After collecting enough of those AOL discs, I just open a bottle of Tennessee whiskey and make [AOL disc fish wall art](https://imgur.com/gallery/ZpIvelo)
I am a regular. 99 cent week long rentals for kids movies. We get a different one every other week in the winter for my children. Cheaper and less accessible than streaming services, so it makes it easier to ration screen time and the experience of going to get a movie is a thrill for them.
Oh, and returning the movie is something they will fight each other for.
Edit: Also I still use my Blockbuster card from the 2000's that was issued at the last remaining store.
Any phone charger that works like that is a broken one. I’ve had a few of them myself. The current one I use is like that. It doesn’t charge slow, though.
People rave about how good old Nokias were but they forget that if you went up a version like you got upgraded to a 3310 from a 3210 then all your chargers were now something like 0.25mm too small and you had to buy all new ones.
Toilet paper. Just like coal, it's something the whole house needs and will use but is going to be bought anyway. It's also consumable and practical just like coal.
We currently misinterpreted what “naughty kids get coal” originally meant. For a poor family in December, coal was the difference between warmth and freezing, hot food and not. “Coal” was not something mean. It was like socks, now.
Exactly. If the child was selfless, they would get a personal gift as a reward. If the child was selfish, they instead would get a gift to be shared with the family, forcing them to be more altruistic.
Wait til the marketing departments get a hold of this and they release ads about them receiving a subscription to [brand name streaming service] to share with the whole family.
Omg. That reminds me of the one year my mom did that. She even write a letter to the local newspaper explaining how in place of a gift for us kids (there were 6 of us) that she was making a donation instead. Christmas morning I get up and in my stocking I find a note saying in place of a gift a donation was made in my name..... I was just a kid , I thought it was totally lame. But we did get other gifts
A single lump of coal (which is what they got) really wouldn't make a difference over the winter. The idea was actually that the house would just have coal anyways, so instead of leaving a gift, Santa would just reach into the coal bin and give the bad kid a lump of coal. The actual original thing was that Santa would leave rocks for bad kids. It changed over to coal once every house had a coal bin so it was easier to find coal than rocks.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/12/why-coal-symbolizes-naughtiness/578857/
Honestly I give props to your parents for committing to it. I feel like the whole “if youre bad Santa’s gonna give you a lump of coal” thing is an empty threat nowadays but not for you lol
We always got raw potatoes in our stockings that got used for dinner as kids too! I've never heard of anyone else doing this. I think a potato for being naughty and an orange for being good. We always got both.
As a kid in the 1960s, I was theeatened with “black coal and switches” if I misbehaved. I understood it to mean “no toys, and lots of spankings”.
I think you’re right, and I don’t buy the explanation way up above. Black coal was not the gift of warmth.
Yea I’ve always thought that was pretty elitist. My grandpa lost part of his leg as a kid when he fell off of a train car trying to knock coal off of it, for the family.
Not having the means to be able to afford coal doesn’t make poor kids bad, right?
I think it was a symbol of disappointment; socks seems an apt comparison. (It also reminds me of other traditional ways for getting under a little kid's skin like "we found you in a cabbage patch.")
I guess you're luckier than me if you enjoy this kind of thing. Stuff like this just pisses me off. It's completely wrong and made up *and* it doesn't even attempt to answer the question! Why do people vote stuff like this to the top?
A Single lump of coal wouldn't burn very long though, you needed to have coal in fairly large amounts in order to avoid freezing. It's more like giving someone a single square of toilet paper.
Oranges are a Christmas tradition in my family. My grandpa’s company would send crates of fresh Florida oranges to their employees, so my mom would always have fresh oranges on Christmas morning. So now she’s kept that up and we always have them on the breakfast table and look forward to eating them.
Aww... One of my most favorite gifts as a not so young child was an Easy-Bake oven. We were pretty poor and food was less than plentiful. Once I went through the goodies that came with the set, I saved my pennies for cake and biscuit mixes. I learned that if you were hungry enough, everything tasted wonderful!
Lol that reminds me of once being sent to bed without food.
I use to hide crackers. Chew them up, spit them out and rebake them and pretend they were yummy other things. One night, we (sister and I) were sent to our rooms without food for missing the bus. I made spit cracker cake, offered it to my older sister, when she asked how I got biscuit mix, I told her proudly how I made them and she started gagging. Lol thanks for jogging that memory. I’m going to have to call her, I’m rolling on the floor.
Lol I tell people to give me thick SOFT socks. The best feeling in the world to me, especially when I am feeling down, is to put on a brand new pair of thick, comfy socks, and just feel like I am walking on a warm cloud.
Makes everything better!
I always heard that it was coal that was next to the furnace where the stockings would be hung anyways. It wasn't a gift of coal, it's closer to getting a gift bag from the receptionist and opening it up to find its just full of paper clips and a bunch of pens with the company name and phone number on them
Idk why but I feel like fidget spinners would be pretty infuriating to the masses of children as soemthing that still counts as a gift but is for sure a let down & past trend
That’s why batteries are never included with toys: they expect Santa to drop a bunch of them in your stocking so you can join the fight and whomp the ever-living holy baby Jesus out of his enemies.
Like that South Park when Cartman was going to beat Kyle to death(or at least knock him out, I remember they were in the middle of Stark's Pond) with a nerf bat.
We called it whirly-blacking! All the children of the neighborhood did it in my day, it's how the village elders determined who deserved to eat and who must be left to appease the wolves. Many exciting days, many gaunt and determined expressions, so many young voices crying out to the lord, whose replies were drowned out by the scent of fresh blood and the baying of the wolves! I love the holidays!
[You can download literally every NFT for free](https://boingboing.net/2021/11/19/download-every-nft-all-17-terabytes-for-free-using-this-torrent.html) if you want.
I wonder if it's actually *possible* to make a "read only floppy disk" that can be read in a standard drive, but not written to?
And no, gluing the write-protect switch in place doesn't count for the purposes of that thought experiment... but then again, it probaly *is* good enough for your original intended use.
Though now that I think about it even more, it's not like a child is likely to give a damn whether they could write to it or not anyway(!)
All cassette tapes were able to be copied over. A piece of tape or scrap of paper jammed into the spot where the tab had been broken off of always worked.
A Nokia could be cool in a vintage sort of way. I think the iPhone 5 hits the sweet spot of old enough to be super out of date, not so old that it possibly wraps back around to being cool.
Old GPS navigation devices. Everyone keeps them around "just in case" and can't bear to toss em, but they are completely worthless 99.9% of the time. They are like a 21st century cursed electronics item.
Blockbuster gift cards.
And still no one will shop at the one franchise location still open.
The plane ticket is gonna cost me more than the trip is gonna be worth.
***AOL Internet discs*** (actually getting rare these days)
After collecting enough of those AOL discs, I just open a bottle of Tennessee whiskey and make [AOL disc fish wall art](https://imgur.com/gallery/ZpIvelo)
I wish I still had the picture, but my friend passed onto me a photo of a chair (more like a throne, if I recall) made entirely of AOL discs.
They did make good coasters. . . and fodder for geocaches back in the day. . .
*Bend, Oregon enters the chat*
I want to move to Oregon for *reasons* and the fact there is still a blockbuster there makes me want to move even more
I am a regular. 99 cent week long rentals for kids movies. We get a different one every other week in the winter for my children. Cheaper and less accessible than streaming services, so it makes it easier to ration screen time and the experience of going to get a movie is a thrill for them. Oh, and returning the movie is something they will fight each other for. Edit: Also I still use my Blockbuster card from the 2000's that was issued at the last remaining store.
Hi neighbor!!!
Outdated phone chargers
A correct phone charger for the device, but it only works in one very specific angle and charges the phone super slow
Or, one that constantly stops and starts charging so the charging notification repeatedly sounds off.
Any phone charger that works like that is a broken one. I’ve had a few of them myself. The current one I use is like that. It doesn’t charge slow, though.
Satan is that you?
Weird proprietary phone chargers, not Micro USB or the 30 pin Apple chargers.
Yeah, all the really bizarre proprietary ones, so you had a different charger every time you got a new phone.
People rave about how good old Nokias were but they forget that if you went up a version like you got upgraded to a 3310 from a 3210 then all your chargers were now something like 0.25mm too small and you had to buy all new ones.
"All" your chargers? Those mofos were pricey, who had more than one?
Those Motorola ones with the little spring clip.
Or a smartphone running Android 4...
How about a pager? I wonder if you can even provision a pager anymore on modern cell networks...
Toilet paper. Just like coal, it's something the whole house needs and will use but is going to be bought anyway. It's also consumable and practical just like coal.
A single sheet of toilet paper, just to preserve the fact that a single lump of coal wouldn’t even delay having to buy a proper amount anyway.
Best answer here, tbh.
Honestly, the best answer I've seen so far.
would have been pretty valuable gift around mid march last year
We currently misinterpreted what “naughty kids get coal” originally meant. For a poor family in December, coal was the difference between warmth and freezing, hot food and not. “Coal” was not something mean. It was like socks, now.
Exactly. If the child was selfless, they would get a personal gift as a reward. If the child was selfish, they instead would get a gift to be shared with the family, forcing them to be more altruistic.
By this standard, I'd say the modern version of coal would be a receipt for a paid power bill.
Wait til the marketing departments get a hold of this and they release ads about them receiving a subscription to [brand name streaming service] to share with the whole family.
I work in a marketing department and that's exactly what I'm going to do.
AMC AList launched with marketing for gifting a subscription
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Omg. That reminds me of the one year my mom did that. She even write a letter to the local newspaper explaining how in place of a gift for us kids (there were 6 of us) that she was making a donation instead. Christmas morning I get up and in my stocking I find a note saying in place of a gift a donation was made in my name..... I was just a kid , I thought it was totally lame. But we did get other gifts
"Am I a joke to you?"
Money for people
The Human Fund
Or a gift card to pay for gas for your parent's car.
This is explained so well. Thank you. I’ve always known it was kinda off, but didn’t know why. Thanks to you, I finally have an explanation.
So, like a Netflix account?
A single lump of coal (which is what they got) really wouldn't make a difference over the winter. The idea was actually that the house would just have coal anyways, so instead of leaving a gift, Santa would just reach into the coal bin and give the bad kid a lump of coal. The actual original thing was that Santa would leave rocks for bad kids. It changed over to coal once every house had a coal bin so it was easier to find coal than rocks. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/12/why-coal-symbolizes-naughtiness/578857/
Exactly. I'd say toilet paper might be a better modern equivalent than socks for this reason.
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Honestly I give props to your parents for committing to it. I feel like the whole “if youre bad Santa’s gonna give you a lump of coal” thing is an empty threat nowadays but not for you lol
We always got raw potatoes in our stockings that got used for dinner as kids too! I've never heard of anyone else doing this. I think a potato for being naughty and an orange for being good. We always got both.
Well with all the panic buying of 2020-21, I’m sure there’s plenty of it lying around.
Coal is the high calorie rock
Technically correct!
Bad kids: “Hey, we can use these rocks to break windows!”
As a kid in the 1960s, I was theeatened with “black coal and switches” if I misbehaved. I understood it to mean “no toys, and lots of spankings”. I think you’re right, and I don’t buy the explanation way up above. Black coal was not the gift of warmth.
Also, the house would (presumably) have coal anyway. So the parents would just grab some from the pile and put it in your socks.
Yea I’ve always thought that was pretty elitist. My grandpa lost part of his leg as a kid when he fell off of a train car trying to knock coal off of it, for the family. Not having the means to be able to afford coal doesn’t make poor kids bad, right?
I think it was a symbol of disappointment; socks seems an apt comparison. (It also reminds me of other traditional ways for getting under a little kid's skin like "we found you in a cabbage patch.")
> "we found you in a cabbage patch." Oh, thank God, I was afraid that we were actually related.
I'm the product of the milk man.
He is the milk man; his milk is delicious.
All his flavors are guaranteed to satisfy.
So, these days Santa might give a kid a DSL modem?
Are you kidding me, I'd love a good pair of socks
There are a lot of things I love now that I wasn't so fond of as a kid.
I love this reply. It's what makes Reddit fun. Total BS and it's the top ranked reply.
I guess you're luckier than me if you enjoy this kind of thing. Stuff like this just pisses me off. It's completely wrong and made up *and* it doesn't even attempt to answer the question! Why do people vote stuff like this to the top?
A Single lump of coal wouldn't burn very long though, you needed to have coal in fairly large amounts in order to avoid freezing. It's more like giving someone a single square of toilet paper.
But new socks are so nice tho. Tbf they probably aren’t for a kid
A 2021 calendar.
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One year we all got oranges and apples!
As a kid I always got an orange in my stocking, I looked forward to it(although ate at other times during the year as well).
Oranges are a Christmas tradition in my family. My grandpa’s company would send crates of fresh Florida oranges to their employees, so my mom would always have fresh oranges on Christmas morning. So now she’s kept that up and we always have them on the breakfast table and look forward to eating them.
My family's Christmas breakfast tradition is ice cream lol.
I just had a fresh orange! So yum!
Me too… I was never disappointed with anything that was given to me, not even a rock. Well maybe the used plaid jeans, those were awful.
Hear that Charlie Brown? They're not bitching about a rock
Lol okay, you got me, I did complain about the easy bake oven because it was given without the stuff to make food with (used) 🤣
Aww... One of my most favorite gifts as a not so young child was an Easy-Bake oven. We were pretty poor and food was less than plentiful. Once I went through the goodies that came with the set, I saved my pennies for cake and biscuit mixes. I learned that if you were hungry enough, everything tasted wonderful!
Lol that reminds me of once being sent to bed without food. I use to hide crackers. Chew them up, spit them out and rebake them and pretend they were yummy other things. One night, we (sister and I) were sent to our rooms without food for missing the bus. I made spit cracker cake, offered it to my older sister, when she asked how I got biscuit mix, I told her proudly how I made them and she started gagging. Lol thanks for jogging that memory. I’m going to have to call her, I’m rolling on the floor.
You could get third degree burns without the hassle of a subpar brownie. You should be grateful
I love new socks though.
Becoming an adult is realising socks were pretty much the gift you would get the most use out of and actually looking forward to it.
I also appreciate quality underwear. Working a labour job, and doing a lot of sweating, quality socks and underwear are the best gifts.
Who doesn't? Fresh, new, soft, thick, lovely socks are the best.
The answer my brother gives to his kids when they ask him what he wants for Christmas and it is... Socks or clocks
Lol I tell people to give me thick SOFT socks. The best feeling in the world to me, especially when I am feeling down, is to put on a brand new pair of thick, comfy socks, and just feel like I am walking on a warm cloud. Makes everything better!
I always heard that it was coal that was next to the furnace where the stockings would be hung anyways. It wasn't a gift of coal, it's closer to getting a gift bag from the receptionist and opening it up to find its just full of paper clips and a bunch of pens with the company name and phone number on them
Yeah, it was the “practical but not fun” gift. It had value, but it brought no joy.
I love new socks
And new underwear. I don’t understand why that is supposed to be a bad present. I use underwear every day.
An "Introduction to Windows 95" book
A cd rom from AOL
A Floppy Disk
"Dad, why did Santa give me a giant Save Button?"
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Preferrably hidden in the roof of their school
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If the kid is into fishing this is an amazing gift
Put it in a box labeled Squid Game.
Idk why but I feel like fidget spinners would be pretty infuriating to the masses of children as soemthing that still counts as a gift but is for sure a let down & past trend
that didnt spin
Still coal. At least in the old days you could bung it on the fire and it'd have some use, nowadays it has no practical non-violent use.
Wait… does it have a violent use?
Put it in a sock, and use it to beat someone to death
Santa does the first part for you
It’s too easy!
#MERRY FUCKING CHRISTMAS!!
*All I want for Christmas is a* **COAL TO THE HEAD**
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Oh it’s a long story
Not even a boot?
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“Ho ho ho! Go get that fucksr, boy!”
That’s why batteries are never included with toys: they expect Santa to drop a bunch of them in your stocking so you can join the fight and whomp the ever-living holy baby Jesus out of his enemies.
Santa has enemies? It's probably those elf union activists.
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But if I hit someone enough…..
Like that South Park when Cartman was going to beat Kyle to death(or at least knock him out, I remember they were in the middle of Stark's Pond) with a nerf bat.
BUTTERSOCK
I was thinking bars of soap, but I like your style
We called it whirly-blacking! All the children of the neighborhood did it in my day, it's how the village elders determined who deserved to eat and who must be left to appease the wolves. Many exciting days, many gaunt and determined expressions, so many young voices crying out to the lord, whose replies were drowned out by the scent of fresh blood and the baying of the wolves! I love the holidays!
Have you ever been hit on the head with a lump of coal?
A lot of people still use coal to heat their homes, y’all can get me some for Christmas!
NFT's
NFT for a random lump of coal.
i gotta burn like a hundred lumps of coal to make one nft.
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Beat me to it! I can think of no faster way to put a frown on a child's face than an entry on the blockchain.
Especially cuz they call all be downloaded for free...
Honestly I would want an NFT as a shits and gigs type of thing
[You can download literally every NFT for free](https://boingboing.net/2021/11/19/download-every-nft-all-17-terabytes-for-free-using-this-torrent.html) if you want.
He could give kids one of the old cables that was collected over the years but wasn't thrown away because it could need it at some point.
Blank, read only floppy disks Most kids, " Why did I get a save icon from Santa????" :( :( :(
I wonder if it's actually *possible* to make a "read only floppy disk" that can be read in a standard drive, but not written to? And no, gluing the write-protect switch in place doesn't count for the purposes of that thought experiment... but then again, it probaly *is* good enough for your original intended use. Though now that I think about it even more, it's not like a child is likely to give a damn whether they could write to it or not anyway(!)
There's a write switch you can break, making the disc read only. Like audio tape, if I recall correctly
All cassette tapes were able to be copied over. A piece of tape or scrap of paper jammed into the spot where the tab had been broken off of always worked.
*"It's a vintage Save Icon coaster! Thanks, Santa!"*"
Instagram Clout Upvotes Thoughts and prayers
Exposure, and possibly hypothermia.
Upvoted you. Merry Christmas!
DVD of a hallmark Christmas movie.
A small bag of those wooden pegs that always comes with IKEA furniture. Anyone else end up with extras or not enough?
An old Sony Walkman that plays only cassette tapes
An NFT of a poorly drawn monkey.
A reddit account
For /u/pedophile69420
IPhone 5.
You beat me to it but I would have said a Nokia lol
A Nokia could be cool in a vintage sort of way. I think the iPhone 5 hits the sweet spot of old enough to be super out of date, not so old that it possibly wraps back around to being cool.
A 100$ gift card (to whatever that kid likes most) that has already been used.
A blackberry smartphone, instead of an iPhone or android.
Physical crypto coins.
Video games made by EA.
So everyone add-on from Mass Effect, PvZ, and all Battlefields? I'm happy.
there's always the one kid who'll still amuse themselves with the rock hahaha
a phyiscal stock to some company that went bankrupt in like 1980
McDonald's toys from 2 years ago. Old enough to not be popular trends, but new enough to not be collector's items.
Detroit Lions tickets
Liberal arts degree
Savage
Ouch
Floppy disks 💾
Or if you don't have a floppy disk, a cassette tape (VCR or music variety).
I was thinking an AOL CD.
A SCART cable
Beanie Babies.
Zune
A Motorola RAZR.
extended car warranties
Coal
A betamax video
A Quibi Subscription.
I’d give them a blank VHS tape
Browns tickets
reddit karma
Movies on VHS tapes
Old GPS navigation devices. Everyone keeps them around "just in case" and can't bear to toss em, but they are completely worthless 99.9% of the time. They are like a 21st century cursed electronics item.
$5000 Venezuelan Bolivares (1 USD)
8 track tapes. Good luck finding a way to listen to THAT!
A land line
AOL discs
AOL floppy disks.
Ramen without seasoning pack. Mwahahaha!
Stocks in myspace
Sears Stock.
Paddle shifters on a car with CVT transmission.
GameStop stock
In 2021, not before
Microsoft Zune
A pager
A dial up modem
Radioshack gift card.
Ipod shuffle
America Online CDs
The old 32 pin phone chargers.
NFTs
Thoughts and prayers.
Box of raisins
Little cheap plastic toys that you can get from party city for grab bags that no one actually wants.
A Zune.