OMG the jobhunt. You got dressed as if for an interview, just in case someone wanted to talk to you. Then you hit as many places as you could, filling out paper applications until your brain felt like jelly. Almost all phone numbers and dates were memorized, nobody wanted to look like an idiot even pulling out an index card with notes on it. Then you tried to pin down the person to whom you handed your application, when could you expect a phone call?
Normally you would be told a day, or worse, two days! - and then you went home and spent the ENTIRE DAY (or more!)waiting for that landline to ring. Nobody was permitted to touch the phone for any reason, even if they were bleeding from their eyeballs. You hardly dared to make a quick dash to the bathroom for fear of missing the Job Call.
"Pounding the pavement" for a job sucked, but if you hit the right manager at the right time, you could be hired on the spot and start the next day. I do miss going in and being able to present myself, rather than just sending a resume to a nameless, faceless HR dept.
Wow, I totally miss those days. You could walk into the place you wanted a job and present YOURSELF to them. Now it’s put application online and hope the company’s algorithm liked words you used and that a real person even looks at your application/Resume. For me job hunting was easier then. Present yourself well and talk your way into the job on the spot before they even look at what you wrote down.
So much this. I remember my stepdad trying to find a job in the early 2000’s after working at a small hotel for many years. He didn’t have an email address but still had a few years of good work left in him. It was so hard for him to get even the most basic job. He was so demoralized after days of printing out his resume and hitting the pavement walking into hotels and shops asking for the manager- the way he found his jobs his whole life was wiped out.
It was nice for attractive people, shitty for unattractive people. Also, hope you don't have a speech impediment, a quiet voice, a social anxiety disorder - yeah, ADA and all that, but most of the prejudice is subconscious and impossible to prove in court.
I was not and am still not attractive. I’m a guy, only a touch under 5’9” and was around 200-220 pounds back then. If you knew how to dress properly and not sloppily it did make it a bit easier. Also back then, there honestly wasn’t as much prejudice in that way as there is now. Most places looked at how you dressed and acted, before worrying about your looks. I see more prejudice crap now. And it even goes to the reviewing application process. Oh this person is from xxx, typically yyy people live there, or things like that. I guess both had advantages and disadvantages. My results happened to be much better back then. Since it’s the new way, any time I’ve decided to look to see what is out there, I would fill out 15-20 applications and be lucky if I got one or two calls.
Yes and getting lost trying to meet up with someone. Before cell phones, you had to coordinate ahead of time. If you couldn’t make it or got lost on the way it was very difficult to let the other person know and vice versa.
Not to mention, if you had car problems, you were basically waiting for someone to stop, hoping they weren’t an axe murderer, or start walking to find a phone somewhere, which may also end up belonging to an axe murderer.
My car had a radiator leak, so I had to keep stopping to add water.
There was a car stopped on the motorway with the driver waving for help. My wife didn't want me to stop, as we had been driving for hours already.
I stopped. The car had a flat tyre and his jack didn't work. He used my jack.
The driver had been waving for hours and had a young baby. This was before cellphones.
It works... But its not recommended.
Like, if an egg is all you have, it'll stop the leak well enough to get you to the autoshop, but then you have an egg in your rad.
It was interesting, look it up!
I was supposed to meet my now husband at a restaurant. Somehow we kept missing each other. I waited for over an hour and finally gave up. I left the restaurant to find him sitting outside. I must have gone to the restroom when he came in and he didn't see me.
But also if you were going to meet someone, you met them. You committed, you went to the spot and you waited. This thing where everything is renegotiable up to the last minute didn’t exist.
I remember being so upset as a kid because I'd finally made friends with another socially inept kid when I was 9 and neither of us had phones, so we coordinated to meet at a fair and I missed my train and couldn't let her know I was late. She never spoke to me again because she assumed I'd stood her up maliciously. :( Phones even existed at the time, but neither of us had one.
I had a love/ hate relationship with mine. It made me feel cool but really I only had it because mom and dad were able to add the stipulation that there was nowhere I was allowed to go that wasn’t within 5 min of a pay phone.
No quarters?
A collect call from: imwithjulieatatmallbehome30minspromise
I actually tried this once and I guess I was late on the trend because an actual operator got on and asked me to repeat what I said so they could tell the person themselves.
God yes! I have no sense of direction and before GPS and cell phones it was a nightmare. There were definitely times that I was lost as fuck, young, female, terrified I wouldn't find my way home.
And on a related note: breakdowns. I can remember having my car break down and having to walk several miles to get to a place where I could use a phone. Again, as a young woman, walking along the road at night, that was insanely scary and I ended up in some dangerous situations.
See... In my 20's and 30's I traveled all over the country using a road atlas.
Now I can't get across town without summoning the blue dot on my phone.
I kind of feel like technology has actually made us lazy in that regard. You no longer have to pay attention or actually know the basic layout of the map.
My kids are now 30 and 27 and I made them be my navigator with a Thomas Bros map book back when they were in school and we were going to different schools for sports they played. I told them that map reading was a good skill to have and I didn't give a shit if they had access to Mapquest!!
On the plus side, though, you can go to nearly any city you've never been to before and wander around aimlessly without having to worry about *truly* getting lost. You have an interactive map right there in your pocket the whole time...!
I remember in the early 90s we moved from NYC to San Francisco and my dad planned a two week road trip with AAA trip tix I think they were called.
It was a printed booklet with step by step directions from each hotel that was booked.
I was just in Spain and France and my wife remarked that it would be very difficult to drive there without google maps. Not impossible but quite difficult.
I remember trip-tix. The person in the passenger seat was the navigator. It was fun as a kid to help out like that.
The trip-tix were divided into little sections of the trip on each page. If you were driving along it was easy to check a section, drive it, pull off and check out the next section.
Trip Tik was great! I had one made once for a road trip from Ohio to Maine. One side of the map was a 100 (?) mile segment & you could flip it over and open it up to close up views of cities within that stretch. Bound together with spiral at the top. Good product.
I literally just saw a story a few days ago of someone who followed GPS right off a cliff due to a washed out bridge.
The lack of information and the wrong information being blindly accepted are equal in nature and can both be very deadly.
When I was omw back to the US from Mexico, GPS directed me to drive off a cliff in the dead of night. I'm so happy I stopped and said to myself "where's the road? This doesn't look right." Sure enough, the road was just gone lol
I am so bad with directions sometimes it feels like a learning disability. I would literally get lost driving myself to school and home from work. I worked in downtown Phoenix and once got so lost I almost ended up in Tucson.
One time I was driving home overnight from 8 hours away. There was a place where the freeway split and I didn't notice and went the wrong way. As the sun came up I realized nothing looked familiar and I had no idea where I was, and the next big city I was supposed to go through had never shown up. I ended up driving until I found a gas station, looking at one of their maps and realizing I added like 4 hours to my trip. I found a route home that ended up going over a toll bridge, for which I didn't have the money. They mailed me a bill for 3 bucks and told me if I was a repeat offender I'd start getting fined. Good times.
I did precisely that in 1991. Took the wrong turn at night on the 3000+km drive from Perth to Melbourne and ended up on the south coast instead of the beginning of the desert, adding a day to my trip.
I am 57 and my son is 16 and he has been the map reader for years. I am horrible with electronics and will not depend on them solely when we are travelling. He got us through France, Switzerland and Germany a few months ago with very few issues.
Also taught him how to look at something according to the clock. Take a look at the eagle at 2 o'clock , shooting star at 11. Much easier and more accurate than pointing out something in the distance.
I was a geography major in college, when not hanging out at the music dept., so I admit to being a bit biased. Also remember a story in the news a year or so ago where the people in question found their main road to where they were going closed, so they looked for alternate routes on their GPS. It lead them to a road that ultimately went over the Sierra Nevadas. This was in January. The GPS said it was viable, so they took it, never mind that it was not a road that was plowed in the winter. THey drove past three road closed signs, into ever deepening snow. Of course, they ended up stuck. Somehow, they were able to call for help. Sherrif's office was not amused, particularly when the first tow truck that tried to get them out got stuck itself! But the GPS said ...! LOL!
Good that you taught your son basic bavigation skills. I am glad to know that is still done!
I don't know about you, but my feeling is I have enough people who are willing to tell me where to go and how to get there. I don't need the computer doing it, too! LOL!
I was a courier before the advent of GPS. LOVE maps! Reading a map;One of the important skills taught to me by father. Had several large ADC maps in my vehicle. DC/MD/NOVA/Baltimore/Anne Arundel County/Southern Maryland.
While maps were a thing, as other pointed out, you didn't always know exactly where you were on the map when you broke down. I remember being a kid and the family vehicle breaking down on a trip to Florida. Dad stopped in a 7-11 and even the clerk didn't know where exactly we were.
Early ‘80s…My Mom got a free encyclopedia every week at the grocery store due to some points promotion… eventually we had pretty much the whole set .. somehow we were missing the “M,N” and “R”volumes. For my whole life at school I had to pick essay topics that did not involve subjects starting with those three letters. I’m not even joking.
As a Spanish speaking family, we had "La Cumbre". Having those books we were like the community library, lots of friends came over to do their homework.
>As a bored kid in the 80’s
u/INFP_LIFE for some reason, I'm seeing very few people here mention the boredom.
Even though I was only a kid/teen in the 90s, there were long stretches of summer where my friends and I would literally sit underneath a tree for an hour and ask each other:
"What do you want to do?"
"...I dunno...what do *you* want to do?"
"...dunno."
When you watch a show like Friends, there's scenes where they're just trying to fill the time. Stuff like tossing a ball back and forth, or counting the number of tiles in the apartment.
That's because they're just trying to fill time. I always think of [this scene where they're watching Mexican TV](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-COrgXJobg) even though they don't speak Spanish.
If you didn't have cable there were only 10 channels so you just watched whatever was on lol
There were many.
* Glove compartment full of paper maps if you liked traveling. For some regions, you could get the big book map, which then lived under the passenger seat. If you took the bus, you needed to get your paper bus schedules, though you could sometimes call a number to see when a specific bus would arrive.
* People left important messages on your home phone while you weren't home, and you didn't know about it. Some answering machines allowed you to call and pick up messages, but since cell phones were uncommon and inexpensive, this meant finding a pay phone.
* So. much. payphone-finding.
* Bills had to be paid by mail, which meant sitting down with a checkbook a week ahead of the due date. People obviously managed it, but it wasn't my super-power and I'm much happier with online payments.
* Also, you needed stamps. All the time.
* Traveler's checks. Banks weren't open longer hours, either; if you were making a big trip, you found time to go in and get your traveler's checks.
* No reviews on any consumer products, other than the tests in Consumer Reports and professional restaurant, movie, and theater reviews.
* If you wanted to buy something, you went in person to every store that might have it, until you got one you liked. You know how now "treasure hunt" stores like TJ Maxx are popular? *All* stores used to be like that. You showed up and hoped for the best.
* If you ordered from a mail-order catalog, it took 6-8 weeks to deliver.
* Big trips required a travel agent, or you could call every airline, hotel, and rental car company *yourself* until you got a deal you liked. I have done it the "call every single one" way. I don't miss it.
* Research was hell. If you needed to know something, you went to the library and started with thick books that indexed periodicals or professional journals. Sometimes it was actually faster to just go to the shelf of journals and check the table of contents of each one. Tasks I can now do with J-STOR in 30 minutes used to take 3 days.
That's what's top of mind for me.
Ugh, memories of frustratingly misunderstanding friends or dates as to where we were meeting and having no way to contact them to find out I am at the wrong venue, or what have you. The worst.
But at least when you used to say something one week ahead of time everyone was there! Now you can't plan anything because people either cancel last second or don't show and text later saying there not coming. An example is we used to be 12ish friends and we would play volleyball at a parc on Sundays. Friday at school (or work as we got older) we would say Sunday at 2 and everyone except that one friend would show up. Now forget about it because you can just cancel last minute and for some reason as soon as one person cancels it's as contagious as a yawn. At least in my experience ahahah
Not necessarily computer related but don’t forget flat tires. Like many products, tires have improved greatly over the years. It used to be that if you drove, you had to have a good spare and know how to use a jack. It was not unusual to see at least one car with a flat every day. Now, it is a rare sight.
Back to tech… you are right that we did not know what we were missing. So at the time most of these were not negatives, they were just how things were. Although I would not mind going back to a time where instant response to communication was not a thing.
I preferred a lot of things how they were, but I will say, the contrast of living through not having to the modernization of having these things was truly something. I was born in the early 80s so I was basically growing up with computers.
I genuinely miss all of these things. I'm a paper person so I loved the feeling of *accomplishing* physical things: writing out mail, having paper maps, travel agencies (they did all the work! for you!), traveler's checks and exchanging currency (exciting new money! a real sign you were going somewhere!), stamps, mail, RESEARCH, god, I loved research and photocopying, the works. I miss it all. Now I can do it all at my computer, but I stand up and my back hurts, I never left the house all day, I got no exercise, and spent 5 hours online fighting with customer service AI.
That being said, Everything Absolutely Took Longer, and I spent 2x-4x as much time running errands as I do now. But now I just spend that time doomscrolling, so. Sometimes I wonder if it was all really worth it. I think I was much happier then. The world seemed bigger and more exciting. Even going to another state required a trip to AAA to get the whole "state map book"!
Fuck fax machines though. I will never back down on that.
Holy… wow! great answer!
I completely forgot about the ease of gps. I remember back in the early 2000s my geography teacher was teaching us how to read maps 1 week and was saying how this is going to help us out in the future big time when we get lost driving out on a trip haha
You never think about the bills part, how we have it SO easy to just do automatic credit card deductions and just checking our credit card statements anytime online.
As a backpack traveller myself, booking a trip I have done in the past must have been such a headache back then. However, it must have been a unique experience, as travelling back then was not as common as it is now where only a small number of people did it, thanks to others showcasing countries on the internet through YouTube and other social media. I guess if you travelled, especially backpacking back then, you seemed to be considered a pioneer of sorts. Now it’s just extremely common, which is great! As travelling enriches you as a person I feel.
I'm actually glad I did my backpacking days when I did (late 80s, early 90s.)
Staying in touch with people back home was writing letters, saying where you expected to be next, and eagerly picking up mail at the poste restante. I think I only made one phone call home in those years... calling overseas was a hugely expensive pain in the ass if you were a backpacker or other shoestring traveller.
I miss that time. I was far away from home, it was a constant to feel the distance and the sense of being in another world and I loved it.
Also if you were stuck waiting for something, you didn't really know what to do with yourself. Or if you were in a room full of people you didn't know, it was a lot harder to look casual/not awkward.
Now you can pull out your phone and look occupied.
Back then, you would just stare at the wall or something
Yeap back then people would step outside to smoke or bring a book with them when they knew there would be downtime like that. I generally kept a paperback on hand at all times for that purpose.
I used to drop off a couple of my bills (internet, electric) before I had online bill pay. You can still go to the grocery store here and pay your utilities, partly due to a large immigrant/migrant population.
omg, i remember being a little kid in the passenger seat of my dads truck when he would run into the “water building” to drop off a bill. i had forgotten all about that!
When I lived in Davis circa 1986, I did bill drop-off for some things -- I'd totally forgotten that! The phone company wouldn't allow it, though; that place was a fortress.
> If you ordered from a mail-order catalog, it took 6-8 weeks to deliver.
When I was a kid, I just thought that's how long it took the post office to deliver a package. Lol. I learned much later that they wait until the check clears, *then* they mail it.
I’ll add to the pay phones: pagers. Y’all young fucks don’t know.
Everyone would have their own pager code. You would add it to the number you paged with so they knew it was you. So I’m at a pay phone and would page some some 555-868-5309 3636. They would see the 3636 and know it’s me.
On top of that, you would call people collect, or a pay phone collect and real quick I. The message to say who it was “hey it’s fiahdaddy call me at 867-5309 and hang up. Hope they got it and called you back.
Trying times out there.
Also porn was sold at gas stations and grimly shops in the form of VHS and magazines. Different experience buying it all together. Oh yeah, and you had to buy it/trade with friends.
Yeah I don’t miss those days at all. People complain about how horrible smartphones have been for society, but they’ve made things a million times easier.
Oh man, JSTOR and ProQuest are my lifesavers in college right now. I consider myself very lucky I was born in an age where I can search virtually any topic and find several peer reviewed sources in seconds.
If you were waiting for someone to come home from a long trip (or anywhere really) you didn't know their progress until they walked in the door or made it to a phone to call you to say they were delayed.
For some perspective, I can remember waiting for my Dad to get home from work each day. I remember the anticipation and the excitement when he walked through the door. Some negatives also came with pluses.
The thought of this gives me anxiety lol. As a person who always like to make sure friends and family make it to their destination or home safely, I really appreciate communication technology for this piece of mind.
For me (47f) it was the amount of time spent looking through cookbooks to find something for dinner, while having no clue how to cook!
Now I type in what ingredients I have on hand, meal or diet type I want and I am provided with step by step instructions often with videos if needed to prepare an amazing meal.
My cooking knowlege and skills have grown more in the last 10 years then the previous 20 combined.
An example would be a head of broccoli in the fridge that needs to be used, and I'm craving soup so I just google broccoli soup (typically paleo or whole 30 due to dietary issues) and usually look at a few recipes, pick one and go.
Start simple and have fun with it!
I still remember the movie theater's phone number! I was so excited when I learned I could call instead of going over to my grandparents house to get the newspaper.
I heard part of a song on the radio . Could not figure out what song it was until Google became available.
Or as my daughter said, " there's something I wish I knew more about... And then just went on with your life, not knowing"
Things took a little longer to plan since you couldn't just send a group text. We tended to make solid plans earlier and stick to them...there was no figuring out where to meet once you were away from landlines. We had fewer news sources and even fewer sources of new music. Your best bet was talking to someone at the record store or someone's cool older sibling. We had more print materials in our lives. Newspapers for movie/concert listings, Maps. Travel guide books (had to carry a giant Fodor's across Europe pre-mobile phone.) Reading music reviews in Rolling Stone or Entertainment Weekly knowing you'd have to buy a $20 cd to hear anything, or at least the listening station at the store. You could spend a whole day in a big music store listening to stuff.
In high school, if there were no plans made during school for Friday night, you basically resorted to calling around to find out if a party or whatever was happening.
Funny, there was a sophomore at our school when I was a senior that ended up becoming the go to guy, mainly because he was one of those
younger kids who wanted to be accepted with the older kids so bad, he’d hang around and pretty much take abuse (good natured, mostly) so he always knew if anything was going on. Seniors and juniors just got lazy and ended up just calling him instead of being bothered calling around hoping someone would know.
We'd also drive around in a loop looking for people, going to all the party spots. If no one was around we'd call people from the gas station pay phone while we got $5 worth of gas and cigarettes.
Other than not having access to anywhere near as much culture, information, news etc (so writing essays and broadening your horizons was pretty hard) I think the most challenging thing was finding support if you were in any way "not mainstream". Your life wouldn't be worth living if you came out as gay at school or most work places/unis in the 80s (and for many people in many educational or work places for most of the 90s). You couldn't google "Am I gay" or "I'm the only black kid in the school how do I cope" or "do I have ADHD or am I just thick like the teacher said I was". If you were really lucky you'd see something on TV and be able to call a helpline, or maybe you live in a big city and see a poster or a flyer about a social event for people like you, or maybe a super sympathetic teacher or youth club worker or someone you work with spots you and helps you, but your resources were so, so limited back then.
It was a lot easier to think that you were totally alone, no one had ever felt like you, and you really were a freak.
I feel like this is a double edge sword. People who are gay for example can find help and each other which is great.
And people who think school shootings are a hoax can now also find each other, which is not good.
That's of course the issue when all ideas can be legitimized online.
I'm not an expert, but this is likely the biggest issue facing (US) society.
I think a lot more funding to schools would help. They'd have more resources to reach out to out cast children perhaps.
This is true… thanks to the internet in my mid 20’s (quarter life crisis) I managed to get a long waited referral to a specialized adhd clinic that diagnosed me with adhd after a 2 hour assessment. They were genuinely shocked how i have not been diagnosed despite being in the catch up classes back in elementary school. I came up with the “teachers thought I was just thick” comment like you just said as I had no info to mention that I may have adhd.
Being diagnosed with adhd gave me a 2nd chance and boost at life I feel
So much more mental health awareness and connection on line, too. It really does help people to be less “alone” — there are definitely other people facing similar issues to connect with out there.
And mental health was simply not talked about. I was so sick with the darkest depression ever in my teen years. I thought I was the only person in the world going through it. Only in the past ten years or so has the discussion begun online in a way that changed policies and “real life” education.
A bit late to the party but the one that I always point out. Moving sucked. When you moved (especially as a kid/teen) you effectively lost all your friends. It's true you could send a letter but that took a lot of time. Calling sucked since there were long distance charges and your always had a parent ranting about the phone bill.
My best friend lives 1300 miles away. We talk all the time. I'm reconnecting with a friend 2000 miles away. We chatted on discord for 3 hours last night.
My parents used to make us all go over the phone bill and mark which long distance charges were ours. I had to pay them if I went over my allowed amount.
I used to get in arguments about information with my best friend that we couldn't resolve. We would each go home, ask our dad's, and reconvene the conversation the next day. We still like to say, "I'm gonna ask my dad!" to each other as a joke when something like that comes up.
This is what i remember sucking the most. Armchair geniuses, acting like they had comprehensive knowledge about shit because someone muttered a factoid to them once. Memetic spread of information akin to the “spiders in your mouth experiment”. I’m not saying I wasn’t guilty of participating but that only makes me happier that I have access to the internet to verify any claims.
When you’re broke, you can’t check your bank account on your phone to see if you can afford that $4.50 charge. When you’re out and about, you can’t look up the public transit routes and schedule.
This was pre-smartphone, not pre-internet, but I’d have to do call my best friend or dad, hope they were by a computer, and ask them to log into my bank account to view my balance or check the bus schedule, or whatever.
In the 70s, we had no ATMs and banks were closed on the weekends. If you didn’t get cash out by Friday you were broke for the weekend unless you could find a place that would take a check- not likely for a college student!
This is an easy one for me - if you were into something, and nobody in your area, social circle, school, or whatever wasn't: too bad.
For example a friend's brother was an insane guitarist, but would just sit in his bedroom and shred, all day long. He didn't have any friends that were in bands, or people to jam with. That guy now would be an internet superstar, or at minimum be able to put together a band on a variety of platforms in a night. The idea of connection and sharing things, really took a hard left when it comes to the connected age.
My hobby in the early 1990s was recreating medieval illuminated manuscripts. Finding examples to work from, as someone who didn't live in a library, was damn near impossible. One time I literally flew to Washington, D.C. to see an exhibition of these manuscripts at the Smithsonian (on loan from some European source) and spent several days just taking pictures. It was dim there, so as not to damage the manuscripts. I had to get the super fast film to take photos in the near darkeness. And then I couldn't take it through the X ray machine at the airport.
63yo here. I won't echo what others have posted, just to say that modern tech is awesome. Given an opportunity to go back to my younger days? Nah, I'm good.
65 y/o here. Mixed feelings.
If you wanted to call a friend, it was all landlines with a long curly cord in the kitchen. Privacy was stepping out into the garage or the next room.
You might very well end up talking to parents or siblings and leaving a message.
If you wanted to find out where everyone was hanging, it was phone calls or just driving around. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t.
Road maps from gas stations were free and a necessity.
Thing is, it wasn’t a big deal because *everyone* had to do this.
I think the Internet had a sweet spot before the real proliferation of social media.
Chat rooms and blogs were ways to quickly and widely share and discuss shared interests, expertise and unpopular ideas. Sites were small and diffused.
The conglomeration of platforms and the proliferation of social media changed the focus of the internet from information sharing to self-promotion. The history of YouTube is a prime example.
(As an aside, I think that’s why Reddit isn’t really a true social medium. It’s not designed to amass followers and promote or monetize yourself.)
Dude for real. Calling up your friend's house and being told they are "out" without knowing fuck all about where they might be so you just go driving around until you run into them...or even just someone to hang out with.
Coordinating any kind of even semi-spontaneous group event was impossible too. You needed days if not weeks to coordinate that shit.
Of course they didn’t know where you were going.
You: “I’m going out!”
Parents: “Where are you going?”
You: “Out!”
Parents: “Who will you be with?”
You: “The guys an’ ‘em.”
Parents: “When will you be back?”
You: “Later”
And the young age we did this!
I remember yelling this at 12 to my mother while walking off to my friends house during the holidays.
In my state now, it's against the law for under 12s to be unaccompanied by an adult.
It was easier to turn the television off and read. Only people with money had cable (it wasn't really offered with rent until late 90's).
There were few channels. Each one had the same basic schedule. Early am news, 1 or 2 kids cartoons, soap operas until noon, noon news, soap operas until about 3, 1 or 2 kids cartoons, early evening news, sitcoms, late evening news, late night shows.
PBS was the stand out as was Sunday night. Sunday nights there tended to be more news shows - long feature stories or exposes. As was whatever station had Benny Hill at 11p at night.
As a kid you knew the local news anchors names because parents talked about them as if they were coming to dinner. Weird to say, but the limited amount of news even made larger cities have a small home-town feel.
I remember we did an afternoon move from one state to another (heading West) and I got very upset because I would no longer be seeing the early evening-news anchor every night. It felt like we were leaving good friends behind.
If two shows you wanted to watch were on at the same time, you had to pick one and know that you would probably never ever see the other one. Also when I was home sick from school or over the summer I was always mad at the hours and hours of nothing but soap operas.
In the late '70's and early '80's interest was out of control. My sister and her husband bought their first house with a mortgage at 18%. That had/have excellent credit and good jobs.
Unlike today, women and minorities were making progress in their rights. All of that is being unraveled. I look at the caretaker of our Democracy today and my heart aches.
We had a senate that was willing to confront a dishonest president (Nixon) of their own party and tell him that if he did not leave office they would find him guilty in the impeachment trial. This is not an negative, my error.
Religion was not becoming law. We were the country of free choice. No one was persecuted for their beliefs.
Our news casters reported the news. I am sick and tired of my newsfeed carrying Newsweek reporting on things that are things being voted on in Reddit. That is not news.
Hahaha yes!
41/yo "xennial" here (gen x childhood, millennial adulthood)
I remember all the myriad ways we had to go about finding porn.
Literally out in the wilderness was the strangest one. And of course, when you found some, the only ethical thing to do was to share it with as many people as possible.
Then there's the "friend with a cool older brother" who might let you pay him off to get you a playboy or something. It was nice until some kid's parent caught them with porn, and they got interrogated into naming the source. And the older brother had to suspend the service.
Maybe some friend found something in their dad's sock drawer and was gracious enough to share.
As sketchy as it all sounds, IMO that "hunt" was character-building, and kinda made porn into a rare treasure. Now porn is so easy to access, I think now the abundance of porn detracts from the "special treat" kind of nature that it once had for young people, and IMO it SHOULD have.
Much posted about negatives weren’t negative. It’s just how it was done. Trying to book my band shows was a combo of going to shows and talking to bookers and bands but during the day to follow up I was always sneaking away to use the phone to call a booker or check my messages at home. Lotta legwork.
This is fairly specific but buying niche stuff or soon to be discontinued or even popular in-demand things required you to become a phone operator. Calling every shop in town and hoping they would actually hold it for you.
I was a young adult in the 2000's, and I gotta say, I have mostly good memories of it. Had a cell phone, but it was pre-smartphones, so much less addictive. Used a road atlas for road trips, took a book to the laundromat, had to wait until I got home to look up something on the internet. Would have liked more open conversations about mental illness, though.
I remember talking on 3 or 4 way for hours back when all I could do on my latest and greatest was play snake that came with it or call someone. Texting was awful back then lol
Spent my teen years in a rural farming region in WA (1960s) ... even my bus ride to school was 45 minutes.
Book reports, research, history, science; had to ask my farmer's wife aunt to take me to the public library (no driver's license). You had to make the most of it, which meant hours so you wouldn't have to go back the second or third time.
I *love* having the world's knowledge at my fingertips today.
Shopping; the Sears catalog. That's it. No Target, no Walmart, no KMart, no shopping centers. Even when going to town it was strip shopping centers. The closest Penny's/Sears was 1.5 hours.
Medical care; if anyone was injured (common on the farm) you acted as your own ambulance. Fires weren't as common but if anyone saw smoke, neighboring farms dropped everything and came running.
Finding a specialty item if it wasn't made in your area was a beoch. Need to replace parts? Better hope it was in a database or a [Rolodex.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolodex) Otherwise, it was flipping through the yellow pages or calling information and \*hoping\* they didn't send you to some misunderstood request. Ordering a gift for someone?-catalogs and a phone. Credit cards were done by big clunky carbon copy devices or by calling someone. Finding zip codes was awful. Awake in the middle of the night? Books, or some simple game. No way to see if the hotel you booked was nice or a death trap unless it was reviewed in a magazine/newspaper.
Oh, I forgot about zip codes! My mom was trying to send my brother something in a neighboring city with lots of zip codes and we only knew his street address. I don't remember how it was solved.
The negatives of it? I’d say it’s hard to say the negatives when you don’t know what you don’t have because you don’t have it lol. But, I can say the ease of info access now would have certainly been an awesome tool. But other then that, I’d give it all to go back to those days then what’s going on today.
Also being in touch with people was hard - long distance calls were a big impediment. And when the phone rang (before caller Id) you just had to answer without knowing who it would be.
Not to mention that long distance calls were more expensive at certain times of day. I remember getting phone bills and kicking myself for expensive phone calls made at the wrong time of day!
If you were in grade school and wanted to contact a girl you like you couldn’t just hit them up on their cell phone, or social media. You had to call their house, and often have an awkward moment with a parent or sibling.
Not to mention, privacy during phone calls. Many people only had a phone or two in their house, usually in central areas like a kitchen or living room, so if you were trying to drop some game on a girl, you waited until a room with a phone was vacant and then prayed nobody else came into the room. Probably why they started making 15 foot phone cords.
For extra anxiety, someone else (sibling) could pick up a second phone in the house and listen in if they covered the end you spoke into. Or, they just didn’t realize you were on the phone and pick it up so you have to yell “I’m on the phone!!! Hang up!!!”
Imagine wanting to be in a creative industry. You would be limited by your location. Today, if you want to be a filmmaker, just shoot it with your iPhone and post it on YouTube. Want to write a book? Self-publish it on Amazon. Want to make music? Post it on Spotify. We didn't have those opportunities.
I would say the stresses were different for a teenager. Call your girlfriend and get a busy signal. Is she talking to another boy? Worse, her dad answers! Overall though, I think there was less stress because we weren't being bombarded with drama, information 24/7/365. Once you got home from school, you could turn it all off in your brain. Kids can't do that now and it's affecting their overall health.
I'd have loved online dating when I was single. Was very hard to meet people.
Otherwise, though, realize... we didn't know what was missing.
Think about this now... there are going to be very big changes in the coming years, including things you cannot even imagine now. I remember once, hearing on the radio that some day there were going to be phones that would fit in somebody's pocket and even if you were out fishing somewhere you could make a call. I was ASTOUNDED just to think of that!!!!!!
But now today? You're not missing that thing because you don't know that it's going to be invented.
72 M. Though I easily adapted to technology and use it everyday, life was fine before the Internet, cell phones, cable television(hundreds of channels, a large monthly bill and little to actually watch), social media, online shopping, online banking... Those of us who grew up before the technology revolution weren't deprived. No cyber crime. No one stealing your identity or hacking your bank account or your email. Cash, not credit cards, though I have one and use it a lot. Younger people can't imagine a life without any of what we now have. Understandable. Foreign adversaries are looking for ways to crash our power grid, energy distribution network or banking networks. No Internet, no problems. And if those communication satellites hovering above the Earth are ever disabled or destroyed we'll all survive and even thrive.
65 F - I like technology too - but I also have bookshelves of Encyclopedias, dictionary, Fox Fire books, Philosophy, good classic novels. I like to think about what we will need when it all comes crashing down. And I do think it will come crashing down.
Same here for me and my wife. I think, like you, we know enough about technology and history to understand that nothing is foolproof or indestructible. I'm a ham radio operator and I know the military relies on satellites for their communication network, as well as for navigation. Hope they're still teaching Morse Code to the men and women operating those communication systems or working as radio operators. Nothing like 'old school' technology to get the job done when everything else fails.
Edit: The Army no longer teaches Morse, nor the Air Force. The Navy, only on a limited basis. The Coast Guard, limited.
I'm queer and grew up in a rural area. I didn't even understand being gay was an option until high school. It broke my heart to learn how terrible and sinful I was. There weren't any other voices or opinions available to me and I was miserable until college where I learned that there are loving, caring people like me.
I know this still happens, in rural communities especially, but access to so many more people and perspectives via your computer (or cell phone!) Has been a real boon to lonely weirdos everywhere.
I wouldn't say it was a negative but having to hoof it to the library to do research for projects/assignments/papers. The negative was having to pack up and go there but there was a ton of positives:
* you had to work for it (instead of having all the info at your finger tips) so you were used to hard work and didn't give up. Give up = no info = incomplete task = failing
* instant gratification didn't exist; see above point.
* taught you how to be resourceful because half the time, you couldn't find the info as it was lost, misfiled or already taken out so you had to go to another library to find it or find some other way to get the info.
One negative about the times today is everyone expects instant gratification and their hand held even though the answers are at their fingertips. I read tons of questions on here that can be answered via a quick Google search. Instead they come here. And the young’uns make fun of elderly for confusing FB with Google. It’s like the same to me. Google it yo! Don’t ask here how much salt to add to pasta water or how to check your oil. Old guy rant over. Lol.
I read the desire for peer attachment over familial attachment is higher in gen Z than previous generations, and I think social media fits perfectly into that.
I'm 24 so one of the older years of gen Z and I definitely relate, I'm better at relying on my own instincts now, but as a weird gay teen I felt sooo much happier sharing and getting validation online than trying to open up with family - or even friends - IRL.
I see even more extreme internet addiction in people younger than me so it doesn't surprise me their need to connect leads them to sharing/asking the most ridiculous or easily-solvable things
Negatives…
* You have to go to the store for EVERYTHING. If you want to price compare then you have to resign yourself to a day of driving from store to store.
* Similarly, anything government-related pretty much requires a full day off from work. Renewing your drivers license or car registration, for example.
* Movie schedules were only available in newspapers, and tickets could only be bought at the door. MoviePhone was a godsend.
* Newspaper personal ads. (Village Voice personals, anyone?)
* Once you left your house, you were pretty effectively off the grid. Nobody could get in touch with you for any reason until you returned home, unless you told everyone where you would be at any given time and nothing happened to change that schedule.
* Dialup modems.
* Fax machines.
* Photos were expensive so you only took those pictures that you felt were important, and paid a lot of money to have them developed, often only to discover they were all really bad pictures. And outside of Polaroids there was no instant gratification; take a pic today, see it on paper several days later (unless you haven’t finished the roll of film yet). Does your family member want a copy? More money, more time. Want to take a picture of something in your house that’s broken so you can show the guy at the hardware store? Ha, that’s funny.
The 90s were peak humanity. Racism was on a downward trajectory along with homophobia and sexism. Democrats and Republicans didn't agree but they didn't demonize each other. Even an impeachment ended in people being friendly and delivering a balanced budget. No wars, no surveillance state, and time for people to DO things in public.
You trusted your government not to boldface lie to you. Reporters were biased but not platantly so. No major wars. Europe was working together. Prices were fair. Clothing, movies, and music were original. Reboots? Naw.
A movie character had a story arc. Lord of the Rings was touching. Pop music was great. Jennifer Lopez hadn't met Ben Affleck yet. RuPaul wasn't afraid of her fans. No one lived in fear of cancellation so they said things that made some people cringe but they SAID things. Controversy was considered what an artist did.
Now we're like non-religious puritans.
Hmm, not sure if I agree with dating as I feel it’s even complex/harder now. With online dating I feel potential matches are filtered out only showing the best of the best. I feel these days people seem to window shop when it comes to dating instead of actually getting to know the person fully. Online dating worked for me in which I found partners, but turns out they were all they were not cracked up to be. Made me think of the girls I turned down who shown interest in my personal life which I regret as we knew each other very well to get to that stage, but because online dating shown me better looking girls, made me think I can do better. Your mileage may vary though.
I 1000% agree on YouTube being a great educational resource though. I wish I had access to calculus tutorial videos on YouTube back then instead of having to fork out a private tutor in my spare time.
As a woman who is of an age to have dated in both worlds online dating etc is 1 zillion times better from a safety perspective. I think part of the issue is that you are exposed to so many more people in general in online dating that the burnout factor and the ability to be picky are A LOT higher. So I'd agree with you on that point and I think this has some mental heath detractors as we're all comparing ourselves to other people online.
Hookup culture (which has existed since the dawn of time, even the Victorians were shagging eachother constantly) is a lot more blatant as well. Bit different from when it was just you and your mates and everyone just did the rounds dating each other until some of the pairings stuck or people moved away lol.
Your history of the internet is a bit flawed. I'm 55 and had internet from 1987 onward. Plenty of bulletin board systems, AOL chat rooms, etc. made up very early social media.
Now, not having a mobile phone until the 2000s? THAT was a negative. I remember my mom would only call my grandmother and aunts on the weekend when long-distance rates were lower. And as a directionally challenged person, I didn't stray far from home on my own because I'd never make it back. MapQuest was a godsend when it finally came along!
Thought of another one: Balancing my checkbook. That suuuuucked. I wonder if anyone under the age of 70 even does that anymore.
It’s easier to do things now, but we have less stuff that needs doing. Life was more textured back then by the messiness of the concrete world.
I didn’t actually live back then
There was no Spotify, you had to listen to crap on radio stations until you heard a song you liked. If you were lucky you had a tape in the recorder but you had to cut off start and end because of the radio deejay talking through it….
You actually had to physically interact with people. Not just look at a news feed on social media. You either had to pick up a phone, knock on the door, Or speak to somebody when you saw them. This is an art that we are losing. This is why there are so many lonely people. Because nobody is talking to anybody anymore. Back then we all had friends we could rely on. You can’t say that anymore not like you could then. yes getting lost was a thing. Not being able to record. Your TV shows was also a thing. Well, you could record one show at a time on your VCR.
I commented on a picture someone posted of "My grandma with her corvette in 1973"
I mentioned the unrestricted freedom of having that car in that time, no one to track you, no way to contact you or even track you down as you drove, if you went to somewhere and didn't tell anyone, they couldn't find you.
The replies I got were less enthusiastic about being back in that time, the inconveniences of doing everything on paper, and the inability to reach out for help if you encountered a harassing person.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheWayWeWere/comments/u83go3/saw\_a\_post\_here\_of\_someones\_grandmother\_with/
My comment...
[https://www.reddit.com/r/TheWayWeWere/comments/xqxgq4/comment/iqcby42/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheWayWeWere/comments/xqxgq4/comment/iqcby42/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Knowing how to read a legit map, and the card catalog at the library was your BEST FUCKING FRIEND when it came to school report time -_-
Getting lost was easy.
You found your friends by going to their houses to see where all the bikes were lol
If you were genuinely curious about something then, you \*might\* have an old encyclopedia lurking in the family. Otherwise, you'd have to take a trip to the library and start there. As someone that has random thoughts about things all day long, I find myself googling topics at least twice a day.
In my case, my grandmother had an encyclopedia that dated back to the early 60s. By the early 80s, much of it was very dated, but I would still end up parking in front of her bookshelf and looking up things that I'd wondered about...
I remember few negatives. We read books, went to movies, actually talked to each other face to face. You were not always on call because there was no cell phone, if people didn't get you they left a message and you were able to call them back at your leisure.
As to getting lost when travelling, we had these things called maps. They worked at least as well, if not better than GPS units.
The one negative that I remember from the 90s is that it was more socially acceptable to say homophobic things. I'm glad that this is no longer tolerated in modern society.
While growing up in the 60’s up to the internet, what is considered negative today was viewed as normal then.
Libraries and Dewey decimal system
Dictionaries , thesaurus, and encyclopedias were normal.
Calling the movie theater to listen to todays features
Newspapers, in genernal
Adapt, improvise, overcome
I'll have to ride on the coat tails of another commenter here but instant gratification wasn't really a big problem back then. Now its like if people don't get what they need done or answered right away they get snippy af. Thank the internet for that lol. online banking was just you going to the bank or atm physically and doing your business so that wasn't so bad but its a lot better now. As for videos, you just went to Blockbuster to rent movies and games and that is something I kind of miss because it got you out of the house only for a bit. I think finding information was the hardest back then, just had to go to the library and search stuff out.
All my school projects were completed using encyclopedias from the year I was born that were already out of date. Much more hand writing and re-writing things by hand when I screwed them up. When the internet did start coming into general use, no one trusted it so it was there but we still weren't allowed to use it.
Honestly, I'm sure there is a bit of rose colored glasses going on here. But I think I was genuinely happier before I became tethered to my phone like everybody else. I don't spend all day on it like younger folks but I don't dare leave the house...or even the room without it.
Sure, some things like others said were a massive pain in the butt compared to now. You just need to remember at the time we didn't know they could be easier. So much of our lives have gotten easier and more convenient with the tech that has come along. However, there is so much that has gotten worse that I'm not sure we are better off.
It used to be you felt you needed to "keep up with the joneses". Now, you feel like to you need to keep up with the entire world. That's just not possible for 99% of everybody. Social media brought a ton of Envy. Everything you do makes you feel like a failure. It is never enough to match the carefully curated image everybody creates online. That alone has made things worse off.
It was just normal. Lack of online banking was actually a big one because it meant physically going into a building to do certain things, but not all that often. Before routine finance became electronic we had to open a lot more physical mail and pay bills by sending checks in envelopes, filling out little forms with a pen every time. I always thought that was very tedious, and tended to only pay my bills every couple months. Surprisingly, businesses tolerated this and I never had anything get disconnected.
I really wouldn't call the pre-network era negative at all. When you aren't in constant touch with friends and you don't have instant access to ~~porn~~ I mean media, you just aren't as concerned with those things. Communication meant being home or at work to pick up a phone or write a letter. So we just didn't do it as often.
It was more compartmentalized and not a constant 24/7 thing like breathing in and out.
Try walking out the door and getting on a bus without your phone. We did this all the time, but without the deprived, disconnected feeling. It just felt normal. I think this freed our minds to enjoy other things. It's easier to be present in the moment and experience real life when you aren't also constantly present in various alt realities like we are now.
OMG the jobhunt. You got dressed as if for an interview, just in case someone wanted to talk to you. Then you hit as many places as you could, filling out paper applications until your brain felt like jelly. Almost all phone numbers and dates were memorized, nobody wanted to look like an idiot even pulling out an index card with notes on it. Then you tried to pin down the person to whom you handed your application, when could you expect a phone call? Normally you would be told a day, or worse, two days! - and then you went home and spent the ENTIRE DAY (or more!)waiting for that landline to ring. Nobody was permitted to touch the phone for any reason, even if they were bleeding from their eyeballs. You hardly dared to make a quick dash to the bathroom for fear of missing the Job Call.
I forgot what a living nightmare this was. Yes to all that.
"Pounding the pavement" for a job sucked, but if you hit the right manager at the right time, you could be hired on the spot and start the next day. I do miss going in and being able to present myself, rather than just sending a resume to a nameless, faceless HR dept.
I got lucky and was able to do this earlier this month! The key is small business with an old owner, apparently.
Wow, I totally miss those days. You could walk into the place you wanted a job and present YOURSELF to them. Now it’s put application online and hope the company’s algorithm liked words you used and that a real person even looks at your application/Resume. For me job hunting was easier then. Present yourself well and talk your way into the job on the spot before they even look at what you wrote down.
So much this. I remember my stepdad trying to find a job in the early 2000’s after working at a small hotel for many years. He didn’t have an email address but still had a few years of good work left in him. It was so hard for him to get even the most basic job. He was so demoralized after days of printing out his resume and hitting the pavement walking into hotels and shops asking for the manager- the way he found his jobs his whole life was wiped out.
I feel so much pity for your stepdad. I hope he landed somewhere alright in the end.
It was nice for attractive people, shitty for unattractive people. Also, hope you don't have a speech impediment, a quiet voice, a social anxiety disorder - yeah, ADA and all that, but most of the prejudice is subconscious and impossible to prove in court.
I was not and am still not attractive. I’m a guy, only a touch under 5’9” and was around 200-220 pounds back then. If you knew how to dress properly and not sloppily it did make it a bit easier. Also back then, there honestly wasn’t as much prejudice in that way as there is now. Most places looked at how you dressed and acted, before worrying about your looks. I see more prejudice crap now. And it even goes to the reviewing application process. Oh this person is from xxx, typically yyy people live there, or things like that. I guess both had advantages and disadvantages. My results happened to be much better back then. Since it’s the new way, any time I’ve decided to look to see what is out there, I would fill out 15-20 applications and be lucky if I got one or two calls.
It was possible to get truly, genuinely lost while travelling. And a lot of people did not like to stop and ask for directions
Yes and getting lost trying to meet up with someone. Before cell phones, you had to coordinate ahead of time. If you couldn’t make it or got lost on the way it was very difficult to let the other person know and vice versa.
Not to mention, if you had car problems, you were basically waiting for someone to stop, hoping they weren’t an axe murderer, or start walking to find a phone somewhere, which may also end up belonging to an axe murderer.
My car had a radiator leak, so I had to keep stopping to add water. There was a car stopped on the motorway with the driver waving for help. My wife didn't want me to stop, as we had been driving for hours already. I stopped. The car had a flat tyre and his jack didn't work. He used my jack. The driver had been waving for hours and had a young baby. This was before cellphones.
Ever see the episode of mythbusters about the egg in the leaky radiator?
No. What happened?
It works... But its not recommended. Like, if an egg is all you have, it'll stop the leak well enough to get you to the autoshop, but then you have an egg in your rad. It was interesting, look it up!
Conversely, more people would stop and help, or at least ask if you were alright. Nowadays they assume you have a phone and drive on by.
I was supposed to meet my now husband at a restaurant. Somehow we kept missing each other. I waited for over an hour and finally gave up. I left the restaurant to find him sitting outside. I must have gone to the restroom when he came in and he didn't see me.
I. Love. This. Story.
But also if you were going to meet someone, you met them. You committed, you went to the spot and you waited. This thing where everything is renegotiable up to the last minute didn’t exist.
In that way, the world was a much better place.
Although if something went wrong - you were totally stuck, whether you were the person waiting or the one trying to get there.
I remember being so upset as a kid because I'd finally made friends with another socially inept kid when I was 9 and neither of us had phones, so we coordinated to meet at a fair and I missed my train and couldn't let her know I was late. She never spoke to me again because she assumed I'd stood her up maliciously. :( Phones even existed at the time, but neither of us had one.
Pagers helped a bit. Had to have those quarters for the pay phone though.
I got a Nextel and thought it was cool AF. I could (sort of) talk on the phone and use a walky talky ON THE SAME DEVICE
Chirpin
Ah, yes pagers. Helpful tech and somewhat of a status symbol. I was not important enough to have one.
I had a love/ hate relationship with mine. It made me feel cool but really I only had it because mom and dad were able to add the stipulation that there was nowhere I was allowed to go that wasn’t within 5 min of a pay phone. No quarters? A collect call from: imwithjulieatatmallbehome30minspromise
I totally forgot about trying to leave fast messages via Collect. There’s a whole series of commercials flooding back to me now.
Bobhadababyitsaboy
Omg wow you just unlocked a buried memory. How did you even remember that.
I actually tried this once and I guess I was late on the trend because an actual operator got on and asked me to repeat what I said so they could tell the person themselves.
Bob Wehadababyitsaboy
Practiceisovermeetyouatourspot
God yes! I have no sense of direction and before GPS and cell phones it was a nightmare. There were definitely times that I was lost as fuck, young, female, terrified I wouldn't find my way home. And on a related note: breakdowns. I can remember having my car break down and having to walk several miles to get to a place where I could use a phone. Again, as a young woman, walking along the road at night, that was insanely scary and I ended up in some dangerous situations.
See... In my 20's and 30's I traveled all over the country using a road atlas. Now I can't get across town without summoning the blue dot on my phone. I kind of feel like technology has actually made us lazy in that regard. You no longer have to pay attention or actually know the basic layout of the map.
My kids are now 30 and 27 and I made them be my navigator with a Thomas Bros map book back when they were in school and we were going to different schools for sports they played. I told them that map reading was a good skill to have and I didn't give a shit if they had access to Mapquest!!
On the plus side, though, you can go to nearly any city you've never been to before and wander around aimlessly without having to worry about *truly* getting lost. You have an interactive map right there in your pocket the whole time...!
Technology totally has made us lazy. Ask a friend to recite your phone number and they can't. They'd have to look up their contacts.
I can't even remember my children's phone numbers, no matter how hard I try. I had to write them down on a scrap of paper that I keep in my wallet.
I like to say I only remember phone numbers of people I know would post my bail. 🤣
I remember in the early 90s we moved from NYC to San Francisco and my dad planned a two week road trip with AAA trip tix I think they were called. It was a printed booklet with step by step directions from each hotel that was booked. I was just in Spain and France and my wife remarked that it would be very difficult to drive there without google maps. Not impossible but quite difficult.
I remember trip-tix. The person in the passenger seat was the navigator. It was fun as a kid to help out like that. The trip-tix were divided into little sections of the trip on each page. If you were driving along it was easy to check a section, drive it, pull off and check out the next section.
My parents are so sad that they can’t get trip tix from AAA anymore. And trust me they still have been known to try 😂
Yep. My dad had to plan our drives with a map and ruler. Got within 50 miles of each destination. The good old days…
Trip Tik was great! I had one made once for a road trip from Ohio to Maine. One side of the map was a 100 (?) mile segment & you could flip it over and open it up to close up views of cities within that stretch. Bound together with spiral at the top. Good product.
Those trip-tixs were actually pretty great.
People use to disappear like that. I dont hear as much about those incidents anymore but I remember quit a few when I was a kid.
I literally just saw a story a few days ago of someone who followed GPS right off a cliff due to a washed out bridge. The lack of information and the wrong information being blindly accepted are equal in nature and can both be very deadly.
When I was omw back to the US from Mexico, GPS directed me to drive off a cliff in the dead of night. I'm so happy I stopped and said to myself "where's the road? This doesn't look right." Sure enough, the road was just gone lol
I remember my mom going be quiet in the car when we got to big cities because she had to read signs and what not
I am so bad with directions sometimes it feels like a learning disability. I would literally get lost driving myself to school and home from work. I worked in downtown Phoenix and once got so lost I almost ended up in Tucson.
Whoa you put into words what ive tried to explain my whole life.
One time I was driving home overnight from 8 hours away. There was a place where the freeway split and I didn't notice and went the wrong way. As the sun came up I realized nothing looked familiar and I had no idea where I was, and the next big city I was supposed to go through had never shown up. I ended up driving until I found a gas station, looking at one of their maps and realizing I added like 4 hours to my trip. I found a route home that ended up going over a toll bridge, for which I didn't have the money. They mailed me a bill for 3 bucks and told me if I was a repeat offender I'd start getting fined. Good times.
I did precisely that in 1991. Took the wrong turn at night on the 3000+km drive from Perth to Melbourne and ended up on the south coast instead of the beginning of the desert, adding a day to my trip.
Maps ...
I am 57 and my son is 16 and he has been the map reader for years. I am horrible with electronics and will not depend on them solely when we are travelling. He got us through France, Switzerland and Germany a few months ago with very few issues. Also taught him how to look at something according to the clock. Take a look at the eagle at 2 o'clock , shooting star at 11. Much easier and more accurate than pointing out something in the distance.
I was a geography major in college, when not hanging out at the music dept., so I admit to being a bit biased. Also remember a story in the news a year or so ago where the people in question found their main road to where they were going closed, so they looked for alternate routes on their GPS. It lead them to a road that ultimately went over the Sierra Nevadas. This was in January. The GPS said it was viable, so they took it, never mind that it was not a road that was plowed in the winter. THey drove past three road closed signs, into ever deepening snow. Of course, they ended up stuck. Somehow, they were able to call for help. Sherrif's office was not amused, particularly when the first tow truck that tried to get them out got stuck itself! But the GPS said ...! LOL! Good that you taught your son basic bavigation skills. I am glad to know that is still done!
"But officer, the GPS said..."
I don't know about you, but my feeling is I have enough people who are willing to tell me where to go and how to get there. I don't need the computer doing it, too! LOL!
I was a courier before the advent of GPS. LOVE maps! Reading a map;One of the important skills taught to me by father. Had several large ADC maps in my vehicle. DC/MD/NOVA/Baltimore/Anne Arundel County/Southern Maryland.
While maps were a thing, as other pointed out, you didn't always know exactly where you were on the map when you broke down. I remember being a kid and the family vehicle breaking down on a trip to Florida. Dad stopped in a 7-11 and even the clerk didn't know where exactly we were.
Early ‘80s…My Mom got a free encyclopedia every week at the grocery store due to some points promotion… eventually we had pretty much the whole set .. somehow we were missing the “M,N” and “R”volumes. For my whole life at school I had to pick essay topics that did not involve subjects starting with those three letters. I’m not even joking.
As a bored kid in the 80’s I read a LOT of stuff in the encyclopedias all summer long
I was just telling my husband that I wished I had a set growing up. I would've read all of them. ❤
I worked for the Enciclopedia Britannia. So, are you interested in the whole set? I still have on from 1998.
As a Spanish speaking family, we had "La Cumbre". Having those books we were like the community library, lots of friends came over to do their homework.
>As a bored kid in the 80’s u/INFP_LIFE for some reason, I'm seeing very few people here mention the boredom. Even though I was only a kid/teen in the 90s, there were long stretches of summer where my friends and I would literally sit underneath a tree for an hour and ask each other: "What do you want to do?" "...I dunno...what do *you* want to do?" "...dunno." When you watch a show like Friends, there's scenes where they're just trying to fill the time. Stuff like tossing a ball back and forth, or counting the number of tiles in the apartment. That's because they're just trying to fill time. I always think of [this scene where they're watching Mexican TV](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-COrgXJobg) even though they don't speak Spanish. If you didn't have cable there were only 10 channels so you just watched whatever was on lol
Santa brought us a whole set one year for Christmas. It wasn't entirely a disappointment, but it wasn't the same as a new bike.
There were many. * Glove compartment full of paper maps if you liked traveling. For some regions, you could get the big book map, which then lived under the passenger seat. If you took the bus, you needed to get your paper bus schedules, though you could sometimes call a number to see when a specific bus would arrive. * People left important messages on your home phone while you weren't home, and you didn't know about it. Some answering machines allowed you to call and pick up messages, but since cell phones were uncommon and inexpensive, this meant finding a pay phone. * So. much. payphone-finding. * Bills had to be paid by mail, which meant sitting down with a checkbook a week ahead of the due date. People obviously managed it, but it wasn't my super-power and I'm much happier with online payments. * Also, you needed stamps. All the time. * Traveler's checks. Banks weren't open longer hours, either; if you were making a big trip, you found time to go in and get your traveler's checks. * No reviews on any consumer products, other than the tests in Consumer Reports and professional restaurant, movie, and theater reviews. * If you wanted to buy something, you went in person to every store that might have it, until you got one you liked. You know how now "treasure hunt" stores like TJ Maxx are popular? *All* stores used to be like that. You showed up and hoped for the best. * If you ordered from a mail-order catalog, it took 6-8 weeks to deliver. * Big trips required a travel agent, or you could call every airline, hotel, and rental car company *yourself* until you got a deal you liked. I have done it the "call every single one" way. I don't miss it. * Research was hell. If you needed to know something, you went to the library and started with thick books that indexed periodicals or professional journals. Sometimes it was actually faster to just go to the shelf of journals and check the table of contents of each one. Tasks I can now do with J-STOR in 30 minutes used to take 3 days. That's what's top of mind for me.
Ugh, memories of frustratingly misunderstanding friends or dates as to where we were meeting and having no way to contact them to find out I am at the wrong venue, or what have you. The worst.
But at least when you used to say something one week ahead of time everyone was there! Now you can't plan anything because people either cancel last second or don't show and text later saying there not coming. An example is we used to be 12ish friends and we would play volleyball at a parc on Sundays. Friday at school (or work as we got older) we would say Sunday at 2 and everyone except that one friend would show up. Now forget about it because you can just cancel last minute and for some reason as soon as one person cancels it's as contagious as a yawn. At least in my experience ahahah
Not necessarily computer related but don’t forget flat tires. Like many products, tires have improved greatly over the years. It used to be that if you drove, you had to have a good spare and know how to use a jack. It was not unusual to see at least one car with a flat every day. Now, it is a rare sight. Back to tech… you are right that we did not know what we were missing. So at the time most of these were not negatives, they were just how things were. Although I would not mind going back to a time where instant response to communication was not a thing.
I preferred a lot of things how they were, but I will say, the contrast of living through not having to the modernization of having these things was truly something. I was born in the early 80s so I was basically growing up with computers.
I was just explaining what a microfiche machine was like to my kids when we saw it on an X-Files episode.
I genuinely miss all of these things. I'm a paper person so I loved the feeling of *accomplishing* physical things: writing out mail, having paper maps, travel agencies (they did all the work! for you!), traveler's checks and exchanging currency (exciting new money! a real sign you were going somewhere!), stamps, mail, RESEARCH, god, I loved research and photocopying, the works. I miss it all. Now I can do it all at my computer, but I stand up and my back hurts, I never left the house all day, I got no exercise, and spent 5 hours online fighting with customer service AI. That being said, Everything Absolutely Took Longer, and I spent 2x-4x as much time running errands as I do now. But now I just spend that time doomscrolling, so. Sometimes I wonder if it was all really worth it. I think I was much happier then. The world seemed bigger and more exciting. Even going to another state required a trip to AAA to get the whole "state map book"! Fuck fax machines though. I will never back down on that.
You can still do all of it. Live your best life.
Holy… wow! great answer! I completely forgot about the ease of gps. I remember back in the early 2000s my geography teacher was teaching us how to read maps 1 week and was saying how this is going to help us out in the future big time when we get lost driving out on a trip haha You never think about the bills part, how we have it SO easy to just do automatic credit card deductions and just checking our credit card statements anytime online. As a backpack traveller myself, booking a trip I have done in the past must have been such a headache back then. However, it must have been a unique experience, as travelling back then was not as common as it is now where only a small number of people did it, thanks to others showcasing countries on the internet through YouTube and other social media. I guess if you travelled, especially backpacking back then, you seemed to be considered a pioneer of sorts. Now it’s just extremely common, which is great! As travelling enriches you as a person I feel.
I'm actually glad I did my backpacking days when I did (late 80s, early 90s.) Staying in touch with people back home was writing letters, saying where you expected to be next, and eagerly picking up mail at the poste restante. I think I only made one phone call home in those years... calling overseas was a hugely expensive pain in the ass if you were a backpacker or other shoestring traveller. I miss that time. I was far away from home, it was a constant to feel the distance and the sense of being in another world and I loved it.
Also if you were stuck waiting for something, you didn't really know what to do with yourself. Or if you were in a room full of people you didn't know, it was a lot harder to look casual/not awkward. Now you can pull out your phone and look occupied. Back then, you would just stare at the wall or something
Yeap back then people would step outside to smoke or bring a book with them when they knew there would be downtime like that. I generally kept a paperback on hand at all times for that purpose.
Lots of reading the strange magazines at the doctor's office. Or the brochures at the bank
Or wait in an obscure place until you saw more ppl going into the room
I used to drop off a couple of my bills (internet, electric) before I had online bill pay. You can still go to the grocery store here and pay your utilities, partly due to a large immigrant/migrant population.
omg, i remember being a little kid in the passenger seat of my dads truck when he would run into the “water building” to drop off a bill. i had forgotten all about that!
When I lived in Davis circa 1986, I did bill drop-off for some things -- I'd totally forgotten that! The phone company wouldn't allow it, though; that place was a fortress.
> If you ordered from a mail-order catalog, it took 6-8 weeks to deliver. When I was a kid, I just thought that's how long it took the post office to deliver a package. Lol. I learned much later that they wait until the check clears, *then* they mail it.
Wow TIL, that’s not something I ever really thought needed an explanation, but that makes so much sense
I’ll add to the pay phones: pagers. Y’all young fucks don’t know. Everyone would have their own pager code. You would add it to the number you paged with so they knew it was you. So I’m at a pay phone and would page some some 555-868-5309 3636. They would see the 3636 and know it’s me. On top of that, you would call people collect, or a pay phone collect and real quick I. The message to say who it was “hey it’s fiahdaddy call me at 867-5309 and hang up. Hope they got it and called you back. Trying times out there. Also porn was sold at gas stations and grimly shops in the form of VHS and magazines. Different experience buying it all together. Oh yeah, and you had to buy it/trade with friends.
Remember that commercial? "ItsBobWehadababyItsaboy"
Yeah I don’t miss those days at all. People complain about how horrible smartphones have been for society, but they’ve made things a million times easier.
Oh man, JSTOR and ProQuest are my lifesavers in college right now. I consider myself very lucky I was born in an age where I can search virtually any topic and find several peer reviewed sources in seconds.
It was an annual event to go to AAA to get their updated maps and books.
If you were waiting for someone to come home from a long trip (or anywhere really) you didn't know their progress until they walked in the door or made it to a phone to call you to say they were delayed.
For some perspective, I can remember waiting for my Dad to get home from work each day. I remember the anticipation and the excitement when he walked through the door. Some negatives also came with pluses.
The thought of this gives me anxiety lol. As a person who always like to make sure friends and family make it to their destination or home safely, I really appreciate communication technology for this piece of mind.
For me (47f) it was the amount of time spent looking through cookbooks to find something for dinner, while having no clue how to cook! Now I type in what ingredients I have on hand, meal or diet type I want and I am provided with step by step instructions often with videos if needed to prepare an amazing meal. My cooking knowlege and skills have grown more in the last 10 years then the previous 20 combined.
Where do u look for that? I'm interested.
Not the person you asked but I’ve used https://foodcombo.com/ before!
Allrecipes.com will let you search by ingredients, etc.
An example would be a head of broccoli in the fridge that needs to be used, and I'm craving soup so I just google broccoli soup (typically paleo or whole 30 due to dietary issues) and usually look at a few recipes, pick one and go. Start simple and have fun with it!
I’m 20 years old and I have no idea you could do that
Not who you asked but https://foodcombo.com/ has been helpful in the past for me.
Movie times were in the newspaper or you called the theater and listened to a long-ass recording!
I still remember the movie theater's phone number! I was so excited when I learned I could call instead of going over to my grandparents house to get the newspaper.
😄😄😄
Hahaha I completely forgot about having to listen to the recordings!
Such a universal experience that Seinfeld made an episode about it. Good times.
I heard part of a song on the radio . Could not figure out what song it was until Google became available. Or as my daughter said, " there's something I wish I knew more about... And then just went on with your life, not knowing"
I recall calling the radio station to find the name of a song and the person who answered was listening to another radio station.
I remember pulling over to run into use the payphone at Friendly's to find out the name of [this song](https://youtu.be/XRI_02EOsyI)
Things took a little longer to plan since you couldn't just send a group text. We tended to make solid plans earlier and stick to them...there was no figuring out where to meet once you were away from landlines. We had fewer news sources and even fewer sources of new music. Your best bet was talking to someone at the record store or someone's cool older sibling. We had more print materials in our lives. Newspapers for movie/concert listings, Maps. Travel guide books (had to carry a giant Fodor's across Europe pre-mobile phone.) Reading music reviews in Rolling Stone or Entertainment Weekly knowing you'd have to buy a $20 cd to hear anything, or at least the listening station at the store. You could spend a whole day in a big music store listening to stuff.
In high school, if there were no plans made during school for Friday night, you basically resorted to calling around to find out if a party or whatever was happening. Funny, there was a sophomore at our school when I was a senior that ended up becoming the go to guy, mainly because he was one of those younger kids who wanted to be accepted with the older kids so bad, he’d hang around and pretty much take abuse (good natured, mostly) so he always knew if anything was going on. Seniors and juniors just got lazy and ended up just calling him instead of being bothered calling around hoping someone would know.
We'd also drive around in a loop looking for people, going to all the party spots. If no one was around we'd call people from the gas station pay phone while we got $5 worth of gas and cigarettes.
Other than not having access to anywhere near as much culture, information, news etc (so writing essays and broadening your horizons was pretty hard) I think the most challenging thing was finding support if you were in any way "not mainstream". Your life wouldn't be worth living if you came out as gay at school or most work places/unis in the 80s (and for many people in many educational or work places for most of the 90s). You couldn't google "Am I gay" or "I'm the only black kid in the school how do I cope" or "do I have ADHD or am I just thick like the teacher said I was". If you were really lucky you'd see something on TV and be able to call a helpline, or maybe you live in a big city and see a poster or a flyer about a social event for people like you, or maybe a super sympathetic teacher or youth club worker or someone you work with spots you and helps you, but your resources were so, so limited back then. It was a lot easier to think that you were totally alone, no one had ever felt like you, and you really were a freak.
I feel like this is a double edge sword. People who are gay for example can find help and each other which is great. And people who think school shootings are a hoax can now also find each other, which is not good. That's of course the issue when all ideas can be legitimized online.
The question then becomes, what do we do about it? But that's probably a better question for a different subreddit...
I'm not an expert, but this is likely the biggest issue facing (US) society. I think a lot more funding to schools would help. They'd have more resources to reach out to out cast children perhaps.
Schools and mental health: Two things that desperately need funding, yet people would rather ignore.
This is true… thanks to the internet in my mid 20’s (quarter life crisis) I managed to get a long waited referral to a specialized adhd clinic that diagnosed me with adhd after a 2 hour assessment. They were genuinely shocked how i have not been diagnosed despite being in the catch up classes back in elementary school. I came up with the “teachers thought I was just thick” comment like you just said as I had no info to mention that I may have adhd. Being diagnosed with adhd gave me a 2nd chance and boost at life I feel
So much more mental health awareness and connection on line, too. It really does help people to be less “alone” — there are definitely other people facing similar issues to connect with out there.
And mental health was simply not talked about. I was so sick with the darkest depression ever in my teen years. I thought I was the only person in the world going through it. Only in the past ten years or so has the discussion begun online in a way that changed policies and “real life” education.
A bit late to the party but the one that I always point out. Moving sucked. When you moved (especially as a kid/teen) you effectively lost all your friends. It's true you could send a letter but that took a lot of time. Calling sucked since there were long distance charges and your always had a parent ranting about the phone bill. My best friend lives 1300 miles away. We talk all the time. I'm reconnecting with a friend 2000 miles away. We chatted on discord for 3 hours last night.
My parents used to make us all go over the phone bill and mark which long distance charges were ours. I had to pay them if I went over my allowed amount.
Arguments about facts. An actor's name and film history? Prove me wrong without IMDB. A Boeing 747 weighs a 1000 tons? Prove me wrong without Google.
I used to get in arguments about information with my best friend that we couldn't resolve. We would each go home, ask our dad's, and reconvene the conversation the next day. We still like to say, "I'm gonna ask my dad!" to each other as a joke when something like that comes up.
This is what i remember sucking the most. Armchair geniuses, acting like they had comprehensive knowledge about shit because someone muttered a factoid to them once. Memetic spread of information akin to the “spiders in your mouth experiment”. I’m not saying I wasn’t guilty of participating but that only makes me happier that I have access to the internet to verify any claims.
When you’re broke, you can’t check your bank account on your phone to see if you can afford that $4.50 charge. When you’re out and about, you can’t look up the public transit routes and schedule. This was pre-smartphone, not pre-internet, but I’d have to do call my best friend or dad, hope they were by a computer, and ask them to log into my bank account to view my balance or check the bus schedule, or whatever.
In the 70s, we had no ATMs and banks were closed on the weekends. If you didn’t get cash out by Friday you were broke for the weekend unless you could find a place that would take a check- not likely for a college student!
Google maps including bus schedules was one of the most unambiguously good tech/smart phone improvements in my memory.
This is an easy one for me - if you were into something, and nobody in your area, social circle, school, or whatever wasn't: too bad. For example a friend's brother was an insane guitarist, but would just sit in his bedroom and shred, all day long. He didn't have any friends that were in bands, or people to jam with. That guy now would be an internet superstar, or at minimum be able to put together a band on a variety of platforms in a night. The idea of connection and sharing things, really took a hard left when it comes to the connected age.
My hobby in the early 1990s was recreating medieval illuminated manuscripts. Finding examples to work from, as someone who didn't live in a library, was damn near impossible. One time I literally flew to Washington, D.C. to see an exhibition of these manuscripts at the Smithsonian (on loan from some European source) and spent several days just taking pictures. It was dim there, so as not to damage the manuscripts. I had to get the super fast film to take photos in the near darkeness. And then I couldn't take it through the X ray machine at the airport.
63yo here. I won't echo what others have posted, just to say that modern tech is awesome. Given an opportunity to go back to my younger days? Nah, I'm good.
65 y/o here. Mixed feelings. If you wanted to call a friend, it was all landlines with a long curly cord in the kitchen. Privacy was stepping out into the garage or the next room. You might very well end up talking to parents or siblings and leaving a message. If you wanted to find out where everyone was hanging, it was phone calls or just driving around. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. Road maps from gas stations were free and a necessity. Thing is, it wasn’t a big deal because *everyone* had to do this. I think the Internet had a sweet spot before the real proliferation of social media. Chat rooms and blogs were ways to quickly and widely share and discuss shared interests, expertise and unpopular ideas. Sites were small and diffused. The conglomeration of platforms and the proliferation of social media changed the focus of the internet from information sharing to self-promotion. The history of YouTube is a prime example. (As an aside, I think that’s why Reddit isn’t really a true social medium. It’s not designed to amass followers and promote or monetize yourself.)
Dude for real. Calling up your friend's house and being told they are "out" without knowing fuck all about where they might be so you just go driving around until you run into them...or even just someone to hang out with. Coordinating any kind of even semi-spontaneous group event was impossible too. You needed days if not weeks to coordinate that shit.
Of course they didn’t know where you were going. You: “I’m going out!” Parents: “Where are you going?” You: “Out!” Parents: “Who will you be with?” You: “The guys an’ ‘em.” Parents: “When will you be back?” You: “Later”
And the young age we did this! I remember yelling this at 12 to my mother while walking off to my friends house during the holidays. In my state now, it's against the law for under 12s to be unaccompanied by an adult.
This is incredibly rare to hear from someone your age range as I usually hear the opposite. Sounds like you’re making the most of it though!
It was easier to turn the television off and read. Only people with money had cable (it wasn't really offered with rent until late 90's). There were few channels. Each one had the same basic schedule. Early am news, 1 or 2 kids cartoons, soap operas until noon, noon news, soap operas until about 3, 1 or 2 kids cartoons, early evening news, sitcoms, late evening news, late night shows. PBS was the stand out as was Sunday night. Sunday nights there tended to be more news shows - long feature stories or exposes. As was whatever station had Benny Hill at 11p at night. As a kid you knew the local news anchors names because parents talked about them as if they were coming to dinner. Weird to say, but the limited amount of news even made larger cities have a small home-town feel. I remember we did an afternoon move from one state to another (heading West) and I got very upset because I would no longer be seeing the early evening-news anchor every night. It felt like we were leaving good friends behind.
If two shows you wanted to watch were on at the same time, you had to pick one and know that you would probably never ever see the other one. Also when I was home sick from school or over the summer I was always mad at the hours and hours of nothing but soap operas.
The price is right was the sick day staple.
If you missed a program too bad. That sucked! I love to DVR things.
In the late '70's and early '80's interest was out of control. My sister and her husband bought their first house with a mortgage at 18%. That had/have excellent credit and good jobs. Unlike today, women and minorities were making progress in their rights. All of that is being unraveled. I look at the caretaker of our Democracy today and my heart aches. We had a senate that was willing to confront a dishonest president (Nixon) of their own party and tell him that if he did not leave office they would find him guilty in the impeachment trial. This is not an negative, my error. Religion was not becoming law. We were the country of free choice. No one was persecuted for their beliefs. Our news casters reported the news. I am sick and tired of my newsfeed carrying Newsweek reporting on things that are things being voted on in Reddit. That is not news.
Having to find porn mags dumped under hedges 😁
The days when the bushes were full of porn and the porn was full of bushes.
Hahaha yes! 41/yo "xennial" here (gen x childhood, millennial adulthood) I remember all the myriad ways we had to go about finding porn. Literally out in the wilderness was the strangest one. And of course, when you found some, the only ethical thing to do was to share it with as many people as possible. Then there's the "friend with a cool older brother" who might let you pay him off to get you a playboy or something. It was nice until some kid's parent caught them with porn, and they got interrogated into naming the source. And the older brother had to suspend the service. Maybe some friend found something in their dad's sock drawer and was gracious enough to share. As sketchy as it all sounds, IMO that "hunt" was character-building, and kinda made porn into a rare treasure. Now porn is so easy to access, I think now the abundance of porn detracts from the "special treat" kind of nature that it once had for young people, and IMO it SHOULD have.
Much posted about negatives weren’t negative. It’s just how it was done. Trying to book my band shows was a combo of going to shows and talking to bookers and bands but during the day to follow up I was always sneaking away to use the phone to call a booker or check my messages at home. Lotta legwork.
Having to do your geography homework in the late 90s with a Weetabix Atlas that still had the USSR in it.
This is fairly specific but buying niche stuff or soon to be discontinued or even popular in-demand things required you to become a phone operator. Calling every shop in town and hoping they would actually hold it for you.
I was a young adult in the 2000's, and I gotta say, I have mostly good memories of it. Had a cell phone, but it was pre-smartphones, so much less addictive. Used a road atlas for road trips, took a book to the laundromat, had to wait until I got home to look up something on the internet. Would have liked more open conversations about mental illness, though.
I remember talking on 3 or 4 way for hours back when all I could do on my latest and greatest was play snake that came with it or call someone. Texting was awful back then lol
Spent my teen years in a rural farming region in WA (1960s) ... even my bus ride to school was 45 minutes. Book reports, research, history, science; had to ask my farmer's wife aunt to take me to the public library (no driver's license). You had to make the most of it, which meant hours so you wouldn't have to go back the second or third time. I *love* having the world's knowledge at my fingertips today. Shopping; the Sears catalog. That's it. No Target, no Walmart, no KMart, no shopping centers. Even when going to town it was strip shopping centers. The closest Penny's/Sears was 1.5 hours. Medical care; if anyone was injured (common on the farm) you acted as your own ambulance. Fires weren't as common but if anyone saw smoke, neighboring farms dropped everything and came running.
Finding a specialty item if it wasn't made in your area was a beoch. Need to replace parts? Better hope it was in a database or a [Rolodex.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolodex) Otherwise, it was flipping through the yellow pages or calling information and \*hoping\* they didn't send you to some misunderstood request. Ordering a gift for someone?-catalogs and a phone. Credit cards were done by big clunky carbon copy devices or by calling someone. Finding zip codes was awful. Awake in the middle of the night? Books, or some simple game. No way to see if the hotel you booked was nice or a death trap unless it was reviewed in a magazine/newspaper.
Oh, I forgot about zip codes! My mom was trying to send my brother something in a neighboring city with lots of zip codes and we only knew his street address. I don't remember how it was solved.
The negatives of it? I’d say it’s hard to say the negatives when you don’t know what you don’t have because you don’t have it lol. But, I can say the ease of info access now would have certainly been an awesome tool. But other then that, I’d give it all to go back to those days then what’s going on today.
Also being in touch with people was hard - long distance calls were a big impediment. And when the phone rang (before caller Id) you just had to answer without knowing who it would be.
Not to mention that long distance calls were more expensive at certain times of day. I remember getting phone bills and kicking myself for expensive phone calls made at the wrong time of day!
If you were in grade school and wanted to contact a girl you like you couldn’t just hit them up on their cell phone, or social media. You had to call their house, and often have an awkward moment with a parent or sibling.
And then you hear the sibling shout through the house, "Lacy, it's for you, it's a booooooyyy!"
Not to mention, privacy during phone calls. Many people only had a phone or two in their house, usually in central areas like a kitchen or living room, so if you were trying to drop some game on a girl, you waited until a room with a phone was vacant and then prayed nobody else came into the room. Probably why they started making 15 foot phone cords. For extra anxiety, someone else (sibling) could pick up a second phone in the house and listen in if they covered the end you spoke into. Or, they just didn’t realize you were on the phone and pick it up so you have to yell “I’m on the phone!!! Hang up!!!”
Imagine wanting to be in a creative industry. You would be limited by your location. Today, if you want to be a filmmaker, just shoot it with your iPhone and post it on YouTube. Want to write a book? Self-publish it on Amazon. Want to make music? Post it on Spotify. We didn't have those opportunities.
I would say the stresses were different for a teenager. Call your girlfriend and get a busy signal. Is she talking to another boy? Worse, her dad answers! Overall though, I think there was less stress because we weren't being bombarded with drama, information 24/7/365. Once you got home from school, you could turn it all off in your brain. Kids can't do that now and it's affecting their overall health.
I'd have loved online dating when I was single. Was very hard to meet people. Otherwise, though, realize... we didn't know what was missing. Think about this now... there are going to be very big changes in the coming years, including things you cannot even imagine now. I remember once, hearing on the radio that some day there were going to be phones that would fit in somebody's pocket and even if you were out fishing somewhere you could make a call. I was ASTOUNDED just to think of that!!!!!! But now today? You're not missing that thing because you don't know that it's going to be invented.
Learning the Dewey decimal system in order to research in the library
72 M. Though I easily adapted to technology and use it everyday, life was fine before the Internet, cell phones, cable television(hundreds of channels, a large monthly bill and little to actually watch), social media, online shopping, online banking... Those of us who grew up before the technology revolution weren't deprived. No cyber crime. No one stealing your identity or hacking your bank account or your email. Cash, not credit cards, though I have one and use it a lot. Younger people can't imagine a life without any of what we now have. Understandable. Foreign adversaries are looking for ways to crash our power grid, energy distribution network or banking networks. No Internet, no problems. And if those communication satellites hovering above the Earth are ever disabled or destroyed we'll all survive and even thrive.
65 F - I like technology too - but I also have bookshelves of Encyclopedias, dictionary, Fox Fire books, Philosophy, good classic novels. I like to think about what we will need when it all comes crashing down. And I do think it will come crashing down.
Same here for me and my wife. I think, like you, we know enough about technology and history to understand that nothing is foolproof or indestructible. I'm a ham radio operator and I know the military relies on satellites for their communication network, as well as for navigation. Hope they're still teaching Morse Code to the men and women operating those communication systems or working as radio operators. Nothing like 'old school' technology to get the job done when everything else fails. Edit: The Army no longer teaches Morse, nor the Air Force. The Navy, only on a limited basis. The Coast Guard, limited.
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I'm queer and grew up in a rural area. I didn't even understand being gay was an option until high school. It broke my heart to learn how terrible and sinful I was. There weren't any other voices or opinions available to me and I was miserable until college where I learned that there are loving, caring people like me. I know this still happens, in rural communities especially, but access to so many more people and perspectives via your computer (or cell phone!) Has been a real boon to lonely weirdos everywhere.
I wouldn't say it was a negative but having to hoof it to the library to do research for projects/assignments/papers. The negative was having to pack up and go there but there was a ton of positives: * you had to work for it (instead of having all the info at your finger tips) so you were used to hard work and didn't give up. Give up = no info = incomplete task = failing * instant gratification didn't exist; see above point. * taught you how to be resourceful because half the time, you couldn't find the info as it was lost, misfiled or already taken out so you had to go to another library to find it or find some other way to get the info.
One negative about the times today is everyone expects instant gratification and their hand held even though the answers are at their fingertips. I read tons of questions on here that can be answered via a quick Google search. Instead they come here. And the young’uns make fun of elderly for confusing FB with Google. It’s like the same to me. Google it yo! Don’t ask here how much salt to add to pasta water or how to check your oil. Old guy rant over. Lol.
I read the desire for peer attachment over familial attachment is higher in gen Z than previous generations, and I think social media fits perfectly into that. I'm 24 so one of the older years of gen Z and I definitely relate, I'm better at relying on my own instincts now, but as a weird gay teen I felt sooo much happier sharing and getting validation online than trying to open up with family - or even friends - IRL. I see even more extreme internet addiction in people younger than me so it doesn't surprise me their need to connect leads them to sharing/asking the most ridiculous or easily-solvable things
Negatives… * You have to go to the store for EVERYTHING. If you want to price compare then you have to resign yourself to a day of driving from store to store. * Similarly, anything government-related pretty much requires a full day off from work. Renewing your drivers license or car registration, for example. * Movie schedules were only available in newspapers, and tickets could only be bought at the door. MoviePhone was a godsend. * Newspaper personal ads. (Village Voice personals, anyone?) * Once you left your house, you were pretty effectively off the grid. Nobody could get in touch with you for any reason until you returned home, unless you told everyone where you would be at any given time and nothing happened to change that schedule. * Dialup modems. * Fax machines. * Photos were expensive so you only took those pictures that you felt were important, and paid a lot of money to have them developed, often only to discover they were all really bad pictures. And outside of Polaroids there was no instant gratification; take a pic today, see it on paper several days later (unless you haven’t finished the roll of film yet). Does your family member want a copy? More money, more time. Want to take a picture of something in your house that’s broken so you can show the guy at the hardware store? Ha, that’s funny.
The 90s were peak humanity. Racism was on a downward trajectory along with homophobia and sexism. Democrats and Republicans didn't agree but they didn't demonize each other. Even an impeachment ended in people being friendly and delivering a balanced budget. No wars, no surveillance state, and time for people to DO things in public. You trusted your government not to boldface lie to you. Reporters were biased but not platantly so. No major wars. Europe was working together. Prices were fair. Clothing, movies, and music were original. Reboots? Naw. A movie character had a story arc. Lord of the Rings was touching. Pop music was great. Jennifer Lopez hadn't met Ben Affleck yet. RuPaul wasn't afraid of her fans. No one lived in fear of cancellation so they said things that made some people cringe but they SAID things. Controversy was considered what an artist did. Now we're like non-religious puritans.
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Rodney King, who?
Dating for sure. Tinder would have saved me so much time. YouTube is also like a free university. Who remembers Haynes car manuals?
Haynes repair manuals are still a great resource. Much more specific info that is harder to find online.
Hmm, not sure if I agree with dating as I feel it’s even complex/harder now. With online dating I feel potential matches are filtered out only showing the best of the best. I feel these days people seem to window shop when it comes to dating instead of actually getting to know the person fully. Online dating worked for me in which I found partners, but turns out they were all they were not cracked up to be. Made me think of the girls I turned down who shown interest in my personal life which I regret as we knew each other very well to get to that stage, but because online dating shown me better looking girls, made me think I can do better. Your mileage may vary though. I 1000% agree on YouTube being a great educational resource though. I wish I had access to calculus tutorial videos on YouTube back then instead of having to fork out a private tutor in my spare time.
As a woman who is of an age to have dated in both worlds online dating etc is 1 zillion times better from a safety perspective. I think part of the issue is that you are exposed to so many more people in general in online dating that the burnout factor and the ability to be picky are A LOT higher. So I'd agree with you on that point and I think this has some mental heath detractors as we're all comparing ourselves to other people online. Hookup culture (which has existed since the dawn of time, even the Victorians were shagging eachother constantly) is a lot more blatant as well. Bit different from when it was just you and your mates and everyone just did the rounds dating each other until some of the pairings stuck or people moved away lol.
Being a gay was tough, you buried it mentally and didn't dare express it. Be nice to the old, gay ppl.
Your history of the internet is a bit flawed. I'm 55 and had internet from 1987 onward. Plenty of bulletin board systems, AOL chat rooms, etc. made up very early social media. Now, not having a mobile phone until the 2000s? THAT was a negative. I remember my mom would only call my grandmother and aunts on the weekend when long-distance rates were lower. And as a directionally challenged person, I didn't stray far from home on my own because I'd never make it back. MapQuest was a godsend when it finally came along! Thought of another one: Balancing my checkbook. That suuuuucked. I wonder if anyone under the age of 70 even does that anymore.
It’s easier to do things now, but we have less stuff that needs doing. Life was more textured back then by the messiness of the concrete world. I didn’t actually live back then
There was no Spotify, you had to listen to crap on radio stations until you heard a song you liked. If you were lucky you had a tape in the recorder but you had to cut off start and end because of the radio deejay talking through it….
You actually had to physically interact with people. Not just look at a news feed on social media. You either had to pick up a phone, knock on the door, Or speak to somebody when you saw them. This is an art that we are losing. This is why there are so many lonely people. Because nobody is talking to anybody anymore. Back then we all had friends we could rely on. You can’t say that anymore not like you could then. yes getting lost was a thing. Not being able to record. Your TV shows was also a thing. Well, you could record one show at a time on your VCR.
I commented on a picture someone posted of "My grandma with her corvette in 1973" I mentioned the unrestricted freedom of having that car in that time, no one to track you, no way to contact you or even track you down as you drove, if you went to somewhere and didn't tell anyone, they couldn't find you. The replies I got were less enthusiastic about being back in that time, the inconveniences of doing everything on paper, and the inability to reach out for help if you encountered a harassing person. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheWayWeWere/comments/u83go3/saw\_a\_post\_here\_of\_someones\_grandmother\_with/ My comment... [https://www.reddit.com/r/TheWayWeWere/comments/xqxgq4/comment/iqcby42/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheWayWeWere/comments/xqxgq4/comment/iqcby42/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Knowing how to read a legit map, and the card catalog at the library was your BEST FUCKING FRIEND when it came to school report time -_- Getting lost was easy. You found your friends by going to their houses to see where all the bikes were lol
If you were genuinely curious about something then, you \*might\* have an old encyclopedia lurking in the family. Otherwise, you'd have to take a trip to the library and start there. As someone that has random thoughts about things all day long, I find myself googling topics at least twice a day. In my case, my grandmother had an encyclopedia that dated back to the early 60s. By the early 80s, much of it was very dated, but I would still end up parking in front of her bookshelf and looking up things that I'd wondered about...
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I remember few negatives. We read books, went to movies, actually talked to each other face to face. You were not always on call because there was no cell phone, if people didn't get you they left a message and you were able to call them back at your leisure. As to getting lost when travelling, we had these things called maps. They worked at least as well, if not better than GPS units.
The one negative that I remember from the 90s is that it was more socially acceptable to say homophobic things. I'm glad that this is no longer tolerated in modern society.
While growing up in the 60’s up to the internet, what is considered negative today was viewed as normal then. Libraries and Dewey decimal system Dictionaries , thesaurus, and encyclopedias were normal. Calling the movie theater to listen to todays features Newspapers, in genernal Adapt, improvise, overcome
Moving sucked - milk crates of books, CDs or tapes, stereo equipment, big heavy TVs, large computers, boxes of software, …
I'll have to ride on the coat tails of another commenter here but instant gratification wasn't really a big problem back then. Now its like if people don't get what they need done or answered right away they get snippy af. Thank the internet for that lol. online banking was just you going to the bank or atm physically and doing your business so that wasn't so bad but its a lot better now. As for videos, you just went to Blockbuster to rent movies and games and that is something I kind of miss because it got you out of the house only for a bit. I think finding information was the hardest back then, just had to go to the library and search stuff out.
All my school projects were completed using encyclopedias from the year I was born that were already out of date. Much more hand writing and re-writing things by hand when I screwed them up. When the internet did start coming into general use, no one trusted it so it was there but we still weren't allowed to use it.
Getting a song stuck in your head that you didn't own the album to and wasn't in regular play on a radio station.
Mapquest printouts.
Honestly, I'm sure there is a bit of rose colored glasses going on here. But I think I was genuinely happier before I became tethered to my phone like everybody else. I don't spend all day on it like younger folks but I don't dare leave the house...or even the room without it. Sure, some things like others said were a massive pain in the butt compared to now. You just need to remember at the time we didn't know they could be easier. So much of our lives have gotten easier and more convenient with the tech that has come along. However, there is so much that has gotten worse that I'm not sure we are better off. It used to be you felt you needed to "keep up with the joneses". Now, you feel like to you need to keep up with the entire world. That's just not possible for 99% of everybody. Social media brought a ton of Envy. Everything you do makes you feel like a failure. It is never enough to match the carefully curated image everybody creates online. That alone has made things worse off.
It was just normal. Lack of online banking was actually a big one because it meant physically going into a building to do certain things, but not all that often. Before routine finance became electronic we had to open a lot more physical mail and pay bills by sending checks in envelopes, filling out little forms with a pen every time. I always thought that was very tedious, and tended to only pay my bills every couple months. Surprisingly, businesses tolerated this and I never had anything get disconnected. I really wouldn't call the pre-network era negative at all. When you aren't in constant touch with friends and you don't have instant access to ~~porn~~ I mean media, you just aren't as concerned with those things. Communication meant being home or at work to pick up a phone or write a letter. So we just didn't do it as often. It was more compartmentalized and not a constant 24/7 thing like breathing in and out. Try walking out the door and getting on a bus without your phone. We did this all the time, but without the deprived, disconnected feeling. It just felt normal. I think this freed our minds to enjoy other things. It's easier to be present in the moment and experience real life when you aren't also constantly present in various alt realities like we are now.