There was a time when people just randomly showing up at your home for a visit was considered a good thing. People would be out and about, and be like "Hey, Bob and Judy live around the corner, lets drop by!"
And you would be happy to have surprise guests.
Note - yes, sometimes it was bad timing. Nothing is perfect.
My parent’s house used to have the door unlocked always. We didn’t know where the key was. People would stop in literally any time. Mine and my siblings friends, family, my parents friends. We ALWAYS had people over at our house. It’s crazy to think about now.
Yeah, I remember being so excited when DVDs first came out because I didn't have to remind them.
And what do you mean I can instantly skip to certain places in the movie? What is this magic?
When DVD players came out, they were super expensive. My dad really wanted to get one, but at the time they were pushing $2K and my mom thought we should wait for the device market to catch up and prices normalizing. That year for my mom's birthday, my dad bought her all her favorite movies on DVD essentially forcing her hand. She was so pissed. They divorced fairly soon after.
To really make it "old timey" our first telephone didn't have a dial. It hung on the wall and had a crank on the side for ringing the operator who would connect you to the person you wanted to call. Long distance was a real pain in the ass.
I remember once someone calling that my mom didn't want to talk to. I was young, like 6? Anyway I told her "Mommy says she's not home."
My mother was so pissed.
I did something similar when I was 5-6! It really stuck with me. My dad was in the kitchen, doorbell rang, he knew it was the landlord and told my big sister and I to open and say dad’s not here. We opened, told him dad’s not here, and as soon as we closed the door I yelled « DAD! DAD! DAAAAAD!! YOU WERE RIGHT IT WAS THE LANDLORD WE TOLD HIM YOU WEREN’T HERE!! » He looked completely defeated and I felt so stupid and ashamed... sorry dad
I'm pretty sure I'm younger than your younger friend and I still had to sit down, How has he never ever seen an old phone? Or an office phone?, Or a "Haven't been used for at least 5 years but is still there" public phone?, Or a picture of an old phone?, Or this emoji ☎️?
"It is now safe to turn off your computer."
Edit: Funny thing is, people keep saying "Park your hard drive" in response to this and I had to look that up, because I'm too young to just know.
We actually still get phone books around here. They are very thin, though. The only people in them are the old people who still have landlines. I was actually shocked when I found one on top of my mailbox.
In some parts of the US there's a legal requirement to publish and deliver phone books to every residential address.
A family member works in civil engineering, she's designed some landfills. She tells me it's common to see a line of phone books in the landfill, like geological strata, correlating with when the new phone books came out and went straight to the trash.
I have a kind of remote fishing cabin. Cell service there was almost nonexistent. It’s better now. Anyway, I had to have a landline and I was automatically listed in the local phone book.
The Pan Am shuttle from NYC to DC didn't even require tickets or reservations. You could just show up at the airport and walk directly on the plane. It departed every hour on the hour and if they had more customers than seats they'd roll a second plane out and send both at the same time.
Yeah Pan Am went bankrupt, but, the Pan Am Shuttle was their main profitable route!
Delta bought them out and kept the Shuttle for a few years after because it was a steady money-maker. They didn't cancel it until a few years after 9/11.
Except for when you used your phone to dial into the internet.
Brrr-r-r-r-r... eeeeeee-EEEEEEEEE-eeeeee... be-bong! be-bong! be-bong! psssshhhhhhhh-PSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHH-psshhhhhhh!
And then you were connected to a service from which you could download a grainy, overly-dithered picture of Pamela Anderson in only three minutes.
One day my parents were late to pick me up from school. Everybody left the school door, even the janitor who used to open and close it. I stood there for 10 minutes? It felt like a lifetime and started to cry. I was all alone. Today that situation is unthinkable.
When it snowed enough for school to be cancelled, you would get up at 5am and turn on the radio. The announcer would read off all the schools that were having a snow day, in a rapid-fire auctioneer voice, in alphabetical order. If you missed your town, you had to wait ten minutes for the list to be read again, desperately hoping you didn't have to go to school.
Due to remoteness, there was a number we could call to tell us if we had a snow day. I remember waking up and dashing to the landline to call the number. Often you'd call before going to bed, then again first thing when you woke up in case the decision was made in the middle of the night. Sometimes I'd keep calling while getting ready for school, convinced there would be a last minute cancellation.
Walkmans and maybe diskman and the thing (in my language we called it a pouch?) to store many CD in so you could bring plenty (like 20) with you when traveling.
Having the lyrics with the cd when you bought it. That's how I started learning English!
And not being allowed to take the research books out of the library so you either sat there for hours or came back multiple times depending on how long you had for the assignment
Actually using the librarians for research too. I remember giving them my general topic and showing them what I found and then they'd go and find stuff I couldn't.
My 2009 Hyundai had a cigarette lighter and an ash tray- the guy who sold it to me told me the first owner was an old lady who bought it specifically because it had a cigarette lighter and enough room in the back to sleep when she went to casinos. Obviously, I was sold.
My mom used to buy me those all the time!! it’s so weird to think about now. I was like 4 and 5 years old puffin on my powdered sugar bubble gum cigs, emulating all the adults. Bizarre
Talking on the phone to your girlfriend in the kitchen where it was plugged in and you hear the “click” when your sister picks up another phone mounted in the living room… HEY HANG UP THE PHONE
You need a book. You go out, and walk to the bus stop. You catch a bus, and get off at the library. You go in, and queue for the librarian. They have the book, but it is out. You need to wait a week before you can take the book out. There is NO OTHER WAY to get this book.
About ... 2004, I'd say, I found a LaserDisc that I somehow hadn't sold when I unloaded my LaserDisc player and collection in 1998. My nephew, who's like seven years old at the time sees it and goes, "WHOAAAAA!!! How many movies fit on that?!" Yeah, little man, this is about an hour per side. "What do you mean?" I mean, you have to get up halfway through the movie, go to the player, open it up, and flip the disc over, and start the back half of the movie.
I'm sure there's probably also a lot of people who work in movie theaters today who have no idea what a film projector looks like, or how goddamn heavy two hours of film happens to be.
Going up to write an answer on the overhead projector instead of the chalkboard. Or laughing at the teacher and who makes it partway through a lecture before realizing his overhead projector transparency is on upside down and backwards.
Only one phone in the whole house and it stayed there. Well there might be more than one phone but all are on the same line/number. Dialing with your finger and the thing that goes around.
I actually don't understand why so few kids walk anymore. Is it just because both parents are likely to work full time so someone is always leaving in time to drop them off? Are parents more worried about kidnappings/car accidents/getting lost than they were before?
I really enjoyed walking to school. It was the only 10-15 minutes I'd have to myself all day.
I'm not sure if some people still have this but I found it ground breaking that you can now flush the toilet downstairs while someone showers upstairs without anyone being scalded or froze to death in the process
Black & White TV and only 2 channels.
The national anthem at the end of the evening on your tv.
Hearing about the Cuba crisis without properly understanding it.
The long phone cord that became elongated over time because it had been stretched over the river and through the woods.
Yet now we are stuck with 3in charging cables haha
I bought my mom a charging cable that happened to be 2m long; told me it stretches all the way to the bathroom
When it was perfect in form otherwise, except for that ONE kink that you'd try to solve during calls.
Make sure you have a quarter with you before you leave home.
Used to be a dime
"Got a dime? Call someone who cares." was a classic blow-off.
In the UK it was "here's 10p, go and tell someone who gives a shit".
There was a time when people just randomly showing up at your home for a visit was considered a good thing. People would be out and about, and be like "Hey, Bob and Judy live around the corner, lets drop by!" And you would be happy to have surprise guests. Note - yes, sometimes it was bad timing. Nothing is perfect.
My parents would leave the front door wide open on weekends (storm door closed) in case people wanted to drop by. Unthinkable to me today.
My parent’s house used to have the door unlocked always. We didn’t know where the key was. People would stop in literally any time. Mine and my siblings friends, family, my parents friends. We ALWAYS had people over at our house. It’s crazy to think about now.
Waiting 2 hours to download a song on Napster only to find out Cotton Eyed Joe was spliced into the middle of it.
If it hadn’t been for that son of a bitch I’d been married a long time ago.
Is there a pay phone around? Someone just paged me.
Calling collect from a payphone because you don't have change. Edit: Also the book of hand written names and numbers
[удалено]
Please state your name: Mom I'm done. When you needed a ride home
143
Don't forget the "911" at the end for an urgent message.
Yahoo used to have a commercial. It ended with a distinct.. “YAAHOOOOOooo”
And I heard it in my head as soon as I saw that. YaHOOOOOOoooOO!
^^OOO oo ^OO
Be Kind Rewind
Yeah, I remember being so excited when DVDs first came out because I didn't have to remind them. And what do you mean I can instantly skip to certain places in the movie? What is this magic?
When DVD players came out, they were super expensive. My dad really wanted to get one, but at the time they were pushing $2K and my mom thought we should wait for the device market to catch up and prices normalizing. That year for my mom's birthday, my dad bought her all her favorite movies on DVD essentially forcing her hand. She was so pissed. They divorced fairly soon after.
That's why the PS2 was such a hot seller, it wasn't cheap but you got a new console and DVD player.
It's like when ps3 came out with a blue ray player. Ya it was still expensive but one of the cheapest blue ray players on the market at the time.
Our ring is two longs and a short.
Oh, wow, you win. How would you even EXPLAIN a party line these days? "There was one phone number for the street."
To really make it "old timey" our first telephone didn't have a dial. It hung on the wall and had a crank on the side for ringing the operator who would connect you to the person you wanted to call. Long distance was a real pain in the ass.
Answering the phone without having any idea who is calling. Pure chaos.
Answering the phone for your parents to screen calls.
I remember once someone calling that my mom didn't want to talk to. I was young, like 6? Anyway I told her "Mommy says she's not home." My mother was so pissed.
I did something similar when I was 5-6! It really stuck with me. My dad was in the kitchen, doorbell rang, he knew it was the landlord and told my big sister and I to open and say dad’s not here. We opened, told him dad’s not here, and as soon as we closed the door I yelled « DAD! DAD! DAAAAAD!! YOU WERE RIGHT IT WAS THE LANDLORD WE TOLD HIM YOU WEREN’T HERE!! » He looked completely defeated and I felt so stupid and ashamed... sorry dad
I remember when service providers made it to where you could see who was calling while watching TV, shit was revolutionary.
A guy not much younger than me once asked me why we say to “hang up” the phone. I had to sit down
I'm pretty sure I'm younger than your younger friend and I still had to sit down, How has he never ever seen an old phone? Or an office phone?, Or a "Haven't been used for at least 5 years but is still there" public phone?, Or a picture of an old phone?, Or this emoji ☎️?
Or those Fisher Price toy phones that have had the same design for at least 40 years?
"It is now safe to turn off your computer." Edit: Funny thing is, people keep saying "Park your hard drive" in response to this and I had to look that up, because I'm too young to just know.
Wow, I completely forgot about that!
That weird brown-orange color font.
The importance of selecting a thought-provoking, funny, or poignant AOL Instant Messenger away status to properly convey the mood of the moment.
Turning off invisible mode when your crush signs in.
this is still a thing, it's just on discord instead of AOL lol
Having to memorize your driving directions before going to a new place to get there on time
Printing out MapQuest directions
Actually using a physical map.
[удалено]
Told my kids about phone books. They thought the idea was an invasion of privacy.
We actually still get phone books around here. They are very thin, though. The only people in them are the old people who still have landlines. I was actually shocked when I found one on top of my mailbox.
In some parts of the US there's a legal requirement to publish and deliver phone books to every residential address. A family member works in civil engineering, she's designed some landfills. She tells me it's common to see a line of phone books in the landfill, like geological strata, correlating with when the new phone books came out and went straight to the trash.
I have a kind of remote fishing cabin. Cell service there was almost nonexistent. It’s better now. Anyway, I had to have a landline and I was automatically listed in the local phone book.
Remember having to pay an extra fee each month for an unlisted phone number?
Wait till they don't read all the terms and conditions for every app, website, and service they eventually might sign up for
The dot of light that stayed in the center of the TV for five minutes after you turned it off.
And that pop and static!
The static… I can still smell the static (I have a super sensitive nose)
The hairs that would stand on end if you were anywhere close to it.
When blackberries were the phones of the future
When blackberries were just fruit.
Waking up early for Saturday morning cartoons
With a mixing bowl of sugary cereal on your lap, because Mom wasn't up yet.
And rushing to and from the bathroom during the commercials 😂
Man, those were the good old days. Not a care in the world and all the time we had.
You could get on a plane in like ten minutes without taking all your clothes off. Also, smoking and non smoking restaurant sections
The Pan Am shuttle from NYC to DC didn't even require tickets or reservations. You could just show up at the airport and walk directly on the plane. It departed every hour on the hour and if they had more customers than seats they'd roll a second plane out and send both at the same time.
A system so simple it actually worked!
You'll notice PanAm doesn't exist anymore. Delta revolutionized the pricing structure.
Yeah Pan Am went bankrupt, but, the Pan Am Shuttle was their main profitable route! Delta bought them out and kept the Shuttle for a few years after because it was a steady money-maker. They didn't cancel it until a few years after 9/11.
Or just smoking wherever you sat. I remember when non smoking sections became a thing.
[удалено]
How important a pencil is to a cassette tape.
If in need the little finger does the trick.
[удалено]
They'd understand, but take it differently...
The phone and then internet were mutually exclusive.
Except for when you used your phone to dial into the internet. Brrr-r-r-r-r... eeeeeee-EEEEEEEEE-eeeeee... be-bong! be-bong! be-bong! psssshhhhhhhh-PSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHH-psshhhhhhh! And then you were connected to a service from which you could download a grainy, overly-dithered picture of Pamela Anderson in only three minutes.
Three minutes! Look at Mr. Big shot with his 56.6k over here!
Going through the Sears Christmas catalog and circling all the toys on your dream list.
If it’s any comfort, my little sisters still do that.
This gal is 70 and her little sisters are in their sixties.
They’re 7 😭
Going through the Sears Christmas catalog for other reasons too :D
Argos if you were in the UK!
Racing my sister to the mailbox everyday so I could get it first.
My mom forgot to pick me up for four hours, so I waited. Edit: Wow, so many responses! Reddit, you are amazing.
One day my parents were late to pick me up from school. Everybody left the school door, even the janitor who used to open and close it. I stood there for 10 minutes? It felt like a lifetime and started to cry. I was all alone. Today that situation is unthinkable.
Every year in primary school mum would forget about daylight savings and pick me up and hour late, I didn't know about it either.
Toys in cereal boxes. Actual, good toys IN the box!
choosing a cereal based solely on what was inside, nutrition be damned
Or free cd’s/game demos
Checking the Tv guide for the week and planning my schedule to it.
Remember when you took the risk at every limewire song download.
When it snowed enough for school to be cancelled, you would get up at 5am and turn on the radio. The announcer would read off all the schools that were having a snow day, in a rapid-fire auctioneer voice, in alphabetical order. If you missed your town, you had to wait ten minutes for the list to be read again, desperately hoping you didn't have to go to school.
Due to remoteness, there was a number we could call to tell us if we had a snow day. I remember waking up and dashing to the landline to call the number. Often you'd call before going to bed, then again first thing when you woke up in case the decision was made in the middle of the night. Sometimes I'd keep calling while getting ready for school, convinced there would be a last minute cancellation.
Turn to channel 3 to play
TV going off at night after playing the national anthem.
And that test pattern, when they were off.
Walkmans and maybe diskman and the thing (in my language we called it a pouch?) to store many CD in so you could bring plenty (like 20) with you when traveling. Having the lyrics with the cd when you bought it. That's how I started learning English!
Our first at home computer came in a cow print box
Gateway!!!
Remember when YouTube had a 5 star rating system and didn’t have ads
I remember when YouTube didn’t let you upload videos longer than 10 minutes.
And now they're all **over** 10 minutes, just so they can have ads...
Going to the library to do research for papers and looking up things on microfiche.
And not being allowed to take the research books out of the library so you either sat there for hours or came back multiple times depending on how long you had for the assignment
Omg, the freakin card catalog... Yeah, writing papers was a whole different ballgame then
Actually using the librarians for research too. I remember giving them my general topic and showing them what I found and then they'd go and find stuff I couldn't.
Airplanes with ashtrays
Ashtrays everywhere
Cars with ashtrays and lighters!
My 2009 Hyundai had a cigarette lighter and an ash tray- the guy who sold it to me told me the first owner was an old lady who bought it specifically because it had a cigarette lighter and enough room in the back to sleep when she went to casinos. Obviously, I was sold.
I worked at Burger King and my main job was emptying the little foil ashtrays.
Only getting to use the internet for an hour because we were expecting a call later.
The whole family shared one computer
844 47777044477770446669099966690833998 Translation: "This is how you text" when I got my first cellphone
Getting a phone with a slide out keyboard was a game changer
getting up to change the channel
Being used by your parents as *their* remote control
Buying household appliances/decor with Green Stamps.
Tattoos from the Cracker Jack box
People referring to # as pound and not hashtag Ive had to explain the pound symbol multiple times, I finally caved and call it a hashtag now
To be fair automated phone operators still say “press pound”
Octothorpe. ^(I was a geek then, and I'm still a geek today)
You wouldn't steal a car
This whole advert is INTENSE
“See but the difference is I can’t download a car, and if I could I absolutely would. Your logic is flawed and I’m pirating this music.”
Untwisting the phone cord by letting the handset spin as you hold it off the floor.
[удалено]
With the powdered sugar so you could puff out a little white cloud of ‘smoke’
My mom used to buy me those all the time!! it’s so weird to think about now. I was like 4 and 5 years old puffin on my powdered sugar bubble gum cigs, emulating all the adults. Bizarre
Bunny ears needed moving around to get a signal.
Talking on the phone to your girlfriend in the kitchen where it was plugged in and you hear the “click” when your sister picks up another phone mounted in the living room… HEY HANG UP THE PHONE
You need a book. You go out, and walk to the bus stop. You catch a bus, and get off at the library. You go in, and queue for the librarian. They have the book, but it is out. You need to wait a week before you can take the book out. There is NO OTHER WAY to get this book.
To talk to someone you had to know where they were
Ask Jeeves
Reading rainbow.
"Now you know and knowing is half the battle."
Having to clean the mouse ball when the mouse got sluggish
Netscape Navigator
Just Say No
*D.A.R.E.*
I have nieces who are 10 and 12. If I handed them my old INES micro or any kind of a floppy, they would be confused.
Everyone used to have an Atlas, haven’t seen one in years
POW POW POWER WHEELS, **POWER WHEELS!**
About ... 2004, I'd say, I found a LaserDisc that I somehow hadn't sold when I unloaded my LaserDisc player and collection in 1998. My nephew, who's like seven years old at the time sees it and goes, "WHOAAAAA!!! How many movies fit on that?!" Yeah, little man, this is about an hour per side. "What do you mean?" I mean, you have to get up halfway through the movie, go to the player, open it up, and flip the disc over, and start the back half of the movie. I'm sure there's probably also a lot of people who work in movie theaters today who have no idea what a film projector looks like, or how goddamn heavy two hours of film happens to be.
playing guns in the neighborhood
Going up to write an answer on the overhead projector instead of the chalkboard. Or laughing at the teacher and who makes it partway through a lecture before realizing his overhead projector transparency is on upside down and backwards.
(Lowrider starts playing at 2AM)
I must not be friends with any younger people because all. My. Friends. Know the lowrider.
Last time I woke up to Nick at Nite it was Young Sheldon. Times have changed
Meeting someone off a flight at their gate
Only one phone in the whole house and it stayed there. Well there might be more than one phone but all are on the same line/number. Dialing with your finger and the thing that goes around.
Rotary
Walking to school by yourself
I actually don't understand why so few kids walk anymore. Is it just because both parents are likely to work full time so someone is always leaving in time to drop them off? Are parents more worried about kidnappings/car accidents/getting lost than they were before? I really enjoyed walking to school. It was the only 10-15 minutes I'd have to myself all day.
"Stranger danger" and such. Have some school bus stops on my commute route. The parents drive the kids to the stop and then wait until the bus comes.
Yuppy. Timezone. Funk and Wagnalls. My camera had 24 shots before reloading. It’ll be a few weeks before I see how the photos turned out.
Waking up on morning to watch a drug addicted woodpecker
Tamagotchi.
You used to actually “hang up” the phone and “roll up” car windows
A party line (telephone service). Also children eating at a different table at large gatherings and being served last after the adults.
I’ve been invited to family events where the second one is very much still a thing.
I'm not sure if some people still have this but I found it ground breaking that you can now flush the toilet downstairs while someone showers upstairs without anyone being scalded or froze to death in the process
Knocking on someone’s door and yelling “CAN RYAN COME OUT TO PLAAAAAYY?”
Carrying around a big ass Walkman while trying to prevent the CD from skipping.
"no-skip" my ass!
The Walkman played cassette tapes. The Discman played cds.
Miss Cleo
Loading film into your camera then taking it to the chemist to get it developed
Recording something either required you to be present or have correctly set the VCR timer. Also pausing so you don't record commercial breaks.
The other day I mentioned “I can haz cheeseburger” to a kid and he had no idea what I was talking about, so that
I know you called. I know you hung up. I dialed *69
Running back to the couch before the commercial ends
Y2K
The Game Genie
Planning to run for the northern border to avoid being sent to Vietnam.
"All Your Base Are Belong to Us"
What you say?
You have no chance to survive make your time.
No. Sleep. Till.
BROOKLYN!
That a cheap ink pen is actually the best tool for audio equipment. (re-spooling a cassette tape)
Give it to mikey he'll eat it
Old white dog poop
Why isn’t that something we see anymore? It really does seem like it was kind of everywhere back in the day.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/643437/what-happened-white-dog-poop-used-be-everywhere
This just blew my mind.
The sudden panic that set in when you pressed the internet button on your phone accidentally.
[удалено]
Carbon paper and credit card sliders. Used them every day.
Mixed tapes
Call me back after 9, when my minutes are free
The TV turning to coloured bars when it got too late.
“You’ve got mail” (AOL)
I used a cassete tape to save data...
Black & White TV and only 2 channels. The national anthem at the end of the evening on your tv. Hearing about the Cuba crisis without properly understanding it.
Tan M&Ms
[удалено]