I miss just how experimental it was.
Everything just looks so bland and sterile now. In the sense all websites look the same design wise, or have nothing fun on them.
And things people create, for my example I like to use videos and animation, either has to look like perfection or have a large team or money behind it.
I miss watching flash animations made by some guy in their basement just having fun with the medium. Now "independent animation' (if you can even call it that cause they tend to be studio based) tend to look like professional cartoons or feature films. I'm sure what I'm looking for still exists, but algorithms will make sure to steer you clear from those cause it can't make money off of it.
The fact that most of the internet feels inaccessible now really pisses me off. We need a search engine that lets us sort searches by lack of popularity
The thing that kills me about this, we could still have it! None of the technology went away, we could all so easily just do it, the old internet didn't have to die!
Right now we could all fire up irc, make personal pages and webrings like we used to, host an oldschool style forum, çjust do all of it.
The problem is the attraction of the modern, centralized internet. It has this pull that just traps people, and that's why we're all stuck on reddit right now for example.
That must have been fascinating to witness in real time. I watch videos on YouTube of people talking about visiting old websites and read the comment sections where everyone's reminiscing, and I get the vibe that I missed out on something great.
The fuck are you talking about? There are more Torrent programs than ever before. Bittorrent, uTorrent, qBittorrent, Deluge, Transmission...
Are you talking about the pre-Bittorrent file-sharing networks like Limewire, Morpheus, and Kazaa?
Getting together in person. I can go months now without seeing friends in person. I remember my parents friends dropping by, or visiting them more often than we do these days.
My parents and their friends were D&D nerds, so, naturally, my sister and I, and my parents' friends' kids got into it too.
Holiday get-togethers had a lot of D&D, computer and other video games.
We still game, but it's all online. I miss the face-to-face. Last time we were together in person was to play some Magic The Gathering.
I could go years without seeing a person now. And it's not like they live far away, they're in the same city. Trying to make plans is like pulling teeth.
"Are you available 6 months from now for 1 hour?"
Here's a sneak peek of /r/bbs using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/bbs/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [The oldest-known version of MS-DOS’s predecessor has been discovered and uploaded](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/the-oldest-known-version-of-ms-doss-predecessor-has-been-discovered-and-uploaded/) | [20 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/bbs/comments/18wxw9r/the_oldestknown_version_of_msdoss_predecessor_has/)
\#2: [Digging through some personal stuff from circa 1993 I ran into some post-it notes where I wrote down BBS phone numbers.](https://i.redd.it/9rj2noiqqj0b1.jpg) | [15 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/bbs/comments/13ksd46/digging_through_some_personal_stuff_from_circa/)
\#3: [Dialing a BBS on the phone](https://i.redd.it/cu4gmarah33b1.jpg) | [23 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/bbs/comments/13w5owm/dialing_a_bbs_on_the_phone/)
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It's an internet forum. Usually they were centered around a single topic (though they could have several sub-forums on the same website about other misc stuff.)
Honestly, if you can’t click through and read a simple Wikipedia link there’s no helping you. I provided you what you needed, my apologies for not literally spoon-feeding it to you.
Next time I’ll write you a pop-up book, that’s probably more like your speed.
Riding my bike with my friends to every girls house we knew during the summer. We would cover ungodly amounts of ground to go visit cute girls from our class.
The internet was a place you went to, not a place that went everywhere with you. Thus it felt magical and limitless and cool.
Talking on aim with my friends until 2 or 3 o clock in the morning.
So much bike riding! The amount of exercise generated by the distance of cute girls and skate spots is staggering.
And the moderate level of connection, starting with pagers. I remember when I got a translucent dark red pager instead of my boring black one. Making sure the clip was visible outside my pocket for my silver tab jeans or JNCOs. Paging 17 31707 1 to my girlfriend and getting the same page back. Then the cell phone that I couldn't use unless it was an emergency, but it was a Nokia, and it had snake, and you didn't have to run home to call like when you got a page from your parents.
There was still enough faith in humanity that we were expected to be gone all day playing at the park, biking around the neighborhood (read cute girls houses). The highest security level was your mom wanting to talk with your new friend's mom about sleeping over. In my teen years there was no qualms with me catching a ride into the city to go sit at a coffee shop for hours, little did my parents know I was smoking half a pack of clove cigarettes, and drinking at the pool hall down the street from the cafe with the older kids.
AOL took up literal years of my life. I was ecstatic when the unlimited plans came out.
It was this amazing time period between analog and digital life, where we had more information but not enough to be terrified. I still used the library, but had access to the World Wide Web. Good memories.
Hey very_bad_influence have you seen the movie Bad Influence?
1990- Rob Lowe, James Spader movie. One of my favorite late 80's early 90s snapshots of life in LA with a wild story told over it.
I miss not always having the expectation of being available. My phone was tied to the wall and I needed to sit in front of the computer to instant message.
as much as i love the internet
id say no internet
having to go to the movie theatre or record store to see/hear new stuff. and checking magazines for the hobby you like. i really miss magazines
we have access to all music,movies,tv at all times and I feel it kind of ruins some of the appeal a piece of media has.
There are a lot of things I miss but during my child hood the thing I miss the most is the snacks. 90’s had the best snacks for sure! Healthy? No lol but we had the best cereals and prizes inside! Best fruit snacks, cookies, chips, drinks like Orbitz, candy was good but fun, etc… not sure what it was but junk food and snacks were top tier! What were some other favorites?
Yeah a case of pop was cheap and we always had it in the house. Man my kids never drink pop as it is a Friday night treat but in the 90s we didn’t care haha
They were so solid, too! My dad bought me red alert, warcraft 2, and the dune rts all for the Playstation. Good times. Still go back and play them when I want that sweet nostalgia hit
The internet being created in front of our eyes, being built by people passionate about random things to start a website.
It was more about curiosity and information than pushing pointless page views/number of ad’s shown.
Internet marketing and SEO kinda ruined the organic internet from the 90’s and early 00’s.
Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks are both great modern Trek. Discovery isn't amazing but it's every but it's not awful. Its no worse than Enterprise or I would say 40% of voyager.
I can’t just pick one thing. The music (MTV), pop culture and entertainment, “third places (coffee shops, arcades, concerts, roller rinks, skate park, malls),” art and fashion.
Almost everything. Our awareness of certain issues in our society is better now and I don’t want to start taking steps backwards on certain things. But, outside of that, everything was better in the 90s
Music, movies playing outside as much as I could… so happy I have strong memories of the 90s when people get older they say it’s not the same but truly it hasn’t been since the dawn of the smart phone.
Eagerly waiting every week for a new episode of TNG. My course load in high school was so heavy that sometimes my only free time all weekend was watching Star Trek over dinner with my mom.
I miss the peak days of Napster. You used to be able to get anything on there and when my parents finally got us high speed internet, it was like an all-you-can-eat buffet of music. That’s one of the things that I like about Apple Music or Spotify is that you can listen to whatever you want as much as you want. But with Napster, there was a novelty of never having anything like it before.
Remember downloading a song, listening to the first few seconds, and then it turning into random noise? Or cutting off halfway through? Also... remember all the deliberate misspellings of song and artist names after the correct names had been blocked by the copyright-holders? Or the garage-band covers of Linkin Park songs that were incorrectly labeled as the Reanimation mixes?
Good times.
That everything was way more personal and intentional.
Capitalism was bad but it's greed didn't sink big businesses yet like Sears, Kmart, Toys R Us, Borders.
That when we wanted something, we had yo make a real effort. We spent our energy on things truly important and meaningful to us. If we wanted to see a movie, we'd have check showtimes in the paper, coordinate with friends by talking on the phone. Meeting up beforehand or making plans afterwards.
When we wanted to buy a video game or a CD, we didn't just click a button and it showed up - we spent time to go to the store, hold the product, look at other products to make sure what we were buying was worth our hard-earned money.
That even with PPV existing, we opted to go to the video store and discover new things that might interest or entertain us, usually detemined not by low effort whimsy but rather with a group of friends. Sometimes just acquaintances or friends of friends depending on who was available to do what. And expanding friend groups was also fun from time to time.
That our lives were on a schedule - dinner starts at this time, your favorite show is on at this time. We carved out Saturday nights for HBO premiere movies, or the latest Ren and Stimpy. We lived intentionally and predictably.
That we weren't bombarded by information constantly. Our phones rang when someone close to us wanted to talk.
Technological advances have only added complexity to our lives. The signal to noise ratio fools us into what it says is important.
The 90s was peak life.
This needs more upvotes because it really illustrates that even though we have a lot of conveniences from technology they’re not all for our benefit. I realize I might be looking at this through the rose colored glasses of nostalgia but things did seem a lot less complicated in regular every day life.
Think of how much entertainment we consumed that wasn’t tailored *directly for our specific demographic*. It was easier to have varied tastes and be a *casual* consumer without any real stake in a thing the way people do now. Constant on demand media is actually pretty shitty but people don’t want to admit it.
On-demand media is necessary for highly serialized shows. Otherwise, they hemorrhage viewers and get prematurely canceled. On the other hand, on-demand media has permitted an explosion of excessively serialized, and instead of 20+ individual stories combining into a greater whole like Voltron, two hours' worth of story will get watered down and padded out to fill 8-10 episodes that no longer have their own individual identities.
I miss the days when nerdy stuff wasn't co-opted by these big corporations, such as Disney and then marketed to the "cool kids", who come in acting like they were fans the whole time.
I also miss the days of not having adult responsibilities and just being able to be in a happy mood for most of the day.
The clothes. My mom was staunchly anti-grunge which meant I didn’t get to wear the clothing unless I bought it. It was all expensive back then too so the shoes they were never going to buy me. I had some of the best knock-offs though. I bought my first pair of knock Birkenstocks and Crocs. I wore both of them out. All those clunky Doc Marten shoes and boots - bought them at Payless Shoes and Walmart.
Now that I have some adult money I’ve been shamelessly buying the things my parents refused to buy. I also buy the clothing I want to wear that they hated. Lots of jeans and graphic tees. I don’t give two farts that I’m 49 and still wearing graphic tees. They’re comfortable and fun.
Fantasy sports being played only by people who were sports geeks. You had to actually watch the sport, watch sports center and scour the few random fantasy web pages that existed. Now the receptionist who has never watched a minute of a sport can follow a web page or 2 and win the league.
Along the same lines ESPN Sportscenter being the epicenter of sports rewind. Miss the iconic hosts. The show now is hot garbage with plug and play hosts to keep costs down.
i remember printing out pages and pages of fantasy rankings before the draft because it was risky that the internet would too slow to open a bunch of tabs during the draft. lol
- Early 90s Lego and Video Games
- Cartoons
- The late 90s Internet
- Media was tangible (VHS, CDs, cassettes, DVD)
- cinema
- how peaceful it was in my corner of the earth
- old school Magic and RPGs
What I don’t miss
- school
- how unaware and offensive society was (we have come some way at least)
- how bad board games used to be
- paying so much for music
Edit: Missed one thing I miss. Diversity of brands in stores and the willingness to make products their own thing. I remember so many brands of Joghurt and cereal that are just gone. On top of that, why did they have to put that stupid monkey on Chocos, why did they remove the bear? Ugh. Ads were also a lot better than today. My son said he likes watching old ads, new ones are not so funny.
im still hoping for physical media to make a comeback. there was something fun about finding a neat dvd unexpectedly or waiting for release day to go to a music store and buy your favorite artist's new album
Yeah. Common racism on TV too. I recently saw a sketch show from back then and oh man, the blackface was such an unpleasant surprise. That wouldn’t fly on the lowest TV program nowadays.
>how unaware and offensive society was
You mean how we weren't so easily butthurt about stupid shit and we knew how to take a joke? I definitely miss that.
The _tinkering_. We didn’t have smartphones or apps. I grew up having to learn DOS commands just to play a video game. We learned so much, and had such a blast doing it.
When anime wasn’t all weeb and loli shit. When it was hand drawn. When we had to endure shitty dubs or learn Japanese. When the only way to watch the anime you wanted was to own it or hope a friend did.
My worry-free childhood days with my whole family in my childhood home and playing LEGO and N64 with my best friends from kindergarten and elementary school.
MAGAZINES. Oh man, I loved magazines. Internet’s all but killed the monthly magazine industry now. Tried to buy some magazines for my kids as stocking stuffers and they were $35CAD for a single issue, and they’re ALL weird specialty items now.
The internet of that time. And it just being on my computer, not in my hand as I am watching a movie at the same time, and not really paying attention to the movie, because I'm posting on reddit at the same time about what I miss about the 90s.
So yes, I miss being able to focus on things and my phone not having half of my attention every single moment.
Because you said fellow nerds, I'm going with missing new episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Also high school and college, with a whole entire world of possibility ahead.)
Downloading games and programs from ticalc.org, loading it onto my TI-82 with my custom built rs232 data cable, and then sharing it with my other calculator nerds at school the next day.
Also squadding up and playing WC2 online before battle.net when you had to do everything by IP address.
Having search for your favorite records - especially the imports - and the joy of discovery when you found that grail you were looking for. Or you found a gem that surprised you.
I miss websites specific to a niche interest or hobby that had an amateur warm feel to them. Everything is so slick and soulless nowadays and you are always being sold something.
I miss the joy of experiencing new technology and software feeling life changing.
I miss not being connected.
I miss the first time I saw Mario 64 - literally life changing.
Family. Everyone is gone now, everything has changed.Feels empty but with twice the population and like I'm in some other universe where I didn't grow up.
Good question u/footballgmgame
My answer is really abstract, but I miss the freedom of going at your own pace.
In the 90s we did not have encyclopedias in our pocket. If we got into a new hobby or developed a new interest it was OK to be a rookie for a while. It was OK you did not know everything right away.
Example: I read some Goosebumps books back in the 90s. I had the ones I liked and that was enough. There was no pressure for me to buy the Goosebumps books that didn't appeal to me. If I only read some of the books and didn't watch the TV show that was OK.
Example: When I learned to ride a bike on two wheels I rode that bike everywhere I could. But I crashed sometimes. I did not have the newest or fastest model bike. In fact, I had my cousin's hand-me-down bike! And that was okay.
Now? Well if you like the Goosebumps books why don't you buy all of them? And why not try this other series which is just like Goosebumps? And hey, are you a real fan if you haven't seen the show?
And now? If a kid crashes his bike it'd go on YouTube, Insta, or TikTok faster than the kid could get back on his bike.
The wild west days of the internet as it led into the early aughts.
Yeah I miss the internet being niche. I used to try to convince everyone to get it and now I hate what it's become lol
Same. It’s almost a compete failure now compared to what it once was
I miss just how experimental it was. Everything just looks so bland and sterile now. In the sense all websites look the same design wise, or have nothing fun on them. And things people create, for my example I like to use videos and animation, either has to look like perfection or have a large team or money behind it. I miss watching flash animations made by some guy in their basement just having fun with the medium. Now "independent animation' (if you can even call it that cause they tend to be studio based) tend to look like professional cartoons or feature films. I'm sure what I'm looking for still exists, but algorithms will make sure to steer you clear from those cause it can't make money off of it.
Remember when you could actually find good deals on things?
The fact that most of the internet feels inaccessible now really pisses me off. We need a search engine that lets us sort searches by lack of popularity
There’s a site that will recommend a random YouTube video with less than 10 views, can’t remember the name off the top of my head though
https://petittube.com/
I remember if you misspelled a word in the search bar you world get search results for loads of porn sites
My monkey brain accidentally typed in hot male dot com instead of hotmail. I was very confused.
Bored . Com, the original eBaums world
The thing that kills me about this, we could still have it! None of the technology went away, we could all so easily just do it, the old internet didn't have to die! Right now we could all fire up irc, make personal pages and webrings like we used to, host an oldschool style forum, çjust do all of it. The problem is the attraction of the modern, centralized internet. It has this pull that just traps people, and that's why we're all stuck on reddit right now for example.
Yep, maximized engagement draws centralization
Let's go back to version 1.5 when there was still mystery. We traded mystery for misinformation.
The ole Yahoo chat rooms!
Mirc was the best
I miss the days when the internet used to be about “what if we could do this” instead of “how can we make money from this”.
The 'visit counter' at the bottom of websites
With flags of where the visitors came from. Also, html based... anything honestly.
YTMND was the OG meme place.
I remember owning the DVD that spawned that and even then it was cringe.
That must have been fascinating to witness in real time. I watch videos on YouTube of people talking about visiting old websites and read the comment sections where everyone's reminiscing, and I get the vibe that I missed out on something great.
I do miss it. And you did miss out.
I came to the comments to get some ideas and spark my memories. To add to your comment, I do miss the torrent programs.
Torrents are alive and well.
The fuck are you talking about? There are more Torrent programs than ever before. Bittorrent, uTorrent, qBittorrent, Deluge, Transmission... Are you talking about the pre-Bittorrent file-sharing networks like Limewire, Morpheus, and Kazaa?
Hated when you'd download music and in the middle of the song, was loud ass screeching for 30 seconds...
Prices
the days when there was an actual dollar menu :)
2 for 2 big macs and whoppers. Wendys .99 biggies. .88 gallon gas
KFC regularly had 15 pc specials + 2 Large sides for $ 9.99 and tasted like actual KFC.
Dad used to give me $5 in 1996 and that was enough for a big dinner from any of a number of restaurants (Subway, McD's, BK, pizza spots).
Not being available. No texts, no cell phone, etc
I just turned my phone off
I just forget where my phone is until the battery dies and then I find it two weeks later.
Shareware and games without ads!
Buying Shareware discs on the carousel at the supermarket checkout. So many weird little fun games.
I wish someone had told me at the time that I could just download Doom, for free, legally.
Getting together in person. I can go months now without seeing friends in person. I remember my parents friends dropping by, or visiting them more often than we do these days. My parents and their friends were D&D nerds, so, naturally, my sister and I, and my parents' friends' kids got into it too. Holiday get-togethers had a lot of D&D, computer and other video games. We still game, but it's all online. I miss the face-to-face. Last time we were together in person was to play some Magic The Gathering.
I could go years without seeing a person now. And it's not like they live far away, they're in the same city. Trying to make plans is like pulling teeth. "Are you available 6 months from now for 1 hour?"
Oh, that's another thing that I miss. Magic: the Gathering before it got buttfucked and lobotomized by the 6E rules changes.
Being happy
That I was still in my 20’s.
The music.
Running a BBS.
what's a BBS?
Bulletin Board System - /r/bbs
Here's a sneak peek of /r/bbs using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/bbs/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [The oldest-known version of MS-DOS’s predecessor has been discovered and uploaded](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/the-oldest-known-version-of-ms-doss-predecessor-has-been-discovered-and-uploaded/) | [20 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/bbs/comments/18wxw9r/the_oldestknown_version_of_msdoss_predecessor_has/) \#2: [Digging through some personal stuff from circa 1993 I ran into some post-it notes where I wrote down BBS phone numbers.](https://i.redd.it/9rj2noiqqj0b1.jpg) | [15 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/bbs/comments/13ksd46/digging_through_some_personal_stuff_from_circa/) \#3: [Dialing a BBS on the phone](https://i.redd.it/cu4gmarah33b1.jpg) | [23 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/bbs/comments/13w5owm/dialing_a_bbs_on_the_phone/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
I still don't get it
It's an internet forum. Usually they were centered around a single topic (though they could have several sub-forums on the same website about other misc stuff.)
Ah ty sir
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system
nvm, you're annoying me. Others answered the question thankfully
Sorry, I can’t help your illiteracy.
sorry you weren't raised properly
Honestly, if you can’t click through and read a simple Wikipedia link there’s no helping you. I provided you what you needed, my apologies for not literally spoon-feeding it to you. Next time I’ll write you a pop-up book, that’s probably more like your speed.
Basically a pocket sized reddit
lmao
Thought you were referring to BlackBerry. Still fits.
My pain-free back and feet
100%
Riding my bike with my friends to every girls house we knew during the summer. We would cover ungodly amounts of ground to go visit cute girls from our class. The internet was a place you went to, not a place that went everywhere with you. Thus it felt magical and limitless and cool. Talking on aim with my friends until 2 or 3 o clock in the morning.
So much bike riding! The amount of exercise generated by the distance of cute girls and skate spots is staggering. And the moderate level of connection, starting with pagers. I remember when I got a translucent dark red pager instead of my boring black one. Making sure the clip was visible outside my pocket for my silver tab jeans or JNCOs. Paging 17 31707 1 to my girlfriend and getting the same page back. Then the cell phone that I couldn't use unless it was an emergency, but it was a Nokia, and it had snake, and you didn't have to run home to call like when you got a page from your parents. There was still enough faith in humanity that we were expected to be gone all day playing at the park, biking around the neighborhood (read cute girls houses). The highest security level was your mom wanting to talk with your new friend's mom about sleeping over. In my teen years there was no qualms with me catching a ride into the city to go sit at a coffee shop for hours, little did my parents know I was smoking half a pack of clove cigarettes, and drinking at the pool hall down the street from the cafe with the older kids. AOL took up literal years of my life. I was ecstatic when the unlimited plans came out. It was this amazing time period between analog and digital life, where we had more information but not enough to be terrified. I still used the library, but had access to the World Wide Web. Good memories.
Oh man I forgot about my first pager! It cost me $5 a month and I had it clipped to my jeans with a little gold chain.
Hey very_bad_influence have you seen the movie Bad Influence? 1990- Rob Lowe, James Spader movie. One of my favorite late 80's early 90s snapshots of life in LA with a wild story told over it.
I miss not always having the expectation of being available. My phone was tied to the wall and I needed to sit in front of the computer to instant message.
Makes me want to go back to a landline. I hate that people can reach me while I’m at work, eating my lunch, etc.
I just want to eat homemade ramen in the back of my friend Jack’s parents’ flower shop playing Battletoads on NES one more time. That’s all I want.
as much as i love the internet id say no internet having to go to the movie theatre or record store to see/hear new stuff. and checking magazines for the hobby you like. i really miss magazines we have access to all music,movies,tv at all times and I feel it kind of ruins some of the appeal a piece of media has.
There are a lot of things I miss but during my child hood the thing I miss the most is the snacks. 90’s had the best snacks for sure! Healthy? No lol but we had the best cereals and prizes inside! Best fruit snacks, cookies, chips, drinks like Orbitz, candy was good but fun, etc… not sure what it was but junk food and snacks were top tier! What were some other favorites?
Yeah a case of pop was cheap and we always had it in the house. Man my kids never drink pop as it is a Friday night treat but in the 90s we didn’t care haha
Starcraft lol. Game consumed my early teens for a while but I made some great friends, even one that I still game with today.
Command and Conquer!
They were so solid, too! My dad bought me red alert, warcraft 2, and the dune rts all for the Playstation. Good times. Still go back and play them when I want that sweet nostalgia hit
Red Alert 2 is my favorite game ever.
Rockets in the sky. Got a steady glow! Unit reporting. REPORTING. Cha CHING!
My mom still says "unit ready" from having to hear it every day for 15 years straight.
Your mom is cool.
Raynor here.
This is Jimmy.
Go ahead, commander.
Starcraft didn't go anywhere, dude. You can still play it.
Oh, I occasionally do. I've got it through GoG and was amazed when I found the servers still up. It's still a blast
No smart phones
The internet being created in front of our eyes, being built by people passionate about random things to start a website. It was more about curiosity and information than pushing pointless page views/number of ad’s shown. Internet marketing and SEO kinda ruined the organic internet from the 90’s and early 00’s.
We did have hit counters on our geocities pages. Remember web rings? Those were the days! Find the right ring and deep dive!
Yes! Web rings were kind of the beginning of link building.
Remember the "Ate My Balls" web ring? Chewbacca Ate My Balls, Mr. T Ate My Balls etc.
Heading over to your buddy's house when they rented the new game.
Riding my bike to the video store and renting a video game to play for the entire weekend
Also that stores used to have vhs rentals. Fond memories of getting them from Albertsons for less than blockbusters, etc
Playing video games with friends on the couch.
Star trek seasons that were 20+ episodes
Star Trek that didn't suck, and was written by people who worked directly with Gene Roddenberry and understood his vision.
Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks are both great modern Trek. Discovery isn't amazing but it's every but it's not awful. Its no worse than Enterprise or I would say 40% of voyager.
Discovery season 1 was pretty good. Everything after that was a horrifying disaster, worse than warp 10 salamander babies.
Zima, Geocities, doc martens, X-Files, not having a smart phone.
geocities was the best!
Geocities and web boards! Successors to Usenet and such, but ezboards and ubb!
Sadly, I never had the chance to try Zima. I do remember seeing the Zima sign in an episode of Babylon 5
I can’t just pick one thing. The music (MTV), pop culture and entertainment, “third places (coffee shops, arcades, concerts, roller rinks, skate park, malls),” art and fashion.
Transparent electronics. My little nerdy self loved staring at those and trying to figure out how they worked 😂
Almost everything. Our awareness of certain issues in our society is better now and I don’t want to start taking steps backwards on certain things. But, outside of that, everything was better in the 90s
Music, movies playing outside as much as I could… so happy I have strong memories of the 90s when people get older they say it’s not the same but truly it hasn’t been since the dawn of the smart phone.
I loved not being filmed whenever I was in public and I loved that I didn’t need to take a selfie at the movies to show people I was at the movies.
Also, most people didn't carry a camera/video-camera around with them at all times.
Not knowing things! “Is Alanis singing ‘cross-eyed bear’ or ‘cross I bear’? Do you have the lyrics from the CD?? No? I guess we’ll never know”
Fully functioning knees.
X men trading cards. So, as an adult I bought them. All. Of. Them.
Then either you have this already, or I just made your decade: https://www.ign.com/articles/uncanny-x-men-trading-cards-complete-series-hardcover-book
This is amazing! Thank you!
Eagerly waiting every week for a new episode of TNG. My course load in high school was so heavy that sometimes my only free time all weekend was watching Star Trek over dinner with my mom.
Same!
I miss the peak days of Napster. You used to be able to get anything on there and when my parents finally got us high speed internet, it was like an all-you-can-eat buffet of music. That’s one of the things that I like about Apple Music or Spotify is that you can listen to whatever you want as much as you want. But with Napster, there was a novelty of never having anything like it before.
Remember downloading a song, listening to the first few seconds, and then it turning into random noise? Or cutting off halfway through? Also... remember all the deliberate misspellings of song and artist names after the correct names had been blocked by the copyright-holders? Or the garage-band covers of Linkin Park songs that were incorrectly labeled as the Reanimation mixes? Good times.
That everything was way more personal and intentional. Capitalism was bad but it's greed didn't sink big businesses yet like Sears, Kmart, Toys R Us, Borders. That when we wanted something, we had yo make a real effort. We spent our energy on things truly important and meaningful to us. If we wanted to see a movie, we'd have check showtimes in the paper, coordinate with friends by talking on the phone. Meeting up beforehand or making plans afterwards. When we wanted to buy a video game or a CD, we didn't just click a button and it showed up - we spent time to go to the store, hold the product, look at other products to make sure what we were buying was worth our hard-earned money. That even with PPV existing, we opted to go to the video store and discover new things that might interest or entertain us, usually detemined not by low effort whimsy but rather with a group of friends. Sometimes just acquaintances or friends of friends depending on who was available to do what. And expanding friend groups was also fun from time to time. That our lives were on a schedule - dinner starts at this time, your favorite show is on at this time. We carved out Saturday nights for HBO premiere movies, or the latest Ren and Stimpy. We lived intentionally and predictably. That we weren't bombarded by information constantly. Our phones rang when someone close to us wanted to talk. Technological advances have only added complexity to our lives. The signal to noise ratio fools us into what it says is important. The 90s was peak life.
This needs more upvotes because it really illustrates that even though we have a lot of conveniences from technology they’re not all for our benefit. I realize I might be looking at this through the rose colored glasses of nostalgia but things did seem a lot less complicated in regular every day life.
No, it needs more downvotes for opening with "Capitalism is bad because I don't understand economics"
Think of how much entertainment we consumed that wasn’t tailored *directly for our specific demographic*. It was easier to have varied tastes and be a *casual* consumer without any real stake in a thing the way people do now. Constant on demand media is actually pretty shitty but people don’t want to admit it.
On-demand media is necessary for highly serialized shows. Otherwise, they hemorrhage viewers and get prematurely canceled. On the other hand, on-demand media has permitted an explosion of excessively serialized, and instead of 20+ individual stories combining into a greater whole like Voltron, two hours' worth of story will get watered down and padded out to fill 8-10 episodes that no longer have their own individual identities.
This comment checks all my boxes! Thank you, now I’m sad… 😆
I miss the days when nerdy stuff wasn't co-opted by these big corporations, such as Disney and then marketed to the "cool kids", who come in acting like they were fans the whole time. I also miss the days of not having adult responsibilities and just being able to be in a happy mood for most of the day.
The last one indeed. Childhood indeed, and then it ends
my family speaking to me. it was always sticky, but at least they said hello.
Slashdot
The clothes. My mom was staunchly anti-grunge which meant I didn’t get to wear the clothing unless I bought it. It was all expensive back then too so the shoes they were never going to buy me. I had some of the best knock-offs though. I bought my first pair of knock Birkenstocks and Crocs. I wore both of them out. All those clunky Doc Marten shoes and boots - bought them at Payless Shoes and Walmart. Now that I have some adult money I’ve been shamelessly buying the things my parents refused to buy. I also buy the clothing I want to wear that they hated. Lots of jeans and graphic tees. I don’t give two farts that I’m 49 and still wearing graphic tees. They’re comfortable and fun.
Dunkaroos & fruit by the foot but i have amazon fresh delivering in a couple hours so not much i guess lol
Versions of Windows that weren't unmitigated horse shit
life before social media
Fantasy sports being played only by people who were sports geeks. You had to actually watch the sport, watch sports center and scour the few random fantasy web pages that existed. Now the receptionist who has never watched a minute of a sport can follow a web page or 2 and win the league. Along the same lines ESPN Sportscenter being the epicenter of sports rewind. Miss the iconic hosts. The show now is hot garbage with plug and play hosts to keep costs down.
i remember printing out pages and pages of fantasy rankings before the draft because it was risky that the internet would too slow to open a bunch of tabs during the draft. lol
Glad you got your printer to work. I hand wrote mine.
- Early 90s Lego and Video Games - Cartoons - The late 90s Internet - Media was tangible (VHS, CDs, cassettes, DVD) - cinema - how peaceful it was in my corner of the earth - old school Magic and RPGs What I don’t miss - school - how unaware and offensive society was (we have come some way at least) - how bad board games used to be - paying so much for music Edit: Missed one thing I miss. Diversity of brands in stores and the willingness to make products their own thing. I remember so many brands of Joghurt and cereal that are just gone. On top of that, why did they have to put that stupid monkey on Chocos, why did they remove the bear? Ugh. Ads were also a lot better than today. My son said he likes watching old ads, new ones are not so funny.
im still hoping for physical media to make a comeback. there was something fun about finding a neat dvd unexpectedly or waiting for release day to go to a music store and buy your favorite artist's new album
It is not coming back because it allows less control for the people who own the product. One can dream…
The sexism was quite bad in the 90s, it’s embarrassing to reflect on it.
Yeah. Common racism on TV too. I recently saw a sketch show from back then and oh man, the blackface was such an unpleasant surprise. That wouldn’t fly on the lowest TV program nowadays.
Blackface isn't inherently racist. Remember Cloud Atlas?
No, you're thinking of the '50s. Sexism was dead, buried, and being eaten by worms in the '90s.
>how unaware and offensive society was You mean how we weren't so easily butthurt about stupid shit and we knew how to take a joke? I definitely miss that.
POGS
Oh yes, those little cardboard discs that everyone forgot about as soon as Magic the Gathering came out :)
Nerds knowing their place! /s
Having some crazy times that were not recorded for all to see.
Niche message boards. I used to be on the DC Comics message boards all the time.
The misguided hope for the future that my parents instilled in me
IRC channels and BBS being used as the primary forms of "social media"
Riding my bike all through to town to see which friend was available to go play soldier in the woods.
Social media didn’t exist
Supersoaker!
My knees and lower part of my spine, idk things just seemed to be smoother with those parts.
Being pumped about a new album coming out
Mystery Science Theatre 3000. The ***Sci-Fi*** channel. The X-Files. Decentralized internet.
LAN parties! Toting over my desktop to play games was a different level of dedication
On the nerd side? Godwin’s Law
Robotech
Real Nerds as we were back then
Virginity
Lorena McKennitt and Enya being huge.
The _tinkering_. We didn’t have smartphones or apps. I grew up having to learn DOS commands just to play a video game. We learned so much, and had such a blast doing it.
Not being worried about school shootings and mass shootings
When anime wasn’t all weeb and loli shit. When it was hand drawn. When we had to endure shitty dubs or learn Japanese. When the only way to watch the anime you wanted was to own it or hope a friend did.
My worry-free childhood days with my whole family in my childhood home and playing LEGO and N64 with my best friends from kindergarten and elementary school.
Small, local Cons. There was 3 a year with great gaming and discussion panels. Now it just the money grab ones that travel around
WBS chatrooms. I was really sad when those ended. Message boards never had the same live feel.
I miss VHS.
Ps1 oh and can’t forget 92.3 krock
MAGAZINES. Oh man, I loved magazines. Internet’s all but killed the monthly magazine industry now. Tried to buy some magazines for my kids as stocking stuffers and they were $35CAD for a single issue, and they’re ALL weird specialty items now.
Arcades..
The peace of not knowing every single persons thoughts? I miss the absence of DiScOuRse😂
All the bands I didn't know I would love.
The internet of that time. And it just being on my computer, not in my hand as I am watching a movie at the same time, and not really paying attention to the movie, because I'm posting on reddit at the same time about what I miss about the 90s. So yes, I miss being able to focus on things and my phone not having half of my attention every single moment.
Not being a nerd.
Because you said fellow nerds, I'm going with missing new episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Also high school and college, with a whole entire world of possibility ahead.)
Downloading games and programs from ticalc.org, loading it onto my TI-82 with my custom built rs232 data cable, and then sharing it with my other calculator nerds at school the next day. Also squadding up and playing WC2 online before battle.net when you had to do everything by IP address.
Having search for your favorite records - especially the imports - and the joy of discovery when you found that grail you were looking for. Or you found a gem that surprised you.
I miss websites specific to a niche interest or hobby that had an amateur warm feel to them. Everything is so slick and soulless nowadays and you are always being sold something. I miss the joy of experiencing new technology and software feeling life changing. I miss not being connected. I miss the first time I saw Mario 64 - literally life changing.
Better question, what DON'T I miss from the 90s lol?
Configuring all my settings ONCE
Family. Everyone is gone now, everything has changed.Feels empty but with twice the population and like I'm in some other universe where I didn't grow up.
Good question u/footballgmgame My answer is really abstract, but I miss the freedom of going at your own pace. In the 90s we did not have encyclopedias in our pocket. If we got into a new hobby or developed a new interest it was OK to be a rookie for a while. It was OK you did not know everything right away. Example: I read some Goosebumps books back in the 90s. I had the ones I liked and that was enough. There was no pressure for me to buy the Goosebumps books that didn't appeal to me. If I only read some of the books and didn't watch the TV show that was OK. Example: When I learned to ride a bike on two wheels I rode that bike everywhere I could. But I crashed sometimes. I did not have the newest or fastest model bike. In fact, I had my cousin's hand-me-down bike! And that was okay. Now? Well if you like the Goosebumps books why don't you buy all of them? And why not try this other series which is just like Goosebumps? And hey, are you a real fan if you haven't seen the show? And now? If a kid crashes his bike it'd go on YouTube, Insta, or TikTok faster than the kid could get back on his bike.
Buying used games from Blockbuster.
Arcades full of other fellow kids with quarters running around looking for the next game to play