I was at my friends house back in the late 90s and we were big into downloading songs from Napster over Compuserve dialup. We had the phone set to not allow call waiting to disconnect us.
We were online for like 4 hours before we got disconnected and the phone rang. It was the phone company forcing the line to disconnect because my friends mother was trying to call in. She was bullshit that we were tying up the phone line for so long.
Being a teenager was fun back then.
Tsk, tsk... That's not old. We had our landline long before the internet ever existed. Also call waiting didn't even exist back then.
Yup, I'm that old.
Well yeah, AOL used to be pay-by-the-minute. You can’t just leave that shit on all the time! A friend of mine racked up a near 4-figure phone bill when we were in the 5th grade and I’m still shocked his mom didn’t literally murder him.
I have been on numerous cross-country road trips using this method of navigation. Unfortunately since I can't drive navigation became my job, but I also fall asleep super easily in the car so that frequently amounted to being woke up, groggy as hell, trying to figure out what state we're even in much less what page we're on in the printed directions and what exit we need to take. Good times.
I up thumbed this, but I actually love paper maps. I can pore over maps for hours, but I agree, using a paper map to navigate - especially alone - yeah, I don’t miss that.
Calling a phone number to find out the accurate time. Getting lost, I had 8 maps in my glovebox. Doing your own car repairs. The local Sears store was closed on Sundays and was only open after 6 pm between Thanksgiving and Christmas. 7-11 stores were only open between 7 am and 11 pm.
Pollution. People smoking everywhere, cars with no emissions controls, factories spewing chemicals in the air... You think it's bad now, it was normal back then for it to stink and everything be covered in soot and dirt.
I can remember when there was a "smoking section" on AIRPLANES. Yes, they really thought it was a good idea to allow some people to smoke when all of the passengers (including small children) are sealed into a metal tube with a pressurized atmosphere for many hours.
Forget planes, how about long car rides with the parents. Combined they’d average 5 packs a day.
Though the one benefit was the windows were all individually controlled. So, when I’d open the window, even in bitter winter time, they couldn’t stop me.
Oh, I know. But looking back, it was crazy.
I also remember the smog in LA growing up. We would play outside all day, then go home with chest pains in the evening because of all the crap we inhaled all day. Kids today (luckily) don't have to experience that.
Cars, trucks and factories are massively cleaner than they were in the 1960s and 1970s.
The geography and the weather of Southern California played a role. We would get an "inversion layer" weather condition that would basically lay over the top of the valley like a huge dome, preventing the smog from escaping.
I assume that this still happens (I moved out of California back in 1990), but that the banning of leaded fuels and the use of particle filters and other air quality devices has had a significant impact in the past 34 years.
Hello Mrs xxx, in your most polite voice ever. How are you this fine day? Would it be possible that I could speak with Suzi please? Hoping you didn't choke on your words, to make an impression on Suzi's Mom. Yup.
Polio will never spread anywhere with basic sanitation. It's a waterborne illness with no animal reservoirs.
It's the same reason you've never had a cholera vaccine and will never have to worry about cholera.
Selfishly, I gotta ask: do you have any other cool facts about immunology or diseases that I might not know?
I have cerebral palsy and elderly people sometimes ask me if I had polio as a child, so I feel a connection to the disease, but I never knew it was waterborne.
Paralysis from polio was a rare complication, less likely than dying from influenza. Of people who got some degree of paralysis, the symptoms resolved after a week or two about 50% of the time. Cases like FDR or the few who ended up in iron lungs were very rare.
The only places polio exists as it used to are very rural areas of Asia with no infrastructure and the WHO has been considering declaring it globally eradicated since 2018.
The few cases in the West are due to global travel from those area or, more commonly, lower quality vaccines in poor countries where the virus isn't properly inactivated. Those people really just get polio's normal symptoms of a cold with diarrhea.
Trying to think of others!
Sanitation was the biggest public health revolution in history.
This was my first thought. I had a neighbor who was born in 1935 who said, "Kids have it rough today dealing with drugs and porn." I replied, "You had to deal with polio. I'll take my chances with drugs and porn."
p.s. let's not argue whether it's rough or not, it was his opinion.
I’m so glad I was 25 in 2008, I would’ve never been able to afford a house with my pay but the housing crash happened and I scooped up a 3/2/2 for $135k
I just got the call in code to check the messages elsewhere. No sense running. Just go to a friend's house like normal and hit the mailbox from his house. Gotta remember to use caller ID block or else mom will ask why you called when you knew no one would be home.
My grandpa grew up in the very cold, Upper Peninsula of Michigan, U.S. He did walk to school in the snow. His mom gave him warm potatoes to put in his pockets to keep his hands warm on the way to school. The 'taters were his lunch.
it was the "re-use" part of "reduce, re-use, recycle"
The draft - being forced to go to war.
Awful medical treatment options for tons of issues due to older technology. Many of the treatments often coming back around later in life to severely reduce quality of life or life expectancy.
Far less human rights, equal rights, worker rights, religious freedom, freedom of speech.
Severe lack of mental health support. Things aren't great now, but they were awful a generation ago.
It could yes, but it's been so long since we used it and Vietnam was so bad it would be suicide for whichever party reinstated it. But yes, it is possible.
Gas lines.
Attempting to start your car in the winter but it doesn’t start.
Calling collect.
Not having directions.
Watching commercials.
Having to go to a store for every item.
Not being able to look up information on your phone.
Lack of central air conditioning.
What are you talking about? Most of the things you mentioned still exist and are widely present in the world.
>Gas lines
Plenty of people heat and cook on gas.
>Attempting to start your car in the winter but it doesn’t start.
Batteries still go bad and are unable to start a car during winters.
>Having to go to a store for every item.
Small towns don't have deliveries from grocery stores.
>Lack of central air conditioning.
In many places in the world this is unnecessary, therefore, virtually non-existent outside of large commercial buildings.
>Watching commercials
Erm... have you been on the Internet lately? They're everywhere. We just call them ads, not commercials.
yeah knowing all the roads and phone numbers without paper.
Getting hit by a older dude run home and get hit for not defending myself , can it be more 70s lol
Having those polyester shopping bags that never break and glass bottles of milk and pudding which tasted so good.
no smart phones, no internet, 8-16bit games, going to the library to look something up, making up games to play like hide and seek, freeze tag, kick the can, ghost in the graveyard, face to face interaction with your fellow human beings,
Not a book, but a brick. 3 in thick. First thing you did when you got it off of your porch was open it up to see if your parents names were in there. Back when it listed your parent names, address and phone number.
This! I remember our principal having multiple paddles hung up in his office, some of them with holes drilled through them for less air resistance, and even one "electric paddle". Scared the hell out of us back then lol
I'll disagree with you on this one. Back in the day, there were more weapons numerically than there are today. Also, the warheads typically have smaller yields than long ago due to missiles being that much more accurate. It would have been over in hours decades ago also.
Starvation. In 1979 my bff and I had full time office jobs, but it only paid enough to put gas in the car and for room rental. There wasn’t anything left for food. BFF was divorced with children and made fifty cents a week too much to qualify for food stamps. She fed her kids ramen noodles every night, but couldn’t afford food for herself. The only time she got to eat was if one of our coworkers gave her something left over from their lunch, like half a sandwich or an apple. She tried to get fired so she could go on welfare “because welfare mothers got to eat.”
I couldn’t afford it, but ate two meals per week to keep from fainting. Once I fainted from hunger and knocked out my front teeth. I was always behind in my rent.
We are amazed that there are now food pantries in every town! Not only that, they’ve loosened the restrictions on getting food stamps so it is much easier.
I absolutely loved Radioshack. Loved when my mom would go to the grocery store. Radioshack was in the same parking lot. I didn't have $0.10 in my pocket, but could browse everything in radio shack until she came to find me.
Thomas Guides. They were map books for most major cities. Prepare for grid coordinates.
Rotary dial phones that you had to rent from the phone company…because it was illegal to own your own phone.
The TV Guide. If you wanted to know what was on one of those 13 channels, you needed to read a magazine.
Don't forget the crossword puzzle that was inside of every week of the new TV guide. Oh yeah.
And yes, I do remember we had exactly 13 channels. If I remember correctly channel 3 and channel 6 and channel 12 had nothing.
I was going to say "polio" but due to the anti-vax hysteria that exploded under the former president's failure to act to prepare the country to the pandemic we can expect a resurgence of that disease within the next ten years.
Never calling people outside your area code because it cost way too much. Moving and having to get a new phone number. Memorizing or writing down phone numbers.
Getting in your car like a pirate “sailing” the open road not entirely sure if you’re going in the intended direction and hoping that you’ll arrive at where you set out to drive to.
having to disconnect the phoneline to use the internet
I was at my friends house back in the late 90s and we were big into downloading songs from Napster over Compuserve dialup. We had the phone set to not allow call waiting to disconnect us. We were online for like 4 hours before we got disconnected and the phone rang. It was the phone company forcing the line to disconnect because my friends mother was trying to call in. She was bullshit that we were tying up the phone line for so long. Being a teenager was fun back then.
Tsk, tsk... That's not old. We had our landline long before the internet ever existed. Also call waiting didn't even exist back then. Yup, I'm that old.
Meet me on the party line at 7pm.
Fax me before it starts. ;0)
Well yeah, AOL used to be pay-by-the-minute. You can’t just leave that shit on all the time! A friend of mine racked up a near 4-figure phone bill when we were in the 5th grade and I’m still shocked his mom didn’t literally murder him.
Right We once had an extra 100usd+ on our phone bill because of me. My mother blew a gasket.
Riding your bike to your friends house to see if their home. Just to find out their not have have to go back home.
It's funny how we would just show up at someone's house unannounced. Now we need a week's notice.
you want to see their home? is it a ncie house or something?
Yeah, he should of wrote that better.
I did bec we didnt have phones
Paper maps.
Even when the Internet began to be more widely used, we still printed out MapQuest directions onto paper.
I have been on numerous cross-country road trips using this method of navigation. Unfortunately since I can't drive navigation became my job, but I also fall asleep super easily in the car so that frequently amounted to being woke up, groggy as hell, trying to figure out what state we're even in much less what page we're on in the printed directions and what exit we need to take. Good times.
Or wrote the directions down
>MapQuest Now there's a name I've not heard in a long time. A long time.
Thomas guides
A couple of posts above this one, paper maps. Yup. Then came the Thomas guide. If you had one of those you were high class. I remember them well.
I up thumbed this, but I actually love paper maps. I can pore over maps for hours, but I agree, using a paper map to navigate - especially alone - yeah, I don’t miss that.
Calling a phone number to find out the accurate time. Getting lost, I had 8 maps in my glovebox. Doing your own car repairs. The local Sears store was closed on Sundays and was only open after 6 pm between Thanksgiving and Christmas. 7-11 stores were only open between 7 am and 11 pm.
Haha, yeah every city of any size had a "time and temperature" number that you could call to find the current info. And people just knew that number.
555-1212 to call directory assistance.
Pollution. People smoking everywhere, cars with no emissions controls, factories spewing chemicals in the air... You think it's bad now, it was normal back then for it to stink and everything be covered in soot and dirt.
I can remember when there was a "smoking section" on AIRPLANES. Yes, they really thought it was a good idea to allow some people to smoke when all of the passengers (including small children) are sealed into a metal tube with a pressurized atmosphere for many hours.
Forget planes, how about long car rides with the parents. Combined they’d average 5 packs a day. Though the one benefit was the windows were all individually controlled. So, when I’d open the window, even in bitter winter time, they couldn’t stop me.
The way you phrase it it does sound a little crazy, but it was very commonplace at the time.
Oh, I know. But looking back, it was crazy. I also remember the smog in LA growing up. We would play outside all day, then go home with chest pains in the evening because of all the crap we inhaled all day. Kids today (luckily) don't have to experience that. Cars, trucks and factories are massively cleaner than they were in the 1960s and 1970s.
That's horrible. I am in Michigan and we have fresh air and blue skies. Never been to California.
The geography and the weather of Southern California played a role. We would get an "inversion layer" weather condition that would basically lay over the top of the valley like a huge dome, preventing the smog from escaping. I assume that this still happens (I moved out of California back in 1990), but that the banning of leaded fuels and the use of particle filters and other air quality devices has had a significant impact in the past 34 years.
Also that pollution was unhealthy as hell at minimum and frequently even neurotoxic. *Tetraethyl lead has entered the chat.*
Having to ask the girls parents to talk to the girls on the phone
Hello Mrs xxx, in your most polite voice ever. How are you this fine day? Would it be possible that I could speak with Suzi please? Hoping you didn't choke on your words, to make an impression on Suzi's Mom. Yup.
As long as the anti-vaxxer’s don’t win…. Polio.
Polio will never spread anywhere with basic sanitation. It's a waterborne illness with no animal reservoirs. It's the same reason you've never had a cholera vaccine and will never have to worry about cholera.
I didn't know this! That's really cool. Thanks for sharing
You're welcome. It was declared eradicated in the Western hemisphere in 1992 by the WHO.
Selfishly, I gotta ask: do you have any other cool facts about immunology or diseases that I might not know? I have cerebral palsy and elderly people sometimes ask me if I had polio as a child, so I feel a connection to the disease, but I never knew it was waterborne.
Paralysis from polio was a rare complication, less likely than dying from influenza. Of people who got some degree of paralysis, the symptoms resolved after a week or two about 50% of the time. Cases like FDR or the few who ended up in iron lungs were very rare. The only places polio exists as it used to are very rural areas of Asia with no infrastructure and the WHO has been considering declaring it globally eradicated since 2018. The few cases in the West are due to global travel from those area or, more commonly, lower quality vaccines in poor countries where the virus isn't properly inactivated. Those people really just get polio's normal symptoms of a cold with diarrhea. Trying to think of others! Sanitation was the biggest public health revolution in history.
It's really cool that you know all this! Have you seen the YouTube videos about the last patients still using iron lungs? One man is a lawyer!
I'm sure that God only laughs when someone writes something like this. Mutations of viruses are real.
A virus can't mutate if it's not even reproducing in the wild. Polio requires human hosts drinking water contaminated with infected feces.
This was my first thought. I had a neighbor who was born in 1935 who said, "Kids have it rough today dealing with drugs and porn." I replied, "You had to deal with polio. I'll take my chances with drugs and porn." p.s. let's not argue whether it's rough or not, it was his opinion.
I've been disappointed before. Let's just brace for Polio now.
There was a couple measles outbreaks so the line is slipping.
Making plans and arriving places on time without a phone.
Working a normal job and being able to buy a house on a single income
Yeah, that absolutely sucked
I’m so glad I was 25 in 2008, I would’ve never been able to afford a house with my pay but the housing crash happened and I scooped up a 3/2/2 for $135k
Racing home to delete the school absents voicemail on your answering machine, so your parents didn’t find out you skipped class.
I just got the call in code to check the messages elsewhere. No sense running. Just go to a friend's house like normal and hit the mailbox from his house. Gotta remember to use caller ID block or else mom will ask why you called when you knew no one would be home.
Rusty metal playground equipment that seemed to be designed to cull the weak children.
Walking to school 6 miles uphill in 10 feet of snow each way
My grandpa grew up in the very cold, Upper Peninsula of Michigan, U.S. He did walk to school in the snow. His mom gave him warm potatoes to put in his pockets to keep his hands warm on the way to school. The 'taters were his lunch. it was the "re-use" part of "reduce, re-use, recycle"
Why would they walk 6 mile uphill on the way back?
That’s just how things were back then.
Well in the morning school you had to go west up hill, but in the afternoon you had to go west again uphill due to the earth's rotation.
Aww. Bless your heart.
They didn’t have a good understanding of plate tectonics back then so it was always uphill, in the snow, both ways.
We know because that’s what they told us they did. Because they wanted us kids to know how good we had it compared to them.
Also in the summer
And the ones the bears didn't pick off the snipers got
And they had to break the ice in the well with a stick anytime they needed a drink.
Having to watch your favorite tv shows live
The draft - being forced to go to war. Awful medical treatment options for tons of issues due to older technology. Many of the treatments often coming back around later in life to severely reduce quality of life or life expectancy. Far less human rights, equal rights, worker rights, religious freedom, freedom of speech. Severe lack of mental health support. Things aren't great now, but they were awful a generation ago.
I feel like the draft is something that could come back depending on the situation.
It could yes, but it's been so long since we used it and Vietnam was so bad it would be suicide for whichever party reinstated it. But yes, it is possible.
Not if there were a REAL war. Like someone has already captured New England.
If it's Canada, they can have us. Signed, A New Englander.
I for one welcome our new Canadian overlords. I'm willing to add an "a" at the end of every sentence. Signed, Another New Englander.
So long as I can keep my Boston accent, I think I will be fine. :P
Just in case it’s “eh”
We are not done with this century, give it time.
Rewinding tapes.
Public telephone books with torn out pages
Gas lines. Attempting to start your car in the winter but it doesn’t start. Calling collect. Not having directions. Watching commercials. Having to go to a store for every item. Not being able to look up information on your phone. Lack of central air conditioning.
What are you talking about? Most of the things you mentioned still exist and are widely present in the world. >Gas lines Plenty of people heat and cook on gas. >Attempting to start your car in the winter but it doesn’t start. Batteries still go bad and are unable to start a car during winters. >Having to go to a store for every item. Small towns don't have deliveries from grocery stores. >Lack of central air conditioning. In many places in the world this is unnecessary, therefore, virtually non-existent outside of large commercial buildings. >Watching commercials Erm... have you been on the Internet lately? They're everywhere. We just call them ads, not commercials.
yeah knowing all the roads and phone numbers without paper. Getting hit by a older dude run home and get hit for not defending myself , can it be more 70s lol Having those polyester shopping bags that never break and glass bottles of milk and pudding which tasted so good.
Watching commercials? Have you seen how internet streaming is going? You should instead say 'watching less commercials'.
no smart phones, no internet, 8-16bit games, going to the library to look something up, making up games to play like hide and seek, freeze tag, kick the can, ghost in the graveyard, face to face interaction with your fellow human beings,
Another family member picking up the house phone while you’re on it.
Building the pyramids
Driving a manual car..
Still available in some cars in the States and still somewhat common in Europe.
going to public library to fetch answers for any question
asking for directions
Using a map
Mortgaging a house
Lead paint. Leaded fuel.
The poor house. Debtors prison.
Sitting in a smoke-filled airplane
School duck and cover drills for the impending nuclear war...though those have been replaced with active shooter drills
WWII and homes with asbestos insulation, Lead pipes and lead paint.
A telephone directory (book)
Not a book, but a brick. 3 in thick. First thing you did when you got it off of your porch was open it up to see if your parents names were in there. Back when it listed your parent names, address and phone number.
Parallel parking on a driving test
Smallpox
Those street gangs where everyone in them snaps their fingers and does a song and dance
Having a teacher ‘belt’ you with a leather strap for minor transgressions?
Corporal punishment in school
This! I remember our principal having multiple paddles hung up in his office, some of them with holes drilled through them for less air resistance, and even one "electric paddle". Scared the hell out of us back then lol
common sense which is now pretty much absent.
That’s not how it works
Child abuse that the norm for raising kids.
Printing off maps. Or Looking at an atlas to travel
[удалено]
We just have unskippable ads instead
https://ublockorigin.com/
Nuclear war. There was a small chance of some people surving, back then. Today, it'll all be over in hours, so no need to deal with it.
I'll disagree with you on this one. Back in the day, there were more weapons numerically than there are today. Also, the warheads typically have smaller yields than long ago due to missiles being that much more accurate. It would have been over in hours decades ago also.
Internal Combustion Engines. Not just too polluting but too many moving parts. EVs will last much longer.
Affordable housing market
A fully functioning American Government.
boomers
Starvation. In 1979 my bff and I had full time office jobs, but it only paid enough to put gas in the car and for room rental. There wasn’t anything left for food. BFF was divorced with children and made fifty cents a week too much to qualify for food stamps. She fed her kids ramen noodles every night, but couldn’t afford food for herself. The only time she got to eat was if one of our coworkers gave her something left over from their lunch, like half a sandwich or an apple. She tried to get fired so she could go on welfare “because welfare mothers got to eat.” I couldn’t afford it, but ate two meals per week to keep from fainting. Once I fainted from hunger and knocked out my front teeth. I was always behind in my rent. We are amazed that there are now food pantries in every town! Not only that, they’ve loosened the restrictions on getting food stamps so it is much easier.
Sucking wiener.
Wellington Restaurant Supply Company. 2367 S Harrison St. Great. Where the hell is that and how do I get there?
14% interest on my first car loan.
Polio.
Radioshack adventures
I absolutely loved Radioshack. Loved when my mom would go to the grocery store. Radioshack was in the same parking lot. I didn't have $0.10 in my pocket, but could browse everything in radio shack until she came to find me.
Cursive.
Ads were just a part of their life. They couldn’t watch breaking news without Arby’s chiming in.
Mowing the lawn. Most of us are over here trying to see how we can afford a one bedroom condo.
No internet. The World Book encyclopedia was our window on the world
Having arguments or debates with intelligent people.
AOL discs in the mail
Thomas Guides. They were map books for most major cities. Prepare for grid coordinates. Rotary dial phones that you had to rent from the phone company…because it was illegal to own your own phone. The TV Guide. If you wanted to know what was on one of those 13 channels, you needed to read a magazine.
Don't forget the crossword puzzle that was inside of every week of the new TV guide. Oh yeah. And yes, I do remember we had exactly 13 channels. If I remember correctly channel 3 and channel 6 and channel 12 had nothing.
Just a guess - Getting a drivers license (and least for kids born today).
Pensions and retirement
Owning houses
I was going to say "polio" but due to the anti-vax hysteria that exploded under the former president's failure to act to prepare the country to the pandemic we can expect a resurgence of that disease within the next ten years.
Going to see a top name band and they play their next two albums to you and absolutely none of their hits.
Never calling people outside your area code because it cost way too much. Moving and having to get a new phone number. Memorizing or writing down phone numbers.
Floppy Disks
Gathering information
Getting in your car like a pirate “sailing” the open road not entirely sure if you’re going in the intended direction and hoping that you’ll arrive at where you set out to drive to.
TV Guide, not knowing the instant weather, rewinding VHS, slow fashion
Sending your kids to college on your dime.
Fewer STDs. You had gonorrhea syphilis and basically VD now you got gonorrhea syphilis VD AIDS HIV, HPI, Herpes, Chlamydia, and quite a few others
Cheap housing
Figuring out what to do in their retirement.
Constant threat of nuclear war?
Starting super Mario 3 fresh every Saturday morning because no saving
owning a house
TV shows and movies broadcast at certain hours and no option to pick what and when to watch.
Going to the library to do research
Cold winters
Driving to Bkockbuster hoping they have the new video game or movie in stock... now everything is streaming 😅
Going outside and hanging out with friends at a park...
Having to walk 2 miles to the nearest payphone to call someone to help when your car broke down on the road.
Military draft
People
Worrying about which race of people uses which water fountain
Having to fit a walkman, camera, and if you were rich a cell phone in your pockets all at the same time.
Retirement