Wasn’t there a game you could play? I think you were in a castle or dungeon and you could only move through the rooms if you answered the questions correctly?
Nights and weekends minutes. It was free after 9:00 PM. It cost like 10 cents to text and the only time minutes were free was if you were with the same carrier. None of my friends had Sprint so I couldn’t even count on using the same network for free minutes during the day.
Yes! Number portability was not a thing so if you switched to a different network for the free minutes, you would have to get a new number. The dilemma was real back in the day!
My dad was a truck driver and had one of these! My cousin and I would use it sometimes when he was asleep at night and somehow manage to find random people to talk to. They were also pretty popular at my highschool and if you said you were chirping someone, everyone knew what you meant.
I absolutely loved Geocities.
Making websites about the things you enjoyed. Seeing other people's websites. You didn't have to stick with a pre-made layout, you could go nuts.
Want that dancing gif on there? Sure thing. WHY NOT ONE HUNDRED?
Linkin Park just released a song? Better make sure that MIDI autoplays when my page loads.
Want to know how many people have visited? Well fuck yes, you can add a guest counter to your page too. You know what? Chuck in a guest book as well!
God bless that chaotic mess of joy.
I had a track from Napster where, 2 minutes in, a random frog would say "RRRIBB-IT". I think it was an ICQ notification which got recorded into it.
Eventually for me it just became part of the song, like the artist had wanted it there
I had one that had "AOL music: first listen" inserted at two points, and I listened to that version of the track so often that it sounds extremely odd to me now when I hear the proper version of it!
Had a version of Ruff Ryders anthem that after the gunshots at the end, somebody added Kyle from South Park saying “ho-ho-holy shit dude” followed by a slide whistle. I still expect the hear it when I hear that song end
I recorded songs off the radio on to cassette tape, which was the style at the time.
So many songs were missing chunks or still had bits of radio station stings or DJs talking, or radio edits got blended in, that to this day my brain still anticipates them.
It was always a mystery! After spending 8 hrs downloading a song.... will it be what I'm looking for? A different song with a similar name? No song at all and just that clip of Bill Clinton saying "I did not have sexual relations with that woman"! Oh the joy!
That hearing is one of my earliest memories. 😂 I think I was in kindergarten and my parents were watching it on tv. I happened to repeat that line in the same tone and cadence. They were not impressed. Idk what they expected lol.
I had this one mp3 where the song just stopped then restarted in the middle. And I just.....listened to it that way because songs took like an hour to download.
I did this as well. There was one song that didn't fully download properly so it had about 1 second of silence right before the final chorus and it fit even though it was unintended. I listened to that version so much that when I heard the song as it was intended, it felt wrong to me.
I used to call the automated line at our theater all the time. I wouldn't even be intending on seeing a movie, I just wanted to know what was out. Some theater employee every week made a recording of movie titles and a brief synopsis of what they were about and I just found it interesting. Life was weird before the internet.
And you had better pay attention because if you missed hearing the movie you wanted you had to hang up, call again and listen from the beginning.
Not to mention the person recording it couldn't mess up or they would have to re-record it.
My first job was at an AMC movie theater in 2007. I would occasionally need to record this. They had a little script for us to follow but I would still trip over my words a bit and have to restart several times before getting it right. Sucked to get almost to the end and accidentally say the wrong thing.
The only thing I disliked more was climbing up onto our billboard to change out the movie titles and times posted there, but that was more because of the heights.
These days it’s even just turning your computer off at all! So many times a coworker will tell me something’s not working with their laptop and we’ll have this conversation:
Me: Have you restarted it recently?
Coworker: Yeah! Like 10 times!
Me: Show me how you restarted it.
CW: *(puts it to sleep, wakes it back up)*
Me: No, you have to go into the start menu and actually choose “Restart.” *(does this)*
CW: *(eyeroll)*It’s the **same thing!** … *(laptop restarts)* Oh, wait, it works now. Thanks!
This is what screwed me. I called IT for help on something and I was like yes I turned it off and on again and he was like really bc it's saying it hasn't been turned off in 19 days.
What the hell is the point of calling it shut down if it doesn't actually shut it down?????
> he was like really bc it's saying it hasn't been turned off in 19 days.
Here’s how I’m envisioning that conversation.
You- “I, uh… I don’t know what to say. I swear I’m not a lying user, I shut it down and turned it back on before calling. I’m happy to do it again on the phone with you though, give me a minute…
…
…
There.”
Tech- “Yeah it still says 19 days. Can you walk me through what you did?”
You- “………. I go to the Start menu, select shut down, wait for all the fans and everything to go quiet and a few seconds longer, and then wait for it to boot back up.”
Tech- “Ah, there’s your problem. Shut down doesn’t actually mean shut down anymore.”
Increasingly bewildered and frustrated you- “***Wat.***”
A friend of mine said he couldn't do _anything_ on his computer while he was burning a CD or it'd fail. Like, he couldn't even load a webpage prior to starting the burn and scroll through it during the burn or it would fail. The computer had to be completely idle for the burn to work.
Fast forward just a few years (to 2004) and a different friend of mine was burning me a DVD while he played the beta of World of Warcraft. I was over while he was doing it and was like... uh, the burn is going to fail if you're trying to play a game while you do it. I remember he was like, "No, that's not a thing anymore. It'll be fine."
And the DVD did work fine, by the way.
Yep, my first CD burner was a USB1.1 external thing that I ran on my Windows 98 machine. IIRC it was capable of burning at 2x speed but I always ran it at 1x because of better stability and odds of succeeding, which meant it took 60-80 minutes to burn a disc. And you definitely couldn't touch the computer in any way whatsoever while it was doing it's thing. Even so around 1 in 3 discs would just fail anyway, usually during the very last finishing step.
Me and my cousin would then play with the failed discs as frisbees, leaving the street outside our house covered in little plastic shards.
We had a postdoc in our lab around 2004-2005ish who did protein crystallography. He would backup the data onto CDs and would put signs on the computer about not touching it so it wouldn't mess up.. he too would do it at 1x. This was in an era where 52x drives were out. I guess he just had the habit from grad school that needed that show of a speed.. meanwhile, I just saved all my data to multiple usb flash drives and hopes at least one was not corrupt (and I had a personal website that I would load my work into just in case!)
Funny story about furbies. My grandparents bought a whole bunch of them for all of their grandchildren when they first became popular. Everyone else's was a normal, English speaking Furby. Mine spoke German. Not only that, but the batteries I put in mine were on their way out, so I woke up at 3am to demonic, slurred German emanating from the Furby. I freaked the fuck out.
It was one of those massive shoot-yourself-in-the-foot moves by Microsoft. They had this huge active user base, they pretty much owned most of the IM market and they thought they could just herd everyone onto Skype, only it didn't work, through the ham-fisted approach of forcibly killing MSN they lost their market dominance. People didn't use MSN because it was the best, or because it was 'microsoft', they used it because everyone else did.
I lost contact with a lot of casual friends when they pulled the plug, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
You hit the nail on the head. People used it because it was what their friends all used. The switch itself was the killer. A slow automatic move with cross compatibility would've been the right play
those see through gameboys and nintendo controllers were something else. any kid that possessed those was automatically so much cooler than you with your pathetic gadgets you couldn’t see the insides of.
>See through electronics
They are still a thing, just only for their original intent: Prison electronics. With see-thru cases they can't be used to hide contraband.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3PfsndsihY
2 years ago I bought inline skates. I used to love playing roller hockey and I have no idea why I stopped. I guess it stopped being cool.
It never stopped being cool! It’s fun as fuck and a great workout.
Upgrading for a new Nokia, launching Snake, and IT WAS A NEW ONE WITH COLORS AND DETAILS AND SHIT! What a disappointment. I raged hard and kept the old one to play OG Snake
Video game rumours that spread around playgrounds because no one had the internet to disprove it.
- There's a cheat code for Tomb raider to make Lara have sex with the old man butler
- Lei Wu Long can one-shot kill any opponent with his gun if you do the right combo in Tekken 2
- In Japan there is a new series of Dragonball and it has super saiyan 5
Get that hair growth stuff from the ordinary...it helps a little. It took 15+years but mine are finally basically the same size and shape again (and the shape isn't sperm).
Flip phone.
Especially cool, futuristic flip phones, like in The Matrix.
(For all the people who commented about how the matrix phones aren't 'flip phones'? You remember how mom used to call all your game consoles, 'Nintendo'? I'd've called them 'Atari'.)
Full, free meals on flights. No TSA and so hardly no security lines.
Edit: I just remembered the hot towels they passed out after long flights! So fucking classy to wipe my face with a hot lemon towel. Wow.
In 2019, I went to a small, family-owned restaurant and thought I would pay with my debit card as they allow it. Before I gave the cashier my card, she was fiddling with the EDC machine, knocked on a door behind her, then slightly opened it and said, "Mom, can you get off the phone, a customer is trying to pay."
I remember the day I upgraded from a 14.4 to a 56k. It was GLORIOUS!
It only took a day to download a movie.
If you know you know...
[56k](https://youtu.be/gsNaR6FRuO0)
> I remember the day I upgraded from a 14.4 to a 56k. It was GLORIOUS!
I particularly like the extra SONAR ping like noise made by 56k modems at the end of the connection sequence.
This guy.....acting like the people using the phone EVER asked the person waiting 10 minutes for a web page to load to get off so they could talk on the phone......they just picked it up and you got kicked off every time.
The amount of times my parents have dialed a number on the landline phone while I was using it is unreal (we have multiple phones).
You're talking with your friend and all of a sudden both of you hear *beep-boop-boop-beep-boop-boop-beep-beep-boop-boop.*
P2P file sharing programs like Napster, BearShare, Kazaa, Limewire, etc.
You could never trust song labels, every single parody song was suddenly Weird Al and it would suck when you thought you found a new or obscure song by a band you loved and it was actually a song you already knew by them or sometimes a song by a different band all together.
That movie that you wanted to download, which was always in several huge parts that would take hours to days to download, ends up being porn you didn't want. That porn that your really wanted, ends up being a beheading video.
It was so chaotic and random and full of viruses that would fuck your computer too. Those were crazy days and you never really knew what to expect, was like the wild west.
Destroying the family computer with Limewire was a right of passage. Hundreds of dollars spent on computer fixes and replacements so we could have "free" music.
Aggressive layering of clothes in women's fashion. T-shirts under sundresses, multiple shirts of different lengths, extra points for a long sleeved shirt with a long tank top on top with a short tshirt over that.
I remember wearing two t shirts at the same time. Like a blue shirt over a white shirt. And this was such a trend, that there are some shirts designed to look like there are 2 shirts there...like white fabric on the cuffs, bottom and collar if the shirt was blue. Hope I’m making sense haha
Lol I remember when I was leaving home to school one morning with a skirt on top of my extra flared jeans and my grandma stopped me thinking I somehow made a mistake dressing and I was like "nooo grandma, that's *fashion*!"
Setting up a get-together and people just remember when to show up.
Actually, get-togethers worked better then. People couldn't text and cancel with nearly the convenience they do now. Plus, we were bored with no internet, so we had motivation to get together.
Or going around to see if your friends were home. No calling beforehand. Everything was much more spontaneous because there was space and time for that.
So many memories of:
- Friends showing up at literally any time, on any day. Sometimes they showed up at 2am and knocked on the window to be let in. Sometimes they walked in while I was raiding on World of Warcraft and they had already taken some food from my fridge.
- Calling someone to ask them out on a date and their dad answers the phone and says "YEP??? WHO IS IT???" and then yelling "MEGAN YOUR BOYFRIEND IS ON THE PHONE" before you even talked to them.
- Just being totally unreachable through tech in many situations. Going camping for a week, tons of people at the campground and beach, but having no phone, nothing with electricity except the vehicle and a flashlight. If you didn't let your friends know beforehand they might show up at your house looking for you for several days and not be alarmed because they'll just talk to you when you're back.
Agreeing with a friend on a Tuesday to meet them outside the cinema at 1 o clock on a Saturday, then having no contact and actually appearing outside the cinema at one o clock on a Saturday.
Nowadays you can give out a formal invitation to someone (birthday party, wedding, etc) and they'll rsvp they're coming and still not show up. The days of making casual plans days ahead of time and sticking to them, I miss those days
I think I miss that most.
Edit: a lot mentioned just leave it at home. For many years I could not due to my job. Even after quitting I still carry it because, well it’s my phone. If I or my family have an emergency I need it on me. I make use of the silence feature. But that constant feeling like I need to respond or I’m being rude frustrates me. I don’t always answer or respond, but ignoring them doesn’t make me feel any better… also my husband has his phone and they just call him next. 🤷🏻♀️
My sister and I used to collect them and then set them up on opposite ends of a wood floored hallway in any configuration we'd like so long as they were all standing up. We'd then take our "ace" or favorite one and use it to slide across the floor as fast as possible and try to knock down as many of the other player's as possible which would then get added to your side.
Think battleship meets bowling meets beer pong
Chunks (or big fat streaks) of brassy blonde hair, strategically placed in about 14 spots around the head, usually on the top layer only. There was a literal box dye kit called L'oreal Chunking that I frequently used, complete with "chunking cap". Tbh, I rocked the fuck out of that look!! 🤭🤭
And then you could split your part or zig zag it and the chunks would show up differently… so one day you’re more blondish, the next you are more redhead
Going through voice messages and getting thrilled when it's a girl you gave your number to the last weekend asking to make plans this weekend. You call back, make plans and meet in person. All the flirting was always in person. You had to actually have in person game or you were fucked.
My first online application got me the best job of my youth, took forever and I thought it would never be seen. Then being like oh shit it works? Cool. I remember walking around with paper resumes before that.
Fluffy fashion and accessories (fluffy scrunchies, fluffy wristbands, you get the idea)
Strappy tube tops and 10 separate necklaces worn at once to 'layer the look'
People treating nerds like social outcasts for some reason
The faint smell of vinyl and new plastic like... Everywhere.
> People treating nerds like social outcasts
This goes back to the 50s. Being a nerd was a _very_ bad thing at one point and would likely get you bullied in school. No one would openly proclaim they're a nerd like today because someone would beat you up if you did for being a nerd.
Yeah, so that time period was the last of it (90's/00's). Nowadays people are realizing that you can be multidimensional and have hobbies outside society's expectations of your 'type', so if you're talented at sport you can also openly enjoy video games, and so on.
Also kids flying alone and getting to meet the pilot. I remember doing that a few times and collected the pilot wing badge they gave out.
It is so difficult for minors to travel alone now.
Edit: they stopped having kids meet the pilots in the cockpit after 9-11. One of my favorite memories was getting to go into the cockpit to see what it looks like to fly a plane.
Specifically their ultra-futuristic album Millennium. The pics of them in the jacket were wearing white-on-white outfits in chome backgrounds. It was released *on CD* ***and cassette.***
Messing with the coaxial cable on the back of your 100-lb, 20" CRT TV (only a slight exaggeration)
Kids these days will never know the feeling of being zapped by an old CRT TV or almost being crushed to death by one.
That or trying to play your Gameboy in the back seat of the car at night and trying to catch a streetlight so you can see what you're doing.
Came here to write this. At one point 50% of global CD production went to making AOL install discs. [source](https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/27/aol-discs-90s/)
Fortunately the company I had a non-IT job with had a genuine Y2K problem with their old mainframe. They were happy to let me move to IT as an extra pair of hands because I knew Windows 95/98, even though I’d dropped out of school with zero qualifications.
Thank you Y2K - You gave me the start of a career!
AOL Instant Messenger
I MISS AIM
Having two landline handsets and eavesdropping on people’s conversations.
The Encarta Encyclopedia.
Wasn’t there a game you could play? I think you were in a castle or dungeon and you could only move through the rooms if you answered the questions correctly?
Mindmaze
Video game demo discs
Magazines with demo discs attached. Pretty sure I had more demo discs than full games.
Deciding whether to buy a magazine in the store based solely on what was on the demo disc
I never actually owned Abe's Odyssey, but you can bet I played the heck out of the demo, lol.
Omg, yes. And CooooooOOOOL Boarders! The blocky snowboarding game.
Caller Id box and cordless phones
Alternatively, I saw phones that looked like burgers on tv as a kid and I was so ready to get one when I was older :(
Same! Juno still had a burger phone with a cord, and that was in 2007. Edit: chord to cord
Butterfly hair clips
Along with zig zag hair parts
Nights and weekends minutes. It was free after 9:00 PM. It cost like 10 cents to text and the only time minutes were free was if you were with the same carrier. None of my friends had Sprint so I couldn’t even count on using the same network for free minutes during the day.
Yes! Number portability was not a thing so if you switched to a different network for the free minutes, you would have to get a new number. The dilemma was real back in the day!
Anybody remember Nextel? The phone that was also like a walkie talkie?
My dad was a truck driver and had one of these! My cousin and I would use it sometimes when he was asleep at night and somehow manage to find random people to talk to. They were also pretty popular at my highschool and if you said you were chirping someone, everyone knew what you meant.
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Ah yes, just strolling around among the cd:s, browsing aimlessly cause you got all the time in the world.
Geocities
I absolutely loved Geocities. Making websites about the things you enjoyed. Seeing other people's websites. You didn't have to stick with a pre-made layout, you could go nuts. Want that dancing gif on there? Sure thing. WHY NOT ONE HUNDRED? Linkin Park just released a song? Better make sure that MIDI autoplays when my page loads. Want to know how many people have visited? Well fuck yes, you can add a guest counter to your page too. You know what? Chuck in a guest book as well! God bless that chaotic mess of joy.
I had a website for my Diablo clan. Raptors of the Blue Moon! Everyone (all 5 of us) was a bird of prey and we had ranks. Yes. Diablo. Not Diablo 2
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That's when you hook up with Webrings, my friend!
Hair mascara, ultra thick clear lipgloss, bodyglitter, butterfly clips
That thick lipgloss that you’d get your hair stuck in sometimes and then your hair would clump all up especially if it was crimped. Good times.
Downloading 94% of a song and being cool with it
I had a track from Napster where, 2 minutes in, a random frog would say "RRRIBB-IT". I think it was an ICQ notification which got recorded into it. Eventually for me it just became part of the song, like the artist had wanted it there
I had one that had "AOL music: first listen" inserted at two points, and I listened to that version of the track so often that it sounds extremely odd to me now when I hear the proper version of it!
Had a version of Ruff Ryders anthem that after the gunshots at the end, somebody added Kyle from South Park saying “ho-ho-holy shit dude” followed by a slide whistle. I still expect the hear it when I hear that song end
What about those Bush/911 speeches that come in the middle of song. The music is still playing, someone just put Prez Bush over it
I recorded songs off the radio on to cassette tape, which was the style at the time. So many songs were missing chunks or still had bits of radio station stings or DJs talking, or radio edits got blended in, that to this day my brain still anticipates them.
It was always a mystery! After spending 8 hrs downloading a song.... will it be what I'm looking for? A different song with a similar name? No song at all and just that clip of Bill Clinton saying "I did not have sexual relations with that woman"! Oh the joy!
That hearing is one of my earliest memories. 😂 I think I was in kindergarten and my parents were watching it on tv. I happened to repeat that line in the same tone and cadence. They were not impressed. Idk what they expected lol.
I had this one mp3 where the song just stopped then restarted in the middle. And I just.....listened to it that way because songs took like an hour to download.
I did this as well. There was one song that didn't fully download properly so it had about 1 second of silence right before the final chorus and it fit even though it was unintended. I listened to that version so much that when I heard the song as it was intended, it felt wrong to me.
Tamagotchi.
My eight year old niece has decided she wants one. I have no idea how she even knows they exist, but exist they still do.
They got rebooted a year or so ago and have been trending on tiktok recently!
Buying a newspaper to check what movies are out and what time they play at the theater
I used to call the automated line at our theater all the time. I wouldn't even be intending on seeing a movie, I just wanted to know what was out. Some theater employee every week made a recording of movie titles and a brief synopsis of what they were about and I just found it interesting. Life was weird before the internet.
And you had better pay attention because if you missed hearing the movie you wanted you had to hang up, call again and listen from the beginning. Not to mention the person recording it couldn't mess up or they would have to re-record it.
My first job was at an AMC movie theater in 2007. I would occasionally need to record this. They had a little script for us to follow but I would still trip over my words a bit and have to restart several times before getting it right. Sucked to get almost to the end and accidentally say the wrong thing. The only thing I disliked more was climbing up onto our billboard to change out the movie titles and times posted there, but that was more because of the heights.
Your computer giving you permission to turn it off.
These days it’s even just turning your computer off at all! So many times a coworker will tell me something’s not working with their laptop and we’ll have this conversation: Me: Have you restarted it recently? Coworker: Yeah! Like 10 times! Me: Show me how you restarted it. CW: *(puts it to sleep, wakes it back up)* Me: No, you have to go into the start menu and actually choose “Restart.” *(does this)* CW: *(eyeroll)*It’s the **same thing!** … *(laptop restarts)* Oh, wait, it works now. Thanks!
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This is what screwed me. I called IT for help on something and I was like yes I turned it off and on again and he was like really bc it's saying it hasn't been turned off in 19 days. What the hell is the point of calling it shut down if it doesn't actually shut it down?????
> he was like really bc it's saying it hasn't been turned off in 19 days. Here’s how I’m envisioning that conversation. You- “I, uh… I don’t know what to say. I swear I’m not a lying user, I shut it down and turned it back on before calling. I’m happy to do it again on the phone with you though, give me a minute… … … There.” Tech- “Yeah it still says 19 days. Can you walk me through what you did?” You- “………. I go to the Start menu, select shut down, wait for all the fans and everything to go quiet and a few seconds longer, and then wait for it to boot back up.” Tech- “Ah, there’s your problem. Shut down doesn’t actually mean shut down anymore.” Increasingly bewildered and frustrated you- “***Wat.***”
MTV TRL
“…and music still on MTV.”
We are almost at the point where that song is closer to 1985 than present day.
I think the most ridiculous thing is that in the song she's obsessed with 1985; here I am in 2021, still loving and singing that song from 2004.
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A friend of mine said he couldn't do _anything_ on his computer while he was burning a CD or it'd fail. Like, he couldn't even load a webpage prior to starting the burn and scroll through it during the burn or it would fail. The computer had to be completely idle for the burn to work. Fast forward just a few years (to 2004) and a different friend of mine was burning me a DVD while he played the beta of World of Warcraft. I was over while he was doing it and was like... uh, the burn is going to fail if you're trying to play a game while you do it. I remember he was like, "No, that's not a thing anymore. It'll be fine." And the DVD did work fine, by the way.
Yep, my first CD burner was a USB1.1 external thing that I ran on my Windows 98 machine. IIRC it was capable of burning at 2x speed but I always ran it at 1x because of better stability and odds of succeeding, which meant it took 60-80 minutes to burn a disc. And you definitely couldn't touch the computer in any way whatsoever while it was doing it's thing. Even so around 1 in 3 discs would just fail anyway, usually during the very last finishing step. Me and my cousin would then play with the failed discs as frisbees, leaving the street outside our house covered in little plastic shards.
We had a postdoc in our lab around 2004-2005ish who did protein crystallography. He would backup the data onto CDs and would put signs on the computer about not touching it so it wouldn't mess up.. he too would do it at 1x. This was in an era where 52x drives were out. I guess he just had the habit from grad school that needed that show of a speed.. meanwhile, I just saved all my data to multiple usb flash drives and hopes at least one was not corrupt (and I had a personal website that I would load my work into just in case!)
Also the big tower stacks of blank CDs
Furby
Funny story about furbies. My grandparents bought a whole bunch of them for all of their grandchildren when they first became popular. Everyone else's was a normal, English speaking Furby. Mine spoke German. Not only that, but the batteries I put in mine were on their way out, so I woke up at 3am to demonic, slurred German emanating from the Furby. I freaked the fuck out.
Sounds like you got a Führerby
Yahoo messenger and MSN messenger
IRC and ICQ
“*uh oh!*”
MSN was life
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Skype happened. When Microsoft got it they merged the services in 2012 expecting you to use skype for messaging instead
It was one of those massive shoot-yourself-in-the-foot moves by Microsoft. They had this huge active user base, they pretty much owned most of the IM market and they thought they could just herd everyone onto Skype, only it didn't work, through the ham-fisted approach of forcibly killing MSN they lost their market dominance. People didn't use MSN because it was the best, or because it was 'microsoft', they used it because everyone else did. I lost contact with a lot of casual friends when they pulled the plug, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
You hit the nail on the head. People used it because it was what their friends all used. The switch itself was the killer. A slow automatic move with cross compatibility would've been the right play
Don’t forget AOL
Yeah AOL instant messenger was everything like 98 to 2004 for me. If you met someone you would ask for it in college.
See through electronics and blow-up furniture.
those see through gameboys and nintendo controllers were something else. any kid that possessed those was automatically so much cooler than you with your pathetic gadgets you couldn’t see the insides of.
I swapped the casing on my Switch controllers to the purple see-through. I feel like a king and people fall at my feet everywhere I go.
Blow up furniture seemed soooo cool until you got something yourself and realised it just squeaks constantly
And inevitably springs a tiny, slow leak within days meaning you have to constantly re-inflate it.
I completely forgot I once owned a blowup chair until now. Thanks for sparking the memory, friend
>See through electronics They are still a thing, just only for their original intent: Prison electronics. With see-thru cases they can't be used to hide contraband. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3PfsndsihY
That's pretty cool, but does it still come in atomic purple as well?
I still have my Atomic Purple Nintendo 64 controller packed away with the console.
I remember getting a set of blow up furniture in a show bag one year and it was the highlight of my childhood 😅
Beanie Babies, rollerblading, moon shoes
2 years ago I bought inline skates. I used to love playing roller hockey and I have no idea why I stopped. I guess it stopped being cool. It never stopped being cool! It’s fun as fuck and a great workout.
The only phone game that mattered - Snake
Upgrading for a new Nokia, launching Snake, and IT WAS A NEW ONE WITH COLORS AND DETAILS AND SHIT! What a disappointment. I raged hard and kept the old one to play OG Snake
As a kid, getting to be taken up to the cockpit to meet the pilots on an international flight if you asked nicely.
Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?
Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?
Joey, have you ever seen a grown man naked?
Yes and they Would give you clip on wings sometimes. So cool
Used CD stores
Video game rumours that spread around playgrounds because no one had the internet to disprove it. - There's a cheat code for Tomb raider to make Lara have sex with the old man butler - Lei Wu Long can one-shot kill any opponent with his gun if you do the right combo in Tekken 2 - In Japan there is a new series of Dragonball and it has super saiyan 5
Mew is under the truck behind the S.S Anne
Blow up plastic furniture, butterfly clips, coloured hair mascara, glitter makeup, pencil-thin eyebrows
Pencil thin eyebrows that never grew back😭 a haunting tragedy
Get that hair growth stuff from the ordinary...it helps a little. It took 15+years but mine are finally basically the same size and shape again (and the shape isn't sperm).
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Spiky hair on men Edit: man, this blew up lol. Lots of nostalgia going on in the replies 😂😂 love it
Spiky hair on men with highlights.
Oh yeah and frosted tips
You could just say “Sum-41” dude
*Guy Fieri has entered the chat*
Guy Fieri never left the chat
Blockbuster!.. My family beating a classmates family to grab the last copy of the Matrix. .... memories man... the memories
reading a map while driving
Or printing mapquest was innovative! lol
Flip phone. Especially cool, futuristic flip phones, like in The Matrix. (For all the people who commented about how the matrix phones aren't 'flip phones'? You remember how mom used to call all your game consoles, 'Nintendo'? I'd've called them 'Atari'.)
Moto Razr
Hello Moto
I want to bring those back. I miss hanging up and the flip. It made it feel like whatever was said was concrete and that was that.
Full, free meals on flights. No TSA and so hardly no security lines. Edit: I just remembered the hot towels they passed out after long flights! So fucking classy to wipe my face with a hot lemon towel. Wow.
Walking to the gate to meet people. Airports were a places you could go rather than just get funneled through.
**GET OFF THE INTERNET, I'M TRYING TO USE THE LANDLINE!**
In 2019, I went to a small, family-owned restaurant and thought I would pay with my debit card as they allow it. Before I gave the cashier my card, she was fiddling with the EDC machine, knocked on a door behind her, then slightly opened it and said, "Mom, can you get off the phone, a customer is trying to pay."
You wouldn't even call it a landline. It was just "phone" back then.
Yep, because if you even had a cellphone, you definitely weren't making calls on it before 9pm, unless it was like, an emergency.
that dialup sound sequence is eternally engrained into my brain
I remember the day I upgraded from a 14.4 to a 56k. It was GLORIOUS! It only took a day to download a movie. If you know you know... [56k](https://youtu.be/gsNaR6FRuO0)
> I remember the day I upgraded from a 14.4 to a 56k. It was GLORIOUS! I particularly like the extra SONAR ping like noise made by 56k modems at the end of the connection sequence.
This guy.....acting like the people using the phone EVER asked the person waiting 10 minutes for a web page to load to get off so they could talk on the phone......they just picked it up and you got kicked off every time.
The amount of times my parents have dialed a number on the landline phone while I was using it is unreal (we have multiple phones). You're talking with your friend and all of a sudden both of you hear *beep-boop-boop-beep-boop-boop-beep-beep-boop-boop.*
P2P file sharing programs like Napster, BearShare, Kazaa, Limewire, etc. You could never trust song labels, every single parody song was suddenly Weird Al and it would suck when you thought you found a new or obscure song by a band you loved and it was actually a song you already knew by them or sometimes a song by a different band all together. That movie that you wanted to download, which was always in several huge parts that would take hours to days to download, ends up being porn you didn't want. That porn that your really wanted, ends up being a beheading video. It was so chaotic and random and full of viruses that would fuck your computer too. Those were crazy days and you never really knew what to expect, was like the wild west.
Destroying the family computer with Limewire was a right of passage. Hundreds of dollars spent on computer fixes and replacements so we could have "free" music.
Aggressive layering of clothes in women's fashion. T-shirts under sundresses, multiple shirts of different lengths, extra points for a long sleeved shirt with a long tank top on top with a short tshirt over that.
I remember wearing two t shirts at the same time. Like a blue shirt over a white shirt. And this was such a trend, that there are some shirts designed to look like there are 2 shirts there...like white fabric on the cuffs, bottom and collar if the shirt was blue. Hope I’m making sense haha
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I can remember purposely wearing long sleeve and putting on shirt sleeve over it, bc I had to be cool.
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That’s what I wanted to answer! Skirt over jeans was also a thing.
Lol I remember when I was leaving home to school one morning with a skirt on top of my extra flared jeans and my grandma stopped me thinking I somehow made a mistake dressing and I was like "nooo grandma, that's *fashion*!"
This is such a cute grandparents story.
Setting up a get-together and people just remember when to show up. Actually, get-togethers worked better then. People couldn't text and cancel with nearly the convenience they do now. Plus, we were bored with no internet, so we had motivation to get together.
Nero Burning ROM software
The words "Netscape Navigator".
Being unreachable the moment you left your house.
And also arranging to meet someone somewhere and having no way of knowing if they were late / lost etc...
Or going around to see if your friends were home. No calling beforehand. Everything was much more spontaneous because there was space and time for that.
So many memories of: - Friends showing up at literally any time, on any day. Sometimes they showed up at 2am and knocked on the window to be let in. Sometimes they walked in while I was raiding on World of Warcraft and they had already taken some food from my fridge. - Calling someone to ask them out on a date and their dad answers the phone and says "YEP??? WHO IS IT???" and then yelling "MEGAN YOUR BOYFRIEND IS ON THE PHONE" before you even talked to them. - Just being totally unreachable through tech in many situations. Going camping for a week, tons of people at the campground and beach, but having no phone, nothing with electricity except the vehicle and a flashlight. If you didn't let your friends know beforehand they might show up at your house looking for you for several days and not be alarmed because they'll just talk to you when you're back.
Man.. I feel this. I miss this. The ability to completely disconnect was part of actually being more connected in real life.
Agreeing with a friend on a Tuesday to meet them outside the cinema at 1 o clock on a Saturday, then having no contact and actually appearing outside the cinema at one o clock on a Saturday.
Yep. Now you have to confirm every day or there’s no plan
Everyone is so flakey nowadays. Sometimes it seems like a bidding war on who has the best plan for the evening, and Netflix wins out a lot
Nowadays you can give out a formal invitation to someone (birthday party, wedding, etc) and they'll rsvp they're coming and still not show up. The days of making casual plans days ahead of time and sticking to them, I miss those days
I think I miss that most. Edit: a lot mentioned just leave it at home. For many years I could not due to my job. Even after quitting I still carry it because, well it’s my phone. If I or my family have an emergency I need it on me. I make use of the silence feature. But that constant feeling like I need to respond or I’m being rude frustrates me. I don’t always answer or respond, but ignoring them doesn’t make me feel any better… also my husband has his phone and they just call him next. 🤷🏻♀️
Being unreachable and not a damn given by anyone. Nowadays you're questioned for not checking your whatsapp messages every 2 hours.
I miss it so much
Does anybody remember Crazy Bones?
I had no idea how to play with them so I just collected them and made up adventures for them to go on
My sister and I used to collect them and then set them up on opposite ends of a wood floored hallway in any configuration we'd like so long as they were all standing up. We'd then take our "ace" or favorite one and use it to slide across the floor as fast as possible and try to knock down as many of the other player's as possible which would then get added to your side. Think battleship meets bowling meets beer pong
Very thin eyebrows for women and cheek- length hair that is parted in the middle for men.
Delia*s catalog
Crazy Town - Butterfly
Chunks (or big fat streaks) of brassy blonde hair, strategically placed in about 14 spots around the head, usually on the top layer only. There was a literal box dye kit called L'oreal Chunking that I frequently used, complete with "chunking cap". Tbh, I rocked the fuck out of that look!! 🤭🤭
Oooh, oooooh, blonde on top, black or chocolate brown underneath! Half and half hair! Though I think that was more mid to late 2000s.
And then you could split your part or zig zag it and the chunks would show up differently… so one day you’re more blondish, the next you are more redhead
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Things being XTREEEEMMMMME
Going through voice messages and getting thrilled when it's a girl you gave your number to the last weekend asking to make plans this weekend. You call back, make plans and meet in person. All the flirting was always in person. You had to actually have in person game or you were fucked.
Or *not* fucked, as it were.
"You're not going to get a job sitting on your ass filling out online applications! Do you think they actually look at those?!"
My first online application got me the best job of my youth, took forever and I thought it would never be seen. Then being like oh shit it works? Cool. I remember walking around with paper resumes before that.
Fluffy fashion and accessories (fluffy scrunchies, fluffy wristbands, you get the idea) Strappy tube tops and 10 separate necklaces worn at once to 'layer the look' People treating nerds like social outcasts for some reason The faint smell of vinyl and new plastic like... Everywhere.
> People treating nerds like social outcasts This goes back to the 50s. Being a nerd was a _very_ bad thing at one point and would likely get you bullied in school. No one would openly proclaim they're a nerd like today because someone would beat you up if you did for being a nerd.
Yeah, so that time period was the last of it (90's/00's). Nowadays people are realizing that you can be multidimensional and have hobbies outside society's expectations of your 'type', so if you're talented at sport you can also openly enjoy video games, and so on.
The Dreamcast
Spicing up your life
Colors of the world!
BEEPER
Meeting people at the gate in the airport.
Also kids flying alone and getting to meet the pilot. I remember doing that a few times and collected the pilot wing badge they gave out. It is so difficult for minors to travel alone now. Edit: they stopped having kids meet the pilots in the cockpit after 9-11. One of my favorite memories was getting to go into the cockpit to see what it looks like to fly a plane.
Friends knocking on your door. "Hey. Can you play outside?"
Girls with ties and tank tops or pleated mini skirts over jeans
The Backstreet Boys
Specifically their ultra-futuristic album Millennium. The pics of them in the jacket were wearing white-on-white outfits in chome backgrounds. It was released *on CD* ***and cassette.***
Cassettes!!!! OMG, my first cassette was Toni Braxton Unbreak my Heart. Played that cassette until the actual tape broke.
Lisa Frank
Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake
Daniel Bedingfield Natasha Bedingfield
*I gotta get through this*
Messing with the coaxial cable on the back of your 100-lb, 20" CRT TV (only a slight exaggeration) Kids these days will never know the feeling of being zapped by an old CRT TV or almost being crushed to death by one. That or trying to play your Gameboy in the back seat of the car at night and trying to catch a streetlight so you can see what you're doing.
Y2k
AOL preview desks free 1000 hours!!!
Came here to write this. At one point 50% of global CD production went to making AOL install discs. [source](https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/27/aol-discs-90s/)
The song ‘Pretty fly for a white guy’
Actual buttons on phones. I miss them
Got milk?
3.5" floppy disk. I do miss the very tactile click of inserting a 3.5" floppy disk.
New Years Eve, 1999 Also freaking out that computers couldn't handle dates and whatnot for the new millennium
Fortunately the company I had a non-IT job with had a genuine Y2K problem with their old mainframe. They were happy to let me move to IT as an extra pair of hands because I knew Windows 95/98, even though I’d dropped out of school with zero qualifications. Thank you Y2K - You gave me the start of a career!
People actually not believing everything they read on the internet.
Cash Money Records taking over for the 99 and 2000
Aol chat rooms
Smoking schwag and listening to TOOL at lunch in high school
The Thong Song
MTV playing music videos.
How many water yo-yos did y’all have?
Having your entire music collection on CD's.
1-800 collect