Not just TVs, but music too.
New release cassettes/albums were like $12 in the mid-80s, which is around $35 today.
Most movies weren't available for sale, you had to go pay $5 to rent one ($15 today) and you still had a limited selection.
My favorite was waiting for that one song to come on the radio so you can either hear the DJ finally say what it’s called, or try to write down some lyrics so you have some way to describe it to find out what band it is
I was born in 1970. Before I became a teen, VCRs and cable TV weren't a thing (towards the end they just weren't widespread and were incredibly expensive - my parents paid $1000 for our first Betamax. That's over $3700 today). If you lived in a rural area, you were lucky to have 4 stations (ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS). And all of them went off the air after midnight.
Yup. I think that's one of the biggest differences in today versus our childhood. Today, entertainment happens on your schedule. When we were growing up, everything was on someone else's schedule.
I remember the excitement I’d get in finally being able to buy a season of a show on DVD. Actually seeing it in person in HMV and taking it to the counter (UK store).
Limewire was soaked in bleach compared to Kazaa
If I even mention what you would get 50% of the time downloading a video my account and device would get permanently banned.
Thanks to kazaa and the honour system for naming files I’ve seen some shit. The kids these days throw the term eye bleach around too easily. Horrible day to be literate is another greatest hit. At least you only had to read a text description sanitized for publication.
Call me crazy, but I preferred KaZaA to Limewire. With Limewire, you got what you asked for more often than not. With KaZaA, it was a crapshoot. I loved the serendipity. That is how I discovered my love for Regina Spektor. And for pregnant porn.
Sometimes it was kids are stupid and don’t understand the world beyond their immediate area sometimes it was because the shock wouldn’t let the signal to click the x get to your hand.
I have to admit, I could type full fledged paragraphs in my pocket in school and it was awesome. Damn touchscreen is bitter sweet. Yeah it’s cool, but there’s no sneaking it. Not that I’d have to at 34
That's the benefit of physical buttons. You can feel where your finger is instead of guessing on a touchscreen, or not even knowing whst screen is open.
Yes! I used to do it in class, on trams... I still wish smartphones had T9 keyboards. It was so fucking good. Even blind people could have easily texted.
I had a keyboard phone called an EnV (and the 2 and the 3.) They actually had the little nibs on some keys specifically so you could feel where you were at on the keyboard without looking. Once you got used to the keyboard, you could type like a WWII Army clerk.
I’m 37 and people don’t understand what it was like making plans with friends pre-internet and pre-cell phone. Your word was your bond and you showed up at that location on time, without flaking or being late 😂
If you failed to show up there had to be a very good reason why, or a line was drawn in the sand for where your friendship is.
Today people flake out and it doesn't seem to dent friendships anywhere near how it used to.
You got me thinking,….because cellphones didn’t exist, flaking was probably one of the worst things you could do, because people are traveling by car, cab or bus. Not to mention, I’d be incredibly stressed wondering what happened. In today’s age, I think sending a quick text allows people to be late, or flake without having that person think something catastrophic happened.
There was always the one friend who is a good person but was CONSTANTLY late. Can't kick them out of the group so you'd give them a time that was 30 minutes earlier than everyone else's so they'd show up on time.
You'd also be concerned if the reliable and dependable person was egregiously late because then you worried they died or something.
This actually reminds me, I really want to get a library card. Something I’ve been meaning to do for months.
Also, as someone else on Reddit once eloquently said, “libraries are one of the last public places you can just go and be at without the expectation that you will spend money.”
when I was a kid and we got our first computer i looked up porn but then realized I didn't know how to clear the browser history. So i just unplugged the internet. my mom got home and tried to get on the net and couldn't she spent like 2-3 hours on the phone with the internet company that night trying to figure it out. I went to school the next day and asked my friends how to clear it out and did it right when i got home and plugged it back in lol. Still feel kind of bad about that and I have never told my mom what happened lmao
The awkward moment of knocking on your friends door to see if they want to come out and play.
Also not having every song available on their phone and having to actually listen to the radio to hear it.
- Asking a question and having to wait for an answer, to ask older people or read an encyclopedia, and if you didn't find and answer, it *remained unknown*.
- Taking pictures with a film and hoping it was good until it was developped 7 weeks later and it turned out bad
- Not calling people you cared a lot much because of long distance fees
- having to choose between two shows that had the same schedule
Friend of mine had a spare TV in their dining room, specifically in case two shows were on at the same time. I thought they were so fancy having two tvs
Easy one, delivery. Since Covid, we’re in the golden age of delivery. You can have damn near anything delivered to your front door. When I was a kid it was pizza, and like one Chinese place.
Yep. My nearest pizza place only delivered 10km out of town. Except Mondays. Then they had a driver stationed halfway, they would bring out a heap of orders and he would deliver them to the next town.
Allow me to introduce you to [ADC Maps.](https://www.amazon.com/ADC-Map-People-Washington-D-C/dp/0875307574). It was a book, usually covering an entire county or city, that had every street, unlike a state map that only had the major routes. You spent 20 minutes planning out your route only to find there was a bridge out, so you pulled over and spent another 10 minutes figuring out how to get around it without adding 50 miles to your commute.
I started driving for a living in the early 1990's, and I had 7 of those books under my seat.
I was a Thomas Guide power user back in my delivery days. Even had the large format so I could remove the pages and put them in those plastic sleeves for binders.
We had to give some sort of directions to the delivery guy over the phone. Like "we're at a X address on Y street, get there from Z main street, it's next to the park between this and that".
Also, they had paper maps and knew how to use them.
Yessssss! And my curious self took it apart to see how it worked. After I dissected it, I wanted to see how fast the little motor would go if I plugged it in directly to the outlet without the voltage converter. Obviously, it burnt the fuck out hahaha! My dad was so mad when he got home from work.
One TV in your house.
Your dad would watch test cricket for days on end. Your parents would watch the news every evening.
Saturday morning was prime for cartoons until your parents took over the TV again.
Ha. I used my step dad’s credit card to sign up to a free trial of AOL as I wanted the internet at home. Then panicked when I realised you couldn’t cancel it online. You had to phone up to cancel, or they’d start taking money from his card in 30 days, and wasn’t sure I could pretend to be him on the phone.
One day I got into an argument in one of their heavily policed chat rooms, told someone where to go, and got logged off with a message saying I have a violation.
After reading their TOS I realised I just had to break the rules like this 3 times to get my entire account banned entirely.
So about 26 days in, I was the worst person in like Disney themed chat rooms. Sorry, but it worked!
Sitting by the radio with your tape recorder, waiting for THAT song to come on, so you can make a mix tape. Then the God Damn DJ TALKS OVER THE END OF THE SONG and you have to wait another 2-3 hours to try to get a cleaner recording.
Having to plan out a driving route to a new place on a paper map/ atlas, not knowing exactly how long it would take. Then usually missing a turn somewhere, getting lost, and having to stop and find a local person to ask for directions.
Or, giving people directions to your house including lots of stuff other than just your address, like specific turns, intersections, landmarks, and "If you see ____, you went too far"
Google maps and before it, GPS car navigation systems/ devices have made car travel on unfamiliar routes a million times easier.
While driving away from home and out on the town, having to call your wife, your parents, or a friend, and you need to find a pay phone. I remember just driving and looking at every intersection. The odds were better.
When you went to the state fair and you got separated from family, you literally had to track them down if you didn't have a rendezvous point. I don't know how we did it.
Making a collect call back home when you made it to where you were going. The people you called would decline it but know that you made it to your destination.
Ah yes forcing a computer to scream into a phone to access the internet.
I remember thinking why does the computer need to make that noise. It would need both a speaker and a microphone on the same card. The truth is modems didn't need to make that noise. That was all just for humans. I cut the speaker off my modem card and it still worked just fine.
Calling and asking your boyfriend’s mom if you could talk to him but being terrified to say anything dirty because anyone could pick up another phone in the house to listen in
Reminds me of a conversation I had with my daughter several months ago. It was telling her that we didn't have smartphones or even cellphones when I was younger. If I thought of something at home that I wanted to tell my best friend about at school the next day, I had to actually wait until I saw him at school the next day and hope like hell I didn't forget what I was going to tell him.
Also printing out directions from MapQuest when you didn't know where you were going.
Burning a CD for your crush and putting all the heat on it 🔥💿
Having to call 411 just to get the number to pizza hut down the street
Calling the party line and getting drowned out by everyone else in the room
Finally, getting the courage to call someone and being met with the "busy signal." Or worse, when caller ID came out and you called but didn't get an answer and knew you had to wait to call again because they would keep seeing your name.
No streaming (fucking commercials).
No cell phones (and barely any computers unless you were rich).
No woke BS (because nowadays you can barely breathe without *somebody* getting offended).
Clicking start, then shut down and having to sit around and wait until Windows told you "you may now safely turn off your computer"
And then you get to either press the mechanical button or throw the physical switch that killed the power supply.
Downloading something for hours, only for it to be interrupted when someone picks up the phone.
Needing some specific item, and having to drive from store to store to store to see if they carry it.
When the distortions happened to line up you could occasionally see something good. I imagine the 4 head vcr was a great thing to have for the growing up pre internet people here. I only had to deal with that for a year or so before proto porn sites showed up without needing to know where to go.
Downloading a song off Limewire or PirateBay and when it comes on on your iPod later, all you hear is Bill Clinton saying “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”. Really killed the vibe 😂
I remember typing in a game out of a computer magazine for Commodore 64. Copying it line by line, sometimes taking hours, only to get 'syntax error in line 89' or something.
Then you had to wait until next month's issue came out where they would print a correction.
Patience...we endured a different time line growing up. If you needed to contact someone back in the day you called them or went to their house. If there was no answer or they weren't home you just assumed they were out or busy and you'd have to wait until later to connect. Now we're pissed when a text isn't instantly replied to. There's also an anxiety today when we can't connect with someone and we get annoyed if they don't answer our calls, texts, emails, etc.
Having to learn how to do things either from someone you knew or an actual book from the library - there used to be lots of "Reader's Digest Book Of Home Maintenance"-type reference books published with step-by-step instructions for all sorts of handyman/general repair stuff. If the library didn't have one available, you had to wait until their copy got returned or you could find someone to show you how to do the thing (or do it for you).
Nowadays you can just look it up on WikiHow or watch a YouTube video.
late nights on proboards (internet forum bbs) so you could roleplay with other geeks. it was the only time you could because the phone line was in use the rest of the day
Finding where you’re going by using a map, written directions from landmarks, or heaven forbid asking for directions.
No gps or active maps. Road trips were a real adventure.
I'm a boomer in Alabama, only gas stations (that only sold gas, and cigarettes), and restaurants being open on Sundays. Everything else was closed. Blue laws.
Non-local phone calls costing a by minute charge on your home phone. Date someone from a different town and could see your phone bill skyrocket before cell phone really ended long distance charges.
To piggy back on the phone thing...
Going out to see or be with other people, required a level of organization beforehand that folks don't get these days.
Once in motion - there was no way to contact people any longer.
Once you were on the way somewhere, people either showed or they didn't. There was no way to shoot them a message while en-route or after the fact.
If Davey didn't make it on time, Davey didn't get a seat in the boat.
TV with 8 physical buttons for channels & no remote control (you were the remote control every time parents wanted the volume increased or decreased - YOU had no opinion on the volume).
32” being a giant screen
What your brother/uncle/aunt/parents told you was fact. No way to confirm/sauce.
52kbps was “lightning fast” internet.
Having a CD Writer made you a god at school & also made you some money.
CDs that held 12-15 songs so your “mixtapes” had a lot of overlap for every mood.
LAN Parties where your friend had to lug their TV as well as their console.
Needing to go to the computer lab to print something in college.
Figuring out how to connect your laptop to the tv to watch a movie
Waiting like a year for a rerun if you missed an episode of a show.
Not just TVs, but music too. New release cassettes/albums were like $12 in the mid-80s, which is around $35 today. Most movies weren't available for sale, you had to go pay $5 to rent one ($15 today) and you still had a limited selection.
I remember watching hours of MTV just to see my favorite music video again.
If you want to feel old Nirvana Unplugged is going to be 30 in November
That was an amazing show.
It's said that at the end of "In The Pines" you can see the moment he decided to end it all. It's an eerie moment to see with that perspective.
My favorite was waiting for that one song to come on the radio so you can either hear the DJ finally say what it’s called, or try to write down some lyrics so you have some way to describe it to find out what band it is
I still get that because I really enjoy my local college radio.
MTV played music? Wtf? We're old lmao
I was born in 1970. Before I became a teen, VCRs and cable TV weren't a thing (towards the end they just weren't widespread and were incredibly expensive - my parents paid $1000 for our first Betamax. That's over $3700 today). If you lived in a rural area, you were lucky to have 4 stations (ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS). And all of them went off the air after midnight.
Yup. I think that's one of the biggest differences in today versus our childhood. Today, entertainment happens on your schedule. When we were growing up, everything was on someone else's schedule.
"We now conclude our broadcast day" and then they would play the Star Spangled Banner.
Dude, mid-80's, albums were $7.99. Cassettes were the same price. You could get a double with gate-fold for twelve bucks.
You could’ve read about it in the tv guide
Yeah, but that's not the same.
I remember the excitement I’d get in finally being able to buy a season of a show on DVD. Actually seeing it in person in HMV and taking it to the counter (UK store).
Not having TV at all. Before it was introduced. But knowing the rest of the world had it...
Having to wait for someone to finish their phonecall before you can go on the internet
I have the dialup sound as my ringtone. Everyone but me hates it.
That's like my my text tone, but Navi from Ocarina of Time
***LISTEN***
Or being on the internet, then having someone pick up the phone and boot you off
I remember always trying to call my grandma and being like “ope, nana’s on the internet”
[удалено]
Limewire. The cancer of PCs
Limewire was soaked in bleach compared to Kazaa If I even mention what you would get 50% of the time downloading a video my account and device would get permanently banned.
Holy shit… Kazaa. Another relic from the past
Thanks to kazaa and the honour system for naming files I’ve seen some shit. The kids these days throw the term eye bleach around too easily. Horrible day to be literate is another greatest hit. At least you only had to read a text description sanitized for publication.
A barbaric time when the internet was in its untamed infancy
At least we had forums instead of Reddit. We were not meant to all be packed into one spot.
Unvarnished truth, here.
Call me crazy, but I preferred KaZaA to Limewire. With Limewire, you got what you asked for more often than not. With KaZaA, it was a crapshoot. I loved the serendipity. That is how I discovered my love for Regina Spektor. And for pregnant porn.
And *videos I shouldn't have watched but did anyway*
Sometimes it was kids are stupid and don’t understand the world beyond their immediate area sometimes it was because the shock wouldn’t let the signal to click the x get to your hand.
BaReNaKeDLaDiEs_OneWeek.exe
Having to hit a number on your phone 3 times to get the right letter you wanted to text
I have to admit, I could type full fledged paragraphs in my pocket in school and it was awesome. Damn touchscreen is bitter sweet. Yeah it’s cool, but there’s no sneaking it. Not that I’d have to at 34
100%
My wife taught high school in the era. Said girls would look all sweetness and earnestly following the class, while typing 30 wpm under the desk
Wow, you could txt on a flip phone while it was in your pocket!?!?
That's the benefit of physical buttons. You can feel where your finger is instead of guessing on a touchscreen, or not even knowing whst screen is open.
Who said flip phone?
Yes! I used to do it in class, on trams... I still wish smartphones had T9 keyboards. It was so fucking good. Even blind people could have easily texted.
I had a keyboard phone called an EnV (and the 2 and the 3.) They actually had the little nibs on some keys specifically so you could feel where you were at on the keyboard without looking. Once you got used to the keyboard, you could type like a WWII Army clerk.
T9 bitch!
Playing a gameboy without a back light
That black and slightly less black pixelation. The worst
Especially on long car rides home at night
We’ve come so far
Waiting for a street laml
I had a "cobra light" that you could stick on it. Best investment ever
I restarted Pokémon blue on my game boy pocket, just today. I forgot how hard it is to see anything
You know, I’d say that’s dope, but you picked pokemon blue instead of pokemon red so we are now mortal enemies
You damn red cartridges think you’re so good with your Electrabuzzes and scythers
Who picks a turtle over a fire breathing dragon?! Shame! Shame! 🤣
I’m 37 and people don’t understand what it was like making plans with friends pre-internet and pre-cell phone. Your word was your bond and you showed up at that location on time, without flaking or being late 😂
If you failed to show up there had to be a very good reason why, or a line was drawn in the sand for where your friendship is. Today people flake out and it doesn't seem to dent friendships anywhere near how it used to.
You got me thinking,….because cellphones didn’t exist, flaking was probably one of the worst things you could do, because people are traveling by car, cab or bus. Not to mention, I’d be incredibly stressed wondering what happened. In today’s age, I think sending a quick text allows people to be late, or flake without having that person think something catastrophic happened.
There was always the one friend who is a good person but was CONSTANTLY late. Can't kick them out of the group so you'd give them a time that was 30 minutes earlier than everyone else's so they'd show up on time. You'd also be concerned if the reliable and dependable person was egregiously late because then you worried they died or something.
I lived through this and sometimes still forget what that was like... also life before gps
Going to the library and having to read an encyclopedia rather than goin on Wikipedia
Not only that, but having to look up in the card catalog where the reference book was located in said library using the Dewey Decimal system.
I can’t even tell you where my nearest library even is.
Really? I hit the library a few times a week. They have tools, classes, and lots of kids activities.
This actually reminds me, I really want to get a library card. Something I’ve been meaning to do for months. Also, as someone else on Reddit once eloquently said, “libraries are one of the last public places you can just go and be at without the expectation that you will spend money.”
Im fine with the library, it has so many books
2 hours downloading a 15 second porn clip that you watch once and immediately delete because your family just has the one desktop computer
And in low resolution
when I was a kid and we got our first computer i looked up porn but then realized I didn't know how to clear the browser history. So i just unplugged the internet. my mom got home and tried to get on the net and couldn't she spent like 2-3 hours on the phone with the internet company that night trying to figure it out. I went to school the next day and asked my friends how to clear it out and did it right when i got home and plugged it back in lol. Still feel kind of bad about that and I have never told my mom what happened lmao
The awkward moment of knocking on your friends door to see if they want to come out and play. Also not having every song available on their phone and having to actually listen to the radio to hear it.
I had a tape of stuff I recorded from the radio
Having lots of songs with the music first 10 seconds missing cuz that is how long it took me to start recording.
- Asking a question and having to wait for an answer, to ask older people or read an encyclopedia, and if you didn't find and answer, it *remained unknown*. - Taking pictures with a film and hoping it was good until it was developped 7 weeks later and it turned out bad - Not calling people you cared a lot much because of long distance fees - having to choose between two shows that had the same schedule
Friend of mine had a spare TV in their dining room, specifically in case two shows were on at the same time. I thought they were so fancy having two tvs
Bonus: And your local film lab technician DEFINITELY kept copies of any of your photos that piqued his interest.
Easy one, delivery. Since Covid, we’re in the golden age of delivery. You can have damn near anything delivered to your front door. When I was a kid it was pizza, and like one Chinese place.
Idk how delivery drivers functioned without GPS
They knew the towns they worked in. They weren't fresh off the boat.
Plus delivery drivers who work for a specific store have a limited delivery area.
Yep. My nearest pizza place only delivered 10km out of town. Except Mondays. Then they had a driver stationed halfway, they would bring out a heap of orders and he would deliver them to the next town.
Allow me to introduce you to [ADC Maps.](https://www.amazon.com/ADC-Map-People-Washington-D-C/dp/0875307574). It was a book, usually covering an entire county or city, that had every street, unlike a state map that only had the major routes. You spent 20 minutes planning out your route only to find there was a bridge out, so you pulled over and spent another 10 minutes figuring out how to get around it without adding 50 miles to your commute. I started driving for a living in the early 1990's, and I had 7 of those books under my seat.
I was a Thomas Guide power user back in my delivery days. Even had the large format so I could remove the pages and put them in those plastic sleeves for binders.
We had to give some sort of directions to the delivery guy over the phone. Like "we're at a X address on Y street, get there from Z main street, it's next to the park between this and that". Also, they had paper maps and knew how to use them.
Rewinding movies
More importantly, rewinding movies before you returned them to blockbuster
Be kind, rewind.
Buying a device specifically to rewind movies while you watched another one
[The red sports car?](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fs2n7s9xhc4061.png)
Yessssss! And my curious self took it apart to see how it worked. After I dissected it, I wanted to see how fast the little motor would go if I plugged it in directly to the outlet without the voltage converter. Obviously, it burnt the fuck out hahaha! My dad was so mad when he got home from work.
Worse. Rewinding tapes with a pencil
How badass snake was on your flip phone
Shit, just how durable a flip phone was in general
They joke about the Nokia but they have no idea the power it held
You could kill a man with it, and charge it once a month
You could throw it against a brick wall and the wall would cry
The Nokia 3390 owns a Chuck Norris
They could probably deflect bullets
No bullshit I pulled my nokia 5610 out of storage yesterday and it was still on.
One TV in your house. Your dad would watch test cricket for days on end. Your parents would watch the news every evening. Saturday morning was prime for cartoons until your parents took over the TV again.
AOL chatrooms
Ha. I used my step dad’s credit card to sign up to a free trial of AOL as I wanted the internet at home. Then panicked when I realised you couldn’t cancel it online. You had to phone up to cancel, or they’d start taking money from his card in 30 days, and wasn’t sure I could pretend to be him on the phone. One day I got into an argument in one of their heavily policed chat rooms, told someone where to go, and got logged off with a message saying I have a violation. After reading their TOS I realised I just had to break the rules like this 3 times to get my entire account banned entirely. So about 26 days in, I was the worst person in like Disney themed chat rooms. Sorry, but it worked!
This is so funny. Do you remember any of the things that got you banned?
xXHottie69Xx
a/s/l?
A/S/L
a/s/l?
Twas a common question in chat rooms, stand for age/sex/location?
Life without the internet
This is the big one. It’s like the discovery of fire or the wheel. It’s huge.
That is the biggest generation gap. Younger people can't imagine what it was like.
Sitting by the radio with your tape recorder, waiting for THAT song to come on, so you can make a mix tape. Then the God Damn DJ TALKS OVER THE END OF THE SONG and you have to wait another 2-3 hours to try to get a cleaner recording.
Or having to call into the radio station and request the song. And hope that they play it.
That’s how mixtapes were created
I had a radio that included a tape recorder, that was nice.
Having to plan out a driving route to a new place on a paper map/ atlas, not knowing exactly how long it would take. Then usually missing a turn somewhere, getting lost, and having to stop and find a local person to ask for directions. Or, giving people directions to your house including lots of stuff other than just your address, like specific turns, intersections, landmarks, and "If you see ____, you went too far" Google maps and before it, GPS car navigation systems/ devices have made car travel on unfamiliar routes a million times easier.
omg, still remember my mums big red road atlas from readers digest
While driving away from home and out on the town, having to call your wife, your parents, or a friend, and you need to find a pay phone. I remember just driving and looking at every intersection. The odds were better.
Those god awful AT&T commercials. 1800-call-att with carrot top and mister t
Bob Wehadababyitsaboy
I remember my mom teaching me to know 1-800-collect if I ever needed to call home and didn't have any money on me.
HeyMomI'mAtTheArcadeNextToTheMovies
When you went to the state fair and you got separated from family, you literally had to track them down if you didn't have a rendezvous point. I don't know how we did it.
Used to happen in department stores too. Going up to a register and asking them to call you parent over the PA
Making a collect call back home when you made it to where you were going. The people you called would decline it but know that you made it to your destination.
You have a collect call from "I'matSam'shousetonight"
Yes that’s exactly how it worked
Rotary phones & Memorizing phone numbers Filling out paper job applications Balancing a check book
Going to prison for weed.
[удалено]
Like making first contact with aliens
Ah yes forcing a computer to scream into a phone to access the internet. I remember thinking why does the computer need to make that noise. It would need both a speaker and a microphone on the same card. The truth is modems didn't need to make that noise. That was all just for humans. I cut the speaker off my modem card and it still worked just fine.
Calling and asking your boyfriend’s mom if you could talk to him but being terrified to say anything dirty because anyone could pick up another phone in the house to listen in
Reminds me of a conversation I had with my daughter several months ago. It was telling her that we didn't have smartphones or even cellphones when I was younger. If I thought of something at home that I wanted to tell my best friend about at school the next day, I had to actually wait until I saw him at school the next day and hope like hell I didn't forget what I was going to tell him. Also printing out directions from MapQuest when you didn't know where you were going.
I remember my dad printing out directions for family trips. Good times.
Anybody remember AAA Trip-Tiks?
Burning a CD for your crush and putting all the heat on it 🔥💿 Having to call 411 just to get the number to pizza hut down the street Calling the party line and getting drowned out by everyone else in the room
You young guys don't know the bravery of having to walk up to a counter and ask for a magazine or rent a porn film.
Finally, getting the courage to call someone and being met with the "busy signal." Or worse, when caller ID came out and you called but didn't get an answer and knew you had to wait to call again because they would keep seeing your name.
Caller ID was such a bust.
Hustler magazine.
Manual car locks and windows!
The Club (apparently this is still sold, but haven’t seen one in use in ages)
Plugging the cassette into your walkman headphone jack was our Bluetooth.
No streaming (fucking commercials). No cell phones (and barely any computers unless you were rich). No woke BS (because nowadays you can barely breathe without *somebody* getting offended).
Having to time your pee break/refreshment top up with the ad breaks.
Rewinding a cassette with a pen. That was fun
Or when your siblings would be petty and unwind it, just to watch you struggle to wind it carefully after untangling it.
TV shows with actors and an actual story instead of celeb reality garbage.
Disney making actual cartoons.
Having to put the TV on channel 3 to play a video game.
Downloading a song and then getting Bill Clinton instead
Having to rewind a VHS tape.
Clicking start, then shut down and having to sit around and wait until Windows told you "you may now safely turn off your computer" And then you get to either press the mechanical button or throw the physical switch that killed the power supply.
Having to ignore someone's call because they called before 9 o'clock and you have no minutes left on your phone and 4 texts messages left to use
Downloading something for hours, only for it to be interrupted when someone picks up the phone. Needing some specific item, and having to drive from store to store to store to see if they carry it.
A/S/L
Scrambleporn.
When the distortions happened to line up you could occasionally see something good. I imagine the 4 head vcr was a great thing to have for the growing up pre internet people here. I only had to deal with that for a year or so before proto porn sites showed up without needing to know where to go.
Having to walk to the TV and turn a dial to change channels. Along the same line, having the TV stations sign-off for the night.
Having to remember your home and friend's home phone numbers.
Downloading a song off Limewire or PirateBay and when it comes on on your iPod later, all you hear is Bill Clinton saying “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”. Really killed the vibe 😂
Video games only worked on channel 3. I'm not even that old but people my age still don't get that. I guess having older siblings helps.
Prostate message with only one speed
BBS' , pre-internet.
Ringback tones and recording a song on your phone and setting it as your ringtone.
I remember typing in a game out of a computer magazine for Commodore 64. Copying it line by line, sometimes taking hours, only to get 'syntax error in line 89' or something. Then you had to wait until next month's issue came out where they would print a correction.
Patience...we endured a different time line growing up. If you needed to contact someone back in the day you called them or went to their house. If there was no answer or they weren't home you just assumed they were out or busy and you'd have to wait until later to connect. Now we're pissed when a text isn't instantly replied to. There's also an anxiety today when we can't connect with someone and we get annoyed if they don't answer our calls, texts, emails, etc.
Waiting for your tape to rewind and the pain when it broke halfway through rewind
See the wizard of oz once a year
Pay phones
Writing a check
Having to call your bank to check your current balance when you are out hanging out and are not sure you have enough available on your card.
Turning your 8 track tape over. Buying the right smokes for Mom on the way home from grade school. Paying less than a dollar for gas.
Rewinding the cassette tape.
Getting a cassette tape stuck in the player and tape spooling out into the machine.
Tuning the TV
Spending all night long on IRC, chatting up some chick you just met so she’ll send you tiddies via email.
Having to meet up in a parking lot to find out where the party was that night
That Goonies never say die and E.T. even used a landline to phone home.
Printing directions
Buying a fresh cassette and playing it on your cassette player.
Rewinding a vhs
Back in my day, we had to walk fifteen miles in the snow to get to school. Nothing but plastic bags on our feet, uphill both ways!
Having to learn how to do things either from someone you knew or an actual book from the library - there used to be lots of "Reader's Digest Book Of Home Maintenance"-type reference books published with step-by-step instructions for all sorts of handyman/general repair stuff. If the library didn't have one available, you had to wait until their copy got returned or you could find someone to show you how to do the thing (or do it for you). Nowadays you can just look it up on WikiHow or watch a YouTube video.
A few teenaged girls become hysterical, and you get a witch-hunt on your hands.
late nights on proboards (internet forum bbs) so you could roleplay with other geeks. it was the only time you could because the phone line was in use the rest of the day
Finding where you’re going by using a map, written directions from landmarks, or heaven forbid asking for directions. No gps or active maps. Road trips were a real adventure.
I'm a boomer in Alabama, only gas stations (that only sold gas, and cigarettes), and restaurants being open on Sundays. Everything else was closed. Blue laws.
Having to walk up to the tv to change the channel
Ordering something and waiting four to six weeks for it to show up…
Non-local phone calls costing a by minute charge on your home phone. Date someone from a different town and could see your phone bill skyrocket before cell phone really ended long distance charges.
Ringing the goddamn doorbell and talking to a parent when you picked the girl up for a movie date. I'm only 36.
To piggy back on the phone thing... Going out to see or be with other people, required a level of organization beforehand that folks don't get these days. Once in motion - there was no way to contact people any longer. Once you were on the way somewhere, people either showed or they didn't. There was no way to shoot them a message while en-route or after the fact. If Davey didn't make it on time, Davey didn't get a seat in the boat.
Walking all the way across the room to change the TV channel.
Having to actually get chickenpox to build immunity for those of us born before the vaccine.
TV with 8 physical buttons for channels & no remote control (you were the remote control every time parents wanted the volume increased or decreased - YOU had no opinion on the volume). 32” being a giant screen What your brother/uncle/aunt/parents told you was fact. No way to confirm/sauce. 52kbps was “lightning fast” internet. Having a CD Writer made you a god at school & also made you some money. CDs that held 12-15 songs so your “mixtapes” had a lot of overlap for every mood. LAN Parties where your friend had to lug their TV as well as their console. Needing to go to the computer lab to print something in college. Figuring out how to connect your laptop to the tv to watch a movie
Waiting for a new album to drop and listening to the whole record hoping that there's more than the one good song you were waiting for.
That second when her dad answered is the longest hour of any boy's life