Life before 9/11. The world was still far from perfect then, but I felt that the innocence of my childhood died that day and the reality that the world is a dangerous and unpredictable place really started to sink in. I feel like we’ve been in a downward spiral ever since.
Finding a magazine with something you love on it, a band or an actor or whatever. Now if you love something you can immediately consume every piece of media on that thing, which is also cool, but I’ll always miss turning the corner at the grocery store and seeing that Spin is doing an all punk issue, or the Rolling Stone issue after Hunter Thompson died, and being like FUCK YES.
Edited to add: and the smell! The ink plus the paper and the perfume samples, incredible.
Spending all day outside with my siblings until mom hollered for us to come in for dinner. I don’t think I would be comfortable leaving my child for a full day outside with no supervision.
When everyone watched a tv show at the same time in their individual households and then came together to talk about it the next day. Pre-streaming services days. Commercials still sucked but there was something magical about it
My parents had absolutely no idea where I was; outside of school anyway. They had no way to contact or track me; I would just roam around the countryside playing with friends.
Don’t get a girl pregnant, no fights and don’t die. I try my damndest to let my daughters live like this.
EDIT: The numbers of DMs I got congratulating my girls for not getting anyone pregnant rofl.
Newspapers, especially (I confess) reading the comics. It was how I started every morning. Also loved getting the big Sunday edition and spending all morning reading it.
Being able to be unreachable. It’s hard to really get alone time or time to relax when you have a phone in you all the time and you can always be reached.
Internet being a brief thing you did, not a thing weaved constantly in your life. Going on AIM and chatting with friends felt like actual chats, and brief for 30 minutes.
You’d hang out in real life, the internet was just like watching TV. It was just something small and neat. Everything is so digital now.
I have a friend who has kids and they like hang out online. When we were in middle school and high school, we’d hang out in real life and only talk online as like a separate thing.
It’s probably how people in the 70s and 80s chatted on the phone later in the day with friend.
Lack of knowing what’s going on. The 24/7 news cycle is one of the worst things to happen to our society. Why do I need to know about a murder in Texas when I live on the East Coast. Constantly being hit with terrible horrific news 24/7. It’s just killing everyone’s mental health
y’all remember all night skates? We’d literally spend 12 hours straight in rollerblades. Everyone used to do a lot more physical activities that were social in nature.
Watching TV live! No pausing, no rewinding. The show you have been waiting weeks for is FINALLY on and it begins at 8pm sharp. So you and your siblings gather the snacks and fluff the pillows and pile onto the couch, and at 7:59pm you giggle and squeal and then it STARTS and you are all DEAD SILENT while the show is on… and there is a commercial break and you all let out a breath you’ve been holding in since the show started and then you all spin theories about what is going to happen next and someone runs to the bathroom, taking the stairs two and a time so they are back before the commercial break ends, and when the show comes back you are all DEAD SILENT again and your brother who ran to the bathroom has to hurdle over the dog and the coffee table and the pile of pillows to get back on the couch in time…
And when it is over you just CANNOT BELIEVE you have to wait A WHOLE WEEK to see what happens next, and that lovely anticipation gets you through all the chores and the homework and the thunderstorms etc etc… and then the night comes around again and you and your siblings are yet again bonding over this TV show experience.
TV just isn’t like that anymore, and I really miss when it was.
I think what the younger generation misses is the ability to throw together a social occasion. You were basically forced to learn how to call some people up, figure out a place to get together, and to have a party for no reason whatsoever.
In that sense, I think the internet has served to socially isolate ourselves from one another. People seem way too holed up at home.
Being a street kid from dawn till dusk. Going to Blockbuster with my sibling on a on a Friday night with $20 and getting movies and snacks to last the entire weekend.
I miss everyone watching the same thing, at the same time, so you could talk about it the next day. We’ll never have tv shows with huge ratings where everyone tunes in to the finale of MASH at the same time again.
Living my coyote ugly dream dancing on bars thinking I’m hot shit but likely being an absolute embarrassment to myself and there being no video evidence of it
Peace of mind. There was a lot to distract us in the 90s and 80s, but nowhere near the levels now. You could go off and do your thing, and didn’t feel like you were missing out on something else.
Getting up at 8am during summer vacation, grap a pop tart and leave the house for an adventure with any of the other neighborhood kids, up to elbows in muddy water catching crayfish and frogs, building forts in the woods. When we were hungry someone’s mom would make sandwiches and then off we go, play baseball in a unbuilt lot. Come home when the street lights start to come on. No cell phones, most advanced technology people had were cassette based answering machines the rest of us had a pencil and paper next to the phone to leave a message who called.
Genuinely excited for technology changes. Going from small tube TVs and monitors to flat screen was like something out of science fiction, same with mobile phones, tablets and laptops. Now it’s all pretty much normal to have these things and constant data and information. It was stuff we dreamed of. No Phone in the last decade has changed my life the way the first iPhone did. I’m not sure if there will be another huge technology change again. We went from barely functional dialup to gigabit fiber to the home in a 30 year span.
The thrill of picking up the home phone and it’s your crush calling you- and the disappointment of picking up and it’s aunt Beatrice asking for your mom instead. Caller ID has ruined that.
I’m not quite 35 yet, but this is my answer. When I say midnight releases, I mean having to wait in line at the actual store for the clock to roll over before you can get the game. Most of the time, it was a party and full on experience on it’s own. The GTA 5 midnight release I went to hired a Dj for the event and they were giving out free burgers and hotdogs.
If you missed Thursday night’s episode of The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air that was it, maybe you’d catch it months later in syndication if you were lucky. No rewinding. No streaming. No spoilers to dodge because everyone watched at the same time.
Don’t get me wrong I love the convenience of streaming. But I miss looking forward to something, and that tiny bit of pressure to be there when it happened. That feeling’s hard to replicate.
Honorable mention to strolling through Blockbuster on Friday evening.
Comments
Not being addicted to a phone
The excitement of your new favorite song playing on the radio or MTV
Blockbuster.
Things built to last
Creating my own ringtone on Nokia composer
Life without social media.
Life before 9/11. The world was still far from perfect then, but I felt that the innocence of my childhood died that day and the reality that the world is a dangerous and unpredictable place really started to sink in. I feel like we’ve been in a downward spiral ever since.
Finding a magazine with something you love on it, a band or an actor or whatever. Now if you love something you can immediately consume every piece of media on that thing, which is also cool, but I’ll always miss turning the corner at the grocery store and seeing that Spin is doing an all punk issue, or the Rolling Stone issue after Hunter Thompson died, and being like FUCK YES.
Edited to add: and the smell! The ink plus the paper and the perfume samples, incredible.
The feeling. All felt different before the Internet came.
Handwritten letters.
we didn’t have to pay an exorbitant amount of money for concert tickets.
Wake up early on weekends to watch cartoons and record some of them (Transformers, Denver the Last Dinosaur, Tom Sawyer, and many others).
Edit: I’m amazed and happy by how many people remember Denver. Now I had to add the music to my playlist. Thank you.
The spontaneous joking that happens when a group of friends sit around without cell phones to distract them
[removed]
That feeling of not being watched/ recorded
The arcade. Putting two quarters on the glass indicating you’ve got next. Watching this one dude beat mortal kombat 2 on just two quarters.
Walking around a mall.
Listening to whole albums, not just singles on an app
Spending all day outside with my siblings until mom hollered for us to come in for dinner. I don’t think I would be comfortable leaving my child for a full day outside with no supervision.
Being unavailable. No phone.
The beauty of being disconnected.
When everyone watched a tv show at the same time in their individual households and then came together to talk about it the next day. Pre-streaming services days. Commercials still sucked but there was something magical about it
Walking down the street collecting your mates along the way to go hang out
I’m 37, and I miss riding my bike miles away in the morning with my best friend and coming back home around sunset.
Politics that isn’t channeling the WWE
My parents had absolutely no idea where I was; outside of school anyway. They had no way to contact or track me; I would just roam around the countryside playing with friends.
Don’t get a girl pregnant, no fights and don’t die. I try my damndest to let my daughters live like this.
EDIT: The numbers of DMs I got congratulating my girls for not getting anyone pregnant rofl.
Newspapers, especially (I confess) reading the comics. It was how I started every morning. Also loved getting the big Sunday edition and spending all morning reading it.
Sitting as a family on a Sunday night watching Wild Kingdom, then sharing a big bowl of popcorn watching Wide World of Disney
Internet before corporate got hold of it. Was truly a wild west era
Learning tricks and secrets in games then telling your friends or being told from a friend so you can’t wait to get home and see it.
Now games secrets are leaked before the game even drops.
Before everyone having cellphones. Playing outside with your friend group. And your parents calling your name cause it’s time for dinner.
Learning pop culture history from VH1.
Being able to be unreachable. It’s hard to really get alone time or time to relax when you have a phone in you all the time and you can always be reached.
Internet being a brief thing you did, not a thing weaved constantly in your life. Going on AIM and chatting with friends felt like actual chats, and brief for 30 minutes.
You’d hang out in real life, the internet was just like watching TV. It was just something small and neat. Everything is so digital now.
I have a friend who has kids and they like hang out online. When we were in middle school and high school, we’d hang out in real life and only talk online as like a separate thing.
It’s probably how people in the 70s and 80s chatted on the phone later in the day with friend.
The 90s its like the world peaked for ten years.
Being unreachable.
The ability to be in public without having to worry about some random asshole filming you and putting it on the internet.
That kind of privacy we will NEVER get back.
Just being able to go out with no phones and parents trusting you to come home before dark
Lack of knowing what’s going on. The 24/7 news cycle is one of the worst things to happen to our society. Why do I need to know about a murder in Texas when I live on the East Coast. Constantly being hit with terrible horrific news 24/7. It’s just killing everyone’s mental health
Trick or Treating until 9pm
slamming the phone down to end a phone call
Sending away for free stuff in the mail with a “SASE”
And Columbia house CDs
Going to Radioshack for electrical components and kits. Everything is online now.
y’all remember all night skates? We’d literally spend 12 hours straight in rollerblades. Everyone used to do a lot more physical activities that were social in nature.
Sears catalog before Christmas
Trying to go to the bathroom, make a snack, and grab something during the commercial break.
National Parks not overly crowded. Used to never need a reservation to enter a park.
Figuring out where your friends are hanging out based on the pile of bikes in the front yard.
A world without social media.
Watching TV live! No pausing, no rewinding. The show you have been waiting weeks for is FINALLY on and it begins at 8pm sharp. So you and your siblings gather the snacks and fluff the pillows and pile onto the couch, and at 7:59pm you giggle and squeal and then it STARTS and you are all DEAD SILENT while the show is on… and there is a commercial break and you all let out a breath you’ve been holding in since the show started and then you all spin theories about what is going to happen next and someone runs to the bathroom, taking the stairs two and a time so they are back before the commercial break ends, and when the show comes back you are all DEAD SILENT again and your brother who ran to the bathroom has to hurdle over the dog and the coffee table and the pile of pillows to get back on the couch in time…
And when it is over you just CANNOT BELIEVE you have to wait A WHOLE WEEK to see what happens next, and that lovely anticipation gets you through all the chores and the homework and the thunderstorms etc etc… and then the night comes around again and you and your siblings are yet again bonding over this TV show experience.
TV just isn’t like that anymore, and I really miss when it was.
Owning your media and products and not perpetually renting the right to use them.
The joy of getting off a plane and having someone right there at the gate waiting for you
I think what the younger generation misses is the ability to throw together a social occasion. You were basically forced to learn how to call some people up, figure out a place to get together, and to have a party for no reason whatsoever.
In that sense, I think the internet has served to socially isolate ourselves from one another. People seem way too holed up at home.
Being a street kid from dawn till dusk. Going to Blockbuster with my sibling on a on a Friday night with $20 and getting movies and snacks to last the entire weekend.
I miss everyone watching the same thing, at the same time, so you could talk about it the next day. We’ll never have tv shows with huge ratings where everyone tunes in to the finale of MASH at the same time again.
Knowing where your friends are because their bikes are on the front lawn
An absolutely star filled sky
The offline world.
Living my coyote ugly dream dancing on bars thinking I’m hot shit but likely being an absolute embarrassment to myself and there being no video evidence of it
Peace of mind. There was a lot to distract us in the 90s and 80s, but nowhere near the levels now. You could go off and do your thing, and didn’t feel like you were missing out on something else.
Toy stores. Nothing beat the aisles and aisles of stuff at Toys R Us
burning your own cd!
Getting up at 8am during summer vacation, grap a pop tart and leave the house for an adventure with any of the other neighborhood kids, up to elbows in muddy water catching crayfish and frogs, building forts in the woods. When we were hungry someone’s mom would make sandwiches and then off we go, play baseball in a unbuilt lot. Come home when the street lights start to come on. No cell phones, most advanced technology people had were cassette based answering machines the rest of us had a pencil and paper next to the phone to leave a message who called.
Just being set free in the summer time. “Be home when the streetlights go out.” We were feral and free with no phones.
Things being special. When a popcorn party at school was something to look forward to or a personal pizza motivated you to read a book.
Genuinely excited for technology changes. Going from small tube TVs and monitors to flat screen was like something out of science fiction, same with mobile phones, tablets and laptops. Now it’s all pretty much normal to have these things and constant data and information. It was stuff we dreamed of. No Phone in the last decade has changed my life the way the first iPhone did. I’m not sure if there will be another huge technology change again. We went from barely functional dialup to gigabit fiber to the home in a 30 year span.
The thrill of picking up the home phone and it’s your crush calling you- and the disappointment of picking up and it’s aunt Beatrice asking for your mom instead. Caller ID has ruined that.
When I was a kid I just walked to my friends’ houses and knocked on the door and said “can so-and-so come out to play” and they would!
Not being able to be reached instantly via phone
Life without a smart/dumb phone
Leaving the house and being absolutely free. No phone. Nobody knows where I am. They just have my word, and that’s it. It was glorious
Pre-social media.
Going to blockbuster to pick out a movie
Not having a phone on you ever.
Social media when it was AIM and MySpace.
Midnight releases for video games.
I’m not quite 35 yet, but this is my answer. When I say midnight releases, I mean having to wait in line at the actual store for the clock to roll over before you can get the game. Most of the time, it was a party and full on experience on it’s own. The GTA 5 midnight release I went to hired a Dj for the event and they were giving out free burgers and hotdogs.
If you missed Thursday night’s episode of The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air that was it, maybe you’d catch it months later in syndication if you were lucky. No rewinding. No streaming. No spoilers to dodge because everyone watched at the same time.
Don’t get me wrong I love the convenience of streaming. But I miss looking forward to something, and that tiny bit of pressure to be there when it happened. That feeling’s hard to replicate.
Honorable mention to strolling through Blockbuster on Friday evening.
Flashlight tag
I loved looking forward to summer nights with the neighborhood kids running and hiding in the dark.
Now if someone sees some teenagers running around at night it’s a guarantee 9-1-1 call
Dating. Meeting each other organically. The old fashioned way. The internet has ruined dating
Ditto paper in school. I haven’t smelled that bluish-purple ink in like 35 years.
Doing research with strictly books, newspapers, etc. I loved having a ton all opened up and hand written notes. Spending hours at the library.
Being able to be unreachable. Either by work, or by anyone, to have things like vacation time free of other people’s expectations or demands.
When fast food was actually really cheap and tasted good. Now it’s neither.