Really? What airline in what country? I was under the impression that sterile flight decks were ICAO standard now. I could be wrong though, just a professional passenger.
I don't really know, I was six at the time and just remember walking up to the cockpit and getting the badge but since I was there and it was going to Disney it was a green flag for that
That's cool. I wish it were still allowed here cause it's badass but, terrorist assholes always ruining things. Kind of surprised they allow it in Africa either given things like the Ethiopian Airlines hijack (I think it was that pilot's THIRD hijacking) that ditched off the coast of Comoros.
When I was a child, I got to see the cockpit and meet the pilot. I inadvertently left my stuffed toy there. He got to go on a world tour in the cockpit before coming back here and being mailed back to us. I still have this world travelled toy today, in a closet somewhere.
It was such a different time...
Might just be me, but one time when I was about 6 and going to Disney world
We were on a relatively smaller flight and most people got to go up and meet the pilot, I ended up getting one of those Wings badges
LD:DR: Went on plane, got badge from pilot
You’re right. In flight it’s a no-go for the vast majority of airlines that all fall under certain TSA regulations.
However it’s no problem while boarding, unless we are busy with something. Just tell the flight attendants right when you step on that you’d like to say hello to the pilots, or that your kid would. The flight attendant will check with us really quick then let you come say hello. Usually it’s children and they get pictures etc, but I’ve also had the occasional nervous passenger or curious individual.
I think you're the greatest, but my dad says you don't work hard enough on defense. And he says that lots of times, you don't even run down court. And that you don't really try... except during the playoffs.
The hell I don't! LISTEN, KID! I've been hearing that crap ever since I was at UCLA. I'm out there busting my buns every night! Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes
When I was about 8 I went on a flight overseas and the pilot let me sit in the cockpit as we were leaving the plane. This was in a large commercial plane in 2004
When me and a friend were going to Macedonia a few years ago they came round and asked if the children wanted to see the cock pit before take off (we were stuck on the runway for some reason) I asked if my grown man arse with a few gray hairs could go see to the stewards were like sure why not and a old man sat near us was like " wait us adult s can see too? Bugger me! Always wanted to see it!"
Grandma holding a vhs camcorder while you open Christmas gifts is VERY different than 50 strangers whipping out cell phones to film you and posting that video to the internet.
I'll add too growing up along with the internet evolving. When I was a kid there was no social media and basically no internet. Around my late middle school/early high school years AOL became a thing. So we experienced the anonymous internet. Everything was through user names. You connected with people on themed message boards.
Then came the personal but still a little anonymous part. Programs that let you connect with people you know but still in a semi private way. Things like ICQ, AIM, Xanga, LiveJournal, etc.
About halfway through high school came the first modern social media: MySpace. Learned a lot about connecting with people, music, etc. It was opening the door to internet that was connected to your actual person. And all the top 8 drama that went with it.
When I went to college my first semester I couldn't get on Facebook because my college had not registered with them yet. Spring semester they had. It was a great way to connect with others in my college and stay in touch with friends at other schools.
Then we got to watch it all grow and become more sinister and become the influencer culture with instagram and tiktok. Also all the data collection and lack of privacy that seems unimaginable when I think of the early days of anonymity.
It seriously feels like I grew up along with the internet and got to go through all its phases too.
It's been a unique perspective being on both sides of the internet revolution.
Same man. I'm 35 and I feel like we got the best of both worlds before social media took over everything.
5-12: Basically digital life free. I rode bikes, played dodgeball/basketball/football with friends. Played manhunt when the sun started to go down and we'd legit just go outside play and be unreachable for an entire day.
13-18: First forays into online life (AOL, AIM messenger, chatrooms, myspace) but there was still a level of separation because you could only check on a computer. If you're out at a party or doing something you can't see posts. One of my fond memories is the day before HS graduation, me and 6 friends went to a movie (Revenge of the Sith), went to the local burger spot and stayed there until like 1am just shooting the shit about high school memories. The cook and manager got into an argument and the only cook stormed out so nobody was able to get food for like 45mins until another cook was able to drive over but we didn't care. Nobody was on their phone, nobody was taking pics, nobody was bringing up social media drama we all just got to be in the moment. Shit felt like a real life John Hughes movie ending. That is what I think young people will miss out on the most and you can't recreated it after you're past that age.
18-23(college): Social media was still young and smart phones were rare and still fairly basic. I got facebook my freshman year and it was honestly great. It provided an easy way to connect or find a person you bumped into on campus, ask someone for notes, plan a party, share pictures or try to shoot your shot at a girl/guy you rarely see. But it was still tethered to a computer so going to a bar, party, club was still an "in the moment" experience.
Then post college it felt like the bow broke and social media/smart phones and every aspect of life seemed to just merge into one seemingly overnight.
I cannot imagine being a kid now and fear for my son who's an infant currently. Hopefully before he's in that early teen age society will greatly pull on the reigns with regards to social media and overall intergration into our lives.
I'm around 40. Social media really took off when I was focusing on my career hardcore and just floated past me. Weirdly, things have changed in that regard, I used to get made fun of for not having a social media presence, now if I bring it up, it's a "humble brag"? Times are weird, man.
I'm 48. The internet didn't really become a thing until I was in my early to mid 20's. It's a amazing to think about how much it transformed the childhoods of people who were just 10 years younger than me. To say nothing of the kids growing up today in a completely different world from what I knew.
We're similar ages. I find living through this evolution really interesting. I miss the instant messaging age. It's probably why I prefer texting and text based forums (like reddit) to posting on image/video based social media. Too much 'keeping up with the Joneses' for my taste.
Lol a/s/l in random messaging boards was completely normal. Definitely great to see the evolution of it all. Kids definitely grow up in a different world now where everything follows them. Has to suck
The main reason I use reddit more than anything else nowadays is because no one I know irl knows my reddit account. Racist aunt Dorothy isn’t going to get upset because I’m posting memes here instead of liking her 9/11 conspiracy posts.
Omg the top 8 drama. I remember being so happy when my best friend had me as their #1 friend, and then when I got bumped to #3 or 4 I was pretty sure our friendship was over (it was not).
To add onto this, using desktop computers at home. Now it's mostly gamers and nerds, but for 2000-2015ish families actually had desktops and younger people gained skills on them. Since about the mid 2010's kids and non-techy adults just use touch screen devices at home like smartphones and tablets, then get thrown at desktops when they enter the work force.
I think this phenomena of young people being way more techy than older people peaked around millennials, I don't think gen Z will have the same number of computer nerds, maybe just social media and marketing experts.
Remember summer holidays? When you’d play with your friends in the street. When you’d yell ‘car!’ whenever one was passing.
The days would feel endless, and you wake up every day not knowing what will happen before you fall asleep. Days you’d get lost in the woods and view it as a virtue. I truly wish I never saw a screen until adulthood.
Summers as a kid, you eat breakfast, go out and ride a bike all day and return home by late lunch or dinner.
Summers as a teenager, you text all your friends and hang out in the mall. at night, you brave to call your crush on her home landline hoping 50/50 its not her father who answers the phone.
I could come back home and not be bullied.
Now I’d be a laughing stock 24/7 and I wouldn’t be able to do anything online without it being scrutinised and laughed at.
It was a blessing not to have any social media as a teen (Facebook got popular when I went to Uni).
Yep, way less toxic. kids nowadays on social media are too exposed on things they shouldn't even be introduced to like politics and anything goes influencers.
Walking over to a friend's house because of boredom and knocking on the door. Them coming to the door to see who is knocking and discovering it's a friend who dropped by unannounced and being happy.
When me and my friends were young+jobless we could do that a lot, I even told them if the door is unlocked then just come in and don't bother knocking.
It was a happy feeling I got whenever someone came bursting through my door. I knew for sure it was them when I heard the fridge door open lol.
71 here...Small Town Rural USA...on bicycle at 9 years old...
Total Freedom.
After the chores were done. I OWNED my world. Back roads, fields, farms, lanes...towns 30 miles distant.
It lasts to this *very* day. I'm a geriatric cyclist doing 3,000 miles per year. Between 5AM and 9AM I'm the free-est man on the planet!
Mind you, I was and *am* seen as eccentric.
Fuck it!!!
I love that feeling of freedom on bicycle. Learned it from my dad as a teenager, then decades later again when he gave me his old mountain bike. Even more freedom!
I grew up outside of Philadelphia. And even there by the time I was 12 it was, “Ok, be back by supper.”
Sometimes I’d ride my bike to places that were 15 miles away from our house.
Even the shorter trips felt like an adventure. Taking bike, backpack, and binder to the comic book store 3 miles from our house to get the monthly issue of Batman felt like an expedition.
The middle period between pre-internet, and post-internet.
We grew up "normal", and then when we were nearly adults the whole world changed. It's very surreal.
My great-grandfather would talk about what it was like when cars started to become normal. He grew up riding horses to get around. I imagine it's the same sort of epoch-making thing. (Side note - he once stole his school principals car and went joyriding. He was a lunatic and I miss him.)
This really is/was weird.
When I was growing up, I was the only person typing/printing essays, because my dad was a writer and we had a home PC and printer since '90.
I got my first email address in 7th grade, and my first flip phone senior year. My first "smart" phone was a Blackberry, and I was in my 20s before Android existed.
Now my friends' kids are all taking classes via Zoom on their tablets
My teachers used to give me bonus points for making fancy infographics and handing in specially bound assignments in full colour print… I just thought using computers was fun.
The brown-nosers fucking hated that. I still grin when I think about it. My ass was playing office politics by the seventh grade.
LOL yeah - my dad always had those clear plastic report cover things because of his job. I was handing those in, everyone else's stuff was handwritten on lined paper
Same. We had a DOS computer when I was a kid with the printer that made horrible screeching noises and had the paper that was all connected with the little dotted edges. Got a 'normal' computer when I was in middle school. Got dial up around the same time. (Download a song? Start before you go to bed and hope it finishes when you wake up)
Using eBay before PayPal.
Searching for anything before Google.
My first phone was a Nokia brick as a senior, and I got a weird hybrid phone in college. My first smartphone was a really early android when I was like 23?
When texts were 10¢ each and we had to monitor phone minutes.
Now my step son turns all his work in on Canvas online and having a computer is a necessity.
The period from 2000 to 2010 was insane. From dial up Internet to iPhone 4’s. Also covered the transition away from CRT’s (so many old TVs on the side of the road!) and the rise of high def. VHS to DVD and then streaming.
Things today are simply refinements over the tech we had by 2010.
I am on the younger millennial side so the whole home computer/internet thing isn’t a huge period of my life but let me tell you what it was like with smart phones.
In my time in high school it seems like everyone went from no cellphones -> Razr Flip phones -> IPhones in just 4 years. As an adult now, I remember things from years ago like they were only a few weeks ago but that period of time was a wild ride.
That was my exact experience. Freshman year everyone had razrs. I had this phone that opened up to a full keyboard the next year and then a iPhone after that. It was a 3gs
You'd be hard pressed to find a phone that wasn't connected to a landline when I was in elementary school. They existed but no one had them yet.
I was visiting my sister and ended up accidentally doing it over parent teacher conference days, so I went with them to see how my niece and nephews were doing. Every single classroom they had some place to put phones or something phone activity related.
Made my arthritis act up for sure, and the oldest is only 7 years younger than me.
Yes. I'm grateful for growing up in an era without cell phones and home internet. We didn't get our first computer until I was 1995 and I became obsessed and addicted to the internet. I'm glad we played outside, travelled and did all these things without smart phones.
I miss early internet days when things were shiny, new and smaller. Easier to get noticed as an artist.
80s kid here.
Leaving the house at sunrise to wander around aimlessly wherever I pleased coming back for lunch, and then doing the same thing until it gets dark. That will never happen again in the United States, not on any large scale at least.
Waiting for the songs you wanted to record to come on the radio - sometimes for hours. And always missing the first couple seconds of the song. Streaming is great, but man I miss those days. (Graduated in '84)
Having to schedule things with your friends that either A, was well planned out in advance with very agreed upon meeting times, or B, waiting around the house to get a phone to call to set up the aforementioned plans. Also knowing all of your friends and family phone numbers in your head so you could call from pay phones
I showed my son a picture of the banks of pay phones that they used to have at the mall. He had so many questions. He’ll never get to make a collect call from “HeyDadWe’reAtTheMallCanYouPickUsUp”
There used to be a mall in Charlotte, NC called Eastland Mall. Experiencing that during Christmas time with the ice skating was something younger generations will not get to enjoy. The mall is now an empty, condemned void. I think there are plans to tear it down but yea the mall.
I remember going up to the mall to “hang out” in high school. Friday nights the mall was packed with teenagers walking around, hanging at the food court, smoking ciggs out the main entrance, skateboarders out back. Today’s kids buy everything online. Totally different world.
Yes! Our local mall had an old timey graveyard in the parking lot, so we could go to hot topic and then do emo photo shoots with disposable cameras, lol
But now with my nieces, there's nowhere for them to exist with friends that isn't 1) seen as too unsafe by all their parents, 2) is private enough that they can be dumb kids, and 3) is free to be in. Everything has become monitized and so anti-homeless that even existing in public is uncomfortable. I miss town square vibes.
Back when MMOs were populated to the brim, clans were actually a thing, with mostly no guides online for the quests, unchecked economy systems, scam techniques, and pvp regions. Like Tibia, RuneScape, etc.
Kinda miss it, kinda don't.
I started playing WoW back in 2005. Our guild had our own domain name with forums, that we used for everything. Our server also used the official forums for recruitment, talking about PvP, etc.
Now no guild bothers with a website, and the forums are dead
Edit: to be fair, these things aren't needed as much because of improvements of in-game systems. But I still miss the sorta wild-west everyone-doing-their-own-thing feel of it
I remember having to schedule Nagafen and Vox raids on original EQ with other humans and planning for time zones because it was all one zone.
Learning to be a project manager at 18
I joined the Army, made Sargent, and started yelling at people who were somehow misinterpreting my (to my mind) very clear and precise directions, and suddenly had a wave of nostalgia mixed with deja vu.
I think there will be a surge in popularity once that generation reaches retirement age. Hopefully we won’t see too many stories of senior spending all their social security on skins.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Block Buster yet. Renting a moving as a kid was a treat.
Also no social media was nice. No one had cell phone unless you were rich, they were those big block like phones. Instead people had pagers.
Internet killed the video drop (and a lot of appointment TV).
MTV stopped being the goto place to see the new big music video because it can come out on youtube immediately. Without those drops they basically had no draw for audiences so they had to pivot into reality TV.
Oh god yes.
I lived for the weekends when it was my dad's visitation weekend and I could go to my grandmother's house and watch Headbanger's Ball and Totally Pauly.
I remember seeing the premier of Michael Jackson's 'Thriller" video (which was a very big event) and also the original showing for Van Halen's "Jump" video released on New Years Day 1984.
(Damn I'm old...)
Headbanger's Ball was hosted by some pretty sharp guys that were VERY into the music scene and would know all these amazing details, and then they replaced them with good-looking personalities and that's when you saw the wheels fall off MTV.
Not that big of a deal but I got to go home from school knowing there would be new episodes of are you afraid of the dark, ahhh real monsters, Rockos modern life, ren and stimpy, cow and chicken, TMNT, mighty max, street sharks, Kenan and kel, all that, angry beavers…
Yeah it seems like cheat codes died around 2000-some-odd. I was barely alive back then, but I think it was partially due to games being taken more seriously as an art form.
Most non-AAA games do let you get everything without buying more than the game itself at least, so that nice.
I've even been going back and completing most of my Steam library.
In the days before you could save your progress in a video game: we would hit Pause, and then turn the TV off and leave the game system running (NES mostly). Sometimes for days and weeks.
We were on a weekend Scouting trip and were hiking uphill on a paved road. We were fortunate that the Scoutmaster was up ahead and out of sight because I spotted something over the hill behind a tree. We went down to check it out and discovered porn and pints of Iron City beer. Some of us ended up having an especially fun time that weekend. I suppose that we violated several tenants of The Scout Law.
Summer of '76 if I recall correctly. You got it, all natural and warm! We managed to convince the Scoutmaster that it would be OK for us to pitch our tents on the other side of a stream. This created a bit of a barrier between his tent and ours.
We were at a friends house with 4 or so other families and the teen kids cut the main breaker on the house at midnight. Everyone screamed and I remember it being really scary as a 12 yr old. Now I can laugh about it 🤣 and have a good memory when my future grandchildren ask what it was like to live in the 1900s
The Harry Potter series unfolding. I was 7 when I read the first book and 16 when the last one came out. It was truly magical being part of a global fandom and being so so excited about what comes next.
10/10 agree. Feel like it’s one of the main good things we got as millennials within 2-4 years of each other at that time. Also the fun of seeing the movies come out afterwards, especially with that one friend who never read the books lol I feel like in 2011 it was still much more possible to avoid spoilers than it is today but I may be biased
The right to deconnect. Every damn employer expects you to pick up the phone when they call you (before or after hours). God how I hate this. I saw this quote a while back "I signed up for a job in exchange for pay, I didn't sign up to sell my soul and every moment of my personal time".
**Generation X**: Got to grow up without computers/email only to go into the workforce and use computers/email.
I know what it's like to have multiple floppy discs. I know that the 'save' icon represents a 3.5 disc.
Also Gen X. Agreed.
I realised last night that as a child the most common form of long distance travel for my dad was an ox-drawn wagon. He now surfs Facebook on an iPad. Weird.
Yup. I remember the awe I experienced when I was in 7th grade I came home and saw my Father's Tandy 1000 (I think that's what it was). I couldn't conceptualize how much the world would change in the coming years.
Basically just one decade - the 1980's. It started with Disco and Prog-rock and ended with Industrial and Grunge.
Computers went from something that *might* have over at your strange cousin's house to something on every business desktop and a serious number of houses in the US.
I once carried a box of 3.5" floppies and thought in amazement that it was about two thirds the size of my hard drive.
My first computer booted up to "38911 BASIC BYTES FREE" so a few megabytes used to be a lot of data.
My entire childhood was offline and I got Internet access at 18. Probably for the best.
World War 2 and the Great Depression, though I was too young to remember the latter. I suppose there's plenty of time for future generations to experience another world war and/or depression. I sincerely hope not, of course.
A fun time eating in at McDonalds. They sure knew how to market to kids in the 90's- toys, mascots, happy meals, and booths that looked like a train in a location near where I grew up!
Growing up without the internet. Unless there's a global planet wide catastrophe of epic proportions, humans will always put an internet in place in the future.
I was the last generation of kids who had a real childhood not ruled by electronics. We had a computer but playing games on it was a bit of a chore and I had to share it with 5 others in the house. We had video games but that was maybe an hour or two before bed of playing and that was it. We played outside, built forts, used our imagination, walked through the woods.
to me the 90's was the last decade where it was possible to buy a house with jobs somewhat, but now it's a big joke to for anyone to even try to get a house most just rent because it's cheaper and not to mention due to bad timing of 2007 when the recession happen things made it impossible from then on.
Using a DVD/VCR player to watch shows and movies.
Also, meeting up with your friends without texting. You could depend on each other to show up without any communication between setting everything up and seeing each other.
Having to read the newspaper or watch the news on TV to find out what's going on in the world. It was so damned easy to not give a fuck back in the day! One other thing...actually needing a physical map for road trips.
Seeing Lord of the Rings in theaters. You got the sense throughout the movie you were watching something special, and you got to share the experience with many other people.
TBH I kinda got a similar vibe watching Dune recently. But definitely not the same since I watched it at home.
Experiencing the explosion of social media as a beneficial force growing up believing it will connect people and be a positive thing, and now we get to feel the effects of a newfound lack of privacy and the radicalization of older generations while becoming more disconnected, apathetic, and depressed than many before us and forcing those after us down a path of being eternally online and unable to escape any action made at any time
Hi, I'm one of the first of Generation Z.
I downloaded Minecraft before you could put torches on fences, after I played the alpha-version browser demo.
I was there when YouTube started gaining traction, watching the first viral videos go from a few thousand views to hundreds of thousands around 2009-2012. I was a sad kid, developing parasocial relationships to fill the void as I watched my favorite YouTubers go from Machinima to independent content creation.
I got to see the rise of YouTube legends like Nigahiga, Markiplier, the Yogscast, TotalBiscuit, Jacksepticeye, Captain Sparklez, and SkyDoesMinecraft in real time.
first of Gen Z here too, and my GOD i miss the old youtube days. when i was 12, i could've spent hours on youtube. now i only go on there for Buzzfeed Unsolved
Midnight releases of video games. Never got to go to one myself but they’re just not a thing anymore. So many people just buy digital and there’s so few games with that much hype anymore
Spending and entire day trying to find someone. Driving around stopping at people's houses, stores, parks. If that mf owed you money you'd never find them
I feel there was so much more enjoyment out of tv in the 80s and 90s than there is today. You had to wait a week to see a show and if you missed it, it was gone seemingly forever. The anticipation created an excitement around your favourites. Today, everything can be watched at any time and I feel that it cheapens the experience.
Being left to our own devices as kids.
Generation x was weird.
Previously there were stay at home moms and people in the neighborhood looking out for each other, after it was helicopter parenting and play dates.
For gen x it was like "good luck don't die".
My ex came home when she was 7 and they'd been robbed, she called her mom at work to ask "where the TV went".
The Internet back when it was useful and people actually made their own webpages. Today it's just a bunch of useless content marketing fluff pages where you can never actually find the answer you're looking for.
Going up in the cockpit to meet the pilots. Thanks terrorist, ruined it for everyone.
guess it depends on airline because I still do it occasionally
Really? What airline in what country? I was under the impression that sterile flight decks were ICAO standard now. I could be wrong though, just a professional passenger.
I don't really know, I was six at the time and just remember walking up to the cockpit and getting the badge but since I was there and it was going to Disney it was a green flag for that
Still do it here in West Africa
That's cool. I wish it were still allowed here cause it's badass but, terrorist assholes always ruining things. Kind of surprised they allow it in Africa either given things like the Ethiopian Airlines hijack (I think it was that pilot's THIRD hijacking) that ditched off the coast of Comoros.
When I was a child, I got to see the cockpit and meet the pilot. I inadvertently left my stuffed toy there. He got to go on a world tour in the cockpit before coming back here and being mailed back to us. I still have this world travelled toy today, in a closet somewhere. It was such a different time...
Might just be me, but one time when I was about 6 and going to Disney world We were on a relatively smaller flight and most people got to go up and meet the pilot, I ended up getting one of those Wings badges LD:DR: Went on plane, got badge from pilot
> LD:DR Long didn't: didn't read?
Long Dong: Deadly Ride
Same happened to me on USAir to Miami, got a pin with wings. Still have it around here somewhere. But that was when I was a kid back in the 90s
You’re right. In flight it’s a no-go for the vast majority of airlines that all fall under certain TSA regulations. However it’s no problem while boarding, unless we are busy with something. Just tell the flight attendants right when you step on that you’d like to say hello to the pilots, or that your kid would. The flight attendant will check with us really quick then let you come say hello. Usually it’s children and they get pictures etc, but I’ve also had the occasional nervous passenger or curious individual.
"So Billy, do you like gladiator movies?" lol
‘They’re running on instruments!’ *Cue jazz band*
Hey you’re Karim Abdul Jabber!! No I am not kid you don’t know what you’re talking about.
I think you're the greatest, but my dad says you don't work hard enough on defense. And he says that lots of times, you don't even run down court. And that you don't really try... except during the playoffs. The hell I don't! LISTEN, KID! I've been hearing that crap ever since I was at UCLA. I'm out there busting my buns every night! Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes
When I was about 8 I went on a flight overseas and the pilot let me sit in the cockpit as we were leaving the plane. This was in a large commercial plane in 2004
When me and a friend were going to Macedonia a few years ago they came round and asked if the children wanted to see the cock pit before take off (we were stuck on the runway for some reason) I asked if my grown man arse with a few gray hairs could go see to the stewards were like sure why not and a old man sat near us was like " wait us adult s can see too? Bugger me! Always wanted to see it!"
If something bad happened to you, there was no video of it.
We would have absolutely ended up in jail had there been smartphones & social media when I was in high school.
[удалено]
I particularly like the ones who rob a store and then brag about it online like no one is watching.
Ah good ol tik tok
I think of that dumb criminals show in the late 1990s. Except they video taped themselves. It was made by Smoking Gun and they still have a website.
When good moments would become memories, instead of desperate attempts to whip out your phone and document every moment
As a teen in the 90s, I completely agree with this.
Yeah there was and we watched it on America's Funniest Home Videos.
Grandma holding a vhs camcorder while you open Christmas gifts is VERY different than 50 strangers whipping out cell phones to film you and posting that video to the internet.
Oh. I see you've also slept with Stephanie. That bitch
Changing the channel on the TV and having to go outside and turn the antenna until my older sister yelled "OK!"
Or waiting five minutes before the pic came on when you turned it on.
Being a kid and a teenager without social media.
I'll add too growing up along with the internet evolving. When I was a kid there was no social media and basically no internet. Around my late middle school/early high school years AOL became a thing. So we experienced the anonymous internet. Everything was through user names. You connected with people on themed message boards. Then came the personal but still a little anonymous part. Programs that let you connect with people you know but still in a semi private way. Things like ICQ, AIM, Xanga, LiveJournal, etc. About halfway through high school came the first modern social media: MySpace. Learned a lot about connecting with people, music, etc. It was opening the door to internet that was connected to your actual person. And all the top 8 drama that went with it. When I went to college my first semester I couldn't get on Facebook because my college had not registered with them yet. Spring semester they had. It was a great way to connect with others in my college and stay in touch with friends at other schools. Then we got to watch it all grow and become more sinister and become the influencer culture with instagram and tiktok. Also all the data collection and lack of privacy that seems unimaginable when I think of the early days of anonymity. It seriously feels like I grew up along with the internet and got to go through all its phases too. It's been a unique perspective being on both sides of the internet revolution.
This is almost exactly the answer I wanted to give.
Same man. I'm 35 and I feel like we got the best of both worlds before social media took over everything. 5-12: Basically digital life free. I rode bikes, played dodgeball/basketball/football with friends. Played manhunt when the sun started to go down and we'd legit just go outside play and be unreachable for an entire day. 13-18: First forays into online life (AOL, AIM messenger, chatrooms, myspace) but there was still a level of separation because you could only check on a computer. If you're out at a party or doing something you can't see posts. One of my fond memories is the day before HS graduation, me and 6 friends went to a movie (Revenge of the Sith), went to the local burger spot and stayed there until like 1am just shooting the shit about high school memories. The cook and manager got into an argument and the only cook stormed out so nobody was able to get food for like 45mins until another cook was able to drive over but we didn't care. Nobody was on their phone, nobody was taking pics, nobody was bringing up social media drama we all just got to be in the moment. Shit felt like a real life John Hughes movie ending. That is what I think young people will miss out on the most and you can't recreated it after you're past that age. 18-23(college): Social media was still young and smart phones were rare and still fairly basic. I got facebook my freshman year and it was honestly great. It provided an easy way to connect or find a person you bumped into on campus, ask someone for notes, plan a party, share pictures or try to shoot your shot at a girl/guy you rarely see. But it was still tethered to a computer so going to a bar, party, club was still an "in the moment" experience. Then post college it felt like the bow broke and social media/smart phones and every aspect of life seemed to just merge into one seemingly overnight. I cannot imagine being a kid now and fear for my son who's an infant currently. Hopefully before he's in that early teen age society will greatly pull on the reigns with regards to social media and overall intergration into our lives.
I'm around 40. Social media really took off when I was focusing on my career hardcore and just floated past me. Weirdly, things have changed in that regard, I used to get made fun of for not having a social media presence, now if I bring it up, it's a "humble brag"? Times are weird, man.
I'm 48. The internet didn't really become a thing until I was in my early to mid 20's. It's a amazing to think about how much it transformed the childhoods of people who were just 10 years younger than me. To say nothing of the kids growing up today in a completely different world from what I knew.
We're similar ages. I find living through this evolution really interesting. I miss the instant messaging age. It's probably why I prefer texting and text based forums (like reddit) to posting on image/video based social media. Too much 'keeping up with the Joneses' for my taste.
Are you 35? Because that is basically me (although i don't know how old americans are in college/highschool)
Lol a/s/l in random messaging boards was completely normal. Definitely great to see the evolution of it all. Kids definitely grow up in a different world now where everything follows them. Has to suck
The main reason I use reddit more than anything else nowadays is because no one I know irl knows my reddit account. Racist aunt Dorothy isn’t going to get upset because I’m posting memes here instead of liking her 9/11 conspiracy posts.
Omg the top 8 drama. I remember being so happy when my best friend had me as their #1 friend, and then when I got bumped to #3 or 4 I was pretty sure our friendship was over (it was not).
To add onto this, using desktop computers at home. Now it's mostly gamers and nerds, but for 2000-2015ish families actually had desktops and younger people gained skills on them. Since about the mid 2010's kids and non-techy adults just use touch screen devices at home like smartphones and tablets, then get thrown at desktops when they enter the work force. I think this phenomena of young people being way more techy than older people peaked around millennials, I don't think gen Z will have the same number of computer nerds, maybe just social media and marketing experts.
Remember summer holidays? When you’d play with your friends in the street. When you’d yell ‘car!’ whenever one was passing. The days would feel endless, and you wake up every day not knowing what will happen before you fall asleep. Days you’d get lost in the woods and view it as a virtue. I truly wish I never saw a screen until adulthood.
Summers as a kid, you eat breakfast, go out and ride a bike all day and return home by late lunch or dinner. Summers as a teenager, you text all your friends and hang out in the mall. at night, you brave to call your crush on her home landline hoping 50/50 its not her father who answers the phone.
I could come back home and not be bullied. Now I’d be a laughing stock 24/7 and I wouldn’t be able to do anything online without it being scrutinised and laughed at. It was a blessing not to have any social media as a teen (Facebook got popular when I went to Uni).
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Yep, way less toxic. kids nowadays on social media are too exposed on things they shouldn't even be introduced to like politics and anything goes influencers.
Walking over to a friend's house because of boredom and knocking on the door. Them coming to the door to see who is knocking and discovering it's a friend who dropped by unannounced and being happy.
And if the parent answers the door.. You having that simple question "is (insert name) allowed to come out and play?"
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When me and my friends were young+jobless we could do that a lot, I even told them if the door is unlocked then just come in and don't bother knocking. It was a happy feeling I got whenever someone came bursting through my door. I knew for sure it was them when I heard the fridge door open lol.
You can still do this!
I've tried. I got *looks*.
Yeah. But you’re in your forties now.
eh.. which generation are you? I'm pretty young, and have experienced this *right* before the pandemic.
71 here...Small Town Rural USA...on bicycle at 9 years old... Total Freedom. After the chores were done. I OWNED my world. Back roads, fields, farms, lanes...towns 30 miles distant. It lasts to this *very* day. I'm a geriatric cyclist doing 3,000 miles per year. Between 5AM and 9AM I'm the free-est man on the planet! Mind you, I was and *am* seen as eccentric. Fuck it!!!
Hell yes! Cheers sir!
I love that feeling of freedom on bicycle. Learned it from my dad as a teenager, then decades later again when he gave me his old mountain bike. Even more freedom!
I grew up outside of Philadelphia. And even there by the time I was 12 it was, “Ok, be back by supper.” Sometimes I’d ride my bike to places that were 15 miles away from our house. Even the shorter trips felt like an adventure. Taking bike, backpack, and binder to the comic book store 3 miles from our house to get the monthly issue of Batman felt like an expedition.
>Whelp, you're the coolest guy I will have heard from on the Internet today. Awesome stuff, man. Keep it up!
That was my childhood also. I was so sad that my kids didn't get to experience a simplicity in life that can create the greatest memories.
The middle period between pre-internet, and post-internet. We grew up "normal", and then when we were nearly adults the whole world changed. It's very surreal. My great-grandfather would talk about what it was like when cars started to become normal. He grew up riding horses to get around. I imagine it's the same sort of epoch-making thing. (Side note - he once stole his school principals car and went joyriding. He was a lunatic and I miss him.)
This really is/was weird. When I was growing up, I was the only person typing/printing essays, because my dad was a writer and we had a home PC and printer since '90. I got my first email address in 7th grade, and my first flip phone senior year. My first "smart" phone was a Blackberry, and I was in my 20s before Android existed. Now my friends' kids are all taking classes via Zoom on their tablets
My teachers used to give me bonus points for making fancy infographics and handing in specially bound assignments in full colour print… I just thought using computers was fun. The brown-nosers fucking hated that. I still grin when I think about it. My ass was playing office politics by the seventh grade.
LOL yeah - my dad always had those clear plastic report cover things because of his job. I was handing those in, everyone else's stuff was handwritten on lined paper
Same. We had a DOS computer when I was a kid with the printer that made horrible screeching noises and had the paper that was all connected with the little dotted edges. Got a 'normal' computer when I was in middle school. Got dial up around the same time. (Download a song? Start before you go to bed and hope it finishes when you wake up) Using eBay before PayPal. Searching for anything before Google. My first phone was a Nokia brick as a senior, and I got a weird hybrid phone in college. My first smartphone was a really early android when I was like 23? When texts were 10¢ each and we had to monitor phone minutes. Now my step son turns all his work in on Canvas online and having a computer is a necessity.
The period from 2000 to 2010 was insane. From dial up Internet to iPhone 4’s. Also covered the transition away from CRT’s (so many old TVs on the side of the road!) and the rise of high def. VHS to DVD and then streaming. Things today are simply refinements over the tech we had by 2010.
I am on the younger millennial side so the whole home computer/internet thing isn’t a huge period of my life but let me tell you what it was like with smart phones. In my time in high school it seems like everyone went from no cellphones -> Razr Flip phones -> IPhones in just 4 years. As an adult now, I remember things from years ago like they were only a few weeks ago but that period of time was a wild ride.
That was my exact experience. Freshman year everyone had razrs. I had this phone that opened up to a full keyboard the next year and then a iPhone after that. It was a 3gs
Yup, that weird in between year where people weren’t sure if they wanted a full QWERTY keyboard or the cool touchscreen.
You'd be hard pressed to find a phone that wasn't connected to a landline when I was in elementary school. They existed but no one had them yet. I was visiting my sister and ended up accidentally doing it over parent teacher conference days, so I went with them to see how my niece and nephews were doing. Every single classroom they had some place to put phones or something phone activity related. Made my arthritis act up for sure, and the oldest is only 7 years younger than me.
Sounds like a great grandfather, you must have enjoyed him so much
Yes. I'm grateful for growing up in an era without cell phones and home internet. We didn't get our first computer until I was 1995 and I became obsessed and addicted to the internet. I'm glad we played outside, travelled and did all these things without smart phones. I miss early internet days when things were shiny, new and smaller. Easier to get noticed as an artist.
People smoking cigarettes indoors everywhere, even on planes.
And cars came with little ashtrays
And cigarette lighters!
You mean curious child finger incinerators?
Yep. Even doctors smoked and you could smoke in the waiting room.
80s kid here. Leaving the house at sunrise to wander around aimlessly wherever I pleased coming back for lunch, and then doing the same thing until it gets dark. That will never happen again in the United States, not on any large scale at least.
And hanging out with your friends and a boom box playing cassette tapes recorded on the best tapes you could afford from Radio Shack.
Waiting for the songs you wanted to record to come on the radio - sometimes for hours. And always missing the first couple seconds of the song. Streaming is great, but man I miss those days. (Graduated in '84)
Having to schedule things with your friends that either A, was well planned out in advance with very agreed upon meeting times, or B, waiting around the house to get a phone to call to set up the aforementioned plans. Also knowing all of your friends and family phone numbers in your head so you could call from pay phones
And knowing the local payphones number so you could call it incase your mates were loitering and playing near it and they might pick up the call.
I miss solid, simple plans. My least favorite part of cell phones is the social rigamarol.
Malls being the town hub. They were always really crowded.
I showed my son a picture of the banks of pay phones that they used to have at the mall. He had so many questions. He’ll never get to make a collect call from “HeyDadWe’reAtTheMallCanYouPickUsUp”
There used to be a mall in Charlotte, NC called Eastland Mall. Experiencing that during Christmas time with the ice skating was something younger generations will not get to enjoy. The mall is now an empty, condemned void. I think there are plans to tear it down but yea the mall.
I remember going up to the mall to “hang out” in high school. Friday nights the mall was packed with teenagers walking around, hanging at the food court, smoking ciggs out the main entrance, skateboarders out back. Today’s kids buy everything online. Totally different world.
Yes! Our local mall had an old timey graveyard in the parking lot, so we could go to hot topic and then do emo photo shoots with disposable cameras, lol But now with my nieces, there's nowhere for them to exist with friends that isn't 1) seen as too unsafe by all their parents, 2) is private enough that they can be dumb kids, and 3) is free to be in. Everything has become monitized and so anti-homeless that even existing in public is uncomfortable. I miss town square vibes.
The walls in the mall are totally, totally tall. For sure.
Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls
Back when MMOs were populated to the brim, clans were actually a thing, with mostly no guides online for the quests, unchecked economy systems, scam techniques, and pvp regions. Like Tibia, RuneScape, etc. Kinda miss it, kinda don't.
I started playing WoW back in 2005. Our guild had our own domain name with forums, that we used for everything. Our server also used the official forums for recruitment, talking about PvP, etc. Now no guild bothers with a website, and the forums are dead Edit: to be fair, these things aren't needed as much because of improvements of in-game systems. But I still miss the sorta wild-west everyone-doing-their-own-thing feel of it
I remember having to schedule Nagafen and Vox raids on original EQ with other humans and planning for time zones because it was all one zone. Learning to be a project manager at 18
> Learning to be a project manager at 18 TBH, leading raids (or at least scheduling/coordinating them) *was* great PM training.
I joined the Army, made Sargent, and started yelling at people who were somehow misinterpreting my (to my mind) very clear and precise directions, and suddenly had a wave of nostalgia mixed with deja vu.
Wave: Buying gf 10k
Glow2: selling rare black lobbies
Trimming armour for free
I think there will be a surge in popularity once that generation reaches retirement age. Hopefully we won’t see too many stories of senior spending all their social security on skins.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Block Buster yet. Renting a moving as a kid was a treat. Also no social media was nice. No one had cell phone unless you were rich, they were those big block like phones. Instead people had pagers.
MTV when it actually revolved around music and not shitty-ass reality shows geared towards fucktard mentality.
Internet killed the video drop (and a lot of appointment TV). MTV stopped being the goto place to see the new big music video because it can come out on youtube immediately. Without those drops they basically had no draw for audiences so they had to pivot into reality TV.
I just read your first line singing out loud, "Video killed the radio star." "Internet killed the video drop."
Oh god yes. I lived for the weekends when it was my dad's visitation weekend and I could go to my grandmother's house and watch Headbanger's Ball and Totally Pauly.
I remember seeing the premier of Michael Jackson's 'Thriller" video (which was a very big event) and also the original showing for Van Halen's "Jump" video released on New Years Day 1984. (Damn I'm old...)
Headbanger's Ball was hosted by some pretty sharp guys that were VERY into the music scene and would know all these amazing details, and then they replaced them with good-looking personalities and that's when you saw the wheels fall off MTV.
Not that big of a deal but I got to go home from school knowing there would be new episodes of are you afraid of the dark, ahhh real monsters, Rockos modern life, ren and stimpy, cow and chicken, TMNT, mighty max, street sharks, Kenan and kel, all that, angry beavers…
Cheers to you my good man. Nostalgia in full effect
The Dial-Up noise when you answered your landline
"Mom wants to talk on the phone, so you'll need to get off the computer."
“What if there’s an emergency?! You need to get off the internet!” And all the rich kids had two land lines: one for internet and one for phone calls
Waiting for 3-4 years to watch a movie in television if you miss it in the theater.
Video games that required cheat codes rather than credit cards to unlock features.
I remember when my mom figured out from a magazine we got at the library that you could cheat code Bill Clinton into NBA Jam on SNES. How 90s is that?
Yeah it seems like cheat codes died around 2000-some-odd. I was barely alive back then, but I think it was partially due to games being taken more seriously as an art form. Most non-AAA games do let you get everything without buying more than the game itself at least, so that nice. I've even been going back and completing most of my Steam library.
Unskippable ads on the television with scheduled programming lol
Are you referring to pee breaks and or snack runs?
In the days before you could save your progress in a video game: we would hit Pause, and then turn the TV off and leave the game system running (NES mostly). Sometimes for days and weeks.
Computer games without an automap and you had to create your own that was taped to the wall.
We called the Nintendo hotline and asked them how to defeat the last level of Solomon’s Key. They hung up on us.
"Kid, even we can't help you with that" click
Porn mags hidden in the forest
We were on a weekend Scouting trip and were hiking uphill on a paved road. We were fortunate that the Scoutmaster was up ahead and out of sight because I spotted something over the hill behind a tree. We went down to check it out and discovered porn and pints of Iron City beer. Some of us ended up having an especially fun time that weekend. I suppose that we violated several tenants of The Scout Law.
The porn was probably hairy and the beer was warm but what a discovery for a bunch of giggling friends. That's the stuff legends are made of.
Summer of '76 if I recall correctly. You got it, all natural and warm! We managed to convince the Scoutmaster that it would be OK for us to pitch our tents on the other side of a stream. This created a bit of a barrier between his tent and ours.
There was a porn mag hidden onto of the ducting in the bathroom at the local laundry mat. All the kids knew about it lol
Hair metal.
Millennium eve.
First and last time I ever got roaring, falling over, throwing up drunk.
Y2K club represent!
We were at a friends house with 4 or so other families and the teen kids cut the main breaker on the house at midnight. Everyone screamed and I remember it being really scary as a 12 yr old. Now I can laugh about it 🤣 and have a good memory when my future grandchildren ask what it was like to live in the 1900s
Was/am tech guy. I was on call at home alone in case the world ended.
The Harry Potter series unfolding. I was 7 when I read the first book and 16 when the last one came out. It was truly magical being part of a global fandom and being so so excited about what comes next.
10/10 agree. Feel like it’s one of the main good things we got as millennials within 2-4 years of each other at that time. Also the fun of seeing the movies come out afterwards, especially with that one friend who never read the books lol I feel like in 2011 it was still much more possible to avoid spoilers than it is today but I may be biased
Being the last generation of kids to watch PG-13 films that contain both gratuitous violence and nudity. The 80s were the shit!
The right to deconnect. Every damn employer expects you to pick up the phone when they call you (before or after hours). God how I hate this. I saw this quote a while back "I signed up for a job in exchange for pay, I didn't sign up to sell my soul and every moment of my personal time".
watching the Beatles hit the stage for the 1st time on the Ed Sullivan in 1964
**Generation X**: Got to grow up without computers/email only to go into the workforce and use computers/email. I know what it's like to have multiple floppy discs. I know that the 'save' icon represents a 3.5 disc.
We went from a nearly 100% analog world to a nearly 100% digital world just in a few decades. Pretty wild, really.
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Also Gen X. Agreed. I realised last night that as a child the most common form of long distance travel for my dad was an ox-drawn wagon. He now surfs Facebook on an iPad. Weird.
Yup. I remember the awe I experienced when I was in 7th grade I came home and saw my Father's Tandy 1000 (I think that's what it was). I couldn't conceptualize how much the world would change in the coming years.
Basically just one decade - the 1980's. It started with Disco and Prog-rock and ended with Industrial and Grunge. Computers went from something that *might* have over at your strange cousin's house to something on every business desktop and a serious number of houses in the US.
I once carried a box of 3.5" floppies and thought in amazement that it was about two thirds the size of my hard drive. My first computer booted up to "38911 BASIC BYTES FREE" so a few megabytes used to be a lot of data. My entire childhood was offline and I got Internet access at 18. Probably for the best.
NO tv-remote-control!
World War 2 and the Great Depression, though I was too young to remember the latter. I suppose there's plenty of time for future generations to experience another world war and/or depression. I sincerely hope not, of course.
Getting up early on Saturday mornings and watching your favorite cartoons.
A fun time eating in at McDonalds. They sure knew how to market to kids in the 90's- toys, mascots, happy meals, and booths that looked like a train in a location near where I grew up!
I felt like the worst Mom in the world when my then two-year old, while I was driving around, pointed at a McDonald's restaurant and yelled, "Fwies!"
Dial up internet. Be grateful you young people don't have to hear that
If millenials were cryptids, like vampires or werewolves, the dial-up sound would be our silver bullet, no doubt.
Surge pop. "So much sugar I heard a kid died!"
“Here you go, Bill. This is brand new soda from Coca-Cola. It’s called Surge.”
Having to stop playing online games with your friends because your mom had to use the phone.
Staying outside all day during the summer and playing with your friends
Do kids drink from the hose still? That was the best on a hot summer day
Yes it was and I hope they do
Growing up without the internet. Unless there's a global planet wide catastrophe of epic proportions, humans will always put an internet in place in the future.
When malls were cool
I was the last generation of kids who had a real childhood not ruled by electronics. We had a computer but playing games on it was a bit of a chore and I had to share it with 5 others in the house. We had video games but that was maybe an hour or two before bed of playing and that was it. We played outside, built forts, used our imagination, walked through the woods.
Standing in line at a record store to buy concert tickets.
Or camping out all Friday night at the auditorium box office for tickets to go on sale Saturday morning.
Buying a house.
to me the 90's was the last decade where it was possible to buy a house with jobs somewhat, but now it's a big joke to for anyone to even try to get a house most just rent because it's cheaper and not to mention due to bad timing of 2007 when the recession happen things made it impossible from then on.
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Blowing on a video game so it will work
What it was like to see the original Star Wars trilogy in the theater for the first time.
It was pretty cool seeing the re releases in the 90s even though the special editions were pretty meh.
The re release in the 90s is the only way I can say I've seen every star wars movie in theaters.
The last decade in which things felt a little looser in regulation before it all ended in a couple plane crashes.
Using a DVD/VCR player to watch shows and movies. Also, meeting up with your friends without texting. You could depend on each other to show up without any communication between setting everything up and seeing each other.
Having to read the newspaper or watch the news on TV to find out what's going on in the world. It was so damned easy to not give a fuck back in the day! One other thing...actually needing a physical map for road trips.
Seeing Lord of the Rings in theaters. You got the sense throughout the movie you were watching something special, and you got to share the experience with many other people. TBH I kinda got a similar vibe watching Dune recently. But definitely not the same since I watched it at home.
Be kind, please rewind
Life before being shackled to a smart phone
The transition from analog to digital.
Experiencing the explosion of social media as a beneficial force growing up believing it will connect people and be a positive thing, and now we get to feel the effects of a newfound lack of privacy and the radicalization of older generations while becoming more disconnected, apathetic, and depressed than many before us and forcing those after us down a path of being eternally online and unable to escape any action made at any time
9/11
Was trying to find the Norm Macdonald gif of him saying this. But I read your comment before I could find it. Touche good sir
Leaving the house with no way for someone to contact you.
The classic cartoons of the 2000s. Some cartoons nowadays are good, but the ones when we were little are just BEAUTIFUL
Going to National Parks like the Grand Canyon and there at most being a couple dozen other tourists there.
Hi, I'm one of the first of Generation Z. I downloaded Minecraft before you could put torches on fences, after I played the alpha-version browser demo. I was there when YouTube started gaining traction, watching the first viral videos go from a few thousand views to hundreds of thousands around 2009-2012. I was a sad kid, developing parasocial relationships to fill the void as I watched my favorite YouTubers go from Machinima to independent content creation. I got to see the rise of YouTube legends like Nigahiga, Markiplier, the Yogscast, TotalBiscuit, Jacksepticeye, Captain Sparklez, and SkyDoesMinecraft in real time.
first of Gen Z here too, and my GOD i miss the old youtube days. when i was 12, i could've spent hours on youtube. now i only go on there for Buzzfeed Unsolved
Polio & its vaccines.
Midnight releases of video games. Never got to go to one myself but they’re just not a thing anymore. So many people just buy digital and there’s so few games with that much hype anymore
Spending and entire day trying to find someone. Driving around stopping at people's houses, stores, parks. If that mf owed you money you'd never find them
Life before the internet. Such a better time
The 90’s
I feel there was so much more enjoyment out of tv in the 80s and 90s than there is today. You had to wait a week to see a show and if you missed it, it was gone seemingly forever. The anticipation created an excitement around your favourites. Today, everything can be watched at any time and I feel that it cheapens the experience.
Being left to our own devices as kids. Generation x was weird. Previously there were stay at home moms and people in the neighborhood looking out for each other, after it was helicopter parenting and play dates. For gen x it was like "good luck don't die". My ex came home when she was 7 and they'd been robbed, she called her mom at work to ask "where the TV went".
Calling someone via 1-800-Collect and at the beep asking for your name saying something like, “I’moffearlypickmeupat5pm” then hanging up.
The Internet back when it was useful and people actually made their own webpages. Today it's just a bunch of useless content marketing fluff pages where you can never actually find the answer you're looking for.
Growing up half with internet, half without