So many great forums where people were helping each other, 0 social media in the current meaning of the word. When you searched for something you would get actual people's webpages and not some business who paid the most to get at the top of the list.
The sudden transition from having to physically go to the store to buy a CD to being able to download literally all music for free, before Apple took over with iTunes, was a wild time
Going to bed having set up like 20 albums to download on my dial up connection. Waking up to have 3-4 of them completed and feeling on top of the world.
That brief moment when the internet felt human. No algorithms, no monetization brain rot, just curiosity, creativity, and people making things because they loved it. We didn’t know it was the golden age until it was gone.
Websites got popular because of word of mouth, not because of an algorithm. You only knew about Home Star Runner, Newgrounds or Runescape cause your friends had told you about them.
Yeah it's amazing to think that there was a time when basically all of the content on the internet was driven by people's personal interests/hobbies/passions and not by monetization and profit.
I have such nostalgia for all the individual geocities/angelfire websites. Imperfect, terrible graphics, and a little weird, but the intentions were so much purer. Just people sharing information about the things they were passionate about.
I stumbled on one of these the other day that was last updated in 2003. It was for a band called Honeybus and was in a webring for bands of the ‘60s. Some of the webring sites were still in existence and one was still being updated. Made me happy and sad. I miss those wholesome days.
Yep and the insertion of political ideas through bot farms etc. Not that things weren't political before it's just it was individual discussions rather than bad actors posting en masse to drive extremism.
There’s an indie/small web movement with hosts like neocities and mmm.page, search engines like wiby and marginalia. It just takes some effort to go off the beaten path these days
I was on a path to become a carpenter until I used the internet in 1997, I immediately decided to learn web design and computer programming, I knew immediately the internet was going to change the world and I wanted in on it.
It was a great decision. But everything is fucked now.
I’d give all the social media in the world for one more hour browsing low-quality jpegs and fanfics in a dedicated Tenchi Muyo Angelfire site with a shockingly active message board.
I still have a copy of of the first editions of Wired magazine, where they declare that the sum total of all data on the internet had broken 1TB. And we couldn't grasp how there could BE that much data ;)
My experience of this was BBSes before the WWW. There were people exchanging/sharing ideas and learning about other BBSes through word of mouth and helping each other learn how to set up/build/fix techie things and "online" had not yet been turned into a GD graphical shopping mall
Appointment TV. Everyone watching the same thing at the same time. Weird to be nostalgic about that. But watching St Elsewhere with my parents and brothers and sisters was cool.
I was just trying to explain to my 14 year old tonight how when I was in High school if you didn't see last night's episode of the Chappelle Show you might as well not socialize in school because every student saw it and it's all we talked about.
Ohh, is that where it came from? I never knew, I just remember one day at school if I looked down I was getting punched, & that just kind of existed for awhile after that.
Malcolm in the Middle popularised that particular version, but the concept has been around for a lot longer.
Back in the early 90's (at least at our school), our version was hitting someone if they stepped on your shoe. So obviously you'd try to get people to step on your shoe so you could hit them.
I miss this so much! There was always a commonality with anyone you met. As a kid the next day at school was all about what was on the night before. I found the same thing happened with morning radio shows too. I feel like it’s added to the disconnect in society. Sure, there are popular shows that get cult like followings, but they might not be on a streaming service everyone has, etc.
This has been an interesting dynamic to watch as I've raised my own kids. It used to be this shared cultural thing we went through, everyone watching the same shows generally at the same time. Now there's so much content that there is no cohesive cultural experience that everyone has as a baseline.
It’s funny. Was thinking the same thing. My parents were religious but I realize that I saw more grownup-oriented content (Seinfeld, movies) as a kid than my kids do, because it was the only time for them to watch it. I remember not understanding things and then slowly getting more as I aged. Or it dawning on me suddenly in my teens what a joke I heard at 9 meant.
Now I try to watch more stuff around them and just let it rip. Nothing harmful, but enough to understand the lived experiences of people and families outside their own.
I’ve made a conscious effort to watch grownup stuff around them.
It’s hard to comprehend now, but everybody in the U.S. was glued to their TVs on Saturday nights in the 1970s. At one time we had a lineup of All in the Family, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart and Carol Burnett.
Here's my favourite stat on that. There's an also-ran Must See TV sitcom called Veronica's Closet that was supposed to be a new vehicle for Kirstie Alley post-Cheers. It regularly got over 20 million viewers and was cancelled when it dipped below that for too long.
The last show that was considered "monoculture" was Game of Thrones and it never got over 20 million viewers once in it's entire run. The closest it got was its finale at 19.3m.
And when NBC was a powerhouse with its Must See Thursday night line up with Friends and ER, then Tonight Show with Leno and followed up with Conan. It was like a solid 5 hours.
I miss dollar menus so much. They were still pretty decent up until the late 2010s. Taco bell was the last holdout. There was just something special about digging through the change in your car's ash tray, counting it out, and realizing you had just enough to grab some greasy fast food. Coins don't even have any utility anymore. You used to actually be able to buy things with your change.
Early VJs and news segments felt so authentic and almost gonzo: no paid segments, no label interference, just objective journalism with a unique finger on the pulse of mainstream (and some indie) alternative.
It was trusted, almost academic, and sociological. "Gods we were strong then!"
My parents have both told me about the first time they saw that music video on MTV. My dad didn't even like MJ, and it was still one of those moments he chose to tell his kids about.
I was JUST on the border between having my stupidity recorded and put online and having complete freedom to do anything I wanted.
For a good while, you'd know if someone was taking pictures because they'd bring out a digital camera that usually always had the flash on when you were inside or if it was even remotely dark out.
Then that just sorta stopped once phone cameras got good enough and social media started being a thing. The difference between the stupid shit I did between freshman and senior year of high school was INSANE, because by the end I knew that there would be a chance I was being recorded and put on social media in real-time.
Literally, I can’t get intoxicated at raves without worrying about my face getting plastered in that club or festivals advertisements. I remember one time I was on a fuck ton of molly for my birthday and one of the staff decided to shine the spotlight directly on me and point the camera at me. The way I just ducked into the crowd was insane.
I hate drinking around my sister now. Back in the day we would get drunk and talk shit/do dumb stuff. Now she feels the need to record everything and plaster it on her socials.
So we'd be laughing having a good time then the phone comes out. Really dampens the mood.
The sad part about streaming is how most of the new movies and shows are just so forgettable. I'd really have to dig into my brain to name my top 5 netflix shows/movies, at the current moment Ozark is the only one I can think of. Been calling it Shitflix lately, don't even know why they have so much value.
When you didnt aee your schools name at 11pm news before going to bed, pulling out all the stops on superstitions. Pennies taped to the door window, wearing pajamas inside out, yelling snow day into the freezer, flush ice cubes down the toilet, etc.
My kids did that last week. White crayons in each window sill and spoons under their pillows. School didn’t get cancelled for them until after 4am. Maybe it was the crayons?
I remember as a kid keeping a radio on Detroit am news so I could hear the announcement. They would read the entire list and if you missed it you’d have to listen to all the school districts again! Or I’d have to go downstairs and watch the list scroll on the morning TV news as I got ready for school just in case…
As soon as they came up with online school for the public schools kids stopped having the excuse needed to not go to school even on a snow day. Kinda hard to justify missing class when class can come home with you as long as your parents have wifi.
So not only do kids these days miss out on the tons of snow we got in the winter they also miss out on the no school aspect even if the little bit of snow we get closes the roads.
As someone in high school I can tell you that we only had school on snow days during and right after the pandemic, we absolutely get to miss school if the roads are bad.
Just had our first (and second) snow days on Wednesday and Thursday lol!
I used to be a freak for sledding. As soon as the snow day was called I’d be out at like 5:30am shredding that sweet sweet fresh powder. I used to drag a plastic bike ramp up to the local park in the middle of the night before the snow accumulated so others can jump their sleds. Good times
NoT aLl DiStRiCtS but for real, the one I work in has decided that snow days are snow days. Part of it is the limited efficacy of online learning; part of it might be a distrust on the past of students to bring tech back. But either way, we're out if we're out.
instant prizing in general. You used to be able to look under the lid of your coke and see if you won another free coke or a bag of doritos or something, which you could then redeem then and there on the spot with the cashier.
Now its a fucking QR code and you need to register with fucking pepsi.com and enable two factor authentication with your google authenticator and a US phone number.
It went from, "If we offer prizes maybe they will buy our product," to, "If we offer prizes maybe we can get their data and sell it." Unfortunately, in the grand scheme of things one is way more profitable. Data is the new goldrush.
Arcades in the 90s with the introduction of fighting games was amazing. I remember going to the arcade and adding my quarter to the line of quarters already lined up on the Mortal Kombat game to let others know “I got winner”. It was like a nerdy fight club at the mall.
That late 90’s optimism. Everything was humming. The dollar had a lot of buying power. People had good paying jobs and home ownership was attainable. Companies grew their business by being the best or providing value. I owned things instead of paying for a subscription.
Remember buying computer programs and having them last multiple computers. I had Excel 97 for like, 10 years. All you needed was the CD, or multiple floppy discs, and the ID number. You could just load it on any computer. I also used office 2007 until, like 2019.
The Matrix came out in 1999 and had a line about that year being the peak of human civilization. I thought it was prosperouspreposterous that they were saying things wouldn't get any better. Little did I know...
9/11 itself didn't shut us down, but you could say it was a catalyst. I remember the weeks post 9/11 when it felt like the whole country was getting it all together. There was a kumbaya moment that lasted right up until the invasions started. America was ready to rally together, and all of that energy could have been steered into something positive. Instead it got steered into two wars that drastically widened the partisan divide. What a complete failure of leadership, and a wasted opportunity.
My buddy used to work midnight shift and used to call into radio shows at night. He won a ton of stuff because there were so few listeners at that time.
He told me one night, they announced the 10th caller would win movie tickets.
My parents had 2 landlines and a cell phone for my dad's home business. The radio would be on all day and night, soon as they would announce we would all be dialing as fast as possible. They would win so much they kept a list of all their friends names next to the phone, they would just go down the list as they won stuff because the station would only let you win once every two weeks or something.
You could in Kansas City up until 2023. Come out of the gate, follow the conga line straight across the gate lobby, through the security door they opened for your flight, and boom there's your family.
That arrangement isn't around today. The old terminals were closed and replaced because they were designed before security and it was an incredibly clunky fit.
One if my best childhood memories is the summer between 8th and 9th grade. My parents both worked. I rolled out of bed probably around 11, ate my Honeycomb cereal, and then the whole day was MTV on in the living room, going back and forth between my house and the community pool and all the kids' houses in the neighborhood. MTV was the soundtrack of my life then.
Walking with me dad all way through the airport and to the boarding ramp outside the airplane. Then watching the plain taxi back and seeing him waving at me, mom, and my bro.
The Mall was a thing back then. Grew up in a small city. We had four great malls. Galleria, Eastern Hills, McKinley and North Town. The amount of time we spent just walking around the mall during winter would fill a few calendar months. They were really something back then.
I'd tell my parents I wanted clothes from Sears just so I could play Nintendo while they waited in line to cash out sometimes.
They did. Free from social media. You found the things you love. They weren’t peddled by some over filtered face. Wanna know where all your friends are? Just look for the bikes on the lawn. We touched grass…. That was the way
I'm not exaggerating when I say some of my fondest memories were in record stores. Looking up cds of music I heard on the radio, trying to figure out what I should spend my $15 on. Then when used cds became a thing, digging through them, finding some hidden gem for $5. Don't get me wrong, I would have killed for the instant gratification of Spotify (or the internet) when I was in high school. But digging through stacks of cds, and bringing them home to see what I got, was such a special time in my life.
1980s mall rat. On weekend nights, it was THE place to be. Cool shopping, movies, and arcades. My parents gave me $20 for the night and I was set, usually with change left over, too.
Also 1980s roller skating. So weird, but so much fun! Every time Another One Bites the Dust came on, the whole building rushed onto the floor!
You could go to thr mall with $20, buy a record from the record store, eat lunch, and still have some left over for the arcade. $20 for me was 20 hours of babysitting money and totally worth it.
Oh man I forgot about Thursday/Friday nights at the roller rink. My city even had two competing roller rinks... Getting that combo meal, holding hands during slow skates, failing horribly at the limbo
Being able to buy tickets to a concert and get good seats without paying scalper prices. All I had to do was stand in line a few hours before they went on sale.
Now I can’t even get tickets to concerts. Last two I tried to purchase for my teenage kids by the time I got into ticketcrap they were sold out.
Making mix tapes. Mix tapes required love and thoughtfulness, manning a double tape deck, and hoping that song came on the radio at the right time. You had a finite amount of space, so every song had to have meaning.
iTunes / Spotify kind of ruined it by dragging / dropping and infinite storage and I don't see CD's or cassettes making a come back.
This one for me as well. Hearing our local classic rock station switch over to New Wave/ska/Brit Pop was mind opening. So many great bands and singers I had never experienced before: Adam and the Ants, The Cure, Bow Wow Wow, Kate Bush, Madness...just fabulous
The personal ads in the free (printed) weekly. You would place an ad for maybe 10 cents a word, and you would get handwritten LETTERS and PHOTOS in the MAIL from the people that wanted to meet you. It was awesome.
As a kid we could just take off on our bikes and go to the park, or the beach, or the mall, and just be back by dinner without parents monitoring our every move.
Being a teenager in the 80s and a young adult in the 90s. It wasn't perfect but things seemed a lot simpler. There were more opportunities to meet and connect with people in person and have experiences without the fear of being possibly recorded on social media.
Also, the music, particularly in the 90s, was amazing. There was something for everyone from grunge, alternative, hip hop, trip hop, dance and everything in between. It truly was the last great decade.
The golden era of television and cinema was the 90s and early 2000s imo.
High budget blockbusters were great, but they were also making wacky as hell films too and you could go see them in the theaters for cheap. I remember going to see Austin Powers, for example, in a packed theater on a Tuesday night for $4. Films like that dont really get made now, let alone make it to the theaters.
Studios were willing to greenlight weird ass movies with star power, not just IP driven franchises like they do today. Off the top of my head im thinking of stuff like:
Ghostbusters, Beetlejuice, Big, Groundhog Day, Back to the Future, Splash, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, Liar Liar, Mrs. Doubtfire, Gremlins, The Goonies, Flubber, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, National Lampoon’s Vacation, Christmas Vacation, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Uncle Buck, The Blues Brothers, Midnight Run, Being John Malkovich, Edward Scissorhands, and Men in Black...oh yeah and Home Alone. There's so many more.
Similarly, it was the golden era of sitcoms. Those days are never coming back. So many good shows.
Seinfeld, Friends, Married With Children, Home Hmprovements, Will and Grace, Frasier, The Simpsons, Cheers, Roseanne, Fresh Prince, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Boy Meets World, That 70s Show, Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens...hell, even Goldrn Girls.
The 80s had a bunch of good ones too but I only remember them from reruns.
Damm, we also had good game shows as well.
Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, The Price Is Right, Family Feud, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Double Dare, Win Ben Stein’s Money, Supermarket Sweep.
My mom used to watch soap operas like All My Children, Days Of Our Lives, and Young and the Restless.
It was the perfect mix of gritty music, dirty Hollywood, and optimisim white still being mostly affordable. Venice was humming, the South Bay was still half a surfer community, plenty of dives instead of just trendy overpriced places, etc
Growing up in late 60’s and 70’s. Ran wild as kids out until street lights came on. Building forts in the woods, riding bikes everywhere. Living in the moment. No cell phones and people were truly present. Saturday morning cartoons were huge but then everyone played outside and had real fun. No one was bored. In my 20’s in the 80’s being able to go to clubs and socialize with no one taking videos of you so you had privacy and again people were present and enjoying the moment. Music was great through the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.
The pre smart phone era, when people were not glued to a damn screen 24/7 like zombies. They had live interactions with other people, conversations over meals in restaurants, and went to concerts to enjoy the experience in real time, not to miss the whole thing because they have to record it for social media likes.
That's the one. I had an analog childhood and and a digital adulthood, started college right around the time where DSL and cable internet were first entering residential homes. I feel like I hit the timing just right.
I feel so damn lucky we didn't have smartphones in middle or high school. I don't think I would have survived my awkward teen years otherwise.
1990-2000 nyc suburbs, in terms of quality of life, optimism, and safety its got to rank up there as best in world history.
we won the cold war, everyone was making money, everyone was still interacting with each other bc no internet, it just seemed like things were good and would only get better.
The period between 1991 and 2001 was truly the peak of Pax Americana. The western world had not seen an undisputed superpower of that nature since Rome, maybe ever. You could argue things started to crumble when the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, but the whole thing definitely came crashing down on 9/11. Became clear it wasn't going to be all roses just because the Soviets were gone.
In store midnight releases for games. Most games today don't have the anticipation and hype. And even games that do, like GTA 6, I think most people would still rather sit at home and just download it once it drops.
No cell phones, no social media. If nobody witnessed it, or had a frikkin polaroid it didn't happen. When I left my house, that's it, there's no getting in touch with me until I check back into home base.
I’d say anytime before the late 1990s was a pretty good time to watch live entertainment, as far as professional major league sports, concerts, theater, amusement parks, and things like that. It is after the late 90s things started to get very expensive, and then in like the 2010s things exploded on how expensive it all got.
Getting dressed up and go dancing. (80’s- early 2000’s) The little town I grew up in Michigan had at least 15 places to go dancing in a 50 mile radius. Chattanooga had at least 50. Now it’s hard to find a dance floor or regular entertainment, even on weekends, to go dance.
Early days of travel hacking, late 90s to late 2010s:
- Internet allowed people to look for airfares without travel agents. People finding all sorts of quirks in the ancient reservation systems, airfare mistakes, etc.
- Internet allows just enough frequent flyers to get together and share these quirks and mistakes. Just enough to spread among a dedicated community of frequent flyers, but not blast it to the masses like Twitter and gets shut down right away. Airfare mistake lasted hours or days back then instead of minutes. The number of people who took advantage of them were lower and airlines were more likely to honor them.
- Frequent Flyer programs still based on distance flown, and ripe for gaming and maximizing benefits.
- Credit card companies started to discover how profitable it is to create their own reward systems, and the ever increasing size of valuable promotions.
- Tricks that are now popular didn't have names like skiplagging (what a dumb name-it was always hidden-city ticketing), credit card churning, manufactured spending.
- All this knowledge stayed in the community, not secrets, but available to people who made the cursory effort to look for it. Now all these info are instead of being peddled by "influencers" and bloggers to the masses for page views and referral bonuses and diluted for everyone.
- Way more people collecting points and miles means way less award seats to go around, less upgrades, stingy benefits.
- Airlines got a lot more aggressive at improving their IT system. Less mistake fares to be had. Way quicker at fixing any if they do happen. Better at predicting load factor and filling up the plane so less award seats. Better at optimizing ticket prices to maximize profits.
During those good old days I earned obscene amount of frequent flyer miles and points, flew first and business many time, flew free most of the time, and saw the world. Good days. 700+ flights, close to a million miles, got some wild travel experiences such as flying free on a private jet, got a spot on an airline delivery flight, flew into Airbus' private airport, met a bunch of industry executives, flew on a bunch of inaugural flights. Good times were had.
Not having to have a meeting about everything all the time.
We used to have meetings like once a month to go over projects and issues etc. Now its one every day or two over teams. Feel like i get fuck all done now because those meetings always bring up things needing to be done outside my typical scope of work.
The joy of the Sears catalog coming in late November before the Christmas shopping season. Then opening to the toy section and just looking. I knew I wasn’t probably getting anything from the catalog, but it was fun to look.
Growing up in the 90’s/00’s. It was the golden age of technology, where things had begun to transform and add to your quality of life without taking it over. Like the internet was around but not expected, movies were great, cell phones were not an absolute constant and even if they were, they CALLED and TEXTED and that’s it. It was just a simpler era growing up in without being inundated by something brand new every damn second.
The early internet era.
Less noise. More curiosity. People talked to connect, not to perform.
So many great forums where people were helping each other, 0 social media in the current meaning of the word. When you searched for something you would get actual people's webpages and not some business who paid the most to get at the top of the list.
Yes! And people took the trouble to make a website about something because they cared a lot about the topic.
The sudden transition from having to physically go to the store to buy a CD to being able to download literally all music for free, before Apple took over with iTunes, was a wild time
Borders Books. Had a great listening section where you could put on their headphones and sample the music while reading their mags.
Going to bed having set up like 20 albums to download on my dial up connection. Waking up to have 3-4 of them completed and feeling on top of the world.
Take me back man.
Was one of the first in my school to have a cd burner.
Would make mix cds for 10 and copies of albums for 5.
Had a stack of stuff in my backpack at all times
Paid for a few pair of jncos this way.
But then someone picked up the phone 2 hrs into your downloading that 1 song ...
That brief moment when the internet felt human. No algorithms, no monetization brain rot, just curiosity, creativity, and people making things because they loved it. We didn’t know it was the golden age until it was gone.
Websites got popular because of word of mouth, not because of an algorithm. You only knew about Home Star Runner, Newgrounds or Runescape cause your friends had told you about them.
Can’t forget Stumbleupon!
I miss it terribly
I had so much cool shit saved on my account.
How dare you not mention YTMND.COM!
You're the man now dog! YOU'RE THE MAN NOW DOG!
And albinoblacksheep
I found RuneScape on miniclip because my older sisters friends played games on there. Still playing 20+ years later. (Hit 20 years in June)
Forgot all about Miniclip!!!
Me too! And I still love it so much 🤩 OSRS feels like the last bastion of the old internet
Word of mouth is how I found Reddit.
It's how I found digg and then reddit
Yeah it's amazing to think that there was a time when basically all of the content on the internet was driven by people's personal interests/hobbies/passions and not by monetization and profit.
I have such nostalgia for all the individual geocities/angelfire websites. Imperfect, terrible graphics, and a little weird, but the intentions were so much purer. Just people sharing information about the things they were passionate about.
I stumbled on one of these the other day that was last updated in 2003. It was for a band called Honeybus and was in a webring for bands of the ‘60s. Some of the webring sites were still in existence and one was still being updated. Made me happy and sad. I miss those wholesome days.
Capitalism commodifies everything and sells it back to us.....
Yep and the insertion of political ideas through bot farms etc. Not that things weren't political before it's just it was individual discussions rather than bad actors posting en masse to drive extremism.
God the 90s and early 2000's were an amazing time!
Came here to say precisely this.
I wish there was something today that gave the same sense of wonder. It would be AI, but it's so filthy and dehumanizing...
There’s an indie/small web movement with hosts like neocities and mmm.page, search engines like wiby and marginalia. It just takes some effort to go off the beaten path these days
Early 2000s internet was an absolutely magical place
Early 1990s internet was like an alien planet though.
Anyone remember BBSs? I was a young kid with a computer and a 1200 baud modem. It felt like I was an early explorer, it was absolutely fantastic!
I was on a path to become a carpenter until I used the internet in 1997, I immediately decided to learn web design and computer programming, I knew immediately the internet was going to change the world and I wanted in on it.
It was a great decision. But everything is fucked now.
I’d give all the social media in the world for one more hour browsing low-quality jpegs and fanfics in a dedicated Tenchi Muyo Angelfire site with a shockingly active message board.
I still have a copy of of the first editions of Wired magazine, where they declare that the sum total of all data on the internet had broken 1TB. And we couldn't grasp how there could BE that much data ;)
My experience of this was BBSes before the WWW. There were people exchanging/sharing ideas and learning about other BBSes through word of mouth and helping each other learn how to set up/build/fix techie things and "online" had not yet been turned into a GD graphical shopping mall
Used to host a BBS on a software called Wildcat. Those were the days.
They paved paradise to put up a parking lot :(
No brain rot? What about elf bowling and hamster dance? Those were good times. Simpler times...
The brain rot felt better when it wasn't mass media, I think. It was more like an inside joke and less like the pop song everyone knows two lines of.
Badger badger badger badger musroom mushroooom~
Appointment TV. Everyone watching the same thing at the same time. Weird to be nostalgic about that. But watching St Elsewhere with my parents and brothers and sisters was cool.
I was just trying to explain to my 14 year old tonight how when I was in High school if you didn't see last night's episode of the Chappelle Show you might as well not socialize in school because every student saw it and it's all we talked about.
That episode of Malcom in the middle with the punching game and trying not to look down for the months after it aired at school.
Ohh, is that where it came from? I never knew, I just remember one day at school if I looked down I was getting punched, & that just kind of existed for awhile after that.
Malcolm in the Middle popularised that particular version, but the concept has been around for a lot longer.
Back in the early 90's (at least at our school), our version was hitting someone if they stepped on your shoe. So obviously you'd try to get people to step on your shoe so you could hit them.
I miss this so much! There was always a commonality with anyone you met. As a kid the next day at school was all about what was on the night before. I found the same thing happened with morning radio shows too. I feel like it’s added to the disconnect in society. Sure, there are popular shows that get cult like followings, but they might not be on a streaming service everyone has, etc.
This has been an interesting dynamic to watch as I've raised my own kids. It used to be this shared cultural thing we went through, everyone watching the same shows generally at the same time. Now there's so much content that there is no cohesive cultural experience that everyone has as a baseline.
The future is gonna be wild.
It’s funny. Was thinking the same thing. My parents were religious but I realize that I saw more grownup-oriented content (Seinfeld, movies) as a kid than my kids do, because it was the only time for them to watch it. I remember not understanding things and then slowly getting more as I aged. Or it dawning on me suddenly in my teens what a joke I heard at 9 meant.
Now I try to watch more stuff around them and just let it rip. Nothing harmful, but enough to understand the lived experiences of people and families outside their own.
I’ve made a conscious effort to watch grownup stuff around them.
It’s hard to comprehend now, but everybody in the U.S. was glued to their TVs on Saturday nights in the 1970s. At one time we had a lineup of All in the Family, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart and Carol Burnett.
Here's my favourite stat on that. There's an also-ran Must See TV sitcom called Veronica's Closet that was supposed to be a new vehicle for Kirstie Alley post-Cheers. It regularly got over 20 million viewers and was cancelled when it dipped below that for too long.
The last show that was considered "monoculture" was Game of Thrones and it never got over 20 million viewers once in it's entire run. The closest it got was its finale at 19.3m.
I remember Sunday nights, peak Simpsons and X Files.
And when NBC was a powerhouse with its Must See Thursday night line up with Friends and ER, then Tonight Show with Leno and followed up with Conan. It was like a solid 5 hours.
And Malcolm later on
As bad as it ended..etc.....it was really cool when game of thrones essentially brought this back briefly.
Absolutely! Some of the best friends I made in college was due to every one of us clearing our plans at 9:00 on Thursdays to watch ER together.
The finale of Seinfeld basically shut the world down.
They were able to get Frank Sinatra to the hospital because there was less traffic due to the Seinfeld finale.
Discovery & National Geographic Channels - back when they showed actual documentaries and informational shows.
Now it's gold rush reality shows and crap about aliens involvement in the pyramids.
History channel having actual history
The burger war of the late 90's. Every major fast food chain had their biggest burger on sale for 99¢. As a broke teenager, it was glorious.
I miss dollar menus so much. They were still pretty decent up until the late 2010s. Taco bell was the last holdout. There was just something special about digging through the change in your car's ash tray, counting it out, and realizing you had just enough to grab some greasy fast food. Coins don't even have any utility anymore. You used to actually be able to buy things with your change.
Getting out of school and digging through my center console to find 214 so I could get a double and a large coke. Shit hit different.
Early MTV
Music Television — they actually played music on television. Shit was crazy.
Headbangers ball
I still have an old VHS somewhere of my favorite HBB videos. The night that Metallica’s One premiered was a big deal.
The emergence of grunge was absolutely huge.
Going to school the day we found out Kurt Cobain killed himself was something else
Early VJs and news segments felt so authentic and almost gonzo: no paid segments, no label interference, just objective journalism with a unique finger on the pulse of mainstream (and some indie) alternative.
It was trusted, almost academic, and sociological. "Gods we were strong then!"
MTV when a Micheal Jackson video was about to drop was seismic
My parents have both told me about the first time they saw that music video on MTV. My dad didn't even like MJ, and it was still one of those moments he chose to tell his kids about.
ETA: referring to the "Thriller" video.
Thriller changed everything.
World Premier videos!! I used to wait for those.
Live (sometimes a little recklessly back in the day) without the concern of being filmed and plastered online.
I’m so glad none of the stupid shit I did as a teenager was recorded
I was JUST on the border between having my stupidity recorded and put online and having complete freedom to do anything I wanted.
For a good while, you'd know if someone was taking pictures because they'd bring out a digital camera that usually always had the flash on when you were inside or if it was even remotely dark out.
Then that just sorta stopped once phone cameras got good enough and social media started being a thing. The difference between the stupid shit I did between freshman and senior year of high school was INSANE, because by the end I knew that there would be a chance I was being recorded and put on social media in real-time.
I do miss the expectation of not having my every moment potentially recorded.
Literally, I can’t get intoxicated at raves without worrying about my face getting plastered in that club or festivals advertisements. I remember one time I was on a fuck ton of molly for my birthday and one of the staff decided to shine the spotlight directly on me and point the camera at me. The way I just ducked into the crowd was insane.
A lot of rave style clubs in germany ban all use of cameras in the clubs. If you are seen, you are automatically kicked out and in some cases banned.
Exactly sometime I'm scrolling on tik tok and see live feeds from bars/clubs. I am so thankful that was not a thing back when I was in those places.
I hate drinking around my sister now. Back in the day we would get drunk and talk shit/do dumb stuff. Now she feels the need to record everything and plaster it on her socials.
So we'd be laughing having a good time then the phone comes out. Really dampens the mood.
The time before the streaming wars. Pretty much everything was on Netflix and it wasn’t 20 something goddamn dollars a month.
The sad part about streaming is how most of the new movies and shows are just so forgettable. I'd really have to dig into my brain to name my top 5 netflix shows/movies, at the current moment Ozark is the only one I can think of. Been calling it Shitflix lately, don't even know why they have so much value.
I almost never invest in new tv shows because they usually get canceled or they aren’t very good.
True snow days
And specifically finding out if your school was closed by watching the local news and waiting for the ticker to go by.
When you didnt aee your schools name at 11pm news before going to bed, pulling out all the stops on superstitions. Pennies taped to the
doorwindow, wearing pajamas inside out, yelling snow day into the freezer, flush ice cubes down the toilet, etc.I grew up in a tropical place. We had hurricane days instead. I adore these snow day rituals.
My kids did that last week. White crayons in each window sill and spoons under their pillows. School didn’t get cancelled for them until after 4am. Maybe it was the crayons?
I remember as a kid keeping a radio on Detroit am news so I could hear the announcement. They would read the entire list and if you missed it you’d have to listen to all the school districts again! Or I’d have to go downstairs and watch the list scroll on the morning TV news as I got ready for school just in case…
The blizzard of 1996 in the Northeast. Still have fond memories of it
My friends and I dug insane tunnels through the snow banks and my neighbor’s dad built a crazy snow tube run off their deck.
As soon as they came up with online school for the public schools kids stopped having the excuse needed to not go to school even on a snow day. Kinda hard to justify missing class when class can come home with you as long as your parents have wifi.
So not only do kids these days miss out on the tons of snow we got in the winter they also miss out on the no school aspect even if the little bit of snow we get closes the roads.
As someone in high school I can tell you that we only had school on snow days during and right after the pandemic, we absolutely get to miss school if the roads are bad. Just had our first (and second) snow days on Wednesday and Thursday lol!
I used to be a freak for sledding. As soon as the snow day was called I’d be out at like 5:30am shredding that sweet sweet fresh powder. I used to drag a plastic bike ramp up to the local park in the middle of the night before the snow accumulated so others can jump their sleds. Good times
NoT aLl DiStRiCtS but for real, the one I work in has decided that snow days are snow days. Part of it is the limited efficacy of online learning; part of it might be a distrust on the past of students to bring tech back. But either way, we're out if we're out.
Prizes in cereal boxes.
instant prizing in general. You used to be able to look under the lid of your coke and see if you won another free coke or a bag of doritos or something, which you could then redeem then and there on the spot with the cashier.
Now its a fucking QR code and you need to register with fucking pepsi.com and enable two factor authentication with your google authenticator and a US phone number.
FUCKING BULLSHIT
It went from, "If we offer prizes maybe they will buy our product," to, "If we offer prizes maybe we can get their data and sell it." Unfortunately, in the grand scheme of things one is way more profitable. Data is the new goldrush.
I remember getting some cool game demos on CDs in cereal boxes.
Man now you got me thinking of going to the store to buy a game guide magazine.
They once stuck the full version of Rollercoaster Tycoon in a cereal box. Now that's a treat!
Chex Quest!!!
Happy meal toys with moving parts that you actually wanted to play with!
Yeah why did they stopped doing this? Was it because of choking hazard or something?
Saturday morning cartoons.
I was trying to think of something to add to that, but that is really it.
Well a lot less people eat cereal these days so I suppose they don’t vote it as an effective enough marketing tool to be worth the trouble I guess?
I still remember the excitement of browsing breakfast cereals for the toys🤣
Arcade games in the early 80s.
Things moved so fast. One year you were playing Donkey Kong, the next year there was a Guantlet machine.
I can still imagine the smell of cicruit boards in arcades
I held the Tempest top score in our mall arcade for a few beautiful weeks in 1983
Defender Missile Command Space Invaders Asteroid
Arcade games were the best!
Pay-phones over cell phones.
No internet.
Arcades in the 90s with the introduction of fighting games was amazing. I remember going to the arcade and adding my quarter to the line of quarters already lined up on the Mortal Kombat game to let others know “I got winner”. It was like a nerdy fight club at the mall.
That late 90’s optimism. Everything was humming. The dollar had a lot of buying power. People had good paying jobs and home ownership was attainable. Companies grew their business by being the best or providing value. I owned things instead of paying for a subscription.
Remember buying computer programs and having them last multiple computers. I had Excel 97 for like, 10 years. All you needed was the CD, or multiple floppy discs, and the ID number. You could just load it on any computer. I also used office 2007 until, like 2019.
You can still buy a copy of office to own, you just have to know it's an option and keep refusing the 365 subscription in the Microsoft store.
They hide it, but I've bought office 2021 and honestly I see no reason to update for at least another decade
The Matrix came out in 1999 and had a line about that year being the peak of human civilization. I thought it was
prosperouspreposterous that they were saying things wouldn't get any better. Little did I know...[edit: autocorrect]
*prophetic?
I think it was “preposterous”
Yes. The late 90s were great. I love listening to 90s music because it sounds so optimistic and joyful.
I'd say 9-11 shut that optimism down pretty hard. It would have sounded crazy at the time, but the world really did change that day.
9/11 itself didn't shut us down, but you could say it was a catalyst. I remember the weeks post 9/11 when it felt like the whole country was getting it all together. There was a kumbaya moment that lasted right up until the invasions started. America was ready to rally together, and all of that energy could have been steered into something positive. Instead it got steered into two wars that drastically widened the partisan divide. What a complete failure of leadership, and a wasted opportunity.
No I'm pretty sure the Leader$hip succeeded in getting exactly what they were after.
Trying to be the 5th caller into a radio station to win tickets
My buddy used to work midnight shift and used to call into radio shows at night. He won a ton of stuff because there were so few listeners at that time.
He told me one night, they announced the 10th caller would win movie tickets.
He was the 1st, 3rd, 6th, 7th and 10th caller.
My parents had 2 landlines and a cell phone for my dad's home business. The radio would be on all day and night, soon as they would announce we would all be dialing as fast as possible. They would win so much they kept a list of all their friends names next to the phone, they would just go down the list as they won stuff because the station would only let you win once every two weeks or something.
Airline travel before 9/11
Remember when you saw your friends/family at the gate? That was so cute.
You could in Kansas City up until 2023. Come out of the gate, follow the conga line straight across the gate lobby, through the security door they opened for your flight, and boom there's your family.
That arrangement isn't around today. The old terminals were closed and replaced because they were designed before security and it was an incredibly clunky fit.
I remember when MTV played music all the time. It was magical.
One if my best childhood memories is the summer between 8th and 9th grade. My parents both worked. I rolled out of bed probably around 11, ate my Honeycomb cereal, and then the whole day was MTV on in the living room, going back and forth between my house and the community pool and all the kids' houses in the neighborhood. MTV was the soundtrack of my life then.
Walking with me dad all way through the airport and to the boarding ramp outside the airplane. Then watching the plain taxi back and seeing him waving at me, mom, and my bro.
Malls being cool (with arcades)
Toys R Us
The Mall was a thing back then. Grew up in a small city. We had four great malls. Galleria, Eastern Hills, McKinley and North Town. The amount of time we spent just walking around the mall during winter would fill a few calendar months. They were really something back then.
I'd tell my parents I wanted clothes from Sears just so I could play Nintendo while they waited in line to cash out sometimes.
The 80’s and 90’s cultures each had their own bliss.
They did. Free from social media. You found the things you love. They weren’t peddled by some over filtered face. Wanna know where all your friends are? Just look for the bikes on the lawn. We touched grass…. That was the way
I'm not exaggerating when I say some of my fondest memories were in record stores. Looking up cds of music I heard on the radio, trying to figure out what I should spend my $15 on. Then when used cds became a thing, digging through them, finding some hidden gem for $5. Don't get me wrong, I would have killed for the instant gratification of Spotify (or the internet) when I was in high school. But digging through stacks of cds, and bringing them home to see what I got, was such a special time in my life.
1980s mall rat. On weekend nights, it was THE place to be. Cool shopping, movies, and arcades. My parents gave me $20 for the night and I was set, usually with change left over, too.
Also 1980s roller skating. So weird, but so much fun! Every time Another One Bites the Dust came on, the whole building rushed onto the floor!
You could go to thr mall with $20, buy a record from the record store, eat lunch, and still have some left over for the arcade. $20 for me was 20 hours of babysitting money and totally worth it.
Oh man I forgot about Thursday/Friday nights at the roller rink. My city even had two competing roller rinks... Getting that combo meal, holding hands during slow skates, failing horribly at the limbo
Being able to buy tickets to a concert and get good seats without paying scalper prices. All I had to do was stand in line a few hours before they went on sale.
Now I can’t even get tickets to concerts. Last two I tried to purchase for my teenage kids by the time I got into ticketcrap they were sold out.
90s sleepovers/mall trips
Hanging out at the mall as young teens in the 90s... using the payphone to call a parent to pick us up.
Collect Call Name: Momitsmepickmeup
Making mix tapes. Mix tapes required love and thoughtfulness, manning a double tape deck, and hoping that song came on the radio at the right time. You had a finite amount of space, so every song had to have meaning.
iTunes / Spotify kind of ruined it by dragging / dropping and infinite storage and I don't see CD's or cassettes making a come back.
Punk/ post punk/ new wave music in the late 70s into the 80s.
Saw so many great live shows-
The Clash The Ramones The Pretenders Talking Heads
Just to name a few. And they were
Putinplaying in smaller, more intimate, venues.(Edited that crazy typo)
Being in a small room with Putin sounds terrifying
lol. What the hell? Craziest typo/ autocorrect ever. Thanks for pointing it out. Fixed.
Yes! I saw so many great bands in bars, small clubs, and smaller venues.
Yeah! I saw The Ramones at Tipitina’s in New Orleans.
This one for me as well. Hearing our local classic rock station switch over to New Wave/ska/Brit Pop was mind opening. So many great bands and singers I had never experienced before: Adam and the Ants, The Cure, Bow Wow Wow, Kate Bush, Madness...just fabulous
The personal ads in the free (printed) weekly. You would place an ad for maybe 10 cents a word, and you would get handwritten LETTERS and PHOTOS in the MAIL from the people that wanted to meet you. It was awesome.
Indeed! Met my husband that way LOL. 30 years ago 😳
The feeling of hope for the world when the Berlin Wall came down.
Yeah the feeling that the world is inevitably becoming brighter and brighter and we are heading towards Star Trek universe.
Then Bush, 9/11, Patriot Act, Putin, Brexit, Trump, MAGA. The world has changed to spinning on a dangerous axis
being a kid in the 90s and a teen in the early 2000s. the best. These kids today have NO idea what they missed.
Kid in the 80s, teen in the 90s, and early adult in the 00s was pretty awesome.
Born in 80, can confirm. Went from a rotary phone to a cell phone and internet. Xennials really were special
Wait til we tell you about the 80s…
As a kid we could just take off on our bikes and go to the park, or the beach, or the mall, and just be back by dinner without parents monitoring our every move.
No one will ever get that “Friday night trip to the video store” feeling again…
Being a teenager in the 80s and a young adult in the 90s. It wasn't perfect but things seemed a lot simpler. There were more opportunities to meet and connect with people in person and have experiences without the fear of being possibly recorded on social media.
Also, the music, particularly in the 90s, was amazing. There was something for everyone from grunge, alternative, hip hop, trip hop, dance and everything in between. It truly was the last great decade.
The golden era of television and cinema was the 90s and early 2000s imo.
High budget blockbusters were great, but they were also making wacky as hell films too and you could go see them in the theaters for cheap. I remember going to see Austin Powers, for example, in a packed theater on a Tuesday night for $4. Films like that dont really get made now, let alone make it to the theaters.
Studios were willing to greenlight weird ass movies with star power, not just IP driven franchises like they do today. Off the top of my head im thinking of stuff like:
Ghostbusters, Beetlejuice, Big, Groundhog Day, Back to the Future, Splash, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, Liar Liar, Mrs. Doubtfire, Gremlins, The Goonies, Flubber, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, National Lampoon’s Vacation, Christmas Vacation, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Uncle Buck, The Blues Brothers, Midnight Run, Being John Malkovich, Edward Scissorhands, and Men in Black...oh yeah and Home Alone. There's so many more.
Similarly, it was the golden era of sitcoms. Those days are never coming back. So many good shows.
Seinfeld, Friends, Married With Children, Home Hmprovements, Will and Grace, Frasier, The Simpsons, Cheers, Roseanne, Fresh Prince, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Boy Meets World, That 70s Show, Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens...hell, even Goldrn Girls.
The 80s had a bunch of good ones too but I only remember them from reruns.
Damm, we also had good game shows as well.
Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, The Price Is Right, Family Feud, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Double Dare, Win Ben Stein’s Money, Supermarket Sweep.
My mom used to watch soap operas like All My Children, Days Of Our Lives, and Young and the Restless.
Those price is right sick days hit hard. I recently rewatched some old bob barker episodes when I wasn't feeling well.
Just watched The Fifth Element and Armageddon for the first time this weekend. Good times. I'm still enjoying movies from this era!
90s gaming.
LucasArts of the 90s was A+ gaming. Honorable mention to Sierra for Space and Kings Quest.
90s music
90s in general.
'90s hip hop.
'90s rock.
Playing Goldeneye all night with the boys in the 90’s
The 90s in LA.
Living in West Hollywood and Santa Monica in my 20s.
Unbelievable times
It was the perfect mix of gritty music, dirty Hollywood, and optimisim white still being mostly affordable. Venice was humming, the South Bay was still half a surfer community, plenty of dives instead of just trendy overpriced places, etc
U.S.A. after the moon landing. We could do anything. Now we’re just a bunch of stupid assholes.
Crazy, too. Crazy stupid assholes.
Growing up in late 60’s and 70’s. Ran wild as kids out until street lights came on. Building forts in the woods, riding bikes everywhere. Living in the moment. No cell phones and people were truly present. Saturday morning cartoons were huge but then everyone played outside and had real fun. No one was bored. In my 20’s in the 80’s being able to go to clubs and socialize with no one taking videos of you so you had privacy and again people were present and enjoying the moment. Music was great through the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.
And the music of the 60s and 70s was before autotune and computer-created tracks. Real musicians and real singers.
Kmart blue light specials.
Harry Potter as the books were coming out, and being essentially the same age (give or take a year or two) as the characters when the books came out.
The pre smart phone era, when people were not glued to a damn screen 24/7 like zombies. They had live interactions with other people, conversations over meals in restaurants, and went to concerts to enjoy the experience in real time, not to miss the whole thing because they have to record it for social media likes.
That's the one. I had an analog childhood and and a digital adulthood, started college right around the time where DSL and cable internet were first entering residential homes. I feel like I hit the timing just right.
I feel so damn lucky we didn't have smartphones in middle or high school. I don't think I would have survived my awkward teen years otherwise.
Being in a group of friends was so different without phones, I really miss it.
1990-2000 nyc suburbs, in terms of quality of life, optimism, and safety its got to rank up there as best in world history.
we won the cold war, everyone was making money, everyone was still interacting with each other bc no internet, it just seemed like things were good and would only get better.
The period between 1991 and 2001 was truly the peak of Pax Americana. The western world had not seen an undisputed superpower of that nature since Rome, maybe ever. You could argue things started to crumble when the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, but the whole thing definitely came crashing down on 9/11. Became clear it wasn't going to be all roses just because the Soviets were gone.
In store midnight releases for games. Most games today don't have the anticipation and hype. And even games that do, like GTA 6, I think most people would still rather sit at home and just download it once it drops.
No cell phones, no social media. If nobody witnessed it, or had a frikkin polaroid it didn't happen. When I left my house, that's it, there's no getting in touch with me until I check back into home base.
Sixties and seventies. Kids were outside all day with no helicopter parents
92-96 era of NYC hip hop
Late 60’s early 70’s music.
I’d say anytime before the late 1990s was a pretty good time to watch live entertainment, as far as professional major league sports, concerts, theater, amusement parks, and things like that. It is after the late 90s things started to get very expensive, and then in like the 2010s things exploded on how expensive it all got.
Getting dressed up and go dancing. (80’s- early 2000’s) The little town I grew up in Michigan had at least 15 places to go dancing in a 50 mile radius. Chattanooga had at least 50. Now it’s hard to find a dance floor or regular entertainment, even on weekends, to go dance.
When we were able to roam all over the neighborhood as kids.Just had to go home when the streetlights came on.
Early days of travel hacking, late 90s to late 2010s:
- Internet allowed people to look for airfares without travel agents. People finding all sorts of quirks in the ancient reservation systems, airfare mistakes, etc.
- Internet allows just enough frequent flyers to get together and share these quirks and mistakes. Just enough to spread among a dedicated community of frequent flyers, but not blast it to the masses like Twitter and gets shut down right away. Airfare mistake lasted hours or days back then instead of minutes. The number of people who took advantage of them were lower and airlines were more likely to honor them.
- Frequent Flyer programs still based on distance flown, and ripe for gaming and maximizing benefits.
- Credit card companies started to discover how profitable it is to create their own reward systems, and the ever increasing size of valuable promotions.
- Tricks that are now popular didn't have names like skiplagging (what a dumb name-it was always hidden-city ticketing), credit card churning, manufactured spending.
- All this knowledge stayed in the community, not secrets, but available to people who made the cursory effort to look for it. Now all these info are instead of being peddled by "influencers" and bloggers to the masses for page views and referral bonuses and diluted for everyone.
- Way more people collecting points and miles means way less award seats to go around, less upgrades, stingy benefits.
- Airlines got a lot more aggressive at improving their IT system. Less mistake fares to be had. Way quicker at fixing any if they do happen. Better at predicting load factor and filling up the plane so less award seats. Better at optimizing ticket prices to maximize profits.
During those good old days I earned obscene amount of frequent flyer miles and points, flew first and business many time, flew free most of the time, and saw the world. Good days. 700+ flights, close to a million miles, got some wild travel experiences such as flying free on a private jet, got a spot on an airline delivery flight, flew into Airbus' private airport, met a bunch of industry executives, flew on a bunch of inaugural flights. Good times were had.
Not having to have a meeting about everything all the time.
We used to have meetings like once a month to go over projects and issues etc. Now its one every day or two over teams. Feel like i get fuck all done now because those meetings always bring up things needing to be done outside my typical scope of work.
Grew up GenX. Eternally grateful. 🙏
90s rave culture. The love, MDMA, and glowsticks were so beautiful
Pretty much every form of entertainment from 80’s-00’s. Everything was fresh and exciting and now it’s all sequels and remakes.
Toys r us and kaybee toys. Stores that were a kids dream store to got to
The joy of the Sears catalog coming in late November before the Christmas shopping season. Then opening to the toy section and just looking. I knew I wasn’t probably getting anything from the catalog, but it was fun to look.
The 1970s.
Now we talking!
Started kindergarten in Harlem 1972. Childhood memories of a real vibe just in the air.
An analog childhood
Growing up in the 90’s/00’s. It was the golden age of technology, where things had begun to transform and add to your quality of life without taking it over. Like the internet was around but not expected, movies were great, cell phones were not an absolute constant and even if they were, they CALLED and TEXTED and that’s it. It was just a simpler era growing up in without being inundated by something brand new every damn second.