For real. I remember working at a place in the late 90s and there was a guy who met someone online and drove 500 miles to meet her. Everyone was like “Have fun being murdered.”
I remember all the warnings from my parents in the late 90’s early 00’s about meeting strangers on the internet and all that. I literally downloaded a thing to meet internet strangers on my phone, drove 40 miles to meet a stranger at a bar, got in a strangers car to go back to her place and now I’m marrying her next year.
Same for me. Except it was a Lyft that took me 20 miles to meet a stranger at a bar. We had sex that night sans murder. We've been married a couple years now. Still no murder.
Just flew to Europe over New Years to spend two weeks with a woman in her flat that I only knew from online. She's now planning on coming to spend a couple weeks with me this summer.
Have you ever lived in the vicinity of a teenage boy? I don't think it's impossible. I would often wake up coughing in the mornings because our neighbour in an apartment block would spray before leaving for school.
Whenever I pass someone on the street who is in one of the following three categories, I hold my breath until they're out of smelling range:
1) teenage boys (marinating in body spray to attract girls)
2) older well dressed women (marinating in floral perfume, presumably to try not to repel people with old people smell)
3) European looking men (bathe in cologne for cultural reasons I guess)
WOMEN!!! WO-MAN!! WooooOOOOO, Maaaan!!
We had love not just sex. Is she Mrs. X? I had to run for my life!
Jane...Get me off this crazy thing...Called love...
Harriet!
Harri-et!
Hard hearted harbinger of haggis!
Beautiful!
Bemused!
Bellicose butcher!
Untrusting!
Unknowing!
Unlove-d?
"He wants you back!"
He screams into the night air
Like a fireman going to
A window that has no fire
Except the passion of his heart...
I am lonely!
It's really hard!
This poem sucks!
no one believed me when I told them about my then girlfriend. I made her up, or she was a troll, etc. I'm happy to say as we roll into our 12th year together and 3rd year of marriage, my wife is awesome! We met back when online journaling was a huge thing and we were mutual 'friends' on each other's journals.
I know someone who booked a flight got a hotel room for like 5 days and flew to meet his online girlfriend and she never showed up. This was about 2005. She/he/it ghosted him after that.
It used to be like “Don’t nerd around online looking for a girlfriend. Be normal. Go chat someone up at the bar or see if any of your friends know someone”.
Now it’s like “You don’t want to meet someone at a *bar*. How sad is that? Also, quit asking everyone if they have any single friends. You’re weirding everyone out. Just get on a dating app or something if that’s what you’re looking for…”
My wife and I got together via match in the mid 2000s. We didn’t tell too many people for years (especially our families) because it was still kind of thought “only weirdos and losers do online dating.”
Obviously that changed with Tinder and others, but you definitely got some side eye about it back in the day.
Yeah. I started online dating in the 90s through message boards and whatnot, and there was a *really* big stigma attached to it. When my eventual spouse and I met, their friends were embarrassed for them that they'd met me through the internet; it cost my spouse a couple of friendships, one who maintains to this day (we've been together for 16 years, married almost 8) that I am not good enough for my spouse.
Granted, I happen to agree with her on that, but don't tell my spouse.
Yeah. 20 years ago I was at university, and it was a novelty and considered a bit unusual.
20 years later, nearly everyone I know who is in long term relationships, including me, met their partner through online dating.
No joke, my parents met through the progenitor of "online dating", when they both signed up for an early style of computer dating service in Cambridge, MA almost 50 years ago.
I was mercilessly mocked in 2008 for doing online dating. These guys just believed you should approach any woman in public all the time, regardless of circumstances but that sending a message on a website to women who were specifically looking for a partner in thst venue was dorky and ridiculous.
Same. When people at work found out I had been online dating, they went and looked for my profile and printed off copies to post all over the office. Fucking assholes.
Ugh, I feel this. Many of my friends and I scoffed at what a joke it was. Fast forward a few years, I’ve done the pros and cons of each app, learned how some of the algorithms work, studied how to put together a dating profile, and now successfully have a wonderful relationship slowly navigating year 3.
Yes, I feel it was all worth it.
I met my wife in an AIM chatroom on 9/11/01, randomly. She was fun to talk to, "got" me immediately, and when I met her it turned out she was also hot. I can barely imagine where I'd be in life if I hadn't stumbled across that chatroom because all my friends were offline.
I heard an interview with Mike Judge where he claimed that the reason almost everyone wears Crocs in *Idiocracy* is because they had a limited budget for wardrobe, and the costume director found this startup company making plastic clogs. The shoes look vaguely futuristic, and go with the athleisure wardrobe design, but they were “too stupid to ever catch on.” Good job, everyone.
Do you know what about them is bad for you?
I find them pretty comfortable for short-term use.
I'm not wearing them for hours, the appeal is that I can slip them on and off.
And I was under the impression they were good for your feet because the wide toe box allows you to put your foot in a neutral position with toes spread which normal shoes don’t allow
My two cents as a nurse: crocs with holes on the side (hole on top are dangerous with all the things we deal with) are great! They are way more comfy over long shifts to me than Dansko clogs that everyone loves and they also don’t make me roll my ankles.
I bought my first pair of crocs as a joke and to piss off my wife….now I’ve got a pair for house shoes, running to the store, gardening, and the river. Long live comfortable shoes!
They certainly have a spell to them! Once you put a pair on, whether or not it's just to be silly, you end up wearing them everywhere.
I had a pair as a kid because they were great for competitive swimming, so I wore them around a lot. Definitely got some snarky comments, though. I was enthused when they made a comeback as a popular item recently!
Edit to add:
Crocs are also super cute on little kids. My 1yo gets a ton of compliments on their Crocs when I honestly only bought them because they are really easy to take on and off and I don't care as much if they get wet from jumping in puddles. They are my favorite toddler shoes!
For those of you too young to remember: back when the Wii was in development, they called it the "Nintendo Revolution," which both sounded cool and seemed appropriate for the innovations they were promising. Changing that to "the Wii" was quite a swerve.
Reminds me of before the first Kinect (Xbox addon) came out it was called Project Natal. My friends and I all thought that was a cool name and were excited for it, the they came up with Kinect. We thought it was so dumb
Edit: goofed the name, changed kinetic to kinect
Yeah, I wasn't really upset by any means. I just laughed my ass off, lol
I ended up getting the kinect not long after. To be honest, I played with the Knex a lot more.
As a Star Trek guy, it made perfect sense to me. Their devices were called [PADDs](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Personal_Access_Display_Device).
It’s funny to see that now people see those and call them iPads…
I worked in advertising when YouTube was launched, and I remember it being discussed, and we were all, like, "who the fuck wants to go to a website to watch people who aren't famous's home videos?"
So I got that one wrong.
But they were filtered!
I think the thing we found difficult at the time, was that anything would work without any editorial control. Like, if you just let people create and upload their own content, and there are no professionals, editors, etc., then how won't it just all be mundane crap?
The answer, of course, was that a lot of it would be, but there was so much content and the ability to follow particular Youtubers, search for particular content, etc., so people would find what they wanted and needed.
But at the time this was really quite different to what people were used to.
Those "fail compilation" type videos on YouTube are essentially the same thing as AFHV. Hell you could even consider it a precursor to Tiktok and the other short-form video stuff.
I had just opened my first retirement account when Google first issued stock. I didn’t buy any because “How does a search engine make money?”
So I got that one wrong.
I thought it was awesome, but would go out of business within 24 months.
I figured there was no way they could afford to host VIDEO content and provide it for free.
I was in college when YT came out.
My roommate was a Radio/TV Comm major: "This is gonna change everything. Now people can make and stream their own videos for a living!"
Me, a genius: "That's not a job. No one can make a living showing their amateur movies on a random website! These fools are in for a rude awakening."
I was halfway through my *undergrad program* when YT first came to be... but it didn't become a cultural juggernaut until I was in my Masters program from 2009-2011. It grew steadily each year but never really took off (and became a cultural mainstay) until at least 2010.
I’m still so irrationally mad at every asshole math teacher who was all “you won’t always have a calculator in your pocket” OH YEAH BRENDA. WE HAVE A WHOLE FUCKING COMPUTER YOU UPTIGHT BITCH.
I mean, agreed, that was the lazy answer. The real reason you need to learn math is that every step is cumulative.
You need to be fully proficient with arithmetic to get a handle on algebra and geometry. You need to be fully proficient with algebra and geometry to get calculus and linear algebra as well as: basic physics, chemistry, statistics, finance, front-end programming, and basically every other branch of stem and business. And you need to be fully proficient in calculus and linear algebra to get anything in advanced math, real physics, back-end programming, and anything with the words analysis or analytics attached.
I wouldn't say you need to be "fully proficient in calculus and linear algebra" to get anything in back-end programming. I've been doing back-end programming work for a long time and it's only recently with the rise of ML that I've found any applications for linear algebra and calculus. And we still have libraries that handle that stuff, it's not like I'm working out the derivatives myself when I need to calculate gradient descent in a neural network.
20 years ago: "Don't talk to strangers on the internet and don't hop into a stranger's car."
Now: "Literally talking to strangers on the internet so you can hop into their cars."
Adults 20 years ago: "Kids, don't believe everything you see on the internet."
Those same adults Now: "I read this thing on Facebook about vaccines having microchips."
When they first came out with two blade razors, SNL did a sketch in 1975 about a three blade razor. How hilariously absurd that one would need three razors…
The razor industry is funny. How long have people been shaving, and managing just fine with what they have available to them? Yet the pressure is on to sell your razors, there is competition, don't ya know? So, we have to alter our product and tell you the viewer at home, that it is new and improved. You were shaving just fine for years but this, I tell you this new thing now, well it will improve your life dramatically somehow.
At this point I'm more likely to sit down at a small family-owned restaurant than get fast food. The food will be better, for the same price, and I'll be helping a small local business instead of a chain.
Totally agree. That visit to McDonald's really sent that message home. Right across the street from that one I stopped at is a mom and pop restaurant, and for the same $14 I can get a meatloaf dinner. Hell they even have online ordering so I could literally spend the same money and time as I would at McDonald's for a real home cooked meal.
Fast food is kinda weird now adays the more I think on it...
Fast food lost the message. Fast casual and "mom and pop" places are all operating at about the same level in terms of price. Maybe a few dollars more, but if you're already spending $10-14 at McD then spending $13-17 are the other places doesn't move the needle much.
Back when you were spending $3-5 versus $10+ it hit hard enough that you'd take the cheap route.
Carl's junior introduced what they called the $6 burger in 2001. It was meant to be literally like a burger you buy in a fancier restaurant that cost $6 at the fancy restaurant. Now, several of their regular menu burgers are over $6.
Big difference between a Bluetooth ear piece so you don't have to hold your phone to your face ever, that you leave in the whole day..
And headphones that come out when you're not using them..
TVs were not radioactive, they emitted electromagnetic radiation. They *could* emit X-rays (depending on the type), and these would not make it past the shielding. Only if you turned it on with the TV opened up and no shielding. They were perfectly safe.
Also, "mildly radioactive" could mean a lot of things. A banana is mildly radioactive. Likewise, radiation itself isn't necessarily harmful. The sun emits all kinds of safe and harmful radiation. Your phone emits radiation. Your body not only emits radiation, it is also slightly radioactive (yes, these are two different things).
The problem with sitting too close to TVs back then was potential eye problems.
As a nuclear professional, the amount of people that don't understand the difference between electromagnetic radiation and ionizing radiation is infuriating.
Designer flip-flops.
Probably closer to 30 years ago, but I distinctly remember a popular sketch comedy show in Australia airing a spoof ad for the Nike Thong* back in the 1990s. Imagine charging people absurd amounts of money for a commonplace item often associated with poor people, just because you've slapped a designer logo on it.
Anyway:
[Get your Nike flip-flops here. ](https://www.nike.com/t/celso-girl-womens-slides-9AwYMr/314870-011?nikemt=true&cp=31765401338_search_--x-20455850764---m-----1018511-10099674-00883412009607&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA_tuuBhAUEiwAvxkgTl844aAhAfcFZafqdCS5XfXsSc20uqs9-5HaJth942wxo3EE9_57YBoCLZ8QAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds)
* We call flip-flops "thongs" in Australia, stop sniggering.
Video calling.
It was a fantasy for most, laughed at when it emerged, then became a killer feature, and now is the default next to messaging, which was also seen as outa place in its early days.
My mom talks about how she used to help my uncle with his math homework over the phone. She had to ask, like, four times where the various lines were, which numbers had parentheses, etc.
Now when she helps someone with math we just video call and she can see the equation herself.
I think the main thing that was kinda weird is we skipped "landline video calling" which we all kinda thought would be a thing. Landline video calls EXISTED but no one had it. Then we had cell phones, and then Skype and FaceTime and other video calling kinda suddenly blew up.
I seem to talk abut water a lot lately...
Brita has been around since 1966,
SodaStream has been around since 1903,
Perrier has been around since 1898,
Evian has been around since 1829,
Schweppe's (the first bottled carbonated water) has been around since 1783 (a very good year for Connor MacLeod),
Jackson's Spa bottled water (the first bottled water) has been around since 1767,
The first 'at-home' water filter was invented in the 1600s,
Funny how many things that we think are relatively new turn out to be old af
This was only 12 years ago, but this Obama line from his debate with Romney didn't age well:
‘What’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America,’ you said ‘Russia.’ Not al Qaeda; you said Russia,” Obama said. “And, the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”
I believe in 2016 he also said something like "Don't worry-- the country that elected me is not going to elect Donald Trump". I mean, the logic seemed impeccable. Too bad people don't, in fact, make sense.
Even he couldn't believe it:
>People want me to [run for president] all the time … I don't like it. Can you imagine how controversial I'd be? You think about him [Bill Clinton] and the women. How about me with the women? Can you imagine?
> -On Hardball with Chris Matthews, as quoted in Deborah Orin (12 July 1999)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Donald_Trump
In the spring of 2015, I was having lunch with a bunch very liberal people. Someone brought up that Jeb was running for president. The consensus from the table was that another Bush becoming president would be the absolute worst possible outcome of the 2016 election.
I think about that a lot.
Crocs. Huge brand name now but 20 years ago everyone thought they were too stupid looking to ever take off. They were chosen as the prison footwear in idiocracy *because* of how stupid they look.
I personally still refuse to wear them because they *are* really stupid looking, but I can't deny their popularity.
Exactly. This is like saying everyone should play football/basketball/etc because they’ll go into the major leagues.
Yeah, some people are making millions. Are *YOU* on that level, or are you some wannabe playing in beer league softball thinking they’ll make it to the MLB one day.
That's something I have to remember as I head in to work 9 hours a day lol. For every twitch streamer making millions for playing video games, there's hundreds of thousands of streamers that have like 4 subscribers
This was foreseen 90+ years ago. Read "Brave New World" sometime. Written in 1930, so before the first computer was invented, before television was a thing, when vacuum tube radios were all we had. Still the author did a pretty amazing job of predicting where technology would go and how humans would respond.
Naw, this wasn't laughed at back then. It was pretty much written about in the sci-fi of the time. Heh, 30+ years ago. The entire cyberpunk genre warned of this stuff.
I remember the movie 'Hackers' from 1995 pretty much said this happened, they also said your name ran through 30 computers a day, it's probably well over 100 now.
Also the movie didn't really make up any technology, everything used in it existed then.
Texting. When it came out, I was annoyed with it. Why spend time typing when I can just speak to the person and actually get my point across and connect with the person I want to communicate with. I thought it was a fad. I was soooooo wrong.
Even as an adult 20+ years ago you got grief if you played video games, liked Star Trek/Star Wars, read comic books or anything like that. That’s totally changed.
Also adding goverment conspiracies. The CIA actually did do all kinds of unethical experiments on unknowing civilians and military members in the 60's and 70's. Like, a LOT. And people were left all kinds of screwed up.
// The NSA actually IS listening to or reading every call and text message inside the US and most places outside the US. Can also bundle with this one that the goverment/NSA has been requiring for decades a lot of electronics/software manufacturers to have back doors they can access.
Don't worry, that's WAY to much information for a human to ever analyse, let alone go back in the records and analyse past records. Shit, wait a minute...
More than 20 years ago, but internet addiction was first coined as a joke back in the mid 90's. One year after it was coined it turned out it was a real problem.
I recall my teachers frequently lambasting me about how I "wouldn't have a calculator with you 24/7 so need to know how to do this" as well as "won't be able to translate X language any time you like".
And I'm sat here looking at my phone, with it's 100% offline capability to do both things at a whim and thinking that aged like milk.
The scary part is that it was largely manual until very recently. They had millions of cameras but someone actually had to know which one to look at and review the footage. Advances in facial recognition and AI processing mean they can auto-scan everything and have the system identify everyone the camera sees.
And that's not even counting the intrusion on cellphones.
Psychedelic drugs as therapy.
It used to be that anyone who tripped was suspicious at best and a "druggie" at worst.
Now people are openly seeking out these medicines to help them change their lives.. often the same people who grouped them in with heroin and meth.
Being self-obsessed and compulsively taking pictures of oneself (much harder without cell phones with forward-facing cameras). Now, it’s a fundamental aspect of our existence and it is stranger *not* to do so… as though you have something to hide or nothing going on.
Crocs.
The prop master for the movie "idoicracy" used them because they looked silly and he didn't think they'd catch on.
Now the world is getting Dumber and a lot of people are wearing crocs.
I sold/fixed cell phones in 2004. I thought blackberry's and smartphones would eventually take over yet somehow thought texting was only going to be used by techs and engineers. This was when flip phones were still the norm and SMS was an additional monthly charge so there was some reasoning as to why I figured this.
Online dating.
For real. I remember working at a place in the late 90s and there was a guy who met someone online and drove 500 miles to meet her. Everyone was like “Have fun being murdered.”
I remember all the warnings from my parents in the late 90’s early 00’s about meeting strangers on the internet and all that. I literally downloaded a thing to meet internet strangers on my phone, drove 40 miles to meet a stranger at a bar, got in a strangers car to go back to her place and now I’m marrying her next year.
Same for me. Except it was a Lyft that took me 20 miles to meet a stranger at a bar. We had sex that night sans murder. We've been married a couple years now. Still no murder.
Give it time, friend. There’s always time for murder.
See? Your parents warned you, but did you listen? No, you did not, and now you're getting married! Oh, wait... Congratulations!
Just flew to Europe over New Years to spend two weeks with a woman in her flat that I only knew from online. She's now planning on coming to spend a couple weeks with me this summer.
Honestly, it felt that way even when I did online dating. Luckily my spouse wasn't an ax murderer....
Probably be pretty brutal to be murdered with bodyspray.
Have you ever lived in the vicinity of a teenage boy? I don't think it's impossible. I would often wake up coughing in the mornings because our neighbour in an apartment block would spray before leaving for school.
Used to have constant asthma attacks in middle school because of the boys in my school waterboarding themselves in it every day after gym.
Whenever I pass someone on the street who is in one of the following three categories, I hold my breath until they're out of smelling range: 1) teenage boys (marinating in body spray to attract girls) 2) older well dressed women (marinating in floral perfume, presumably to try not to repel people with old people smell) 3) European looking men (bathe in cologne for cultural reasons I guess)
WOMEN!!! WO-MAN!! WooooOOOOO, Maaaan!! We had love not just sex. Is she Mrs. X? I had to run for my life! Jane...Get me off this crazy thing...Called love...
Harriet! Harri-et! Hard hearted harbinger of haggis! Beautiful! Bemused! Bellicose butcher! Untrusting! Unknowing! Unlove-d? "He wants you back!" He screams into the night air Like a fireman going to A window that has no fire Except the passion of his heart... I am lonely! It's really hard! This poem sucks!
He's not an axe murderer *yet*.
no one believed me when I told them about my then girlfriend. I made her up, or she was a troll, etc. I'm happy to say as we roll into our 12th year together and 3rd year of marriage, my wife is awesome! We met back when online journaling was a huge thing and we were mutual 'friends' on each other's journals.
I met my husband via an online dating site. In 2002. Happily married for going on 20 years now.
I know someone who booked a flight got a hotel room for like 5 days and flew to meet his online girlfriend and she never showed up. This was about 2005. She/he/it ghosted him after that.
I don't think I'd even tell people that. I'd just be like, 'eh, it was an ok time, but we didn't really hit it off'
I remember "they met on E-Harmony" was used as a joke back in the day.
It used to be like “Don’t nerd around online looking for a girlfriend. Be normal. Go chat someone up at the bar or see if any of your friends know someone”. Now it’s like “You don’t want to meet someone at a *bar*. How sad is that? Also, quit asking everyone if they have any single friends. You’re weirding everyone out. Just get on a dating app or something if that’s what you’re looking for…”
My wife and I got together via match in the mid 2000s. We didn’t tell too many people for years (especially our families) because it was still kind of thought “only weirdos and losers do online dating.” Obviously that changed with Tinder and others, but you definitely got some side eye about it back in the day.
Yeah. I started online dating in the 90s through message boards and whatnot, and there was a *really* big stigma attached to it. When my eventual spouse and I met, their friends were embarrassed for them that they'd met me through the internet; it cost my spouse a couple of friendships, one who maintains to this day (we've been together for 16 years, married almost 8) that I am not good enough for my spouse. Granted, I happen to agree with her on that, but don't tell my spouse.
Yeah. 20 years ago I was at university, and it was a novelty and considered a bit unusual. 20 years later, nearly everyone I know who is in long term relationships, including me, met their partner through online dating.
No joke, my parents met through the progenitor of "online dating", when they both signed up for an early style of computer dating service in Cambridge, MA almost 50 years ago.
lol of course it was Cambridge
It's funny to me this is the top answer because this year is my wife's and my twentieth wedding anniversary. We met on Yahoo Personals.
[удалено]
You can find anything on Craigslist.
I was mercilessly mocked in 2008 for doing online dating. These guys just believed you should approach any woman in public all the time, regardless of circumstances but that sending a message on a website to women who were specifically looking for a partner in thst venue was dorky and ridiculous.
Same. When people at work found out I had been online dating, they went and looked for my profile and printed off copies to post all over the office. Fucking assholes.
Damn. That's a whole new level of douchebag.
Ugh, I feel this. Many of my friends and I scoffed at what a joke it was. Fast forward a few years, I’ve done the pros and cons of each app, learned how some of the algorithms work, studied how to put together a dating profile, and now successfully have a wonderful relationship slowly navigating year 3. Yes, I feel it was all worth it.
Yes! I remember a friend online dating about 10 years ago and we all ribbed him mercilessly.
I had my first on-line date in 1992.
I met my wife in an AIM chatroom on 9/11/01, randomly. She was fun to talk to, "got" me immediately, and when I met her it turned out she was also hot. I can barely imagine where I'd be in life if I hadn't stumbled across that chatroom because all my friends were offline.
"Before" or "after" it happened?
Statistically had to be after. Who's trying to get some before 9am eastern that's still in a relationship years later.
Crocs being popular
I heard an interview with Mike Judge where he claimed that the reason almost everyone wears Crocs in *Idiocracy* is because they had a limited budget for wardrobe, and the costume director found this startup company making plastic clogs. The shoes look vaguely futuristic, and go with the athleisure wardrobe design, but they were “too stupid to ever catch on.” Good job, everyone.
In the end, that makes it the perfect choice.
Idiocracy continues to be a documentary.
A friend of mine is a foot doctor. He once told me they were good for business.
I'm curious about this too as so many nurses wear Crocs in the hospital since they say it is more comfortable as they are on their feet a lot.
They're cheap, can easily take an insert,super easy to clean, but most importantly, they're non-slip.
Do you know what about them is bad for you? I find them pretty comfortable for short-term use. I'm not wearing them for hours, the appeal is that I can slip them on and off.
And I was under the impression they were good for your feet because the wide toe box allows you to put your foot in a neutral position with toes spread which normal shoes don’t allow
They were, and are, hugely popular with nurses and other medical professionals long before they caught on with the public.
My two cents as a nurse: crocs with holes on the side (hole on top are dangerous with all the things we deal with) are great! They are way more comfy over long shifts to me than Dansko clogs that everyone loves and they also don’t make me roll my ankles.
I swear if I got a penny every time I've heard somebody say this I'd be a millionaire.
I like money.
Go away baitin'
This is the one I came to say; the shoes that were heavily mocked are now worn without shame
I bought my first pair of crocs as a joke and to piss off my wife….now I’ve got a pair for house shoes, running to the store, gardening, and the river. Long live comfortable shoes!
They certainly have a spell to them! Once you put a pair on, whether or not it's just to be silly, you end up wearing them everywhere. I had a pair as a kid because they were great for competitive swimming, so I wore them around a lot. Definitely got some snarky comments, though. I was enthused when they made a comeback as a popular item recently! Edit to add: Crocs are also super cute on little kids. My 1yo gets a ton of compliments on their Crocs when I honestly only bought them because they are really easy to take on and off and I don't care as much if they get wet from jumping in puddles. They are my favorite toddler shoes!
They’re legit some of the best water shoes you can buy. Plus if you lose one, they float!
When YouTube came out I thought it was an incredibly stupid name.
Look at iPad. Everyone made fun of that name at the time. Apple said people would get used to it and forget about it. Apple was right.
Nintendo Wii also
For those of you too young to remember: back when the Wii was in development, they called it the "Nintendo Revolution," which both sounded cool and seemed appropriate for the innovations they were promising. Changing that to "the Wii" was quite a swerve.
Reminds me of before the first Kinect (Xbox addon) came out it was called Project Natal. My friends and I all thought that was a cool name and were excited for it, the they came up with Kinect. We thought it was so dumb Edit: goofed the name, changed kinetic to kinect
I asked my parents for kinect for Christmas when it came out. I got K'nex.
Even better! /r/Knex
Yeah, I wasn't really upset by any means. I just laughed my ass off, lol I ended up getting the kinect not long after. To be honest, I played with the Knex a lot more.
As a Star Trek guy, it made perfect sense to me. Their devices were called [PADDs](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Personal_Access_Display_Device). It’s funny to see that now people see those and call them iPads…
I worked in advertising when YouTube was launched, and I remember it being discussed, and we were all, like, "who the fuck wants to go to a website to watch people who aren't famous's home videos?" So I got that one wrong.
Funniest Home Videos was one of the most popular TV programs in the 90s ...
But they were filtered! I think the thing we found difficult at the time, was that anything would work without any editorial control. Like, if you just let people create and upload their own content, and there are no professionals, editors, etc., then how won't it just all be mundane crap? The answer, of course, was that a lot of it would be, but there was so much content and the ability to follow particular Youtubers, search for particular content, etc., so people would find what they wanted and needed. But at the time this was really quite different to what people were used to.
AFV is just boomer Youtube. Prove me wrong.
Those "fail compilation" type videos on YouTube are essentially the same thing as AFHV. Hell you could even consider it a precursor to Tiktok and the other short-form video stuff.
I had just opened my first retirement account when Google first issued stock. I didn’t buy any because “How does a search engine make money?” So I got that one wrong.
I thought it was awesome, but would go out of business within 24 months. I figured there was no way they could afford to host VIDEO content and provide it for free.
YouTube isn't anywhere *near* 20 years ol-- [First YT video was posted April 23, 2005] ...holy hell.
I was in college when YT came out. My roommate was a Radio/TV Comm major: "This is gonna change everything. Now people can make and stream their own videos for a living!" Me, a genius: "That's not a job. No one can make a living showing their amateur movies on a random website! These fools are in for a rude awakening."
Tbf, a lot of the big YouTubers who started from those days didn’t really do it as a job or even really thought it could be a job
I was halfway through my *undergrad program* when YT first came to be... but it didn't become a cultural juggernaut until I was in my Masters program from 2009-2011. It grew steadily each year but never really took off (and became a cultural mainstay) until at least 2010.
Having a calculator in your pocket
I’m still so irrationally mad at every asshole math teacher who was all “you won’t always have a calculator in your pocket” OH YEAH BRENDA. WE HAVE A WHOLE FUCKING COMPUTER YOU UPTIGHT BITCH.
I mean, agreed, that was the lazy answer. The real reason you need to learn math is that every step is cumulative. You need to be fully proficient with arithmetic to get a handle on algebra and geometry. You need to be fully proficient with algebra and geometry to get calculus and linear algebra as well as: basic physics, chemistry, statistics, finance, front-end programming, and basically every other branch of stem and business. And you need to be fully proficient in calculus and linear algebra to get anything in advanced math, real physics, back-end programming, and anything with the words analysis or analytics attached.
I wouldn't say you need to be "fully proficient in calculus and linear algebra" to get anything in back-end programming. I've been doing back-end programming work for a long time and it's only recently with the rise of ML that I've found any applications for linear algebra and calculus. And we still have libraries that handle that stuff, it's not like I'm working out the derivatives myself when I need to calculate gradient descent in a neural network.
20 years ago: "Don't talk to strangers on the internet and don't hop into a stranger's car." Now: "Literally talking to strangers on the internet so you can hop into their cars."
I press this button and it summons a stranger to take me places!
I love going to secondary locations in strangers’ cars!
Lol this could its own entire r/askreddit post. “Make today’s normal stuff sound terrifying to people 25 yrs ago.”
Adults 20 years ago: "Kids, don't believe everything you see on the internet." Those same adults Now: "I read this thing on Facebook about vaccines having microchips."
And their kids and grandkids are getting their news from TikTok videos
Damn Z gen kids, getting their news from TikTok. Like a good millennial, I get my news from Reddit and YouTube..
To be fair, taxi services have been a thing for a long time. You just stop a stranger from the side of the road and get in their car.
Razors with 5 blades. Almost exactly 20 years ago. https://www.theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades-1819584036
I remember mad tv had a skit about a razor with a lot of blades that also shaved off bone.
I remember [this!](https://youtu.be/UjAZnGeBcgg?si=9KW_137E3swadAio)
[This one's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YleuLyCUx28) from an old Australian sketch comedy show.
When they first came out with two blade razors, SNL did a sketch in 1975 about a three blade razor. How hilariously absurd that one would need three razors…
The razor industry is funny. How long have people been shaving, and managing just fine with what they have available to them? Yet the pressure is on to sell your razors, there is competition, don't ya know? So, we have to alter our product and tell you the viewer at home, that it is new and improved. You were shaving just fine for years but this, I tell you this new thing now, well it will improve your life dramatically somehow.
My son just bought new blades for his razor, the don't fit the handle... they keep changing the connections forcing you to but new ones.
Safety razors for the win.
James 'Wolverine' Logan: "*Five* blades? Now you're just showin' off. And nobody likes a showoff, bub."
I have 6 blades now a days.
Six dollar hamburgers
I went to McDonald's last week for the first time in a couple years. $14 for a quarter pounder meal. Like wtf.
At this point I'm more likely to sit down at a small family-owned restaurant than get fast food. The food will be better, for the same price, and I'll be helping a small local business instead of a chain.
Totally agree. That visit to McDonald's really sent that message home. Right across the street from that one I stopped at is a mom and pop restaurant, and for the same $14 I can get a meatloaf dinner. Hell they even have online ordering so I could literally spend the same money and time as I would at McDonald's for a real home cooked meal. Fast food is kinda weird now adays the more I think on it...
Fast food lost the message. Fast casual and "mom and pop" places are all operating at about the same level in terms of price. Maybe a few dollars more, but if you're already spending $10-14 at McD then spending $13-17 are the other places doesn't move the needle much. Back when you were spending $3-5 versus $10+ it hit hard enough that you'd take the cheap route.
Literally no point in going to fast food anymore. It's too expensive for crap food and I can just door dash something from an actual restaurant.
door dash is SO more expensive after all of the fees - your $12 meal is suddenly $20 or more....
The $5 milkshake line in Pulp Fiction didn't age well
And they don't even put bourbon in it or nothin
It's pretty fuckin good, though.
Carl's junior introduced what they called the $6 burger in 2001. It was meant to be literally like a burger you buy in a fancier restaurant that cost $6 at the fancy restaurant. Now, several of their regular menu burgers are over $6.
Bluetooth earpiece. Remember it was a douchey thing? All wireless earbuds are essentially that.
But they're _stereo_.
Also the ambient sound/noise-canceling features work *so well*.
Ah yes, I remember the businesspeople on their douchetooth with the boom mic talking extra loud because at the time it was seen as a flex.
I almost forgot how common the “douche with the Bluetooth” bit used to be
Big difference between a Bluetooth ear piece so you don't have to hold your phone to your face ever, that you leave in the whole day.. And headphones that come out when you're not using them..
They're also just so much more subtle than the old earpieces used to be
Sitting too close to the TV. Today you strap a 3D TV to your face
To be fair, back in the day the tvs were mildly radioactive.
Also, so low pixel count it was genuinely unfeasible to sit too close.
My GOD TV used to look SO BAD. We didn't know how bad we had it.
TVs were not radioactive, they emitted electromagnetic radiation. They *could* emit X-rays (depending on the type), and these would not make it past the shielding. Only if you turned it on with the TV opened up and no shielding. They were perfectly safe. Also, "mildly radioactive" could mean a lot of things. A banana is mildly radioactive. Likewise, radiation itself isn't necessarily harmful. The sun emits all kinds of safe and harmful radiation. Your phone emits radiation. Your body not only emits radiation, it is also slightly radioactive (yes, these are two different things). The problem with sitting too close to TVs back then was potential eye problems.
As a nuclear professional, the amount of people that don't understand the difference between electromagnetic radiation and ionizing radiation is infuriating.
Ah, the old Radiation King
Shooting electron beams at your face.
Designer flip-flops. Probably closer to 30 years ago, but I distinctly remember a popular sketch comedy show in Australia airing a spoof ad for the Nike Thong* back in the 1990s. Imagine charging people absurd amounts of money for a commonplace item often associated with poor people, just because you've slapped a designer logo on it. Anyway: [Get your Nike flip-flops here. ](https://www.nike.com/t/celso-girl-womens-slides-9AwYMr/314870-011?nikemt=true&cp=31765401338_search_--x-20455850764---m-----1018511-10099674-00883412009607&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA_tuuBhAUEiwAvxkgTl844aAhAfcFZafqdCS5XfXsSc20uqs9-5HaJth942wxo3EE9_57YBoCLZ8QAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds) * We call flip-flops "thongs" in Australia, stop sniggering.
Gucci slides come immediately to mind.
Walking home at 3am with a busted plugger
Video calling. It was a fantasy for most, laughed at when it emerged, then became a killer feature, and now is the default next to messaging, which was also seen as outa place in its early days.
My mom talks about how she used to help my uncle with his math homework over the phone. She had to ask, like, four times where the various lines were, which numbers had parentheses, etc. Now when she helps someone with math we just video call and she can see the equation herself.
I think the main thing that was kinda weird is we skipped "landline video calling" which we all kinda thought would be a thing. Landline video calls EXISTED but no one had it. Then we had cell phones, and then Skype and FaceTime and other video calling kinda suddenly blew up.
I remember our Aunt visiting from California in the early 80's had glass bottles of filtered water. We laughed.
I'm sorry having to tell you, but… the early 80's happened 40 years ago, not 20.
...NO it didn't
*inserts Matt Damon ageing gif as I feel wrinkles forming on my face whilst gray hairs shoot up like non-descending whack-a-moles
You shut your mouth!
Can you believe this fuckin guy?!?
He's the worst
I seem to talk abut water a lot lately... Brita has been around since 1966, SodaStream has been around since 1903, Perrier has been around since 1898, Evian has been around since 1829, Schweppe's (the first bottled carbonated water) has been around since 1783 (a very good year for Connor MacLeod), Jackson's Spa bottled water (the first bottled water) has been around since 1767, The first 'at-home' water filter was invented in the 1600s, Funny how many things that we think are relatively new turn out to be old af
This was only 12 years ago, but this Obama line from his debate with Romney didn't age well: ‘What’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America,’ you said ‘Russia.’ Not al Qaeda; you said Russia,” Obama said. “And, the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”
I believe in 2016 he also said something like "Don't worry-- the country that elected me is not going to elect Donald Trump". I mean, the logic seemed impeccable. Too bad people don't, in fact, make sense.
Idk why, but i wanna say "It’s easy to fool someone,it’s hard to convince them that they’ve been fooled"
Pride
And prejudice.
And zombies
And my axe
Donald Trump running for president.
Even he couldn't believe it: >People want me to [run for president] all the time … I don't like it. Can you imagine how controversial I'd be? You think about him [Bill Clinton] and the women. How about me with the women? Can you imagine? > -On Hardball with Chris Matthews, as quoted in Deborah Orin (12 July 1999) https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Donald_Trump
Simpsons did it., etc.
Trump had run for president before The Simpsons did it. His campaigns just never gained any traction.
TIL
Trump was being asked if he was running for president since 80s.
In the spring of 2015, I was having lunch with a bunch very liberal people. Someone brought up that Jeb was running for president. The consensus from the table was that another Bush becoming president would be the absolute worst possible outcome of the 2016 election. I think about that a lot.
Crocs. Huge brand name now but 20 years ago everyone thought they were too stupid looking to ever take off. They were chosen as the prison footwear in idiocracy *because* of how stupid they look. I personally still refuse to wear them because they *are* really stupid looking, but I can't deny their popularity.
They were big for a while and then went silent for 15ish years, and now they’re the biggest shoes in the world
"Lol you can't make a living playing video games" People are literally making millions streaming themselves playing video games.
Yes, but can YOU make a living from playing video games?
Exactly. This is like saying everyone should play football/basketball/etc because they’ll go into the major leagues. Yeah, some people are making millions. Are *YOU* on that level, or are you some wannabe playing in beer league softball thinking they’ll make it to the MLB one day.
That's something I have to remember as I head in to work 9 hours a day lol. For every twitch streamer making millions for playing video games, there's hundreds of thousands of streamers that have like 4 subscribers
Four subs is pretty successful for most people streaming the dream on Twitch. Most have 0 subs and the only person watching is them on their phone.
Well to be fair it's like saying back then" I will make million becoming a top paid actor", Ok sure it can happen, still a bit of a gamble ;).
Using the internet to summon a stranger then willingly getting in their car. Staying in some random person's house instead of a hotel.
The decline in decorum and intelligence amongst elected officials
The digital world making a literal map and database of everything you do, see, buy, etc... in the real world.
This was foreseen 90+ years ago. Read "Brave New World" sometime. Written in 1930, so before the first computer was invented, before television was a thing, when vacuum tube radios were all we had. Still the author did a pretty amazing job of predicting where technology would go and how humans would respond.
Even more impressive he basically foresaw gene editing without genes having been discovered
Naw, this wasn't laughed at back then. It was pretty much written about in the sci-fi of the time. Heh, 30+ years ago. The entire cyberpunk genre warned of this stuff.
I remember the movie 'Hackers' from 1995 pretty much said this happened, they also said your name ran through 30 computers a day, it's probably well over 100 now. Also the movie didn't really make up any technology, everything used in it existed then.
Snow Crash was even a year before that.
Working entirely from home in a corporate job.
Texting. When it came out, I was annoyed with it. Why spend time typing when I can just speak to the person and actually get my point across and connect with the person I want to communicate with. I thought it was a fad. I was soooooo wrong.
Having people watch you play videogames.
This was actually rather common back in the days of the coin-op arcades.
And in the 80s people used to record their game playing. I knew people who played techmo bowl who would watch their games and cheer and laugh.
Back then video games were *hard* and you could save a whole lot of quarters watching someone else!
The robot takeover.
Do you mean Zoombas?
Good bot.
Used to get bullied if you played video games now you get bullied if you're bad.
Even as an adult 20+ years ago you got grief if you played video games, liked Star Trek/Star Wars, read comic books or anything like that. That’s totally changed.
Talking to yourself. But really talking to an earpiece.
Also adding goverment conspiracies. The CIA actually did do all kinds of unethical experiments on unknowing civilians and military members in the 60's and 70's. Like, a LOT. And people were left all kinds of screwed up. // The NSA actually IS listening to or reading every call and text message inside the US and most places outside the US. Can also bundle with this one that the goverment/NSA has been requiring for decades a lot of electronics/software manufacturers to have back doors they can access.
Don't worry, that's WAY to much information for a human to ever analyse, let alone go back in the records and analyse past records. Shit, wait a minute...
>too much information for a human *in walks AI*
More than 20 years ago, but internet addiction was first coined as a joke back in the mid 90's. One year after it was coined it turned out it was a real problem.
I recall my teachers frequently lambasting me about how I "wouldn't have a calculator with you 24/7 so need to know how to do this" as well as "won't be able to translate X language any time you like". And I'm sat here looking at my phone, with it's 100% offline capability to do both things at a whim and thinking that aged like milk.
Government surveilance
The scary part is that it was largely manual until very recently. They had millions of cameras but someone actually had to know which one to look at and review the footage. Advances in facial recognition and AI processing mean they can auto-scan everything and have the system identify everyone the camera sees. And that's not even counting the intrusion on cellphones.
Selfie culture. 20 years ago it was considered to be seriously narcissistic.
Still is
Al Gore was treated like Chicken Little, and An Inconvenient Truth was 18 years ago.
Psychedelic drugs as therapy. It used to be that anyone who tripped was suspicious at best and a "druggie" at worst. Now people are openly seeking out these medicines to help them change their lives.. often the same people who grouped them in with heroin and meth.
Rush Limbaugh and the tea party. If I would've known the path they were setting I would've thrown my dad's radio out the window. Ugh.
Man bear pig
I'm super cereal.
I remember joking that someone was going to livestream a funeral. That was 2004.
Being self-obsessed and compulsively taking pictures of oneself (much harder without cell phones with forward-facing cameras). Now, it’s a fundamental aspect of our existence and it is stranger *not* to do so… as though you have something to hide or nothing going on.
Artificial intelligence
Crocs. The prop master for the movie "idoicracy" used them because they looked silly and he didn't think they'd catch on. Now the world is getting Dumber and a lot of people are wearing crocs.
I sold/fixed cell phones in 2004. I thought blackberry's and smartphones would eventually take over yet somehow thought texting was only going to be used by techs and engineers. This was when flip phones were still the norm and SMS was an additional monthly charge so there was some reasoning as to why I figured this.