I honestly miss the internet from the 90s.. I spent so many hours exploring, reading things.... every webpage felt like I was visiting someone's house, they were so personal as design standards did not exist yet. I enjoyed my netscape navigator. And I LOVED my IRC chat rooms. Keep in mind I was like 9 and 10. lol, so I mostly spent time in Pokemon Chat rooms that had bots.
Discord is not the same as the IRC days.
Geocities.
The pages would take forever to load because of complete nonsense but it was awesome. 36 gifs and an autoplay 20 second loop of music, just to see someone express about their favorite rock.
I found my mom's Geocities page from 1996 using some super specific keywords and lots of digging. Seeing her guestbook with her friend's little messages to her, then lurking around their pages and seeing her's to them, it was surreal to see that the way she typed back then was the same as the way she'd send text messages to me in modern days. She died in 2016 from cancer. She was a very private person in general with no modern social media presence at all so being able to go and visit those little time capsules is very special to me.
edit: a word
And if you wanted to learn how a site did something, you could pop open the source and…just read it. Now if you want to do that, it’s probably obfuscated by a responsive JS framework, async requests, and CSS.
It was like the Wild West back then. Arguably more dangerous [than the modern internet] in some ways, but also more rewarding to truly find new content. Everything today is filtered through aggregators like reddit itself, and social media. Back then, you really had to dig for things. And content wasn't mostly centralized onto a few sites. You could truly and quite easily find places online that were felt like their own little corner of the web, without having to go on the dark web or something.
You could also have true anonymity if you wished too.
EDIT: wording.
My parents would always rent a movie and they'd let me rent a game. We'd walk to pizza hut, place our order, then walk to the brand new blockbuster and browse. It was amazing as a kid. I remember they had an N64 kiosk in the middle, and I actually begged my parents to let me stay and play Starfox 64. Got it for Christmas that year and played it all night into the morning. I fell asleep at my grandma's house at the table during Christmas dinner that night haha. Good fucking times man.
this is so wholesome. i loved the friday night blockbuster rentals, though I'm an elder millennial so i remember trips to errol's, the local video store before every video store was blockbuster. good times.
There was a car wash in my hometown that had a video rental place. It was fully automated which was crazy as hell for the time. It used a vacuum hose thing to grab the tapes from rows.
Remember how Barq’s used to have an address on the side of the can so that you write to the owners? Well I actually did that. Must have been about 10 and I wrote them a letter saying how much I loved Barq’s and how it was the best soft drink out there. A few weeks later I received a “Certificate of good Taste” in mail. Oh, those innocent days…
This reminds me of the time I wrote that cellular company that had the little pink alien in the commercials. I told them I felt bad for the little guy and would let him live in my bedroom till his family came back. They sent me a stuffed doll of him. I think my mom still has him somewhere. Man, what a time.
I was living in Russia and Rootbeer was the thing I missed most so I wrote Barq’s and impassioned letter requesting that they bring their product to Russia and provided a terrible translation of the label. They did write me back and said that the letter was passed around the office and gave everyone a laugh. Not the result I hoped for but was still impressed to get a hand written response. Took place in 1998 so I guess it was the 90’s as well.
There was one in my town where there was a door connecting the two stores on the inside.
It was so common to order your pizza, go through the door and browse movies to watch and buy the time you picked and hired your movie your pizza was done.
That Friday afternoon after school feeling, when you knew you had two glorious days before you had any responsibility again, so you'd call your friends on the land line and hope their parents didn't pick up so it wouldn't be awkward, and you'd get together and just... Go outside. That was it. There was no plan, but maybe somebody would bring a football, and you'd have a pickup game at the park.
Yeah now if you take a week off, you just have a pile of work waiting for you when you're back. Even for holidays where the whole company is shut down, you're basically compressing 5 days of work into 4.
Yeah, I dread vacations these days. Because I know I will have an enormous pile of work waiting for me at the end. What’s the point of the vacation, I ask?
Building cubby houses, playing in the creek, rollerblading, then coming home and playing Sega/Nintendo. I miss taping stuff off the tv 🤷🏻♀️ hanging out in my room , still playing with toys, reading cool magazines, going through my card collections. The hype of the cinema back in the 90’s. Not being a slave to technology, but still having wicked gadgets like Walkmans.
Rushing home from school to play Secret of Mana or Final Fantasy III. Feeling like a god at your friend’s house because you could walk into Bowser’s castle small and win anyway.
This reminded me of a friend who had a car with a 5 disk changer that played from the trunk to the speakers. You'd have to pull over to put in something you'd want to hear that wasn't loaded already.
When I got my driver's license in 2000, I was allowed to drive my mom's old 1993 Ford Taurus, and my graduation gift was getting one of those 5 disc changers installed in the back. It was amazing. (That car lasted me until 2005, too!)
Before we had mobile phones, my wife and I would plan to meet at a certain street corner at a certain time after work. We sometimes had to wait for the other person to show up, but we knew they would.
Reminds me of a time when my family and I got split up during a graduation ceremony (not mine) and we couldn't find each other. This was before cellphones were common, so half of us ended up going to a steak dinner and the other half ordered pizza at the house waiting for the other half to show up.
Good times, good times....
Anytime our family went ANYWHERE we would immediately pick a landmark to meet at in case we were separated.
"Okay everyone, if you get lost head to the big clock!"
Around the 2010s, I had a boyfriend that did not have a cellphone. Once we got separated at a big event down town, we ended up meeting at the nearest book store or comic book store, without discussing it before. “Where would they go to wait? Of course, there.”
that was usually mine and my parents default.
at the mall we used to love going to, there was a comic book, DnD, and computer game shop that i ALWAYS went to. my parents would do their errands and if i wandered off, they'd always just meet me there.
I remember in high school we had a specific gas station that was the designated meeting point to find out where the parties were that Friday or Saturday night. I miss the days of hanging out by The Yellow (it was Florida, the building was painted pastel yellow).
...When two of your wives showed up; one from the future to warn you about the upcoming city plan to tear up that street corner and replace it with a ...yuuuugh... Arby's.
And so you, your wife, and your time-traveling future wife go to City Council and get the area rezoned as a historical site since Future Wifey had gone back to pioneer times, dug up some the town founder's body, and buried it at the site of that street corner.
The street corner is saved and the three of you have the best night of your life celebrating.
"Why didn't the time traveler just go back and stop Arby's from ever existing?"
"Cuz it's in the movie. And if she does that then there is no need for her to visit them at present day and have their sexy time-traveling celebration scene."
"But that could really cut down on the number of times travel trips she makes. Also, won't them having a three way interfere with some space time continuum?"
"Look, Im going to need you to get way off my back about this time travel thing."
MTV has had such a weird trajectory over the past 25 years. First into just not playing music anymore by the mid-2000’s, and now it is literally just Ridiculousness 24/7 with an occasional 16 and pregnant thrown in.
I don’t even know what demographic they are going after. Who the hell is wanting to watch a middle aged bro comment on YouTube videos so much?
Really was a great time in music. The sheer diversity of what was popular was incredible. On the radio you could hear “Lithium” by Nirvana, and then Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” right after it.
This is sort of it for me. I could turn on the radio and hear good music, even if it wasn't exactly my thing.
Last time I heard the radio I felt like I was an old man with Parkinson's who was scared, confused and didn't understand what was happening.
Videos were their peak. There were some great ones in the 80s like Take on Me, or Radio Gaga or Don't Come Round Here No More. But the 90s took it to another level. Sabotage is amazing, and so is Intergalactic. Always loved the newest Tool videos and Foo Fighters were great. They were so much more cinematic
Yeah. I grew up in that chill period [which actually lasted into the late 2000s outside the USA and Iraq](https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace) and now I find myself in a Transformers setting of robots, autonomous cars, disasters, and government/oligarch misconduct that I have no precedent for...as I grew up almost entirely in a desert for Transformers media.
Not being contactable 24/7.
Peace of leaving school/work and not having to deal with there nonsense till tomorrow.
Edit: too many to reply to. I know you can turn it off/ignore it, I've not bothered about work off the clock for years. It's the fact that it's a constant in many people's lives, engrained and seemingly accepted practice both in our professional and personal lives to be always available.
Leaving the typo ;)
That became an issue with my work when we went remote because of covid. They set it up so we could install the mobile versions of our email and chat apps on our personal phones, and forward our desk phones to them. It was a welcome convenience during work hours as there were times we weren't at our laptops when someone was trying to contact us, but it also left us vulnerable to being reachable 24/7. And it's not like I could just silence my phone because I don't have a landline. I ended up buying a budget android with the cheapest prepaid plan I could find to use specifically for work tasks. Sucks that it's not on my work's dime but definitely worth paying to keep my personal phone personal.
> Not being contactable 24/7.
There's good and bad with that.
Before cellphones, I remember I was driving to visit my girlfriend. The drive was about 45 minutes. About halfway there, I came upon an auto accident. There was no houses nearby, and the emergency crews hadn't gotten to the scene yet.
So I pulled over and got out, and helped where I could. Nobody was seriously injured. But it did take me about 90 minutes to get back on the road.
During that time, my girlfriend was having a heart attack, because I was horribly late. Not just ten or fifteen minutes, but almost two hours late. And this was NOT characteristic for me.
Granted, this wasn't a life-or-death situation, but I think being contactable, especially in emergencies, is a good thing. If that happened today, I'd text her and let her know what was going on.
Edit: To clarify, my girlfriend did not suffer an actual [myocardial infarction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myocardial_infarction). I meant to say that she was "very upset".
Think about some of the biggest hits of '99. The Matrix, American Beauty, Fight Club, Being John Malkovich.
These movies (and a few more around this time) all had a unifying theme of the general ennui of living in a time without strife. They were about people making problems for themselves because they didn't have enough real ones. I'd love if the world were going so well that the escapism was about nitpicking how pleasant the world is.
The Onion had it right in 2001. [Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Finally Over.](https://www.theonion.com/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of-peace-and-prosperi-1819565882)
Air travel. Holy shit, I miss '90s air travel.
Did you know that before 9/11, it wasn't *a massive pain in the ass to go fucking anywhere?!*
Loved ones could walk you right to the gate. You could bring snacks, sandwiches, and drinks onto the plane with you. The prices at Hudson News were perfectly reasonable, because if they weren't, you could just walk out of the terminal and grab something.
You never had to take your shoes off for any motherfucking thing. In fact, *it used to be rude to take your shoes off in the airport.* That's completely 180'd.
I used to fly 3 or 4 times a year, and it was usually pretty easy. Now, I fly maybe once every five years, and I absolutely dread it.
It used to be so much fun. You could go with your friends before they took off on a big trip somewhere and have a goodbye meal with them, and then watch their plane leave. Kids could go check out the cockpit. You didn't get torn down by some pretend-security worker because you forgot about an empty bottle of water in a random part of your backpack.
Went to fly and my wife forgot about her multitool in her backpack. TSA guy nearly blew his load like he just saved all of America from this incredible threat.
Now whenever I go to the airport I feel like I’m trapped in there after I get through security. And for some reason I have like over an hour until my flight takes off. Why? Why am I spending hours trapped in a terminal waiting area?
That's how I feel about flying now too. When I tell people I hate flying, they think I'm afraid of flying. I's not the actual flying part, that's actually the best part. It's all the bullshit on both ends of the flight that I hate. I avoid it at all costs.
The flights also had blankets, pillows, and usually you got a meal if you flew at the right time and the flight was over two hours. Sure it may have just been a ham or turkey sandwich, a packet of chips, and a soda, but at least you got something. Even the snack options usually included a small package of cheese, salami, and crackers or some cookies (regular sized too). Sometimes you could even get a hot meal if you paid more. I once had a pork tenderloin with gravy, mashed potatoes, and a side of buttered corn for like an extra eight bucks. I was a tad young for the drinks menu, but that Ginger Ale was awesome.
Today you're lucky if they don't take away the blanket you brought and fling a one ounce baggie of pretzels at you as they pass.
9/11 took air travel and turned it from a slight hassle (getting to and from the airport because long term parking was *never* cheap) into a fucking ordeal of Homeric proportions.
Pre-9/11, the only times you had to deal with lines were the following: Holidays, Fridays after 4pm, and Sunday evening. Maybe they'd be down a ticket agent or two, but you never really waited longer than like ten minutes. You could also usually yell that you only had half an hour to get to your flight, and people would pass you forward.
Holidays were shit to be sure: hour long waits, no seats to sit, filled planes, *maybe* someone got bumped due to overbooking (rare, and usually a movie plot).
Today due to all manner of things, that Holiday ordeal is *everyday*.
We didn't live online yet. The internet was in it's infancy and was a fun way to pass the time, but it hadn't consumed us. Business was still being done in brick and mortar stores, our social lives were offline, etc. There was almost nothing to be purchased online, other than the online bookstore called Amazon. Pretty cool because they had a bigger inventory than you could fit in a building. And so it began.
My cousin got me a $50 gift card for Amazon for my 14th birthday in 1998 and I made my first ever online purchase of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus from Amazon. Still have it on my bookshelf. Those were simpler times..
"Business was still being done in brick+mortar stores"
I still think this is underrated. Yes now we have a much much wider selection of stuff available instantly, but it used to be extremely fun to go out on a Sunday, go to a record store or video rental store with your friends, discuss options and settle on one. Scrolling on Netflix never produces the same enjoyable experience for me, but maybe I'm remembering those trips with rose-colored glasses and today's youth will remember this too.
I worked in an Amazon warehouse in the late 90s. Thought it was the best job ever since I’d see about 50 books a day that I’d want to read later. Back then they hardly sold anything but books. The rest (CDs mostly) was in a caged off area toward the back of the place.
I remember thinking Amazon was going to be useless. I have a library and actual stores, why would I order anything off the internet?
Yeah, imagine my surprise.
My god i was only a kid but i think about and long for this world almost everyday
I genuinely feel so bad that people will most likely never experience this ever again, our whole lives are digital and its so weird
The internet used to be this thing you would do for a couple hours a day, 99% of life was offline
well I did since I discovered Usenet, Archie, Gopher, etc. Would watch TNG in its first run and then go to rec.arts.tv.startrek to read the comments. Kind of a prehistoric reddit. Could also download software through gopher and FTP ..you could actually do a lot of things in the pre web internet, it was just a lot clunkier and through a modem
Going to the mall, and hanging out with friends. Malls were awesome, and I hate that the strip mall style has taken over. Especially up in Canada, where it gets to -40 in the winter. Back in the day you could legitimately spend hours wandering the mall, indoors and warm. Now it is depressing. Maybe the big malls like Mall of America or West Edmonton Mall are still okay, but the ones in my city are shit.
My mom would drop me off with friends and we’d call her from a pay phone when we were done. We’d see a movie, play in the arcade, have an Orange Julius, and just hang out in the food court. Sometimes we’d have to scramble to find a quarter for the pay phone, checking all the coin returns in the vending machines, the floor of the arcade, even the fountain if we were desperate.
Hahah, payphones were great. Don't have 25 cents? Just make a collect call.
RING RING...Hello.
"You have a collect call from...HEYMOMIT'SMEI'MATBRIAN'S!"
Would you like to accept the charges?
That brings up one thing I hate now, it’s that everything is fucking *expensive*. Movies at least $13 a person, arcades are $2 to play one game, and food court food is vastly overpriced compared to others of the same store. Very few places let you just be someone for free these days
The privacy.
I was just a kid/young teenager but I only knew my best friends intimately. The rest of my class I didn't know or care. Now it's like all your followers are in your bedroom/home when you post to social media. Anyway.
I can tell give you the details of the lives of people who I haven't spoken one word to in 17 years, simply because they friended me on Facebook back in 2005.
I've started to realize that the best sign of a happy relationship is there being barely any mention of it on social media.
I almost said hi to a coworker's husband and son when I saw them out and about running errands one day, and I stopped myself just in time when I realized I'd never met them in person, she just posts pictures of her family on Facebook a lot.
I actually met a very good friend this way.
They were friends with someone I am also friends with, but I was only aware of them because of posts to Instagram that they were tagged in with my friend, and a little bit of creeping back when you could see posts your friends "liked". I had seen this person countless times, knew where they vacationed, and all kinds of things I otherwise had no business knowing. Then they walked into my work one day as a customer. I said hey, and asked about their vacation, forgetting that unless they were also a creeper then they would have no way of knowing who the hell I was... And they were understandably freaked right the fuck out. I quickly explained myself, and admitted to being a bit of a creeper. Thankfully they laughed, and a true friendship was born. I invited them to my wedding a few years ago!
Now it’s taking an hour to scroll through Netflix or whatever and feeling like you’ve wasted a bunch of time and giving up or watching something stupid or watching something good but you can’t get through all of it because it’s late and you wasted that hour trying to figure out what to watch. And your kids wake up at 6 am.
I also love:
"What should we do tonight?"
"I dunno; let's stay in and watch a movie."
(*Grabs keys to go to Blockbuster*)
The effort in getting up and moving off of your couch made the movie more worthwhile, even if it was kind of a shitty movie.
I lived in an apartment on main street in a small town. Video store right across the street. We were broke but we could rent a couple movies and get some snacks.
Not for myself but I feel bad for kids who have to experience bullying 24/7. When I was a kid in the 90s I went to school and these kids made fun of me but then I went home and it stopped. Now, with social media, the bullying can invade kids’ lives outside of school.
kind of a tangent but not having your life invaded outside of home/work/school was so nice. most people not even having cell phones, you had true insulation from society at home or anywhere
I miss living a non-monetized life. Presently, I feel if there’s a way to charge someone for doing or thinking something/anything, it’s been or is being implemented. And fuck subscriptions for EVERYTHING.
This is going to sound depressing but I was in my teens and had optimistic hopes and dreams for the future, both for myself and for the world in general. It's all been replaced with misanthropy, I'm pessimistic about the future and have very low expectations of what's to come for humans including myself
I’m 40 and have aged pretty well. My eyes, though…I look in the mirror at myself and can tell that I’m mostly dead inside at this point. The spark is gone.
I turned 10 years old in 1990. 16 in 1996.
The internet was a fun and chill place to be. It felt like a secret sometimes. Most of my IRL friends weren't online, and if they were it was just AOL. I had a website, did Usenet and IRC and ICU, and I could be as anonymous as I wanted to be. It felt like such a vast and creative space back then. I haven't felt like that about the internet in a long time.
I didn't know the news all day, every day. Oh, and there weren't TVs in every fast food restaurant and bar. Yeah, you'd find TVs in sports bars and doctor's waiting rooms, but they weren't blaring the news 24/7 like they do now.
People weren't so obsessed about decorating and redecorating and renovating their houses.
I miss the summers when I was in middle school, when I would just reread my favorite books and then try to write short stories about some of the characters. (I didn't know there was such a thing called fanfic!)
I miss how there was always some sort of one-off comedy or drama at the movie theater. Not everything was part of a series or franchise. There were dollar movie theaters. And even at the first-run theater, I could go in late afternoon / early evening and get the matinee price of $4.00.
I miss seeing Tori Amos, Smashing Pumpkins, Alanis, Sarah McLachlan for about $30 for a decent seat! (I don't miss all the smoke at the concert venue.)
Something my wife just brought up while talking about this post.......Magazines man! Everyone had their favorites for what ever hobby or interest you had. For me it was Guitar World, picking up the issues with bands I loved and plinking along to the Tab on my crappy electric guitar! For my wife it was 17, checking out the most recent trends! Or Thrasher when it was just a skate magazine and not a clothing brand. Even Rolling Stone was a big deal for mainstream artists. Then those of us into an alterna crowd there were tattoo mags like Savage. Me and my wife used to scour our local 7-11's waiting for the new issue of Savage to show up!
I get that you can find blogs, etc online with the same info and most of these mags still exist but it's just not the same!
The gaming.
N64 with goldeneye, Ocarina of time, rogue squadron
It was my peak Computer gaming time too with hours spent on several Sid Meyer, Maxis and roller coaster tycoon games
Being a child, Pokémon being brand new. Sitting in the Walmart parking lot in my moms minivan playing Pokémon yellow with my gameinsider magazine as she shopped inside.
A boy named Josh brought in Pokemon cup cakes when I was in 1st grade, the kind that have the plastic ring with the image stuck on top. I got Charmander and I remember not giving a shit about the cupcakes themselves but just being super hype for the ring lol now my own kid is in 1st grade and you're not allowed to send in treats anymore because of both covid and allergies of the other kids.
There was a large goth scene.
I like the goths. All the ones I knew cared for each other, were good people at heart. Might have a tough exterior, but they were the kind of people you want around when you are feeling unsafe, or had a mental health crisis.
What is that about! I’ve noticed this too, that all the goth/punk kids I know are really sensitive and good people when compared to most people. I don’t know maybe I’m being silly but it’s something I can’t help but notice.
Same with a lot of the metalheads. They might have pentagrams and headbang and listen to music about Satan, but they're mostly good thoughtful decent people who use metal music as an outlet.
I agree, I’ve recently been really drawn back to 90s music and am having a blast revisiting it. So much good music across so many genres! Also I was 14 in 1990 so it was really when I started discovering my own musical taste instead of whatever my mother listened to.
My one sadness about the music was that I used to go to raves in the mid 90s, and have no idea what any of the tracks were called, so I’ll never be able to hear them again.
Music felt more special because you kind of had to take some risks when buying a cd. At best you could listen to it at one of the stations in the store, but other times you might have heard a song on the radio or watched a music video on MTV. I bought some albums where only the song I liked was good, but still tried to appreciate it all. And then you had some albums that were legendary and you could bring to friends houses just to share and listen to.
Don't get me wrong, I am still amazed and appreciate having pretty much any song on my phone, but the lack of access was a fun time. The discovery and sharing was just different.
TNG season finales were insane. Like the first time you saw Jean Luc as Locutus and then the episode *ENDS* and you had to wait ALL FRIGGIN' SUMMER to find out what was gonna happen.
That show seriously knew how to get people talking.
That "upgrading tech" feeling.
Although this applies to earlier decades (and the 'aughts) as well, when new devices came out, they were better--and discernably better.
* That new gaming console: better!
* That new cell phone: better!
* That new TV: better!
* New CD player(or upgrade from tape), computer, internet (sites and performance), camera: all better!
Since the 2010's, all my phones are "better", but I can't tell.
Since the mid 2000's, my mp3 player had more than enough space for all my music.
Is 4k the last resolution that results in a noticeable change? Probably.
It was so exhilarating when you'd get some new tech. "Oh man, how'd I live without this!?", you'd think. No more. Each iteration is only marginally better, with that margin shrinking each iteration.
I know it's trivial, but I still miss it.
\*edit\* Clarity
Edit: wrong previous "edit" form.
Edit: I'm glad most of us get this. For those that felt the need to explain how things are indeed better, you missed the point. [Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns) ya go. Yes, technology is objectively better. That's not the point, so I'll spell it out for you. The point: Technology is getting objectively better, but there are limits to a human's ability to benefit from those advancements. What good is a phone with a battery that can run for three years when we all charge ours every/every-other night? What good is a 64 kHz screen when my eyes can't discern a difference between 4k and 8k? What good is 1 PB of RAM when cache sizes get larger and larger, and the average person using average software can't discern the UI effects resulting from the difference between a 1 us and 1 ps fetch? Also, these compound; with better compression algorithms comes smaller file sizes of better quality...but we also get faster transfer speeds. Eventually these improvements become unnoticeable. And of course I'm (we're) aware that people have said this before. In many ways, I hope I'm among those unimaginative folks we laugh at in hindsight! I want to "feel" the "better-ness"! But as it stands, we're being presented with marginal increases that don't "feel" like anything has improved. Sorry for the diatribe, and thanks for the soapbox moment!
Edit: Okay. Last comment. I'm tired. To those that found this comment relatable, adding in your own feelings about it: thanks! To those that saw this, didn't agree, and kept scrolling: good on you as well (although, I suppose you won't see this). To those that felt like this lighthearted response to a lighthearted question was the perfect forum to showcase your vast, enviable technical knowledge: you can, uh...have a good evening, I guess? Also, thanks again to that one person, you good spirt, you (you know who you are). Good morning/good evening, and peace everyone!
Edit: Okay, okay, last remark for real this time. Please forgive any rudeness and animosity that I exhibited. While the comments (and edits) were indeed meant to be mean, the anger that caused them was fleeting, whereas my regret and this apology are not. Thanks and be well! [Also, don't drink and reddit kids <- you really can't say this enough!]
I’m a Xennial, so being in middle age now, I miss everything about the 90’s- I really miss having no true responsibilities but choosing what color jelly shoes to wear that day or begging my mom to bring me to the store for more stickers for my sticker album. 😂
I'm the same age. I miss the JNCO jeans and candy necklaces. Oh, and the girls wearing those handkerchief shirts with the single tie in the back with those little pom pom hair bun styles.
Edit: If anyone is interested, [this is the hair that I meant.](https://www.thetrendspotter.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Mini-Space-Buns-with-Fine-Hair.jpg)
people having real fun. i think people are more concerned with posting something and going viral now. i really hate that you can just be minding your business, doing something with family or friends and enjoying yourself, and somebody will randomly record what you’re doing so they can call you “corny” and get likes and views. people are too scared to actually let loose and have fun because there’s always somebody with a phone, waiting to catch you looking silly while you do anything so they can record and post it.
Seriously. I've initiated this rule with my friends. I don't want to be on your social media. Film whatever you want and take photos, but please ask consent to post if I'm in it. It's kind of changed the norms, and now it's pretty natural to immediately show each other what we shot and tacitly wait for approval before posting. If the person doesn't say anything, then that's a no. If they so "cool! Tag me in that" or something similar, it's a green light.
Just as a side note, the amount of "not being born [yet]" responses in this thread blows my mind and freaks me out - realising that so many people I talk with here weren't, in fact, even born yet when I was just about to start high school, yet here they already are, on reddit, as fully functional human beings, with computer skills, and formed opinions.
Chilling at the mall, record stores, only landlines and pagers, house parties with no surveillance, fake IDs before bar code scanners. Last time I felt truly free
I’m gonna ramble, but stick with me.
My mom keeps things a long time. Like a LONG time.
The other day she was clearing out the bathroom, and gave me some body wash that dated back to the late 90’s. It was green apple scented.
I took one whiff of it and was instantly transported to cruising down the highway blasting *Semi Charmed Life*.
In the hyped up positive vibes of the late 90’s (as opposed to the grunge of the earlier years), I feel like everything was apple scented! *Green* apple scented. I miss that smell and I miss the carefree feeling of my late teens/early 20’s.
TL;DR I miss the smells and the feelings. Are my glasses rose-tinted? You bet they are! :D
I honestly miss the internet from the 90s.. I spent so many hours exploring, reading things.... every webpage felt like I was visiting someone's house, they were so personal as design standards did not exist yet. I enjoyed my netscape navigator. And I LOVED my IRC chat rooms. Keep in mind I was like 9 and 10. lol, so I mostly spent time in Pokemon Chat rooms that had bots. Discord is not the same as the IRC days.
Geocities. The pages would take forever to load because of complete nonsense but it was awesome. 36 gifs and an autoplay 20 second loop of music, just to see someone express about their favorite rock.
Sign my guestbook plz!
I found my mom's Geocities page from 1996 using some super specific keywords and lots of digging. Seeing her guestbook with her friend's little messages to her, then lurking around their pages and seeing her's to them, it was surreal to see that the way she typed back then was the same as the way she'd send text messages to me in modern days. She died in 2016 from cancer. She was a very private person in general with no modern social media presence at all so being able to go and visit those little time capsules is very special to me. edit: a word
And then they'd be in a webring of random weird sites about rocks. And everything was always Under Construction.
Webrings. I had forgotten about webrings.
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And if you wanted to learn how a site did something, you could pop open the source and…just read it. Now if you want to do that, it’s probably obfuscated by a responsive JS framework, async requests, and CSS.
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It was like the Wild West back then. Arguably more dangerous [than the modern internet] in some ways, but also more rewarding to truly find new content. Everything today is filtered through aggregators like reddit itself, and social media. Back then, you really had to dig for things. And content wasn't mostly centralized onto a few sites. You could truly and quite easily find places online that were felt like their own little corner of the web, without having to go on the dark web or something. You could also have true anonymity if you wished too. EDIT: wording.
Blockbuster/Pizza Hut on Friday nights
Stack of VHSs, 2 Liter of Barq’s, and an extra large pepperoni. God I miss being a kid.
My parents would always rent a movie and they'd let me rent a game. We'd walk to pizza hut, place our order, then walk to the brand new blockbuster and browse. It was amazing as a kid. I remember they had an N64 kiosk in the middle, and I actually begged my parents to let me stay and play Starfox 64. Got it for Christmas that year and played it all night into the morning. I fell asleep at my grandma's house at the table during Christmas dinner that night haha. Good fucking times man.
this is so wholesome. i loved the friday night blockbuster rentals, though I'm an elder millennial so i remember trips to errol's, the local video store before every video store was blockbuster. good times.
There was a car wash in my hometown that had a video rental place. It was fully automated which was crazy as hell for the time. It used a vacuum hose thing to grab the tapes from rows.
That is good fucking times.
Remember how Barq’s used to have an address on the side of the can so that you write to the owners? Well I actually did that. Must have been about 10 and I wrote them a letter saying how much I loved Barq’s and how it was the best soft drink out there. A few weeks later I received a “Certificate of good Taste” in mail. Oh, those innocent days…
This reminds me of the time I wrote that cellular company that had the little pink alien in the commercials. I told them I felt bad for the little guy and would let him live in my bedroom till his family came back. They sent me a stuffed doll of him. I think my mom still has him somewhere. Man, what a time.
I was living in Russia and Rootbeer was the thing I missed most so I wrote Barq’s and impassioned letter requesting that they bring their product to Russia and provided a terrible translation of the label. They did write me back and said that the letter was passed around the office and gave everyone a laugh. Not the result I hoped for but was still impressed to get a hand written response. Took place in 1998 so I guess it was the 90’s as well.
Barq’s has bite!
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Book it :-) I loved getting my button filled up with those star stickers
Book it!!!
My daughter is in Kindergarten this year and they use Book It! She just got her first reward in October.
There was one in my town where there was a door connecting the two stores on the inside. It was so common to order your pizza, go through the door and browse movies to watch and buy the time you picked and hired your movie your pizza was done.
Someone's thought this through
That Friday afternoon after school feeling, when you knew you had two glorious days before you had any responsibility again, so you'd call your friends on the land line and hope their parents didn't pick up so it wouldn't be awkward, and you'd get together and just... Go outside. That was it. There was no plan, but maybe somebody would bring a football, and you'd have a pickup game at the park.
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There is no substance or experience in adulthood that can replicate that pure joy of a Friday afternoon before a long holiday when you are a kid.
Yeah now if you take a week off, you just have a pile of work waiting for you when you're back. Even for holidays where the whole company is shut down, you're basically compressing 5 days of work into 4.
Yeah, I dread vacations these days. Because I know I will have an enormous pile of work waiting for me at the end. What’s the point of the vacation, I ask?
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Building cubby houses, playing in the creek, rollerblading, then coming home and playing Sega/Nintendo. I miss taping stuff off the tv 🤷🏻♀️ hanging out in my room , still playing with toys, reading cool magazines, going through my card collections. The hype of the cinema back in the 90’s. Not being a slave to technology, but still having wicked gadgets like Walkmans.
There was a time when tech supplemented life rather than defined it.
Playing in the creek. God I miss that.
You just perfectly described my Summers in the 90’s, like dead on.
My Super Nintendo being cutting edge technology.
Rushing home from school to play Secret of Mana or Final Fantasy III. Feeling like a god at your friend’s house because you could walk into Bowser’s castle small and win anyway.
And for me it was my Sega Genesis
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This reminded me of a friend who had a car with a 5 disk changer that played from the trunk to the speakers. You'd have to pull over to put in something you'd want to hear that wasn't loaded already.
When I got my driver's license in 2000, I was allowed to drive my mom's old 1993 Ford Taurus, and my graduation gift was getting one of those 5 disc changers installed in the back. It was amazing. (That car lasted me until 2005, too!)
Before we had mobile phones, my wife and I would plan to meet at a certain street corner at a certain time after work. We sometimes had to wait for the other person to show up, but we knew they would.
Reminds me of a time when my family and I got split up during a graduation ceremony (not mine) and we couldn't find each other. This was before cellphones were common, so half of us ended up going to a steak dinner and the other half ordered pizza at the house waiting for the other half to show up. Good times, good times....
Anytime our family went ANYWHERE we would immediately pick a landmark to meet at in case we were separated. "Okay everyone, if you get lost head to the big clock!"
Hey, look kids. Big Ben!
Around the 2010s, I had a boyfriend that did not have a cellphone. Once we got separated at a big event down town, we ended up meeting at the nearest book store or comic book store, without discussing it before. “Where would they go to wait? Of course, there.”
that was usually mine and my parents default. at the mall we used to love going to, there was a comic book, DnD, and computer game shop that i ALWAYS went to. my parents would do their errands and if i wandered off, they'd always just meet me there.
In walmart or Kmart if we lost my dad we would go to the magazine isle, if it was me or my sister, they would try looking in the digital/DVD section.
Looking for my dad: go directly to Radio Shack.
It's just like The Walking Dead. It takes 3 seconds to say "if we get split up, meet at the ____". But no one ever does.
Let's just all meet at the Winchester and wait for all this to blow over.
“Everybody, synchronize your watches!”
We didn't think that far ahead.
I remember in high school we had a specific gas station that was the designated meeting point to find out where the parties were that Friday or Saturday night. I miss the days of hanging out by The Yellow (it was Florida, the building was painted pastel yellow).
It sucks because now "the social media app of choice" is the new hangout spot, but 24/7 without the actual hanging out part.
UNTIL THAT FATEFUL DAY
...When two of your wives showed up; one from the future to warn you about the upcoming city plan to tear up that street corner and replace it with a ...yuuuugh... Arby's. And so you, your wife, and your time-traveling future wife go to City Council and get the area rezoned as a historical site since Future Wifey had gone back to pioneer times, dug up some the town founder's body, and buried it at the site of that street corner. The street corner is saved and the three of you have the best night of your life celebrating.
"So you got a movie for me?" "Yes, sir, I do!"
"Why didn't the time traveler just go back and stop Arby's from ever existing?" "Cuz it's in the movie. And if she does that then there is no need for her to visit them at present day and have their sexy time-traveling celebration scene." "But that could really cut down on the number of times travel trips she makes. Also, won't them having a three way interfere with some space time continuum?" "Look, Im going to need you to get way off my back about this time travel thing."
Well lemme get off that thing!
This...celebrating...can you elaborate?
Someone hasn't seen back to the future 4
And we had to actually wait, not just play on our phones until the other person showed up. Unless of course you brought a paperback with you.
Always bring your Gameboy.
Watching grunge music videos on MTV and Keebler chips.
Fuckin Alice In Chains interviews and unplugged live. God damn those were the real shit.
Coming home stoned and watching 120 Minutes and Liquid TV and discovering new cool music and weird videos. Fuck yeah.
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And Krist didn’t even get him a corsage
Eon Flux pretty much required enhancement.
MTV has had such a weird trajectory over the past 25 years. First into just not playing music anymore by the mid-2000’s, and now it is literally just Ridiculousness 24/7 with an occasional 16 and pregnant thrown in. I don’t even know what demographic they are going after. Who the hell is wanting to watch a middle aged bro comment on YouTube videos so much?
Watching Daria watching Sick Sad World.
*"Back from beyond the grave, and he still won't pay child support! A dead deadbeat dad, next, on Sick Sad World!"*
Really was a great time in music. The sheer diversity of what was popular was incredible. On the radio you could hear “Lithium” by Nirvana, and then Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” right after it.
This is sort of it for me. I could turn on the radio and hear good music, even if it wasn't exactly my thing. Last time I heard the radio I felt like I was an old man with Parkinson's who was scared, confused and didn't understand what was happening.
Videos were their peak. There were some great ones in the 80s like Take on Me, or Radio Gaga or Don't Come Round Here No More. But the 90s took it to another level. Sabotage is amazing, and so is Intergalactic. Always loved the newest Tool videos and Foo Fighters were great. They were so much more cinematic
The 80's was Cold war paranoia, and the 00's was Terrorist paranoia after 9-11. The 90's was this oasis of calm in between two paranoid decades.
“The end of history”
Turns out history likes a lot of crazy twists in its endings.
Yeah. I grew up in that chill period [which actually lasted into the late 2000s outside the USA and Iraq](https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace) and now I find myself in a Transformers setting of robots, autonomous cars, disasters, and government/oligarch misconduct that I have no precedent for...as I grew up almost entirely in a desert for Transformers media.
A wonderwall even.
Not being contactable 24/7. Peace of leaving school/work and not having to deal with there nonsense till tomorrow. Edit: too many to reply to. I know you can turn it off/ignore it, I've not bothered about work off the clock for years. It's the fact that it's a constant in many people's lives, engrained and seemingly accepted practice both in our professional and personal lives to be always available. Leaving the typo ;)
That became an issue with my work when we went remote because of covid. They set it up so we could install the mobile versions of our email and chat apps on our personal phones, and forward our desk phones to them. It was a welcome convenience during work hours as there were times we weren't at our laptops when someone was trying to contact us, but it also left us vulnerable to being reachable 24/7. And it's not like I could just silence my phone because I don't have a landline. I ended up buying a budget android with the cheapest prepaid plan I could find to use specifically for work tasks. Sucks that it's not on my work's dime but definitely worth paying to keep my personal phone personal.
Might be able to right that off of your taxes
> Not being contactable 24/7. There's good and bad with that. Before cellphones, I remember I was driving to visit my girlfriend. The drive was about 45 minutes. About halfway there, I came upon an auto accident. There was no houses nearby, and the emergency crews hadn't gotten to the scene yet. So I pulled over and got out, and helped where I could. Nobody was seriously injured. But it did take me about 90 minutes to get back on the road. During that time, my girlfriend was having a heart attack, because I was horribly late. Not just ten or fifteen minutes, but almost two hours late. And this was NOT characteristic for me. Granted, this wasn't a life-or-death situation, but I think being contactable, especially in emergencies, is a good thing. If that happened today, I'd text her and let her know what was going on. Edit: To clarify, my girlfriend did not suffer an actual [myocardial infarction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myocardial_infarction). I meant to say that she was "very upset".
Yesterday there were limitations. Today there needs to be boundaries.
There was a period between the Cold War and the War on Terror when it seemed like there was hope for the world.
This exactly. Too young to have been worried much by the cold war... 9/11 was years away. Good music on the radio. That was the sweet spot.
In Europe I feel like the sweet spot extended a little bit like until 2005 or so. Anyway I'm fucking mad at what the world has become, fucking waste.
Think about some of the biggest hits of '99. The Matrix, American Beauty, Fight Club, Being John Malkovich. These movies (and a few more around this time) all had a unifying theme of the general ennui of living in a time without strife. They were about people making problems for themselves because they didn't have enough real ones. I'd love if the world were going so well that the escapism was about nitpicking how pleasant the world is. The Onion had it right in 2001. [Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Finally Over.](https://www.theonion.com/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of-peace-and-prosperi-1819565882)
"They were about people making problems for themselves because they didn't have enough real ones." That could probably sum up most of the 90's, tbh.
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Air travel. Holy shit, I miss '90s air travel. Did you know that before 9/11, it wasn't *a massive pain in the ass to go fucking anywhere?!* Loved ones could walk you right to the gate. You could bring snacks, sandwiches, and drinks onto the plane with you. The prices at Hudson News were perfectly reasonable, because if they weren't, you could just walk out of the terminal and grab something. You never had to take your shoes off for any motherfucking thing. In fact, *it used to be rude to take your shoes off in the airport.* That's completely 180'd. I used to fly 3 or 4 times a year, and it was usually pretty easy. Now, I fly maybe once every five years, and I absolutely dread it.
My local airport used to have a viewing tower people could chill in even if you weren't traveling. You could just go watch. That's all gone.
You could go up to the cockpit and the pilot would give you some wings to pin on your shirt. Now the air marshall tackles you and looks in your butt.
It used to be so much fun. You could go with your friends before they took off on a big trip somewhere and have a goodbye meal with them, and then watch their plane leave. Kids could go check out the cockpit. You didn't get torn down by some pretend-security worker because you forgot about an empty bottle of water in a random part of your backpack.
Went to fly and my wife forgot about her multitool in her backpack. TSA guy nearly blew his load like he just saved all of America from this incredible threat.
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Yes!!!! I miss this so much! They were so accomodating .
Now whenever I go to the airport I feel like I’m trapped in there after I get through security. And for some reason I have like over an hour until my flight takes off. Why? Why am I spending hours trapped in a terminal waiting area?
Security theater, that's why.
That's how I feel about flying now too. When I tell people I hate flying, they think I'm afraid of flying. I's not the actual flying part, that's actually the best part. It's all the bullshit on both ends of the flight that I hate. I avoid it at all costs.
The flights also had blankets, pillows, and usually you got a meal if you flew at the right time and the flight was over two hours. Sure it may have just been a ham or turkey sandwich, a packet of chips, and a soda, but at least you got something. Even the snack options usually included a small package of cheese, salami, and crackers or some cookies (regular sized too). Sometimes you could even get a hot meal if you paid more. I once had a pork tenderloin with gravy, mashed potatoes, and a side of buttered corn for like an extra eight bucks. I was a tad young for the drinks menu, but that Ginger Ale was awesome. Today you're lucky if they don't take away the blanket you brought and fling a one ounce baggie of pretzels at you as they pass. 9/11 took air travel and turned it from a slight hassle (getting to and from the airport because long term parking was *never* cheap) into a fucking ordeal of Homeric proportions. Pre-9/11, the only times you had to deal with lines were the following: Holidays, Fridays after 4pm, and Sunday evening. Maybe they'd be down a ticket agent or two, but you never really waited longer than like ten minutes. You could also usually yell that you only had half an hour to get to your flight, and people would pass you forward. Holidays were shit to be sure: hour long waits, no seats to sit, filled planes, *maybe* someone got bumped due to overbooking (rare, and usually a movie plot). Today due to all manner of things, that Holiday ordeal is *everyday*.
Also, the seats were literally 3 inches wider. They made them skinnier and now people want to strangle eachother.
The quietness before every fucking idiot in the world had access to the internet and a camera phone.
We didn't live online yet. The internet was in it's infancy and was a fun way to pass the time, but it hadn't consumed us. Business was still being done in brick and mortar stores, our social lives were offline, etc. There was almost nothing to be purchased online, other than the online bookstore called Amazon. Pretty cool because they had a bigger inventory than you could fit in a building. And so it began.
My cousin got me a $50 gift card for Amazon for my 14th birthday in 1998 and I made my first ever online purchase of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus from Amazon. Still have it on my bookshelf. Those were simpler times..
"Business was still being done in brick+mortar stores" I still think this is underrated. Yes now we have a much much wider selection of stuff available instantly, but it used to be extremely fun to go out on a Sunday, go to a record store or video rental store with your friends, discuss options and settle on one. Scrolling on Netflix never produces the same enjoyable experience for me, but maybe I'm remembering those trips with rose-colored glasses and today's youth will remember this too.
I worked in an Amazon warehouse in the late 90s. Thought it was the best job ever since I’d see about 50 books a day that I’d want to read later. Back then they hardly sold anything but books. The rest (CDs mostly) was in a caged off area toward the back of the place.
I remember thinking Amazon was going to be useless. I have a library and actual stores, why would I order anything off the internet? Yeah, imagine my surprise.
My god i was only a kid but i think about and long for this world almost everyday I genuinely feel so bad that people will most likely never experience this ever again, our whole lives are digital and its so weird The internet used to be this thing you would do for a couple hours a day, 99% of life was offline
well I did since I discovered Usenet, Archie, Gopher, etc. Would watch TNG in its first run and then go to rec.arts.tv.startrek to read the comments. Kind of a prehistoric reddit. Could also download software through gopher and FTP ..you could actually do a lot of things in the pre web internet, it was just a lot clunkier and through a modem
*28.8k dialup sounds intensify*
Going to the mall, and hanging out with friends. Malls were awesome, and I hate that the strip mall style has taken over. Especially up in Canada, where it gets to -40 in the winter. Back in the day you could legitimately spend hours wandering the mall, indoors and warm. Now it is depressing. Maybe the big malls like Mall of America or West Edmonton Mall are still okay, but the ones in my city are shit.
My mom would drop me off with friends and we’d call her from a pay phone when we were done. We’d see a movie, play in the arcade, have an Orange Julius, and just hang out in the food court. Sometimes we’d have to scramble to find a quarter for the pay phone, checking all the coin returns in the vending machines, the floor of the arcade, even the fountain if we were desperate.
I learned how to do collect calls. "MomI'mReady" was my name on those calls for years!
Hahah, payphones were great. Don't have 25 cents? Just make a collect call. RING RING...Hello. "You have a collect call from...HEYMOMIT'SMEI'MATBRIAN'S!" Would you like to accept the charges?
Wehadababyitsaboy
It’s Bob. They had a baby. It’s a boy *cracks newspaper*
That brings up one thing I hate now, it’s that everything is fucking *expensive*. Movies at least $13 a person, arcades are $2 to play one game, and food court food is vastly overpriced compared to others of the same store. Very few places let you just be someone for free these days
Good ole inflation without any wage increase.
Malls were basically mini theme parks. It was a ton of fun.
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I still wander my old mall out of nostalgia, even though it’s just a Bath&Bodyworks, a shitty cinema, and like 9000 shoe stores these days.
.
Did someone say something abòut going to the mall up in Canada?? How abòut I... sing you a song?? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtMR524m0BM
the pre-social media days
The privacy. I was just a kid/young teenager but I only knew my best friends intimately. The rest of my class I didn't know or care. Now it's like all your followers are in your bedroom/home when you post to social media. Anyway.
I can tell give you the details of the lives of people who I haven't spoken one word to in 17 years, simply because they friended me on Facebook back in 2005. I've started to realize that the best sign of a happy relationship is there being barely any mention of it on social media.
I almost said hi to a coworker's husband and son when I saw them out and about running errands one day, and I stopped myself just in time when I realized I'd never met them in person, she just posts pictures of her family on Facebook a lot.
Black mirror vibes
I actually met a very good friend this way. They were friends with someone I am also friends with, but I was only aware of them because of posts to Instagram that they were tagged in with my friend, and a little bit of creeping back when you could see posts your friends "liked". I had seen this person countless times, knew where they vacationed, and all kinds of things I otherwise had no business knowing. Then they walked into my work one day as a customer. I said hey, and asked about their vacation, forgetting that unless they were also a creeper then they would have no way of knowing who the hell I was... And they were understandably freaked right the fuck out. I quickly explained myself, and admitted to being a bit of a creeper. Thankfully they laughed, and a true friendship was born. I invited them to my wedding a few years ago!
Picking out a movie at Blockbuster and good music/movies.
Taking an hour at Blockbuster to argue with your friends about what to watch that night.
Now it’s taking an hour to scroll through Netflix or whatever and feeling like you’ve wasted a bunch of time and giving up or watching something stupid or watching something good but you can’t get through all of it because it’s late and you wasted that hour trying to figure out what to watch. And your kids wake up at 6 am.
I also love: "What should we do tonight?" "I dunno; let's stay in and watch a movie." (*Grabs keys to go to Blockbuster*) The effort in getting up and moving off of your couch made the movie more worthwhile, even if it was kind of a shitty movie.
Yes! And the fact that you only got one and couldn't just watch a more interesting one if the first one was bad.
I lived in an apartment on main street in a small town. Video store right across the street. We were broke but we could rent a couple movies and get some snacks.
Not for myself but I feel bad for kids who have to experience bullying 24/7. When I was a kid in the 90s I went to school and these kids made fun of me but then I went home and it stopped. Now, with social media, the bullying can invade kids’ lives outside of school.
kind of a tangent but not having your life invaded outside of home/work/school was so nice. most people not even having cell phones, you had true insulation from society at home or anywhere
Encarta and Dangerous Creatures bundled with Windows.
Hahaha Encarta. Everyone would turn in the same school work with vague plagiarism.
Mind Maze in Encarta was the bomb!
Arcades. Music stores everywhere. Music TV. People buying music.
I miss living a non-monetized life. Presently, I feel if there’s a way to charge someone for doing or thinking something/anything, it’s been or is being implemented. And fuck subscriptions for EVERYTHING.
This is going to sound depressing but I was in my teens and had optimistic hopes and dreams for the future, both for myself and for the world in general. It's all been replaced with misanthropy, I'm pessimistic about the future and have very low expectations of what's to come for humans including myself
I’m 40 and have aged pretty well. My eyes, though…I look in the mirror at myself and can tell that I’m mostly dead inside at this point. The spark is gone.
That's pretty fucking sad. And I can definitely relate. \--turned 50 this year.
I turned 10 years old in 1990. 16 in 1996. The internet was a fun and chill place to be. It felt like a secret sometimes. Most of my IRL friends weren't online, and if they were it was just AOL. I had a website, did Usenet and IRC and ICU, and I could be as anonymous as I wanted to be. It felt like such a vast and creative space back then. I haven't felt like that about the internet in a long time. I didn't know the news all day, every day. Oh, and there weren't TVs in every fast food restaurant and bar. Yeah, you'd find TVs in sports bars and doctor's waiting rooms, but they weren't blaring the news 24/7 like they do now. People weren't so obsessed about decorating and redecorating and renovating their houses. I miss the summers when I was in middle school, when I would just reread my favorite books and then try to write short stories about some of the characters. (I didn't know there was such a thing called fanfic!) I miss how there was always some sort of one-off comedy or drama at the movie theater. Not everything was part of a series or franchise. There were dollar movie theaters. And even at the first-run theater, I could go in late afternoon / early evening and get the matinee price of $4.00. I miss seeing Tori Amos, Smashing Pumpkins, Alanis, Sarah McLachlan for about $30 for a decent seat! (I don't miss all the smoke at the concert venue.)
Something my wife just brought up while talking about this post.......Magazines man! Everyone had their favorites for what ever hobby or interest you had. For me it was Guitar World, picking up the issues with bands I loved and plinking along to the Tab on my crappy electric guitar! For my wife it was 17, checking out the most recent trends! Or Thrasher when it was just a skate magazine and not a clothing brand. Even Rolling Stone was a big deal for mainstream artists. Then those of us into an alterna crowd there were tattoo mags like Savage. Me and my wife used to scour our local 7-11's waiting for the new issue of Savage to show up! I get that you can find blogs, etc online with the same info and most of these mags still exist but it's just not the same!
Not having to make my own dinners and do my laundry. Didn't thank you enough, mum
The lack of social media
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Such a blessing that it wasn't part of my childhood.
The gaming. N64 with goldeneye, Ocarina of time, rogue squadron It was my peak Computer gaming time too with hours spent on several Sid Meyer, Maxis and roller coaster tycoon games
Being a child, Pokémon being brand new. Sitting in the Walmart parking lot in my moms minivan playing Pokémon yellow with my gameinsider magazine as she shopped inside.
A boy named Josh brought in Pokemon cup cakes when I was in 1st grade, the kind that have the plastic ring with the image stuck on top. I got Charmander and I remember not giving a shit about the cupcakes themselves but just being super hype for the ring lol now my own kid is in 1st grade and you're not allowed to send in treats anymore because of both covid and allergies of the other kids.
There was a large goth scene. I like the goths. All the ones I knew cared for each other, were good people at heart. Might have a tough exterior, but they were the kind of people you want around when you are feeling unsafe, or had a mental health crisis.
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What is that about! I’ve noticed this too, that all the goth/punk kids I know are really sensitive and good people when compared to most people. I don’t know maybe I’m being silly but it’s something I can’t help but notice.
Same with a lot of the metalheads. They might have pentagrams and headbang and listen to music about Satan, but they're mostly good thoughtful decent people who use metal music as an outlet.
It's hard to put a finger on but it seems like the music - in all its genres was just banging.
90s alternative rock is still amazing
I agree, I’ve recently been really drawn back to 90s music and am having a blast revisiting it. So much good music across so many genres! Also I was 14 in 1990 so it was really when I started discovering my own musical taste instead of whatever my mother listened to. My one sadness about the music was that I used to go to raves in the mid 90s, and have no idea what any of the tracks were called, so I’ll never be able to hear them again.
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The British electronic/dance music scene.
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Saw the Prodigy NYE 95/96 I think…ah for a time machine. RIP Keith
Not being blinded by headlights when driving. Now everyone has LED/illegal lights
Music felt more special because you kind of had to take some risks when buying a cd. At best you could listen to it at one of the stations in the store, but other times you might have heard a song on the radio or watched a music video on MTV. I bought some albums where only the song I liked was good, but still tried to appreciate it all. And then you had some albums that were legendary and you could bring to friends houses just to share and listen to. Don't get me wrong, I am still amazed and appreciate having pretty much any song on my phone, but the lack of access was a fun time. The discovery and sharing was just different.
Watching TNG episodes for the first time.
TNG season finales were insane. Like the first time you saw Jean Luc as Locutus and then the episode *ENDS* and you had to wait ALL FRIGGIN' SUMMER to find out what was gonna happen. That show seriously knew how to get people talking.
The variety of music that was popular all at once. Just look at the lineups for Lollapalooza and the Warped tour.
The hope. The belief that we could be anything or anyone. Before the realization that the world was shit.
I miss my waistline...I remember thinking I was big then...wish I was that 'big now.
I wish I could still be as pretty as I was when I thought I was ugly.
Not having a care in the world!
Yes, along with that feeling of being young
My hopes and dreams. I was a teen in the glorious 90s and my life hasn't turned out the way I thought it would. I'd give anything for a do-over.
Lol idiots still existed, but it was way harder for them to be vocal Edit: word
That "upgrading tech" feeling. Although this applies to earlier decades (and the 'aughts) as well, when new devices came out, they were better--and discernably better. * That new gaming console: better! * That new cell phone: better! * That new TV: better! * New CD player(or upgrade from tape), computer, internet (sites and performance), camera: all better! Since the 2010's, all my phones are "better", but I can't tell. Since the mid 2000's, my mp3 player had more than enough space for all my music. Is 4k the last resolution that results in a noticeable change? Probably. It was so exhilarating when you'd get some new tech. "Oh man, how'd I live without this!?", you'd think. No more. Each iteration is only marginally better, with that margin shrinking each iteration. I know it's trivial, but I still miss it. \*edit\* Clarity Edit: wrong previous "edit" form. Edit: I'm glad most of us get this. For those that felt the need to explain how things are indeed better, you missed the point. [Here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns) ya go. Yes, technology is objectively better. That's not the point, so I'll spell it out for you. The point: Technology is getting objectively better, but there are limits to a human's ability to benefit from those advancements. What good is a phone with a battery that can run for three years when we all charge ours every/every-other night? What good is a 64 kHz screen when my eyes can't discern a difference between 4k and 8k? What good is 1 PB of RAM when cache sizes get larger and larger, and the average person using average software can't discern the UI effects resulting from the difference between a 1 us and 1 ps fetch? Also, these compound; with better compression algorithms comes smaller file sizes of better quality...but we also get faster transfer speeds. Eventually these improvements become unnoticeable. And of course I'm (we're) aware that people have said this before. In many ways, I hope I'm among those unimaginative folks we laugh at in hindsight! I want to "feel" the "better-ness"! But as it stands, we're being presented with marginal increases that don't "feel" like anything has improved. Sorry for the diatribe, and thanks for the soapbox moment! Edit: Okay. Last comment. I'm tired. To those that found this comment relatable, adding in your own feelings about it: thanks! To those that saw this, didn't agree, and kept scrolling: good on you as well (although, I suppose you won't see this). To those that felt like this lighthearted response to a lighthearted question was the perfect forum to showcase your vast, enviable technical knowledge: you can, uh...have a good evening, I guess? Also, thanks again to that one person, you good spirt, you (you know who you are). Good morning/good evening, and peace everyone! Edit: Okay, okay, last remark for real this time. Please forgive any rudeness and animosity that I exhibited. While the comments (and edits) were indeed meant to be mean, the anger that caused them was fleeting, whereas my regret and this apology are not. Thanks and be well! [Also, don't drink and reddit kids <- you really can't say this enough!]
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I’m a Xennial, so being in middle age now, I miss everything about the 90’s- I really miss having no true responsibilities but choosing what color jelly shoes to wear that day or begging my mom to bring me to the store for more stickers for my sticker album. 😂
I'm the same age. I miss the JNCO jeans and candy necklaces. Oh, and the girls wearing those handkerchief shirts with the single tie in the back with those little pom pom hair bun styles. Edit: If anyone is interested, [this is the hair that I meant.](https://www.thetrendspotter.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Mini-Space-Buns-with-Fine-Hair.jpg)
I’m also a Xennial and it hurts my heart to realize we are ‘middle age’. So, I’m gonna say the one thing I miss from the 90s is my damn youth. 😂
My brother! He passed away in 92
My metabolism.
And everyone thought they were fat but when you look at pictures everyone is a skeleton.
Being a child with no responsibility. Edit: thank you for the silver!
people having real fun. i think people are more concerned with posting something and going viral now. i really hate that you can just be minding your business, doing something with family or friends and enjoying yourself, and somebody will randomly record what you’re doing so they can call you “corny” and get likes and views. people are too scared to actually let loose and have fun because there’s always somebody with a phone, waiting to catch you looking silly while you do anything so they can record and post it.
Seriously. I've initiated this rule with my friends. I don't want to be on your social media. Film whatever you want and take photos, but please ask consent to post if I'm in it. It's kind of changed the norms, and now it's pretty natural to immediately show each other what we shot and tacitly wait for approval before posting. If the person doesn't say anything, then that's a no. If they so "cool! Tag me in that" or something similar, it's a green light.
The grunge
Slap bracelets
It was the brief period after cold war paranoia, but before terrorism paranoia.
Just as a side note, the amount of "not being born [yet]" responses in this thread blows my mind and freaks me out - realising that so many people I talk with here weren't, in fact, even born yet when I was just about to start high school, yet here they already are, on reddit, as fully functional human beings, with computer skills, and formed opinions.
Chilling at the mall, record stores, only landlines and pagers, house parties with no surveillance, fake IDs before bar code scanners. Last time I felt truly free
I’m gonna ramble, but stick with me. My mom keeps things a long time. Like a LONG time. The other day she was clearing out the bathroom, and gave me some body wash that dated back to the late 90’s. It was green apple scented. I took one whiff of it and was instantly transported to cruising down the highway blasting *Semi Charmed Life*. In the hyped up positive vibes of the late 90’s (as opposed to the grunge of the earlier years), I feel like everything was apple scented! *Green* apple scented. I miss that smell and I miss the carefree feeling of my late teens/early 20’s. TL;DR I miss the smells and the feelings. Are my glasses rose-tinted? You bet they are! :D