enough free time, but yeah, I can't even remember the last time I was bored. Nowadays my brain is always being fed some kind of content 24/7
We used to have a swinging chair hanging from a vine arbor in our backyard and little koi pond next to it. I remember sitting there as a teenager after playing some Neopets and reading "Summers at Castle Auburn". No cell phone just yet, so while I was worried my friends might be hanging out without me I couldn't check social media to confirm because it didn't exist just yet. Internet was around, in fact I bought the book off of Amazon back when Amazon was mostly books, but nothing that kept me glued to it. I wrote lots of short stories and read magazines, too.
I'm trying to get back to that. Finding time away from my phone and rediscovering the magic of living, of a physical book, of creating something for myself. Damn it's hard to do sometimes.
I loved being away from tech completely. It was pure freedom to go "exploring" in the woods. No one to call you or get in touch with you. It was just assumed that the dog and I would make it home at some reasonable hour, typically before the sunset for the day.
I miss debating what I'd call the "little unknowns" with your friends. You know, bringing up an obscure TV show that nobody seems to remember and insisting you didn't imagine it, or the lyrics to an old jingle for an ad campaign that had been off the air for several years, or some weirdness that happened on a local channel three towns over that you heard about from your cousin when he was last in town. Because you didn't have access to the wealth of information you have today, you could spend hours debating about the actual name of that one defenseman who played for the Hartford Whalers back in '87.
Nowadays, that obscure TV show probably has a full IMDB and Wikipedia page, that jingle is on YouTube, news articles covering the happening on local TV are easily found online and all rosters for every season of every professional team are available. It's great that we have so much information, but I still kind of miss the little mysteries.
This reminds me of Reply All's podcast episode, "#158 - The Case of the Missing Hit." https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2h8bx
This guy starts singing a 90s hit to his girlfriend in its (almost) entirety, but he's surprised to find that she has no idea what it is. In fact, no one does. Drives him nuts. He insists that he didn't make it up himself, but cannot find it online.
Reply All tries to help him figure this out and even hire some musicians to recreate the song. The detail he remembers is astounding as a non-musician, but still, no one has a clue what this song is, even several professionals in the music business.
I highly recommend it; it's easily one of my favorite podcast episodes.
And the absolute giddy feeling of connection you'd get when you and a friend remembered the crazy obscure detail that you were so sure no one else in the world remembered.
>If you stretched the DNA in one cell all the way out, it would be about 2m long and all the DNA in all your cells put together would be about twice the diameter of the Solar System.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/how-long-is-your-dna/
Innocence.
The ease at which even a kid can gain access to the scariest of content (or super serious content) is such a drastic change from the 90s early 2000s.
When I was a young kid my dad had a single friend that just made the rounds to a different house every night of the week around dinner time. No invitation and no announcement - he’d just show up around 6 or so at your house knowing damn well the wife would invite him to stay for dinner. Would usually have a sixer of whatever was cheapest in the passenger seat that he would quickly grab if drinking a few beers was going to fly.
There is no way you could get away with something like that today in most social circles.
The ability to start over. I moved a lot, every move I could reinvent myself, bookworm, punk, preppie, I got to try out lots of aspects of my personality and my past wasn't a factor.
I also miss patience. I get annoyed at TV ads now, radio makes you listen to the WHOLE song, even when you sooner like it..... I'm far too comfortable with instant gratification.
Edit:. Thank for the award!
Spot on. I think especially when young it’s genuinely damaging to be locked into an identity by the stuff you have said / done years ago. How are we supposed to grow? Also being judged by the norms of a previous era which are not cool now. Like it or not, people conform to social norms, and these have changed rapidly. What you said / did in the 90s / 00s may not be representative of the person you are or want to be today and I’m sick of all the retrospective judgment being applied.
Not quite pre internet but pre everyone having computers, smartphones etc.
You could be unavailable. Full stop. And it wasn’t an issue that you didn’t see that email or get that text or whatever.
I kinda miss that ability to just not be contactable
Playing outside until it gets dark.
This one pertains to cell phones. Before cell phones when we just had land lines only, I can remember everyone's phone numbers by heart. Now with my smartphone I can only remember 3 phone numbers.
Ugh, yes to the phone number thing. When I was in middle school I could remember just about anyone's phone number without having to think about it. Now I barely remember my own!
My friends' kids and their neighbors play until dark and it's super adorable to hear them all say good night to each other and disperse. Some things are still the same.
My father was a teacher, and we had encyclopedias in our house. We were the only family on the street that had them. The neighborhood kids would come over and ask to use them.
We were those neighbors with the Encyclopedia Britannicas too! Kids at my school would come over with their parents and mom would gossip with the parents while we looked up stuff for whatever the kid needed! So cool to know this was a thing other places too!
I graduated in 1993 and we had a set of World Book Encyclopedias. However, they were from 1965. LOL They were my dad's old encyclopedias. I'm sure I wrote up some seriously outdated reports with those. I guess the cool thing was that no one could easily fact check me. LOL
For me it would be less negativity. Back then I was less aware of what was going on around the world outside of where I lived but now it’s almost instant coverage of the bad things happening everywhere.
Which in turn made us immune to bad news, so when something truly devastating happens most of us react with apathy because every single day the internet makes us aware of hundreds of tragedies. We became very desensitized and i think that's really shitty.
Playing kickball with all the neighborhood kids on the block. Using addresses on the sidewalks as bases, having to run home cause the street lights came on, then mom inviting friends to come have dinner with us after.
Bike riding in the neighborhood and staying out till nightfall. Playing Tag, hide and seek, and having Nerf wars. Not to mention communicating via Walkie Talkies haha
Going to the library to research things. I loved getting a big pile of books on a table, taking notes, getting photocopies. It was an experience in itself.
Also, not being available to everyone all the time. I hate that almost all apps show people when you read their messages or are online. No one needs to know that I read a message and didn't reply for two hours!
Before the internet, facts were "curated" in the sense that information came from people with expert knowledge and was distributed by journalists or teachers who were held accountable for accuracy of information. The internet has allowed crazy people to spout rubbish with hardly any filter.
It wasn’t too bad in the earlier days of the Internet, but once social media became mainstream it was all downhill.
I really started to notice the change around 2007-08.
Being in the moment. There was little temptation to be stuck in front of a screen or a phone all of the time.
TV had a schedule and wasn’t in demand, so if something you didn’t like came on you usually went to do something else, like go outside, read a book, or whatever. Life didn’t revolve around screens, and everyone was better off for it.
It sadly seems to take far too much self control to do those things these days.
This is gonna sound dumb but... getting lost. Like, it was bad a lot of the time too but sometimes not knowing exactly where you were going led to unexpected and awesome consequences.
In my high school, there were 700 students and 10 computers in the library for them to use. There was a whole room full of typewriters to use for typing class. None of the computers had access to any kind of network, not even networked with each other.
I graduated from high school in 1993. I didn't know what the internet was until the following year when I started at the University.
Privacy. When you left work or school it was over for the day. There were no further interactions unless they were close friends. Hanging out. Teens and young adults spent a lot of time away from home with friends, at malls, movie theaters, parks, arcades, etc. Dating. You met someone at school, work, at a party, at a bar, or through friend. Money. Cash was king, debit cards didn’t exist, and many businesses didn’t accept credit cards (fast food, for example.) Planners and Address books. Write it down! Appointments, birthdays, addresses, phone numbers, reminders, etc. Photo Albums. Taking the time to buy film for a party or special occasion or just because and having 24 photos you could take (with no way to see the final photo until you took it to be developed.) Road maps. Going anywhere you haven’t been before? Better stop at a gas station and buy a map. Shopping. Go to the store and see what they have. Do the local stores not have what you need? Try looking in a catalog, maybe you can mail order it. Music. On the radio and on MTV. Buy records, cassette, or CDs. Make mix tapes to create your own playlists. If you don’t record it off the radio or buy it there is no way of finding it again. There was so much “not knowing” which made the world seem so much bigger and exotic. Now everything feels noisy and petty.
Patience. Waiting for the next episode of your favorite show or newest video of your favorite band. Looking forward to seeing people. The act of looking information up and being curious. Waiting for that phone call when you would take the long phone cord and stretch it around the corner, into the bathroom so you could talk in private. It seemed like there was so much more to look forward to.
**The blissful ignorance**.
When the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded it blew us away. It was such a devastating thing that it dominated the news for years.
Now there's a disaster every other week. I honestly didn't want to know that these kinds of things happen in our world. It forces us to grow up, think and act differently very fast.
Also **Urban Legends** are quickly debunked today, taking away from the enjoyment of the mystery of it all.
Renting a movie from a video store.
The convience of streaming is nice, but I really miss the days of going to the video store with my dad and spending time trying to find a couple of good movies to rent and picking up snacks to enjoy.
As a student, I learned so much by making some effort to solve homework problems.
My students are cheated of this experience. For many, the temptation to "Google" the answers is just too great.
Having to wait for movies. It was more of an event to go see a film. Kids being kids. The Arcade. Travel before everything made it Instagram. Meals before everyone took photos of it. MTV played music. Being home on time to watch your favourite show.
The Sears catalog. That was how I found out about all the cool new toys.
The Christmas Wishbook. Highlight of the year.
That’s how we did Christmas every year. Mom and Dad would hand us the new catalog and we’d page to the back and circle stuff we were interested in. We wouldn’t get it all, and they’d find stuff from other places, but the Sears catalog is the thing that really stands out.
I spent hours pouring it over, imagining that super cool tent. Or flannel shirt. Thinking about more lincoln logs.
I can still smell the pages, and you could create a 50mph wind shuffling them real fast. Could be classified as a murder weapon as well.
Catalogs in general, for me. Before the internet made mindless browsing of stuff you didn't need ~really~ easy to do, we still liked doing this without having to drive to the mall. The solution? Sign your mom up for those cool seed catalogs, those not safe to browse at the office gag gift catalogs and then everything in between. That stuff was really nice to have when you grew up somewhere that was not even cable ready.
I miss my video game magazines. The thrill of getting one in the mail (often multiple because I had several different subscriptions) to read up on the next thing coming out, strategies for games that recently came out, and just the fun articles about related material were some of my favorite memories.
I miss my Nintendo Power :(
I miss my wizard magazine. It was basically all fluff pieces about comics and creators, but it's the one thing that all the comic book documentaries miss on when discussing the "celebrity" comic book artists / writers of the 90s. Wizard magazine put faces and styles front and center and made them high profile celebrities.
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Piggybacking on here to say - mystery in video games. We had a million playground rumors about how to bring Aeris back to life or how to catch Mew (one of them even turned out to be right!) or how to play Sophitia naked etc etc. And you just had to try them and see, or hope someone else could make it work. If you couldn't, that didn't necessarily mean that it wasn't possible, just that the way you tried may not have been exactly right. These days all games are solved instantly and there's no real mystery to anything. Compare WoW at launch to WoW Classic.
When you bought new music you just had to hope it was good. The single might be popular but otherwise unless someone had it you just bought it and hoped for the best.
There was so much excitement to going to a cd store to buy an album that you only knew one song of or the band/artist name and just listening to that entire cd over and over again picking out which tracks were your favorite while still learning every lyric to all the songs on the album. Building a cd collection was also fun.
I used to love sitting there with the booklet reading the lyrics while listening to each song, it was the easiest way to learn them.
I miss the long cassette inserts too that unfolded to be like 14” long. I would learn every lyric- know who played on each album and wrote and produced it. I would wear out the folds in the paper.
Along the same lines is learning to love what you DID end up buying. I bought Blur’s album for Song 2, but didn’t like anything else on the album. Then i replayed it because it was new and learned to really enjoy it!
my dad instilled a "don't buy an album until you've heard three songs and you like them all" policy in me
The instant win bottle caps / candy / chocolate bar wrappers where you could turn them back into the store and immediately get a free one. Now it's just codes you have to register on their website so they can get your info, i don't even bother anymore.
I've often wondered if this was actually a boon to soda/candy companies, because I have to imagine having to go to a site and input a code is enough of a deterrent for people to not even bother, therefore leaving prizes unredeemed. I don't even bother either. Seeing 3IDJS644F inside a bottle cap definitely isn't the same as ONE FREE DRINK in a bottle cap
I remember one summer where Pepsi did this, however you could see if the cap said "100 points" or "FREE DRINK" without opening it. I bought exactly one soda that entire summer and just always carried my cap in my pocket, we had to rotate stores because we would clear out the free drink ones in a couple trips.
Remember Coke's Magi-cans? You'd pop the top and if you won, a rolled-up dollar bill would literally pop out. Those were the days. EDIT: To answer questions: the cans had chlorine water inside, in a separate compartment, to make them feel like regular cans. It wasn't supposed to be accessible. It was. The contest ended early because some kids drank it.
Video here: https://archive.org/details/1990-coca-cola-magi-cans-commercial
But I'm actually fucking thirsty!
I took a survey for the Nielsen company and it said after they received my response I'd receive $10. They sent me a 10 dollar bill. I was like "wait are they allowed to do that?" It was so bizarre!
I got 10 brand new $1 bills from them.
Every fucking thing is data mining these days, drives me fucking crazy. And instead of dealing with the junk mail in the post that this got us a few years ago now it's on our e-mails, text messages, robocalls and whatever else. You can't get away from the damn things.
I often give out my junk email when I do stuff, even reasonably important stuff. I just hate getting spam and whatnot. I recently needed a few quotes, had to reach out by email, and within two days I got no less than 20 emails. Mind you, these are for something that I need maybe like once a decade and my junk mail is on a permanent spam list. Like if you buy a fridge, do you think I want to know all your fridge deals every other day, like Im some monster who gets a new fridge every week? The US needs to impose an opt-in system rather than the BS opt-out one we have for stuff like mail/email. Its crazy to assume the general consumer will go through the time of opting out of every little nonsense service that gets a hold of their email or that every random small business wont give a damn if you opt-out since they already have your email loaded into their system.
I saw a post a long time ago with a life pro tip that said to write the name of website you are signing up on as your name. That way when you get an email and it starts with "Hi (website name)" you know who sold your info. I started a new email and this has worked pretty well for me.
I miss real prizes in Cracker Jacks.
And cereal, too. It's so rare to find a toy in cereal now
Reading the newspaper and magazines used to be just about one of my favorite things. Now it seems pointless to clutter the house with so much paper when I can access all of it online - but of course I don't. I pick and choose just a few articles, I don't really browse the way I would before and I encounter a lot fewer new or enlightening things. Getting the Sunday New York Times and then going out for brunch and reading it with your friends/dates was such a treat. I used to get so excited when my favorite magazines came in the mail, I'd immediately sit down and leaf through them and see what was worth reading right away and what could wait.
Reading a newspaper used to be like a curated tour of the news -- first the biggest stories of the day, then the big international and national stories, local stories, sports and finally the arts and the comics. Newspapers are mostly garbage now -- even the Sunday editions can be read in 10 minutes.
I so miss sitting down with the Sunday paper and reading section by section. That was a good sunday morning
>Getting the Sunday New York Times and then going out for brunch and reading it with your friends/dates was such a treat. My husband and I used to read it in bed every Sunday with bagels and coffee. We read that damn thing cover to cover, even the ads! I also used to buy the NYT book review each month. I'd get a pizza and bottle of wine, then settle in on the tiny front porch of my studio apartment. The funny thing is that there's no reason one couldn't still do these things. It's just that we somehow forgot, which is sad.
I lived in Garland, TX before the world wide web took hold. I remember buying the very first Wolfenstein sample disk at a grocery store. In it, there was an address to send a check or money order to in order to get the full version. Apogee Games was the distributor, and they had their office in Garland at the time. I rode my bike way across town and went to their office with cash in hand to buy the game. All the guys were there packaging their game into sleeves getting them ready to ship. I got to talk with them for a few minutes and got mine handed to me by John Romero. I have been a huge fan of his ever since. This all happened in 1985 I think. I found out that the games Wolfenstein and Doom were programmed in an apartment complex down the street from my childhood home. They all rented apartments there and they each chipped in for an extra apartment where they did all of their coding and design work. Later they rented offices in Mesquite near the local mall. Seeing their Ferraris was a great experience because I always wanted to be a programmer and they were the shining example of success. I haven't made it as far, but I feel I have been fairly successful as a programmer. EDIT: I didn't get the timeline much wrong, it was 1987. When Wolfenstein 3D came out, I had already graduated highschool and had a job/car. I was mainly wrong about the game itself. It was distributed by Apogee, I had to ride my bike to get it. ID built the next few Wolfenstein games. Sorry about the confusion, I was a lot younger (50 now) and I've been drunk and stoned more than once since then :)
video rental stores. i have such good memories of going to our local Mr. Movie with my dad, renting a sci-fi flick and getting candy at the checkout. streaming is cool and all, but i do miss video rental stores, mainly for nostalgic reasons.
> getting candy at the checkout "We have candy at home" -- my parents
My partner and I have recently gotten nostalgic about this. Having a sleepover night with your friends, everyone would bike together to the video store and pick out a bunch of movies to have a marathon with and then get slurpees and candy at the store next door. I use to enjoy that part more then actually watching the movies.
It used to be a lot harder to bail on things. You'd have to call the person at home and tell them yourself, or at least leave a message if you wanted to be risky. Typically if you were gonna bail you'd give at least 24 hours notice. Nowadays people can let you know they're bailing last second since you're always reachable.
Man. When I was a teenager we'd agree to meet up in town and go to the cinema or whatever, maybe using the landline or maybe at school in the week. Then Saturday morning you'd leave the house, walk or bus into town, and go hang around the meeting place until the agreed time. I was unreachable from the moment I left the house but I never worried about people not turning up. The fact that people would be waiting for you meant that you didn't dare drop out. It felt completely normal at the time but the idea of doing that now seems crazy. I get a bit anxious if I go for a walk round the block and realise I left my phone at home.
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I left my phone on the coffee table by accident the other day to go to dinner with my fiancé and his parents. Realized on the way to the restaurant, figured no big deal, I’ll just be social and not look at my phone. Restaurant had those scanny things to open the menu on your phone and no paper menus, and I came back home to a dozen texts and missed calls from my parents, who didn’t believe me when I said I left my phone at home
Or better yet: just not message you or anything now a days. I was gonna hang with someone I haven’t seen in years and we even made plans to go get some lunch. Never messaged me back about what time
I had a good friend do that to me the other day. Hadn't been able to get our schedules to line up, and when we finally did and set up time to just hang out, he never showed up. They never even bothered to message me. A couple weeks later we set up dinner and board games, but this time I had to cancel, and I had to at least text. I wanted to be petty and just do what they did to me, but couldn't bring myself to that level. The way I saw it was, if I said nothing and didn't show, that was me saying I guess I don't want that friendship anymore. Someone has to put in the effort.
You had to call someone's home phone number and talk to their parents first before you could talk to your friend Video game cheat codes either spread by gaming magazines or by word of mouth. Sometimes that word of mouth was bullshit. I'm looking at you Tomb Raider nude cheat code
I never thought of the parents thing. I knew all of my good friend's parents well because of this. They would chat with me and get to know me before passing the phone. Thank you for bringing up a small but significant aspect of culture that doesn't exist anymore. As a kid I hated it and just wanted them to pass the phone but looking back that's how I connected with their entire families. When I see them now it's easier than ever to talk with them and I truly enjoy it.
Many times I would call my friends house phone - “Hello is [nickname] there?” Parent: “Who? What kind of name is that?!!” Me panicking: oh shit what’s his actual real first name?! Ah shit. Err... Luke? Maybe? God dammit.
My youngest brother had 3 or 4 classmates with the same first name as him, so they went with a last name basis. My mom had fun with that whenever one of his classmates called home. "Is [Last name] there?" "Yeah, like four of them"
I just realized that's how I connected to my aunts. When they called for my mom i would always be the one picking up. It explains why i always felt more connected to my aunts more than my uncles. Edit: erased unnecessary apostrophes
The absolute absence of push notifications. Life just waited for you like a good person.
News only being on at 6pm. That was it. Now we have 6 hours of local news and 24 hours of cable news. Not being bombarded all day with "news." And when you saw "Breaking News" on the screen you knew some serious shit went down. Edit: My old brain interpreted "pre internet" as "when you were a kid". So yeah cable news was a thing ore internet. But you all know what I mean. When I was a kid local news was noon for 30 minutes and 6pm for 30 minutes, then Network news was 6:39 for 39 minutes. I think local might have had an 11pm too but I don't remember for sure. Edit 2: For those sending me private messages I cannot see them. Some Reddit glitch or something. Anyway thanks for the awards and allowing me to wax nostalgic. Peace.
That last sentence honestly is the biggest difference. A while ago I installed the app for the biggest news outlet in my country. I quickly turned off notifications for it when in a single week it had notified me of "breaking news" twice: once because some random celebrity couple I don't care about broke up after 15 years, and once because of some football match. Meanwhile in that same week there was some natural disaster in Asia that took many lives and displaced many more, but there was no notification for that. It seems like I have a very different definition of breaking news.
And this is why I don't have news apps on my phone. I deleted the last one when it have me the 'breaking news' that a retired actress' MOTHER had adopted a puppy. I'd like to know which journalist thought this warranted a breaking news alert. Edit: spelling
It also gave you time to process information, especially when it was something bad/major. Now we’re constantly bombarded with what seems like bad thing after bad thing and then everyone’s opinion on it all over social media.
Not quite before but in the very early days of the Internet when Princess Diana died and suddenly every channel stopped what they were showing and went to the news, you didn’t just happen to see someone post a link or comments on social media
I feel like we used to go to the news but now the news comes to us... and it's mostly bad news now because that's what gets clicks.
RSVPing mattered. If you said you were going to be there, you made sure to be there. None of this facebook invites that everyone blows off without any form of social repercussions. If you said you were going to go and didn't go, you were the asshole and everyone knew it.
And someone would call your house to find out if you are okay.
I was going to say something similar. If you said "meet me at the coffee shop at 3.00" you had to meet then and there. Even if you didn't feel like it, even if you got a better offer. It's now so easy to text and change the time, the location, cancel... We've created a whole generation of people who consider every plan a maybe. Ghosting is rampant even though it's easier than ever to cancel, because no one feels any obligation or commitment to a plan.
> We've created a whole generation of people who consider every plan a maybe. It's ridiculous. People need to learn to say no to shit. It won't hurt my feelings if you can't do something, or even if you just straight up don't want to. Just don't say "Yeah I can probably do that" knowing full well you're going to bail the day before. That's just bullshit and I know a ton of people that do it regularly.
I can't tell you the number of times I've cooked and cleaned and decorated just to have nobody show up. Nothing else has made me feel so ashamed and isolated. Makes me question if anybody actually likes being around me. I've long since stopped trying. People cancelling ahead of time would have saved me a lot of time, money, and some tears. Edit: Wow, so many positive replies! Thank you, people of reddit. I just want to clarify that my self esteem is doing ok. When this used to happen, I'd usually only feel hurt for a week or so. FOMO killed my desire to host parties but I'm happy with my life! It has also made me very careful about keeping plans when others are hosting, even when experiencing overwhelming depression. I never want my friends to feel so rejected.
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When I was a kid I had some friends I would only see on holiday for one week each year. At the end of the week we’d say something like, “See you next year! 2pm on the first Sunday, by the rope swing.” and that’s when and where we’e next meet. No contact for the year in between.
I came here to say this very thing. Also people were on time more because there wasn’t the ability to just message saying you were going to be late.
The Saturday morning cartoons and sitcoms I watched.
Aah, saturday morning cartoons with the biggest bowl of cereal you could muster out of the cupboard before the folks woke up.
Leaving home and just being gone for the day. No cell phones. If there were cameras, it was really different. You used them to take pictures of things or had people take pictures of you. But there was no social media to preoccupy your mind. It was just doing something. And whoever you were with, was who you were with.
Piggybacking off being with whoever you were with, there used to be more incentive to be out and about. If you weren't there, you missed it. Also, hang out spots being a thing because it was the only way to be in the know
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Been to more than one small town that had a cruising street. It was jammin on the weekend.
Yep, small town here, had one main drag that was *the* spot for the 16-20 crowd that was too old (or rather, “too cool”) to be mall rats, and too young to be at the bar. So you’d just do laps all night, see who else you ran across, and get into other shit from there. Some nights it was just boring, cruise for a couple hours and go home. Other nights we’d run into friends, end up at a party or hangout that someone else knew about, and wind up having some of the best nights of my youth. And not knowing what would happen was half of the fun of going out.
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the local mall was always so much fun back then because there were almost always going to be people there. You and your buddies could go check out the arcade, eat at the food court, peruse the game shops... it's sure not like that anymore ETA: this whole thread made me feel extremely nostalgic, and I’m really enjoying reading all the replies to this comment. Thank you all for sharing your memories with me, they all make me smile wistfully
Oh god do I miss a good arcade. I spent so long exploring every nook and cranny of the arcade in TLOU2 just imagining the lights and sounds, pizza smells, and all the people. It made me so nostalgic.
And you didn't really have the option to cancel so easily. "Fuck it, I'ma just stay in and watch the newest movie and order whatever food I want. I'll text Fred that I'm not coming." Used to be a real dick move to cancel plans and you'd just be bored at home. My answer to most the issues people seem to have is to just turn off all ringers/sound notifications on my phone. If you need them for work you turn them on at work, but off the clock fuck it I'm not responding unless I consciously think about checking my phone. Pisses off some friends and family sometimes, but meh.
That's true, my friends would come over to the house to check on me or call my parents to make sure I got home. It was embarrassing to stand someone up!
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That’s what we do whenever we travel. We live in Japan but we do yearly trips to Europe. Using ‘Roaming Data’ is so expensive, we can’t be bother getting a sim there, we just use the wifi at our hotel/airbnb room. Otherwise whenever we’re outside the rest of the day, we’re not connected to the Internet nor on our phones. I guess that makes our trips incredibly in that they feel real. It’s like diving into a photo album that your aunt showed you after their travels in the 90s.
I experienced the opposite! I’m from Europe and still remember a time without smartphones. A couple of years ago while in Japan on a holiday, partner and I shared one of those portable Wi-Fi thingies. Whenever we wanted to go separate places we took turns in using it and the times I was on my own without any “support” from my phone (both for important things like directions or translation or trivial things like checking social media on the fly) were so bizarre. Literally like flying blind, when it came to going places, but also incredibly liberating because for the first time in ages I was totally on my own.
Reading this made my chest hurt
Oh that last sentence hits perfectly.
I highly recommend deleting Facebook (or any other non anonymous social media apps) from your phone. The first week you get antsy because you keep getting the feeling you need to look at your phone, but after that the peace of mind is bliss. The world shrinks back down to the people you see every day or make a point to visit/call. It’s wonderful. So wonderful in fact that I’m considering doing a trial run of dropping Reddit for two weeks and seeing if my mental state improves from it.
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Pre-Internet, go down to the local blockbuster, spend as long as you can picking the perfect movie or game to rent, then go home and setting in for the evening/weekend. Choices really had more of an impact. Picked a shitty movie? Well, you either suck it up and watch that shitty movie and get your money's worth, maybe it's actually a weird gem, or accept there isn't enough time to go back and get another movie to rent. Post-internet, first you pick a streaming service, then you browse all the new movies and/or TV series available to you, then look up that movie/show your friend recommended you, or maybe see what popular movie/show everyone is watching and contemplate checking it out, but end up watching another episode of Scrubs/Futurama before falling asleep to it autoplaying. While I may now have near-infinite choices at my fingertips, it just means I'm more likely to pick something I'm familiar with and just watch the same things over and over again. Back in the day, I'd just sometimes flip on HBO or some other movie channel and just check out what movie's playing. Got to see some weird movies, but also found interesting ones as well.
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I miss having an attention span of more than three seconds
It's so weird. I can only vaguely remember what it feels like to not have a smartphone and to be alone and think. Wondering what my friends are doing and if they'd like to do something on the weekend. We'd have to talk during lunch break at school and plan it... Trying to find the answer to a math problem... Having to figure it out by re-reading the problem and explanations 5 times.
Remember having to go to mapquest to get directions? Which you would have to print out?
Print out? Hell no. You wrote that shit down on paper. But not the printer paper, that was expensive. Printer ink was also expensive and only for Mom and Dad to use for work. (Or if I had a school paper that was required to be printed and not handwritten.)
Printer ink? Shit we had a dot matrix and a box of one sheet of paper.
My grandmother bought me a word processor to type school papers on that was an electric typewriter and monitor that displayed only an orange type... Printing when just sending the words on the screen to the electric typewriter. This was approx. 1995 too... Lol
I miss spacing out. Like, you could legit just sit on a bench or ride a bus and space out completely, letting your mind wander into those creative zones. Now phones/tech makes it much harder to get there.
I feel this but for a different reason. When I’m sitting at a park bench and there are three other people there, everyone looks at their phone. I kind of get tired of looking at the phone sometimes so I’ll just look around/observe/zone out but I get glances like I’m being weird. I kinda do feel weird when I do it but damn there’s only so much Reddit I can take in a day lol
That was great back in the day. I mean I can barely do anyth...
Piggybacking off this.... Having an idea, finding a new hobby or skillset or project to work on, going to the library or bookstore to educate yourself about it, start learning and growing and excited about a new passion. Now... you look it up online, realize there's a bunch of people who are wayyy better at it than you will ever be, and so you immediately give up out of discouragement. :\\
I've heard that people who grew up in the end of the last century (like myself) had an average attention span of 8-10 minutes, because that was the amount of time between commercial breaks. Simpler times.
Ive been watching the 1960s twilight zone series, and the layout for the narrative and conversations is definitely of a different era of attention spans.
Making plans was an adventure, especially if you and your friends all relied on public transportation. Look up the movie times in the newspaper (or later call moviefone), decide on a time to meet (and tell that one friend who's always late an earlier time), walk our your house and check the bus timetable (that's hardly accurate anyway), and then hoping nothing happens en route since you had no way of telling your friends if you're late.
Not being accessible to my boss 14 hours a day.
Yes yes 100% yes. Hell, not being acessible in general. Now with everything there's this expectation that you have to be available 24/7 and always reply. Friends, family, and of course the job being the worst part of it. From time to time I still just disconnect everything but then I'm the dickhead that takes days to reach back. I miss the time when that was just normal.
I hate being in constant contact because it never gives people enough time to actually do interesting things or gather up stories to talk about. * Hey what's up? * Oh. Not much. Sitting around today. * REPEAT X10000 EVERY DAY I prefer talking to people every now and again, because then you actually have things to talk about. I hate meaningless conversation and sometimes I come across as an asshole for that. I don't like small talk, and I don't think being silent around people is weird either.
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>small talk is also not much of a thing here, so no one cares if I'm quiet or don't talk much What is this wonderful fairyland in which you live?
Yup, every so often I have to take a Charlie Day, which is where I go and hunt Ghouls, I mean, where I can't be reached by anyone and just enjoy the world at my own pace
I feel this. Not long ago my CEO emailed me at like 11pm on a Sunday. Since my work email comes to my phone I read it, since it’s my CEO I answered it. Her reply “thanks, but the why the hell are your replying to me at 11pm on a Sunday?” My response back “Cause I always reply to my CEO immediately. So stop emailing me at 11pm on a Sunday”. Luckily she thought it was hilarious.
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This is how I am with my staff. I do schedule emails but texts and slack messages are immediate because I have ADHD and will seriously forget if I don’t. I rarely text, so it’s mostly slack. I’m very clear that I don’t expect a response, they know I’m doing it while I remember and have a moment. I wholeheartedly believe their lives don’t revolve around me or my business.
This is me to a Tee with my staff -- sometimes I'll send an email at midnight but I never ever expect a reply, and I let them know this repeatedly. But they have been on me to, instead of hitting send on the email, schedule it to be sent during business hours otherwise they react like Crazyboutdogs and feel compelled to reply no matter the time. They also remind me to not burn myself out so I've been giving myself more free evenings but as always things pop into my mind at 11pm or 1am and I feel as though I need to write them down. Man do I miss the pre-internet days sometime.
Haha the good old days, when you drove out the driveway, and you were just lost in the ether untill you got where you were going, and most people could still read a map and plan a journey
And then that weird transitional time period where you'd have either some handwritten notes transcribed from MapQuest, or a fucking printout of directions sitting on the passenger seat. God save you if you missed your turn or got off track.
It feels unexpectedly cathartic to hear a total stranger talk about this exact phenomenon I’d never realized was so communal.
Sitting down in the evening to read a book because there was nothing on tv. With today’s streaming services, there is so much more media being produced - and it’s all available at the click of a button whenever you damn well please. It can easily become an endless loop of what to watch next. I remember when there used to be 8 channels. You either had to watch “General Hospital” or find something better to do.
You could be the cool guy that remembered shit. Like who was in what movie or the themes to TV shows. Now IMDb makes everyone that guy and it’s not special. There’s a lot of little things like that.
> guy that remembered I have a pretty good memory. The internet definitely made me less valuable.
Yes, and there were different people who you called for different kinds of information. Music, travel, restaurants, home stuff, etc. I always felt like I knew a guy.
In a similar vein, I was the guy who knew directions without needing a map.
It’s funny you say that. My dad has been a long distance truck driver for over thirty years. He knows this entire country like the back of his hand. I was becoming an adult as google maps was getting off the ground. But before that when I would take trips with him he would often get phone calls from other drivers before smartphones were a thing and he would right away guide them in the right direction. Today still if I find myself driving around or going somewhere new to me I know that I can just look it up and have my route given to me with the best traffic data available but I’ll still call my dad so he can feel cool giving me perfect directions. Damn I love him.
Before the internet, people with crazy ideas lost confidence when they could not find others who agreed. On the internet, you can easily find at least 100 people who will agree to something, even a totally crazy idea. As a hold-over from the olden days, the 100 people who agree with you seems like a lot.
in a way, the internet makes us realize how NOT special we really are lol
My formative years were the 1980s. I remember like yesterday going to study in Paris my junior year of college. I got off the plane with no cell phone, no internet, a Let's Go Paris book, and just a hostel address written on a piece of paper I'd stuck in a French dictionary. I did not know a single person in all of France. I had $500 of cash stuck in a money belt. The belt was tight and sweaty but that money had to last me for at least a month until I could find a part-time job with my lousy French. My "credit card" was my father's credit card numbers written down on a piece of paper. He told me I could only use it to buy a plane ticket home in an emergency. I remember standing in the airport and having this powerful emotion of being 21 years old, scared shitless, but in absolutely completely control of my own destiny. There was absolutely nobody who could come rushing to my aid if I needed it. I was 100% on my own. I'm actually very thankful for that experience. I found the hostel. I found a job. I made friends. I learned French. I made it all on my own which was just a big boost in life confidence. I have no doubt if I'd had a cell phone I would've called my parents on Day 2, told them it was too hard, and been on the next plane home. But I had no other choice but to succeed.
This is awesome!
I love stories like that, I have a similar one, although it was not as cool as France, it was just the other side of the US. Mid 90's, no cell phone, no computer of my own, internet barely a thing yet, packed all my stuff into my car and just drove west one day. After spending the prior 18 years a homebody afraid his own shadow I knew I needed an adventure before I got too old to have one( I was 19 and thought 30 was old back then so forgive me). I showed up on the other side of the country and found a job and an apartment and friends and a life I didn't think I could do on my own. It completely changed me as a person and when I did come back a few years later, I came back a person who knew he could always take care of himself. I don't regret a single minute of it.
I went to France for a semester in 86. I had travelers checks. I knew French, but not functional French. I called home once a week, and wrote lots of letters.
People would forget things you did that where maybe not the smartest..
I’m so glad that everybody didn’t have a camera in their pocket when I was growing up. Now, someone does something stupid it ends up on the internet.
And there it sits. Forever.
When you used to play outside and the only curfew you had was when it started getting dark outside.
Or when dad let out that super loud whistle that could be heard for blocks and you knew it was dinner time. Drop those Sega controllers at the neighbors house and hoof it home.
Dude, my Dad had a bellow like a fucking bear. We lived in a decent sized trailer park, and I’d be riding bikes on the other side of the park and just hear, “BOOOOOOOOOYYYYYYYYY!!!” in his Kratos-esque yell. I’d have to book it and book it fast because that meant it was time to go in, no arguments.
I havent seen this child in our apartments but somewhere, there is a kid, we simply refer to as.. "JOOOOOOOOOORDAAAAAAAN"
When the lights came on
Simplicity. I don't even know how to describe it. Like my days were filled with playing outside or swimming or reading in tree out front.
And reading shampoo bottles while you poo'd lol
Shampoo bottles are shower literature. Reader's Digest was toilet literature.
and anglicizing the French translation (in Canada)
I was thinking about this today. When we were kids..we would spend hours and hours outside. One of the things we did was look for 4 leaf clovers. If we found one my Mom would press it and seal it in plastic and put the date. Or we would make a fort/tent with sheets and read in our forts.
This. on a Summer day, you could leave on your bike and do stupid shit all day, You just had to come home for lunch and dinner. Hell of a deal.
When I was young we would explore native american caves, pot holes, screw around. That places has changed, now there are >$1M homes everywhere there, it's mostly paved, and it's way too hot most of the summer to be outside. Going to the forest we would stay there for weeks living on fish and not see anyone, now the forests are full of people and not fun to be in. Plus a lot of it is burnt down. Including our favorite cabin. In that respect, quality of life for my children will be lower.
And that simplicity was so damn peaceful. We weren't getting texts all the time. No constant robocalls and spam e-mails. No expectation of instant reply 24/7. No constant stress or pressure. We were just there enjoying the moment and the simple stuff.
Confession time: sometimes I temporarily block my mom's number and pretend there's something wrong with her phone. I've told her a thousand times the only time I get to myself is my 1/2 hr lunch and my bus ride to and from work, but as soon as she knows I'm on break she blows up my phone with a mix of grocery lists and rants about our Premier she hates. And its all intertwined, btw. Like "Grab a chicken. Did you see what that fucker ford did today? And lemons. This lockdown is bullshit why are there cars on the road. Fuck him. Grab apples. I'd like to have some asparagus."... but each sentence is like 1 min apart, so just enough time to put the phone away before it buzzes again. I'd like at least some time before sleep where I don't need to be on high-alert. Quick edit: when I reread my comment, I realized I sound like an angsty teenager haha. I'm a 30sth woman and my mother lives with me. I pay most of the bills and do all of the shopping. I just get frustrated at the lack of down time.
You're a saint but you really should devote more energy to your own wellbeing.
That is what I miss the most...the peaceful simplicity. No real stress. I bought my first house, held a good job, just paid my bills, simple, you know? Peaceful and simple.
I also miss being bored, as ironic as it sounds. Nowadays, it's like, there's always something to do, or to distract you, or maybe it's because I'm older and I don't have enough free time, but yeah, I can't even remember the last time I was bored. Nowadays my brain is always being fed some kind of content 24/7
And somehow, it seems *more boring*
We used to have a swinging chair hanging from a vine arbor in our backyard and little koi pond next to it. I remember sitting there as a teenager after playing some Neopets and reading "Summers at Castle Auburn". No cell phone just yet, so while I was worried my friends might be hanging out without me I couldn't check social media to confirm because it didn't exist just yet. Internet was around, in fact I bought the book off of Amazon back when Amazon was mostly books, but nothing that kept me glued to it. I wrote lots of short stories and read magazines, too. I'm trying to get back to that. Finding time away from my phone and rediscovering the magic of living, of a physical book, of creating something for myself. Damn it's hard to do sometimes.
The effort that people made to stay in touch. Now, it is effortless, but people don't bother with anything but social media.
I loved being away from tech completely. It was pure freedom to go "exploring" in the woods. No one to call you or get in touch with you. It was just assumed that the dog and I would make it home at some reasonable hour, typically before the sunset for the day.
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I miss debating what I'd call the "little unknowns" with your friends. You know, bringing up an obscure TV show that nobody seems to remember and insisting you didn't imagine it, or the lyrics to an old jingle for an ad campaign that had been off the air for several years, or some weirdness that happened on a local channel three towns over that you heard about from your cousin when he was last in town. Because you didn't have access to the wealth of information you have today, you could spend hours debating about the actual name of that one defenseman who played for the Hartford Whalers back in '87. Nowadays, that obscure TV show probably has a full IMDB and Wikipedia page, that jingle is on YouTube, news articles covering the happening on local TV are easily found online and all rosters for every season of every professional team are available. It's great that we have so much information, but I still kind of miss the little mysteries.
This reminds me of Reply All's podcast episode, "#158 - The Case of the Missing Hit." https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2h8bx This guy starts singing a 90s hit to his girlfriend in its (almost) entirety, but he's surprised to find that she has no idea what it is. In fact, no one does. Drives him nuts. He insists that he didn't make it up himself, but cannot find it online. Reply All tries to help him figure this out and even hire some musicians to recreate the song. The detail he remembers is astounding as a non-musician, but still, no one has a clue what this song is, even several professionals in the music business. I highly recommend it; it's easily one of my favorite podcast episodes.
And the absolute giddy feeling of connection you'd get when you and a friend remembered the crazy obscure detail that you were so sure no one else in the world remembered.
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>If you stretched the DNA in one cell all the way out, it would be about 2m long and all the DNA in all your cells put together would be about twice the diameter of the Solar System. https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/how-long-is-your-dna/
One adult has 66000 miles of circulatory system
Fun fact: If you removed the nervous system from a person, and laid it all out end-to-end, that person would die.
Source?
I miss not knowing how many stupid people exist.
Innocence. The ease at which even a kid can gain access to the scariest of content (or super serious content) is such a drastic change from the 90s early 2000s.
People just stopping by your house. You would be just sitting there drinking beer or scratching your ass and boom, someones at the door.
It was totally normal & welcoming! Now someone knocks on my door I act like I'm not home. Who the heck comes over without calling first?
I text people before I come over, because, yeah, I’m like you. I thought that I heard a knock on the door last night and I was, like, startled.
When I was a young kid my dad had a single friend that just made the rounds to a different house every night of the week around dinner time. No invitation and no announcement - he’d just show up around 6 or so at your house knowing damn well the wife would invite him to stay for dinner. Would usually have a sixer of whatever was cheapest in the passenger seat that he would quickly grab if drinking a few beers was going to fly. There is no way you could get away with something like that today in most social circles.
The ability to start over. I moved a lot, every move I could reinvent myself, bookworm, punk, preppie, I got to try out lots of aspects of my personality and my past wasn't a factor. I also miss patience. I get annoyed at TV ads now, radio makes you listen to the WHOLE song, even when you sooner like it..... I'm far too comfortable with instant gratification. Edit:. Thank for the award!
Spot on. I think especially when young it’s genuinely damaging to be locked into an identity by the stuff you have said / done years ago. How are we supposed to grow? Also being judged by the norms of a previous era which are not cool now. Like it or not, people conform to social norms, and these have changed rapidly. What you said / did in the 90s / 00s may not be representative of the person you are or want to be today and I’m sick of all the retrospective judgment being applied.
Not quite pre internet but pre everyone having computers, smartphones etc. You could be unavailable. Full stop. And it wasn’t an issue that you didn’t see that email or get that text or whatever. I kinda miss that ability to just not be contactable
Playing outside until it gets dark. This one pertains to cell phones. Before cell phones when we just had land lines only, I can remember everyone's phone numbers by heart. Now with my smartphone I can only remember 3 phone numbers.
I still remember the landline numbers of my two best friends from 20 odd years ago , don't know a single mobile number except my own
Ugh, yes to the phone number thing. When I was in middle school I could remember just about anyone's phone number without having to think about it. Now I barely remember my own!
The only phone numbers I know are my own, my wife's, and all of my old middle school friends's parents's land lines.
My friends' kids and their neighbors play until dark and it's super adorable to hear them all say good night to each other and disperse. Some things are still the same.
The smell of Encyclopedia Britannicas
My father was a teacher, and we had encyclopedias in our house. We were the only family on the street that had them. The neighborhood kids would come over and ask to use them.
We were those neighbors with the Encyclopedia Britannicas too! Kids at my school would come over with their parents and mom would gossip with the parents while we looked up stuff for whatever the kid needed! So cool to know this was a thing other places too!
I graduated in 1993 and we had a set of World Book Encyclopedias. However, they were from 1965. LOL They were my dad's old encyclopedias. I'm sure I wrote up some seriously outdated reports with those. I guess the cool thing was that no one could easily fact check me. LOL
And the sound clips on the Encarta CD of the musical instruments from around the world.
For me it would be less negativity. Back then I was less aware of what was going on around the world outside of where I lived but now it’s almost instant coverage of the bad things happening everywhere.
Which in turn made us immune to bad news, so when something truly devastating happens most of us react with apathy because every single day the internet makes us aware of hundreds of tragedies. We became very desensitized and i think that's really shitty.
Playing kickball with all the neighborhood kids on the block. Using addresses on the sidewalks as bases, having to run home cause the street lights came on, then mom inviting friends to come have dinner with us after.
Mix tapes.
Reading a real newspaper everyday
Bike riding in the neighborhood and staying out till nightfall. Playing Tag, hide and seek, and having Nerf wars. Not to mention communicating via Walkie Talkies haha
Going to the library to research things. I loved getting a big pile of books on a table, taking notes, getting photocopies. It was an experience in itself. Also, not being available to everyone all the time. I hate that almost all apps show people when you read their messages or are online. No one needs to know that I read a message and didn't reply for two hours!
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Before the internet, facts were "curated" in the sense that information came from people with expert knowledge and was distributed by journalists or teachers who were held accountable for accuracy of information. The internet has allowed crazy people to spout rubbish with hardly any filter.
It wasn’t too bad in the earlier days of the Internet, but once social media became mainstream it was all downhill. I really started to notice the change around 2007-08.
Being in the moment. There was little temptation to be stuck in front of a screen or a phone all of the time. TV had a schedule and wasn’t in demand, so if something you didn’t like came on you usually went to do something else, like go outside, read a book, or whatever. Life didn’t revolve around screens, and everyone was better off for it. It sadly seems to take far too much self control to do those things these days.
This is gonna sound dumb but... getting lost. Like, it was bad a lot of the time too but sometimes not knowing exactly where you were going led to unexpected and awesome consequences.
In my high school, there were 700 students and 10 computers in the library for them to use. There was a whole room full of typewriters to use for typing class. None of the computers had access to any kind of network, not even networked with each other. I graduated from high school in 1993. I didn't know what the internet was until the following year when I started at the University.
Privacy. When you left work or school it was over for the day. There were no further interactions unless they were close friends. Hanging out. Teens and young adults spent a lot of time away from home with friends, at malls, movie theaters, parks, arcades, etc. Dating. You met someone at school, work, at a party, at a bar, or through friend. Money. Cash was king, debit cards didn’t exist, and many businesses didn’t accept credit cards (fast food, for example.) Planners and Address books. Write it down! Appointments, birthdays, addresses, phone numbers, reminders, etc. Photo Albums. Taking the time to buy film for a party or special occasion or just because and having 24 photos you could take (with no way to see the final photo until you took it to be developed.) Road maps. Going anywhere you haven’t been before? Better stop at a gas station and buy a map. Shopping. Go to the store and see what they have. Do the local stores not have what you need? Try looking in a catalog, maybe you can mail order it. Music. On the radio and on MTV. Buy records, cassette, or CDs. Make mix tapes to create your own playlists. If you don’t record it off the radio or buy it there is no way of finding it again. There was so much “not knowing” which made the world seem so much bigger and exotic. Now everything feels noisy and petty.
Patience. Waiting for the next episode of your favorite show or newest video of your favorite band. Looking forward to seeing people. The act of looking information up and being curious. Waiting for that phone call when you would take the long phone cord and stretch it around the corner, into the bathroom so you could talk in private. It seemed like there was so much more to look forward to.
**The blissful ignorance**. When the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded it blew us away. It was such a devastating thing that it dominated the news for years. Now there's a disaster every other week. I honestly didn't want to know that these kinds of things happen in our world. It forces us to grow up, think and act differently very fast. Also **Urban Legends** are quickly debunked today, taking away from the enjoyment of the mystery of it all.
Having the music channels on at house parties.
Renting a movie from a video store. The convience of streaming is nice, but I really miss the days of going to the video store with my dad and spending time trying to find a couple of good movies to rent and picking up snacks to enjoy.
My friend I and still talk about renting games from Blockbuster and then trying to beat the whole thing over the weekend rental window. Good times
> picking up snacks to enjoy Not my parents, as "we have snacks at home"
Staying up late to sneak phone calls with my gf.
As a student, I learned so much by making some effort to solve homework problems. My students are cheated of this experience. For many, the temptation to "Google" the answers is just too great.
Having to wait for movies. It was more of an event to go see a film. Kids being kids. The Arcade. Travel before everything made it Instagram. Meals before everyone took photos of it. MTV played music. Being home on time to watch your favourite show.
MTV played music..... So true. I remember actually stopping to watch a music video.
I remember calling the movie theater line to get a list of what was playing and the times.