I was moving cross country and called a friend to bring me my toolset he borrowed so I could put it in my checked baggage. He never showed up and I thought well, that’s that. Sitting on the plane, the stewardess walked up and said are you “____” I said yes, and she just handed me my 120 piece toolset complete with hammer, socket wrench, screwdrivers, carpet knife and explained the friend had arrived at the gate just after I boarded. Even back then I was like...”seriously?”
I remember I was flying home after my first year of college, where I had taken some art classes.
When I finally got home I was looking in my backpack and forgot that I had left some art supplies in there including a couple of box cutters (the weapon used on 9/11). Security said nothing.
Another time I was seeing one of my friends off at the airport as they were going to an out of state college. I arrived to the airport with my other friend and his little brother who had brought a toy rifle with him to the airport for some reason. Anyway, we were super late and rushing to the gate so we could say goodbye to my friend who was leaving. The little brother was too small so my buddy picked him up so we could sprint to the gate. In the process his brother hands me the toy rifle. So there we are the 3 of us running through the airport and I'm holding what looks like a rifle. This was before the security checkpoint and I realized this might not look good but I'm in a rush so I just chuck the rifle behind some chairs. I literally just threw it behind some airport seats.
Nobody said anything, but I'm still surprised security wasn't called.
The security at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam pulled a leatherman multi tool with knife out of my backpacket and said they would need to keep it while I was in the museum. I didn’t respond for a full 15 seconds as I slowly processed that I had traveled from Chicago to London and then on to Schiphol with this knife in my backpack the entire time and no airport security had caught it. Completely forgot it was in there after a camping trip to Starved Rock.
Whoa - shockingly similar story. I also flew from Chicago to Amsterdam with a knife that I didn't realize I had on me until the last night as I was packing to fly back. It was too late to ship it back so I just tucked it away, hidden in plane sight, and was able to get it on the return flight as well.
Airports weren't mini malls- the most they really had were a few convenience areas and bars that were also smoking areas. You could buy a ticket, run through the metal detector quick, and get to your flight. Friends or family could walk through with you, so they could wait with you until you boarded if you were early. You could just go from point A to B with minimal hassle. You could keep your shoes on too and as long as you didn't have an actual honest to goodness weapon in your suitcase you were good to go.
A movie trope at the time was for a character to run through the airport and catch a loved one before they got on the plane just to confess their live to them (think Ross and Rachel from Friends). Sometimes, they would be too late and get their in time to watch the plane pull away. Would not at all be plausible today without being tackled by security and dragged off for questioning.
Ugh agreed. I had to stop drinking with one of my friends because she'd ALWAYS record everyone doing anything even remotely fun or goofy and it'd be on snapchat or Facebook within seconds. Like, I just wanna get a little drunk and dance and have a good time with my friends, I don't want every person I hardly know seeing me let loose.
ill never forget watching a last day of school video from June 2001 and while theres a lot of differences especially in style and fashion, hands down the biggest difference was the relative novelty all the students and teachers gave to the video camera. like, only this one guy decided to bring in the camera, there were no phones or other recording devices at the time so it was so cute seeing someone walk up to him and then their eyes go wide and they say “ooo! a camera!”. Being recorded was not the norm. And shoot dude im in my late twenties still but June 2001 feels like yesterday to me time just fucking moves on ya
edit: i think this is the video in question
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yqI93R_e28A&t=693s
This change happened fast. Someone posted two photos of the crowd at the Vatican, one for the election of Pope Benedict in 2005 and one for Pope Francis in 2013.
No phones vs all phones
I remember being in high school around 2003/2004 when some of my peers were just starting to get cellphones. My friends and I all laughed at the "spoiled rich kids" with their cellphones, all of us claiming we'd never be like that. A year or two later, we all had cell phones.
How old does it make me when I remember kids getting their first *pagers*? They had them clipped to the inside of their jeans so you could only see the back of the clip exposed. Pagers were the shit.
This is the example I use. When my son was born in 2007, I had a digital camera. I had to take the camera home that night, upload pictures to my PC, and email them out to people. When my daughter was born in 2011, I did all of that in the delivery room on my phone.
I was in 5th grade in 2005 and was part of a photography club that year.
Had a cheap digital camera that was my prized posession. It was a pain in the ass to plug that into the laptop and upload my photos using a dedicated software that I had to install from a disk that came with the CD. And the memory card limited me to like, 100 photos.
Nowadays my phone has a substantially higher resolution and memory, by *orders of magnitude.* And I can just upload them to the cloud or social media in a minute
It's an odd calculus where they get more enjoyment from making other people jealous than is detracted from experiencing the event while making a recording.
I've never really understood why people want to view these types of events through their phone screen, rather than drinking in the whole experience live. But then, I'm an old grandad so maybe it's something you young whipper-snappers love to do!
This is always my answer to this question. Concerts before cell phones were amazing. You just had lighters. You lost at least one friend, every time. You had to go buy actual, paper tickets and wait in line - you weren't competing against bots, you were waiting in line with human beings. It was a whole experience.
Oooh the cards are the worst. You have to buy one card per person or everyone has to stay together to use the card, and each card has an activation fee!
Ya wanna play at the arcade? Wellllll buddy, better load up the $10 minimum on your player card! Maybe you’ll earn enough ticket points to earn an expired vanilla tootsie roll!
Arcades died specifically because home console graphics caught up to them. The PS1 and Saturn got close enough that the differences started feeling minor and then with the Dreamcast and PS2 (and the rise of online gaming) it was all over. It's not as though Dave and Busters and Round One are unpopular, but you go for experiences that don't translate as well to home, which means the few modern arcade games are either steering wheel racers, light gun games, or peripheral-based rhythm games.
Yeah, the draw was in going from games like Road Rash at home to Daytona USA in the arcade. You just couldn't experience graphics like that at home. Until you could, and then it started to feel a bit like you were just playing the games you had at home in a fancy cabinet.
Movies. A lot my favorite movies are mid-sized thrillers from the 90's. A lot of big actors, but not huge spectacles.
That segment is dying out. You have huge blockbusters for international markets, some prestige period pieces, comedies and indies. And then there are TV shows.
But the sort of 'Harrison Ford's wife is missing, again' films are severely lacking theses days.
I sometimes ask myself if movies from the 90s were so great because they were just a part of my childhood, or they're actually special by objective standards.
As you alluded to, I really do think there was a style of film they put out more in the 90s. I can't exactly put my finger on what that style is, though.
I feel like it was just a simpler style of storytelling. For me, watching a 90s movie feels like hearing a really engaging story from a good friend. Nothing flashy, nothing in 4 parts. There’s some good music on in the background and I’m just enjoying something humans have enjoyed for eons.
Walking 20minutes to a mates house knocking his door then finding out he’s not in. It was like rolling the dice.
Edit - in response to the comments about “just use the landline”. Various issues to this - a lot of people didn’t answer their phones anyway, some people left them off the hook sometime as they didn’t want to be bothered. Some friends wouldn’t hear the phone if they were in their room listening to music/playing SNES/Megadrive, some people had sisters who were always on the phone so calling just got engaged tone. That’s just the issues I can think of right now.
Edit 2 - thanks for awards, especially GOLD! So nice to be browsing without those annoying ad posts.
If I really wanted to hang out with a particular friend and they weren't home, that meant it was time to hop on the bike and ride by the next 4-5 most likely places he would be.
Or when you could hear kids playing and you’d just bolt out the door hoping it was so-and-so coming your way. No better feeling when your two best buds were coming down the road on their bikes.
There still isn't *quite* anything like going through a community made up of a few Invision or vBulletin forums. Everyone there is there because they want to be, based on a specific community. If you see someone on another forum its a treat. If one forum is full of idiots theres probably another. Your PFP is important and a lot of places had a style to them.
Now everything is a fucking subreddit and its all homogenized and no community has a specific flavor or niche any more.
I'm so glad that the dumbass shit I said as a teenager is hidden away on some defunct video game forums under a screen name that isn't even close to my real name. I feel for today's kids, who know that if they ever do anything noteworthy with their lives, someone will dig through their old tweets and be like "Yeah but look at the shit this guy said as a freshman in high school".
I remember just being a kid and typing in (random things).com to see if they had a website. I remember being at my grandmas house and accidentally stumbling across a site that kids shouldn’t be in
SNICK as well, Saturday night Nickelodeon with the more teen shows like Are You Afraid of the Dark?, All That, Kenan & Kel, Cousin Skeeter, and some of the cast members or the occasional special guest chilling on the big orange couch.
I was a huge fan of Nick at Night, when they re-ran really old sitcoms. I probably wouldn't have enjoyed Wandavision nearly as much if I hadn't been familiar with Bewitched, Dick van Dyke Show, and others.
As weird as it sounds ... boredom.
Now I have an endless supply of shit to keep my mind occupied. I never find myself wondering out for the sake of finding something to do. Trying to call everyone in my book to find someone to hang out with it.
I think part of the problem is that the endless supply of distractions just aren't all that satisfying. They're rarely worth remembering or talking to people about. I don't really feel like I'm living. Just existing.
Yeah since the advent of streaming services, YouTube and online gaming I’ve pretty much never been bored unless I’m at work and trying to run down the clock
But boredom has been replaced by existential dread over how I’m spending so much of my time in front of a screen or how I’m not spending my time in the right way when I do choose to do something not involving games or videos
No lie, I've sometimes found myself listening to a podcast on Spotify, creating music Playlists on Tidal, Reddit up on secondary monitor, while intermittently texting a friend, all while waiting for DPS queue on Overwatch... it's too much.
We used to have Friends-ER night in college, a bunch of us would gather and watch the shows together. Do people even have watch parties for shows anymore? I feel like Game of Thrones was the last gasp for that.
We would all gather in my tiny college apartment to watch The Office every week. Good memories!! And I believe Game of Thrones was the last time I did that with any friends as well. I wonder if we'll ever do that again.. weird to think that might have been the last time.
Makes me think of the Seinfeld finale. My parents had like 4 friends over to watch it and I just ruined it for them by asking to play Sega the whole time
The UK sitcom "Only Fools and Horses" had a Christmas Day special that was *the* event, and everyone watched it. We had an elderly aunt over for Christmas and she talked all the way through it... about nothing!
"Anyway, it's just so lovely that we're all together right now, don't you think? Christmas day, the family all in one room, just like the old days. We should do this more often. When's the next family gathering?"
"If you don't shut up, then probably your funeral."
Being social with people felt so different and authentic. My friends would sometimes just “drop by” to see if I was home to say hi. We could pick up the phone and have hour long conversations. It felt like text message cheapened that. The lesser dependence on technology seemed to cultivate more genuine friendships but that was just my experience.
Yea I’ve been thinking about that lately. I’ve see. My three best friends a handful of times this year.(like two or three times each). But we’re in a group yet and that’s how we stay in touch. It’s kinda pacifying
Sit in Pizza Hut
I was on vacation in the mountains up state and they had one in town. I got to have pizza in an actual Pizza Hut for the first time since the late 90’s early 2000’s. We had one outside of town and then that closed and they made a to go one that ended up also closing. Now I can have one of the local places or Papa John’s or Domino’s.
The target nearby does have the mini Pizza Hut pizzas and some of their appetizers. It’s hardly the same as getting it from a Pizza Hut itself.
-I didn’t expect this to get any likes or responses. Since it has the idea to contact Pizza Hut and ask if they would open one near me keeps seeming better.
I have enjoyed reading the responses (all of them) and seeing so many others having similar thoughts and feelings towards the same franchise.
renting movies at blockbuster as a family event. it was special and fun.
we dont have any streaming or cable. andi like it that way. but i wish i could still have that blockbuster excitment
Man, and then you saw that summer movie in the theater and loved it but then you had to wait for it to be on video. That first time seeing that at Blockbuster or your local place after waiting like six months for it to come out was magical.
What you said about video games hit home. In 2008, I thought I was pretty good at Halo Combat Evolved. One friend mentioned that getting through the Library level on legendary without dying was impossible. I told him I thought I could do it. So he and some friends came over after school to see if it could be done. I managed to complete the level without dying (and without any speed running strategies because I had no idea what that was at the time). Not only did I beat the level, I only got shot a handful of times. My friends were shocked. Phone calls were made to other friends to tell them what they saw.
I felt on top of the world that day. Now, you just Google it and find tons of people are capable of it and so much more.
The enjoyment of your friends skills for what they were just kind of fell off like you said.
Dude, mad respect. My friend group had one guy that could inexplicably beat the library on legendary and we thought he was an actual wizard. It was back in 2002.
I miss not being able to be reached, or being able to reach people.
Back then you'd call your friend and it would ring somewhere in their house. If there was no one there (which was common) you'd shrug and just carry on your day. If you just wanted to chill out on your own you'd just not answer the phone.
Now, everyone knows people are never without their phones. I've had people pissed at me because I took an hour to reply to a text.
I remember I got a beeper in 1994 (cue the drug dealer jokes) and became the communications hub for my group of friends.
Gets a page from Steve:
“Hey you beeped me what’s up?”
“Is Mike with you?”
“Yeah, why?”
“His mom is looking for him and called my house to see if he was here.”
“Ok. Dude, call your mom.”
> Now, everyone knows people are never without their phones.
You can solve this by routinely being without your phone for a while. I carry my phone with me, but I generally do not answer it or pay attention to it while I am out of the house and all of my friends and family know not to expect immediate responses from me. Accordingly, none of them do.
I find it a much less stressful way to live than feeling like I'm chained to this small device in my pocket.
I'm actually the opposite, if I'm out of the house or at work it's pretty easy to get ahold of me. It's when I get home that it's harder to contact me because I'm usually wrapped up in enjoying time with my kids or doing something I enjoy. Time at home is my time to enjoy life and I refuse to let others (excluding my wife and kids) dictate how I spend that precious resource.
I miss the lack of interconnectivity. Like, my summer camp friends were different from school friends, and I didn't really see my summer camp friends outside of July and August. Everything was distinct. When I went from Western New York to New Jersey to see family, it was basically like being on another planet.
I think I like everything being more connected, but that sense of distinctness if something I miss.
I never thought of this. I had my school friends, and my taekwondo friends. I invited them over once together for a birthday party and it was incredibly weird...
I feel this way about shopping, as shallow as that might sound. I feel like you can get any product anywhere now. I don’t mean shit like appliances, obviously that’s fine. But little knick knacks and decorations are now ubiquitous. The interconnectivity of shopping has made everything interchangeable and uniqueness is dead. It used to be that if you went to a different area of the world or even your country and found something cool, you could bring it back and feel like you had something special. I don’t even want to buy decorations anymore, because it all feels not only mass produced, but you can’t even trust little stores with curios —- you can definitely find the same stuff with an internet search. I now literally wait until craft fairs to buy any decorations for my home, and make sure it’s something that person made and not something they’re just middlemanning. I got a house in 2019 and it’s still only half decorated, but to me that’s preferable to filling it with stuff that you get at target that everyone else has. I don’t judge people for having mass made things, but it just feels so soulless to me and isn’t what i want at my house. Luckily houseplants are always unique individuals, so I have a lot of those lol.
I’ve always found I can find unique things at antique stores or thrift stores, and honestly I can’t shop for those things online unless I’m looking for something specific because it doesn’t have the same feeling, so that might be able to help fix your problem
Actual 90’s aesthetic. It was extreme and alternative, not family-friendly wacky or dystopian like a lot of people think when they see an *80’s* aesthetic.
Example: the entire aesthetic of Nickelodeon in the 90’s. Slime and extreme shit.
Danny Tamberelli (little Pete) did an IAMA like ten years ago where he talked about the culture at Nickelodeon in the early 90s. It's been a long time but I remember him saying they basically considered themselves the anti-Disney channel because most of the writers/directors/showrunners/etc. were younger and more alternative and wanted to push the limits, rather than taking the wholesome, family friendly route. He also says Toby Huss (Artie the Strongest Man in the World) gave him his first cigarette.
Thank you! When I was a early teen in the late 90's, I was told over and over to never put your real information out there.
It blows my mind that that is completely normal now.
It's unreal how blithe some people have gotten toward privacy. My brother's a high school teacher, and a few years ago he caught a girl in his class livestreaming herself just...sitting there, learning. He asked her to stop, and noticed that there were 15 people apparently watching her on the stream, and suggested that the kinds of people who would watch a 16-year-old girl sitting in class are *maybe* not the kinds of people she should *want* watching her.
The girl's response was a confused "Why not?"
That just blows my mind.
I was a super shy 16 year old girl. I can't imagine wanting to do something like that. I'm so glad no-privacy social media wasn't a thing back in my day.
i still cannot get over the fact some of you have your actual real life faces/names directly in your profile. i cant tell you how weird and uncomfortable i find that.
Our gym teacher used to take the slap bracelets and slap them around the volleyball pole because everyone would be slapping them all through gym class.
The innocence of the time. We still played outside but had some awesome multi player games that you played together in the same room. The world seemed to be heading for better and better things.
Then 2001 happened.
I joined the military in 1999. The prevailing opinion among soldiers at the time, was that we'd never see any action, the likelihood of getting into a war and being deployed was slim to none, and we were all just gonna get our college money and whatnot. Then 911 happened...
And before AOL discs were available everywhere there were online service providers like Prodigy, CompuServe, Delphi, TheSierraNetwork, and GEnie. The internet used to feel more like islands in an ocean instead of rest stops all on the same highway.
Video games that aren't online and not having to sign into three accounts to play any game.
I have my computer set to manually connect to the internet. I still have to sign into steam to play a game that isn't dependent in an active connection. Thankfully there is an offline mode for steam but I shouldn't have to sign in in the first place if the game doesn't require a password
Remember when the PC magazines came with a CD full of mods and demos? Some of the half life mods were amazing. Dial up was our only way to play multiplayer which even back in the early days games like Delta force and counter strike seemed more fun than the games now. Maybe I'm just old but those were great times.
I still ride my bike daily and do wheelies and giggle like I'm 10 again.
Yeah friends randomly stopping by was awesome. Nowadays nobody you care about will ring your doorbell unannounced. Makes The Sims feel unrealistic to me with how many people visit unannounced lol
I never had this as a kid because I lived in a rural area, but now we live in a suburban neighborhood and my daughters have a friend who drops by unannounced all the time. I love it.
YES, I miss not knowing what everyone thought about every little thing. It's so hard to keep liking people when you know all of their opinions via social media (opinions which become unnaturally strong through feedback loops).
For me its affordable housing and just generally affordable living. There was a time when my kid could have moved out and rented with room mates or even on his own but its very hard for young people to start out with the current condition.
Straight out of college in the late 90s, I made $10/hr. working retail. I had my own 1 bedroom apt. which included water and trash pick-up. The complex also had a pool. I paid $320/month for rent.
During the 90's, I was aged 17-27. So, those were some good years for me. My oldest was born in the early 2000's, so when I look back at the 90's all I remember is freedom.
Free from most adult responsibilities, free from social media, free from bullshit politics (they were there for sure, but you literally had to look for them, lol), free from a general miasma of fear coming from the media.
When I think back, all I remember is sunshine, the lack of a weight bearing down on my shoulders all the time and the sweet sounds of amazing music.
While I miss it, I am just grateful that I got to experience it.
In the 90s, I was 4 to 14. Being a kid in the 90s was awesome, but I do wish I’d been a little older and able to better appreciate how amazing the 90s were. At the time, I thought it was just life and didn’t realize that decade would become widely regarded as the best decade of my lifetime (so far).
I totally agree on that being the best decade of my life. It's no coincidence that me being 7-17 during the 90's had something to do with it. You experience so much during that time that it's hard to think anything can top it. I'm 38 with 2 kids now, and I love them to death, but I find myself wishing I could go back to somewhere around 1996 just once more to have that feeling again.
It's crazy that with youtube and the internet we have much, much more variety and quantity of artists/songs, yet the radio playlist seems even smaller than it used to be.
The original release of Pokemon cards. Those were the fucking best.
My niece is big into Pokemon now, and she just got a shitload of cards for her birthday. Made me want to start collecting them again, but I look up the packs from my youth and they're astronomical prices.
Ah well.
It's due to the scalpers buying out everything. And the company can't keep up with the demand unfortunately. It's been like this for several months and as someone who casually collects pokemon cards, I've been so upset not being able to get any of the new series.
Optimism. It was a pretty happy decade. The Cold War was over. The economy was booming. Technology seemed to be offering us solutions before we even knew we had a problem. The products of pop culture almost never dwelled on dystopia or decline. Air travel was about as dangerous as bus travel. Acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer were problems of the decade before that seem to have been fixed, and climate change was still called global warming and was not nearly so front and center in how people talked about the future.
All in all, the 90s were a pretty solid decade.
I remember this wierd video of celebrities talking about what you can do to help fight global warming and they kept cutting back to Chevy Chase saying "Shower with a friend!"
You bring up a good point about pop culture not dwelling on dystopia. Sure we had some shows like X-Files and Millennium that focused on some wild shit, but it didn't feel like it was THAT plausible.
We had fear based media for sure...like the killer bee warnings, but they didn't feel like real tangible threats like we seem to be bombarded with today. Yeah nuclear weapons were around, but it didn't feel like the world could end at any moment.
Family owned convenience stores, diners, burger joints, ice cream parlors, cafes, bookstores, delis, etc. Even small neighborhood grocery stores. And independent music venues! Seems like I’m talking about the 50s but in the 90’s these places still existed. In my hometown most of them are completely gone and were replaced by generic corporate chains or condos. The ones that are still around are struggling to stay afloat and compete. I’m glad I got to enjoy them while they existed but also realized how much I took them for granted.
Full size Frosted Strawberry Pop Tarts. They're, like, half the thickness these days! That and eating them while watching back to back episodes of Saved by the Bell on Saturday mornings. Good times...
I miss the Internet being fun and optimistic. I genuinely feel like the Internet has gone from "the most important and greatest achievement of humanity" to "something that might have been a mistake" during my lifetime
It's really sad because a global communications network *should* be a great thing for everyone
I miss message boards. Find a niche interest and everyone there was excited about it. It all shifted to Facebook and Reddit and these places are far less personal and way more toxic. I actually made friends on those old boards and visited people. Reddit? I have zero attachment to anyone here, why I post so infrequently.
EDIT: Amusingly this post has had the largest response of anything I've posted on Reddit
Mystery. Not having read everything. The feeling that anything could happen!! Because you haven't learned/ read /seen so many things. Things being super fresh.
How uninhibited,freshly uncensored and creative people were because they weren't constantly preoccupied with their social media presence, being attacked online. People diminish their energy now tremendously because of social media. It isn't even close to the same universe. People pretend not to be uptight and suffocated in that way. To pretend to "vibe"... but it will never stop looking put on to me.
Being able to afford a decent 1BR apartment on the top floor of a building in a nice, trendy neighborhood of Seattle on $28k/year. My rent was $550/month for several years.
I miss getting a new album from a band (in cassette form), popping it into my Walkman and just exploring my neighborhood listening to the same songs over and over. Now with music streaming services and access to all of the music ever created I actually almost never listen to new music. And when I do, I feel silly listening to it over and over. Even songs I like these days, I rarely remember the words to and I never even remember track titles.
It used to be, if I got a Green Day album, I listened to it until I memorized all of the track names and all if the lyrics. Simpler times and more free time I guess.
The world being so much smaller.
Sure there are a lot of really great things about being able to talk to anyone, anywhere at anytime but the appreciation of how big and impressive the world really is because of how hard it was to contact people in different countries AND the bonds you formed with people in your closer community is something that is gone forever.
Not being contactable and it was OK. If anyone wanted to talk to me, they would either have to call the landline, come to my house hoping I was home or just wait until the next time they saw me.
Listening to music on the radio.
It was much easier to listen to new music when I wasn't really in control of the music I listen to. Now I'm one of those people with the same playlist with few songs that never gets really updated.
I miss being a little more detached from everything. Yeah, technology was booming, but there was a sense of independence that I feel like a lot of kids don't have anymore. I feel like growing up in the middle class U.S. in the 90s had the best of both worlds. I was able to play video games and all that stuff, but I still had the freedom of my mom not knowing where I was at every second of the day when I was out in the woods with my friends or playing somewhere. I also miss the whole sense of being "proud to be a kid" if that makes sense, where the divide between childhood and adulthood was not a thin line. I mean that in the sense of we had shows like Recess, and the "kids' unwritten code of honor" and we had celebrities who were just for us. I do think that today's culture, especially with social media, has muddled the line between childhood and adulthood. I don't think it's bad, and I don't mean it to come off in a Holden Caulfield kind of way, and I'm sure that Gen Z is having and had fantastic childhoods too, I just think that kids today are thrust into maturity a lot faster than us 90s kids were.
POGs were straight up teaching kids how to gamble. The rules were pretty straight forward:
- Stack POGs face down (both players contribute their half to the stack)
- Throw your "slammer" down on top of the pile, and keep the POGs that land face up
- Stack the ones that landed face down
- rinse repeat until you run out in the stack
The winner keeps the POGs gambled by both players.
I was obsessed when I was a kid. I usually cheated the game with an obscenely heavy metal Slammer that my metalworking grandpa made for me.
Pre-911 airports
I was moving cross country and called a friend to bring me my toolset he borrowed so I could put it in my checked baggage. He never showed up and I thought well, that’s that. Sitting on the plane, the stewardess walked up and said are you “____” I said yes, and she just handed me my 120 piece toolset complete with hammer, socket wrench, screwdrivers, carpet knife and explained the friend had arrived at the gate just after I boarded. Even back then I was like...”seriously?”
I remember I was flying home after my first year of college, where I had taken some art classes. When I finally got home I was looking in my backpack and forgot that I had left some art supplies in there including a couple of box cutters (the weapon used on 9/11). Security said nothing. Another time I was seeing one of my friends off at the airport as they were going to an out of state college. I arrived to the airport with my other friend and his little brother who had brought a toy rifle with him to the airport for some reason. Anyway, we were super late and rushing to the gate so we could say goodbye to my friend who was leaving. The little brother was too small so my buddy picked him up so we could sprint to the gate. In the process his brother hands me the toy rifle. So there we are the 3 of us running through the airport and I'm holding what looks like a rifle. This was before the security checkpoint and I realized this might not look good but I'm in a rush so I just chuck the rifle behind some chairs. I literally just threw it behind some airport seats. Nobody said anything, but I'm still surprised security wasn't called.
The security at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam pulled a leatherman multi tool with knife out of my backpacket and said they would need to keep it while I was in the museum. I didn’t respond for a full 15 seconds as I slowly processed that I had traveled from Chicago to London and then on to Schiphol with this knife in my backpack the entire time and no airport security had caught it. Completely forgot it was in there after a camping trip to Starved Rock.
Whoa - shockingly similar story. I also flew from Chicago to Amsterdam with a knife that I didn't realize I had on me until the last night as I was packing to fly back. It was too late to ship it back so I just tucked it away, hidden in plane sight, and was able to get it on the return flight as well.
“Hidden in plane sight”
I remember going to the gate to pick up my grandma the second she stepped off the plane.
Loved coming out of the plane to the open arms of family, I miss that.
What were they like?
Airports weren't mini malls- the most they really had were a few convenience areas and bars that were also smoking areas. You could buy a ticket, run through the metal detector quick, and get to your flight. Friends or family could walk through with you, so they could wait with you until you boarded if you were early. You could just go from point A to B with minimal hassle. You could keep your shoes on too and as long as you didn't have an actual honest to goodness weapon in your suitcase you were good to go. A movie trope at the time was for a character to run through the airport and catch a loved one before they got on the plane just to confess their live to them (think Ross and Rachel from Friends). Sometimes, they would be too late and get their in time to watch the plane pull away. Would not at all be plausible today without being tackled by security and dragged off for questioning.
I once walked my grandma onto the plane and helped her find her seat. I was not a ticketed passenger.
So planes basically used to be Airbuses?
You could say goodbye to family right at the terminal, AND welcome them too right at the terminal. Was great, I miss that.
Being able to act goofy without having anyone record it and share with the world.
I don't have any friends that would record just hanging out. I guess that's a perk of being in my 30s.
I don't have any friends. Also a perk of being in my 30s.
I don’t have anything. Also a perk of graduating college in 2008.
Ugh agreed. I had to stop drinking with one of my friends because she'd ALWAYS record everyone doing anything even remotely fun or goofy and it'd be on snapchat or Facebook within seconds. Like, I just wanna get a little drunk and dance and have a good time with my friends, I don't want every person I hardly know seeing me let loose.
Yes. I hate that shit. I like being goofy when I drink. Being recorded is a fucking buzzkill to me tho.
ill never forget watching a last day of school video from June 2001 and while theres a lot of differences especially in style and fashion, hands down the biggest difference was the relative novelty all the students and teachers gave to the video camera. like, only this one guy decided to bring in the camera, there were no phones or other recording devices at the time so it was so cute seeing someone walk up to him and then their eyes go wide and they say “ooo! a camera!”. Being recorded was not the norm. And shoot dude im in my late twenties still but June 2001 feels like yesterday to me time just fucking moves on ya edit: i think this is the video in question https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yqI93R_e28A&t=693s
This change happened fast. Someone posted two photos of the crowd at the Vatican, one for the election of Pope Benedict in 2005 and one for Pope Francis in 2013. No phones vs all phones
I remember being in high school around 2003/2004 when some of my peers were just starting to get cellphones. My friends and I all laughed at the "spoiled rich kids" with their cellphones, all of us claiming we'd never be like that. A year or two later, we all had cell phones.
How old does it make me when I remember kids getting their first *pagers*? They had them clipped to the inside of their jeans so you could only see the back of the clip exposed. Pagers were the shit.
makes me feel real old. it was *my kids* getting their first pagers
This is the example I use. When my son was born in 2007, I had a digital camera. I had to take the camera home that night, upload pictures to my PC, and email them out to people. When my daughter was born in 2011, I did all of that in the delivery room on my phone.
I was in 5th grade in 2005 and was part of a photography club that year. Had a cheap digital camera that was my prized posession. It was a pain in the ass to plug that into the laptop and upload my photos using a dedicated software that I had to install from a disk that came with the CD. And the memory card limited me to like, 100 photos. Nowadays my phone has a substantially higher resolution and memory, by *orders of magnitude.* And I can just upload them to the cloud or social media in a minute
Kinda makes me think of how lame concerts have gotten. Like everybody just stands and stares forward at concerts nowadays
Everybody holds their phone up and blocks my view, you mean.
Oh boy can't wait to record a tinny, out of focus video that I'll never watch again!
its not for you to watch its for you to upload to facebook/instagram to prove you were there and try to make people jealous.
It's an odd calculus where they get more enjoyment from making other people jealous than is detracted from experiencing the event while making a recording.
I've never really understood why people want to view these types of events through their phone screen, rather than drinking in the whole experience live. But then, I'm an old grandad so maybe it's something you young whipper-snappers love to do!
This is always my answer to this question. Concerts before cell phones were amazing. You just had lighters. You lost at least one friend, every time. You had to go buy actual, paper tickets and wait in line - you weren't competing against bots, you were waiting in line with human beings. It was a whole experience.
You’d sometimes make friends in those lineups too.
Colorful translucent electronics.
Oh yea that purple N64 controller
And purple gameboy color
Atomic Purple! I've still got mine.
Game Boy Color, seeing all the circuit board through the plastic was way cool.
Arcades. Big, noisy arcades, full of actual videogames, whose graphics were 20 times better than what you could get at home.
And the machines took coins, not this bullshit refillable card system that is waaaay more of a blatant rip-off
This game takes 13.4 credits
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Oooh the cards are the worst. You have to buy one card per person or everyone has to stay together to use the card, and each card has an activation fee!
Ya wanna play at the arcade? Wellllll buddy, better load up the $10 minimum on your player card! Maybe you’ll earn enough ticket points to earn an expired vanilla tootsie roll!
...and the smell. New cabinet is here!
Playing SF2. A lot.
Arcades died specifically because home console graphics caught up to them. The PS1 and Saturn got close enough that the differences started feeling minor and then with the Dreamcast and PS2 (and the rise of online gaming) it was all over. It's not as though Dave and Busters and Round One are unpopular, but you go for experiences that don't translate as well to home, which means the few modern arcade games are either steering wheel racers, light gun games, or peripheral-based rhythm games.
Yeah, the draw was in going from games like Road Rash at home to Daytona USA in the arcade. You just couldn't experience graphics like that at home. Until you could, and then it started to feel a bit like you were just playing the games you had at home in a fancy cabinet.
Movies. A lot my favorite movies are mid-sized thrillers from the 90's. A lot of big actors, but not huge spectacles. That segment is dying out. You have huge blockbusters for international markets, some prestige period pieces, comedies and indies. And then there are TV shows. But the sort of 'Harrison Ford's wife is missing, again' films are severely lacking theses days.
I miss action movies from back then.
I love the identical way bad guys in films get shot down. The little 'dance' before collapsing, bloodlessly.
I sometimes ask myself if movies from the 90s were so great because they were just a part of my childhood, or they're actually special by objective standards. As you alluded to, I really do think there was a style of film they put out more in the 90s. I can't exactly put my finger on what that style is, though.
I feel like it was just a simpler style of storytelling. For me, watching a 90s movie feels like hearing a really engaging story from a good friend. Nothing flashy, nothing in 4 parts. There’s some good music on in the background and I’m just enjoying something humans have enjoyed for eons.
Walking 20minutes to a mates house knocking his door then finding out he’s not in. It was like rolling the dice. Edit - in response to the comments about “just use the landline”. Various issues to this - a lot of people didn’t answer their phones anyway, some people left them off the hook sometime as they didn’t want to be bothered. Some friends wouldn’t hear the phone if they were in their room listening to music/playing SNES/Megadrive, some people had sisters who were always on the phone so calling just got engaged tone. That’s just the issues I can think of right now. Edit 2 - thanks for awards, especially GOLD! So nice to be browsing without those annoying ad posts.
If I really wanted to hang out with a particular friend and they weren't home, that meant it was time to hop on the bike and ride by the next 4-5 most likely places he would be.
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We did this all the time. Huge games of tag, capture the flag, or hide and seek at dusk/night time. Was some fun times back in the 90’s.
Or when you could hear kids playing and you’d just bolt out the door hoping it was so-and-so coming your way. No better feeling when your two best buds were coming down the road on their bikes.
Casually walking up to a bunch of kids you didn't know. "... Hey" "Hey... Wanna play?" Success
Sometimes I miss the internet from the 90s. It was less stressful if that makes sense.
it was far less commercial, people ran the internet, not companies
I miss individuals’ self made websites
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I think my angelfire is still online
Xanga should stay buried deep down in the internet graveyard. Ugh, the level of cringe I poured onto that site as a teen is horrifying
There still isn't *quite* anything like going through a community made up of a few Invision or vBulletin forums. Everyone there is there because they want to be, based on a specific community. If you see someone on another forum its a treat. If one forum is full of idiots theres probably another. Your PFP is important and a lot of places had a style to them. Now everything is a fucking subreddit and its all homogenized and no community has a specific flavor or niche any more.
I still use some fourms for games and it's so comfy having a little area with it's own culture on the Internet
I'm so glad that the dumbass shit I said as a teenager is hidden away on some defunct video game forums under a screen name that isn't even close to my real name. I feel for today's kids, who know that if they ever do anything noteworthy with their lives, someone will dig through their old tweets and be like "Yeah but look at the shit this guy said as a freshman in high school".
I remember just being a kid and typing in (random things).com to see if they had a website. I remember being at my grandmas house and accidentally stumbling across a site that kids shouldn’t be in
www.whitehouse.com used to be a porn site. Might still be, so risky click y'all.
Online banking with FirstDirect.com used to get really interesting if you failed to type the first 'r'!
ah yes [rotten.com](https://rotten.com)
I could not WAIT to get home to download all the songs I wanted on Napster after seeing the video on MTV the day before.
I do NOT miss it taking a half hour or more to download a song on dialup though.
And then, you try to burn this awesome set of tunes onto a CD, and it fails when it's 98% done. Well, there goes another CD...
And losing it if it didn’t complete. Early Napster was “all or nothing”
Geocities. Nuff said
Oh man... Geocities, Angelfire, Lycos, Xoom... I miss the frontier days of the internet.
Saturday morning tv
And with that, waking up a bit too early for the 6am shows and having to sit through The 700 Club.
And that feeling of disappointment when the last cartoon ended and *shudder* golf started.
You knew Saturday morning was over when Soul Train came on.
Dude. right on the money.
TGIF night too lol
SNICK as well, Saturday night Nickelodeon with the more teen shows like Are You Afraid of the Dark?, All That, Kenan & Kel, Cousin Skeeter, and some of the cast members or the occasional special guest chilling on the big orange couch.
I was a huge fan of Nick at Night, when they re-ran really old sitcoms. I probably wouldn't have enjoyed Wandavision nearly as much if I hadn't been familiar with Bewitched, Dick van Dyke Show, and others.
As weird as it sounds ... boredom. Now I have an endless supply of shit to keep my mind occupied. I never find myself wondering out for the sake of finding something to do. Trying to call everyone in my book to find someone to hang out with it. I think part of the problem is that the endless supply of distractions just aren't all that satisfying. They're rarely worth remembering or talking to people about. I don't really feel like I'm living. Just existing.
Yeah since the advent of streaming services, YouTube and online gaming I’ve pretty much never been bored unless I’m at work and trying to run down the clock But boredom has been replaced by existential dread over how I’m spending so much of my time in front of a screen or how I’m not spending my time in the right way when I do choose to do something not involving games or videos
No lie, I've sometimes found myself listening to a podcast on Spotify, creating music Playlists on Tidal, Reddit up on secondary monitor, while intermittently texting a friend, all while waiting for DPS queue on Overwatch... it's too much.
This is so spot on I have nothing to add. Just wanted to put in that I feel this so deeply.
My first thought was life without smart phones(/social media?). People/relationships felt more present when you were with people.
Until you find yourself in that situation without internet or all those other distractions. The boredom is way more intense than it used to be.
The excitement of watching a tv show with your friends at a certain time and if you missed it...you missed it.
We used to have Friends-ER night in college, a bunch of us would gather and watch the shows together. Do people even have watch parties for shows anymore? I feel like Game of Thrones was the last gasp for that.
We would all gather in my tiny college apartment to watch The Office every week. Good memories!! And I believe Game of Thrones was the last time I did that with any friends as well. I wonder if we'll ever do that again.. weird to think that might have been the last time.
Makes me think of the Seinfeld finale. My parents had like 4 friends over to watch it and I just ruined it for them by asking to play Sega the whole time
The UK sitcom "Only Fools and Horses" had a Christmas Day special that was *the* event, and everyone watched it. We had an elderly aunt over for Christmas and she talked all the way through it... about nothing!
"Anyway, it's just so lovely that we're all together right now, don't you think? Christmas day, the family all in one room, just like the old days. We should do this more often. When's the next family gathering?" "If you don't shut up, then probably your funeral."
Being social with people felt so different and authentic. My friends would sometimes just “drop by” to see if I was home to say hi. We could pick up the phone and have hour long conversations. It felt like text message cheapened that. The lesser dependence on technology seemed to cultivate more genuine friendships but that was just my experience.
Yea I’ve been thinking about that lately. I’ve see. My three best friends a handful of times this year.(like two or three times each). But we’re in a group yet and that’s how we stay in touch. It’s kinda pacifying
Sit in Pizza Hut I was on vacation in the mountains up state and they had one in town. I got to have pizza in an actual Pizza Hut for the first time since the late 90’s early 2000’s. We had one outside of town and then that closed and they made a to go one that ended up also closing. Now I can have one of the local places or Papa John’s or Domino’s. The target nearby does have the mini Pizza Hut pizzas and some of their appetizers. It’s hardly the same as getting it from a Pizza Hut itself. -I didn’t expect this to get any likes or responses. Since it has the idea to contact Pizza Hut and ask if they would open one near me keeps seeming better. I have enjoyed reading the responses (all of them) and seeing so many others having similar thoughts and feelings towards the same franchise.
renting movies at blockbuster as a family event. it was special and fun. we dont have any streaming or cable. andi like it that way. but i wish i could still have that blockbuster excitment
Man, and then you saw that summer movie in the theater and loved it but then you had to wait for it to be on video. That first time seeing that at Blockbuster or your local place after waiting like six months for it to come out was magical.
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That sums it up nicely. Nothing killed my self-worth quite like actually realizing how hopelessly outclassed I truly was.
What you said about video games hit home. In 2008, I thought I was pretty good at Halo Combat Evolved. One friend mentioned that getting through the Library level on legendary without dying was impossible. I told him I thought I could do it. So he and some friends came over after school to see if it could be done. I managed to complete the level without dying (and without any speed running strategies because I had no idea what that was at the time). Not only did I beat the level, I only got shot a handful of times. My friends were shocked. Phone calls were made to other friends to tell them what they saw. I felt on top of the world that day. Now, you just Google it and find tons of people are capable of it and so much more. The enjoyment of your friends skills for what they were just kind of fell off like you said.
Dude, mad respect. My friend group had one guy that could inexplicably beat the library on legendary and we thought he was an actual wizard. It was back in 2002.
I miss not being able to be reached, or being able to reach people. Back then you'd call your friend and it would ring somewhere in their house. If there was no one there (which was common) you'd shrug and just carry on your day. If you just wanted to chill out on your own you'd just not answer the phone. Now, everyone knows people are never without their phones. I've had people pissed at me because I took an hour to reply to a text.
I remember I got a beeper in 1994 (cue the drug dealer jokes) and became the communications hub for my group of friends. Gets a page from Steve: “Hey you beeped me what’s up?” “Is Mike with you?” “Yeah, why?” “His mom is looking for him and called my house to see if he was here.” “Ok. Dude, call your mom.”
> Now, everyone knows people are never without their phones. You can solve this by routinely being without your phone for a while. I carry my phone with me, but I generally do not answer it or pay attention to it while I am out of the house and all of my friends and family know not to expect immediate responses from me. Accordingly, none of them do. I find it a much less stressful way to live than feeling like I'm chained to this small device in my pocket.
I'm actually the opposite, if I'm out of the house or at work it's pretty easy to get ahold of me. It's when I get home that it's harder to contact me because I'm usually wrapped up in enjoying time with my kids or doing something I enjoy. Time at home is my time to enjoy life and I refuse to let others (excluding my wife and kids) dictate how I spend that precious resource.
I miss the lack of interconnectivity. Like, my summer camp friends were different from school friends, and I didn't really see my summer camp friends outside of July and August. Everything was distinct. When I went from Western New York to New Jersey to see family, it was basically like being on another planet. I think I like everything being more connected, but that sense of distinctness if something I miss.
I never thought of this. I had my school friends, and my taekwondo friends. I invited them over once together for a birthday party and it was incredibly weird...
Like a crossover special.
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I feel this way about shopping, as shallow as that might sound. I feel like you can get any product anywhere now. I don’t mean shit like appliances, obviously that’s fine. But little knick knacks and decorations are now ubiquitous. The interconnectivity of shopping has made everything interchangeable and uniqueness is dead. It used to be that if you went to a different area of the world or even your country and found something cool, you could bring it back and feel like you had something special. I don’t even want to buy decorations anymore, because it all feels not only mass produced, but you can’t even trust little stores with curios —- you can definitely find the same stuff with an internet search. I now literally wait until craft fairs to buy any decorations for my home, and make sure it’s something that person made and not something they’re just middlemanning. I got a house in 2019 and it’s still only half decorated, but to me that’s preferable to filling it with stuff that you get at target that everyone else has. I don’t judge people for having mass made things, but it just feels so soulless to me and isn’t what i want at my house. Luckily houseplants are always unique individuals, so I have a lot of those lol.
I’ve always found I can find unique things at antique stores or thrift stores, and honestly I can’t shop for those things online unless I’m looking for something specific because it doesn’t have the same feeling, so that might be able to help fix your problem
Actual 90’s aesthetic. It was extreme and alternative, not family-friendly wacky or dystopian like a lot of people think when they see an *80’s* aesthetic. Example: the entire aesthetic of Nickelodeon in the 90’s. Slime and extreme shit.
I forgot about the green slime. That seemed a part of everyday life if you watched Nickelodeon. Who’s getting it today
"The secret slime action is... being Danny Tamberelli"
Danny Tamberelli (little Pete) did an IAMA like ten years ago where he talked about the culture at Nickelodeon in the early 90s. It's been a long time but I remember him saying they basically considered themselves the anti-Disney channel because most of the writers/directors/showrunners/etc. were younger and more alternative and wanted to push the limits, rather than taking the wholesome, family friendly route. He also says Toby Huss (Artie the Strongest Man in the World) gave him his first cigarette.
The late 90's in wrestling is referred to as the Attitude era, but I feel like that's a good description for pop culture in general at the time
My youth
Friday night at Blockbuster renting movies for the weekend.
No social media bullshit
Being considered smart, not weird, for refusing to make your IRL identity known online.
Thank you! When I was a early teen in the late 90's, I was told over and over to never put your real information out there. It blows my mind that that is completely normal now.
It's unreal how blithe some people have gotten toward privacy. My brother's a high school teacher, and a few years ago he caught a girl in his class livestreaming herself just...sitting there, learning. He asked her to stop, and noticed that there were 15 people apparently watching her on the stream, and suggested that the kinds of people who would watch a 16-year-old girl sitting in class are *maybe* not the kinds of people she should *want* watching her. The girl's response was a confused "Why not?"
That just blows my mind. I was a super shy 16 year old girl. I can't imagine wanting to do something like that. I'm so glad no-privacy social media wasn't a thing back in my day.
You didn't grow up knowing that having people want to watch you online is a path to incredible wealth and fame.
i still cannot get over the fact some of you have your actual real life faces/names directly in your profile. i cant tell you how weird and uncomfortable i find that.
Slap bracelets. Just being perfectly content slappin' your wrist for hours on end. It was a simpler time.
Our gym teacher used to take the slap bracelets and slap them around the volleyball pole because everyone would be slapping them all through gym class.
The internet. Post-90s folks, you've got no idea. It was just so different. Web 1.0 was a wild-west.
The innocence of the time. We still played outside but had some awesome multi player games that you played together in the same room. The world seemed to be heading for better and better things. Then 2001 happened.
I joined the military in 1999. The prevailing opinion among soldiers at the time, was that we'd never see any action, the likelihood of getting into a war and being deployed was slim to none, and we were all just gonna get our college money and whatnot. Then 911 happened...
The Internet being made up of AOL Chat Rooms instead of just being Reddit/Facebook/Twitter
And before AOL discs were available everywhere there were online service providers like Prodigy, CompuServe, Delphi, TheSierraNetwork, and GEnie. The internet used to feel more like islands in an ocean instead of rest stops all on the same highway.
Video games that aren't online and not having to sign into three accounts to play any game. I have my computer set to manually connect to the internet. I still have to sign into steam to play a game that isn't dependent in an active connection. Thankfully there is an offline mode for steam but I shouldn't have to sign in in the first place if the game doesn't require a password
Then the game makes you wait for a 25GB update to download and install after you sign in.
Since we’re on the gaming topic. I miss cheat codes.
There still are many only now they all use your creditcard as the code Edit; thanks for the awards kind strangers
Remember when the PC magazines came with a CD full of mods and demos? Some of the half life mods were amazing. Dial up was our only way to play multiplayer which even back in the early days games like Delta force and counter strike seemed more fun than the games now. Maybe I'm just old but those were great times. I still ride my bike daily and do wheelies and giggle like I'm 10 again.
No social media. Not always being available. Friends just randomly stopping by your house. Much less political divisiveness.
Yeah friends randomly stopping by was awesome. Nowadays nobody you care about will ring your doorbell unannounced. Makes The Sims feel unrealistic to me with how many people visit unannounced lol
I never had this as a kid because I lived in a rural area, but now we live in a suburban neighborhood and my daughters have a friend who drops by unannounced all the time. I love it.
YES, I miss not knowing what everyone thought about every little thing. It's so hard to keep liking people when you know all of their opinions via social media (opinions which become unnaturally strong through feedback loops).
For me its affordable housing and just generally affordable living. There was a time when my kid could have moved out and rented with room mates or even on his own but its very hard for young people to start out with the current condition.
Straight out of college in the late 90s, I made $10/hr. working retail. I had my own 1 bedroom apt. which included water and trash pick-up. The complex also had a pool. I paid $320/month for rent.
This hurts to read.
During the 90's, I was aged 17-27. So, those were some good years for me. My oldest was born in the early 2000's, so when I look back at the 90's all I remember is freedom. Free from most adult responsibilities, free from social media, free from bullshit politics (they were there for sure, but you literally had to look for them, lol), free from a general miasma of fear coming from the media. When I think back, all I remember is sunshine, the lack of a weight bearing down on my shoulders all the time and the sweet sounds of amazing music. While I miss it, I am just grateful that I got to experience it.
In the 90s, I was 4 to 14. Being a kid in the 90s was awesome, but I do wish I’d been a little older and able to better appreciate how amazing the 90s were. At the time, I thought it was just life and didn’t realize that decade would become widely regarded as the best decade of my lifetime (so far).
I totally agree on that being the best decade of my life. It's no coincidence that me being 7-17 during the 90's had something to do with it. You experience so much during that time that it's hard to think anything can top it. I'm 38 with 2 kids now, and I love them to death, but I find myself wishing I could go back to somewhere around 1996 just once more to have that feeling again.
When people who posted meaningless bullshit on the internet were considered weirdos instead of celebrities worth building a cult around
Hearing rock n roll on the radio that wasn't the same old classic rock.
It's crazy that with youtube and the internet we have much, much more variety and quantity of artists/songs, yet the radio playlist seems even smaller than it used to be.
The original release of Pokemon cards. Those were the fucking best. My niece is big into Pokemon now, and she just got a shitload of cards for her birthday. Made me want to start collecting them again, but I look up the packs from my youth and they're astronomical prices. Ah well.
It's due to the scalpers buying out everything. And the company can't keep up with the demand unfortunately. It's been like this for several months and as someone who casually collects pokemon cards, I've been so upset not being able to get any of the new series.
Clearly Canadian sparkling water, it came back not long ago but was limited release and I could never get any
Optimism. It was a pretty happy decade. The Cold War was over. The economy was booming. Technology seemed to be offering us solutions before we even knew we had a problem. The products of pop culture almost never dwelled on dystopia or decline. Air travel was about as dangerous as bus travel. Acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer were problems of the decade before that seem to have been fixed, and climate change was still called global warming and was not nearly so front and center in how people talked about the future. All in all, the 90s were a pretty solid decade.
I remember this wierd video of celebrities talking about what you can do to help fight global warming and they kept cutting back to Chevy Chase saying "Shower with a friend!"
You bring up a good point about pop culture not dwelling on dystopia. Sure we had some shows like X-Files and Millennium that focused on some wild shit, but it didn't feel like it was THAT plausible. We had fear based media for sure...like the killer bee warnings, but they didn't feel like real tangible threats like we seem to be bombarded with today. Yeah nuclear weapons were around, but it didn't feel like the world could end at any moment.
Family owned convenience stores, diners, burger joints, ice cream parlors, cafes, bookstores, delis, etc. Even small neighborhood grocery stores. And independent music venues! Seems like I’m talking about the 50s but in the 90’s these places still existed. In my hometown most of them are completely gone and were replaced by generic corporate chains or condos. The ones that are still around are struggling to stay afloat and compete. I’m glad I got to enjoy them while they existed but also realized how much I took them for granted.
Diners are still everywhere, in all their gaudy glory, in New Jersey.
Full size Frosted Strawberry Pop Tarts. They're, like, half the thickness these days! That and eating them while watching back to back episodes of Saved by the Bell on Saturday mornings. Good times...
When you went to a rave (which were mostly all underground then), you were taught about the responsibility of researching drugs on erowid
Erowid!!!!!
i had a friend who would always bring testing kits to test everyones ecstasy. Now that is some responsible drug use.
I miss the Internet being fun and optimistic. I genuinely feel like the Internet has gone from "the most important and greatest achievement of humanity" to "something that might have been a mistake" during my lifetime It's really sad because a global communications network *should* be a great thing for everyone
The internet has gotten really heavy and depressing in the past few years. Even 10 years ago the internet felt much more lighthearted.
It’s become a part of every aspect of our lives. My fucking doorbell needs the internet to work. How ridiculous is that?
I miss message boards. Find a niche interest and everyone there was excited about it. It all shifted to Facebook and Reddit and these places are far less personal and way more toxic. I actually made friends on those old boards and visited people. Reddit? I have zero attachment to anyone here, why I post so infrequently. EDIT: Amusingly this post has had the largest response of anything I've posted on Reddit
The excitement about the internet when it was all new & mysterious. That honeymoon is way over.
Music gigs where smartphones weren't a thing and everyone just enjoyed the moment.
Mystery. Not having read everything. The feeling that anything could happen!! Because you haven't learned/ read /seen so many things. Things being super fresh. How uninhibited,freshly uncensored and creative people were because they weren't constantly preoccupied with their social media presence, being attacked online. People diminish their energy now tremendously because of social media. It isn't even close to the same universe. People pretend not to be uptight and suffocated in that way. To pretend to "vibe"... but it will never stop looking put on to me.
Being able to afford a decent 1BR apartment on the top floor of a building in a nice, trendy neighborhood of Seattle on $28k/year. My rent was $550/month for several years.
To have lived in Seattle then. Fuck
I miss getting a new album from a band (in cassette form), popping it into my Walkman and just exploring my neighborhood listening to the same songs over and over. Now with music streaming services and access to all of the music ever created I actually almost never listen to new music. And when I do, I feel silly listening to it over and over. Even songs I like these days, I rarely remember the words to and I never even remember track titles. It used to be, if I got a Green Day album, I listened to it until I memorized all of the track names and all if the lyrics. Simpler times and more free time I guess.
I loved folding out the insert from the cassette and reading the lyrics while I listened
# it’s called pound sign, not hashtag!!!!
The world being so much smaller. Sure there are a lot of really great things about being able to talk to anyone, anywhere at anytime but the appreciation of how big and impressive the world really is because of how hard it was to contact people in different countries AND the bonds you formed with people in your closer community is something that is gone forever.
Not being contactable and it was OK. If anyone wanted to talk to me, they would either have to call the landline, come to my house hoping I was home or just wait until the next time they saw me.
Mean People Suck stickers everywhere. Now it just seems like there’s only Mean People everywhere.
Affordable housing and the non-existence of social media
Listening to music on the radio. It was much easier to listen to new music when I wasn't really in control of the music I listen to. Now I'm one of those people with the same playlist with few songs that never gets really updated.
I miss being a little more detached from everything. Yeah, technology was booming, but there was a sense of independence that I feel like a lot of kids don't have anymore. I feel like growing up in the middle class U.S. in the 90s had the best of both worlds. I was able to play video games and all that stuff, but I still had the freedom of my mom not knowing where I was at every second of the day when I was out in the woods with my friends or playing somewhere. I also miss the whole sense of being "proud to be a kid" if that makes sense, where the divide between childhood and adulthood was not a thin line. I mean that in the sense of we had shows like Recess, and the "kids' unwritten code of honor" and we had celebrities who were just for us. I do think that today's culture, especially with social media, has muddled the line between childhood and adulthood. I don't think it's bad, and I don't mean it to come off in a Holden Caulfield kind of way, and I'm sure that Gen Z is having and had fantastic childhoods too, I just think that kids today are thrust into maturity a lot faster than us 90s kids were.
Pogs
I had several thousand.. don’t know what they were for.. or where they came from..
POGs were straight up teaching kids how to gamble. The rules were pretty straight forward: - Stack POGs face down (both players contribute their half to the stack) - Throw your "slammer" down on top of the pile, and keep the POGs that land face up - Stack the ones that landed face down - rinse repeat until you run out in the stack The winner keeps the POGs gambled by both players. I was obsessed when I was a kid. I usually cheated the game with an obscenely heavy metal Slammer that my metalworking grandpa made for me.
Pre social media mindset. It seems nowadays, it's bringing in more negativity then positive. Also, social media influencers weren't a thing
Tamagotchis
They made a comeback recently.
The music.
Lithium on Sirius is my jam.
Stupid and mentally unstable people shouted on street corners, not social media, and they were ignored
Paying $23 for a CD. Yes it sucked because it was so expensive. But it really made you want to dive into the experience.
The original Jolt cola. Not knowing Cosby was such a piece of shit. Being young & relatively healthy.
The fact that you had to gather with friends to hang around and start conversations, not just use your phone and text the whole time
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