We’re so used to any bit of information being readily available at our fingertips at a moment’s notice. It’s easy for people who were around before many of these modern conveniences to remember what it was like. But younger people may never be able to fully grasp the details of simpler times before the internet and iPhones. These glimpses into the past, as told by real message board users, will bring back memories for some and give younger folks an idea of what it was really like.
Rewinding VHS Tapes
Before DVDs or streaming, watching a movie meant inserting a bulky VHS tape into a VCR (Video Cassette Recorder). After the movie ended, you couldn’t just click “restart”—you had to manually rewind the tape to the beginning. This could take a couple of minutes, during which you’d stare at the screen showing fuzzy lines or a spinning “rewind” icon.
Blockbuster and other rental stores even had “Be Kind, Rewind” stickers on their tapes, urging renters to rewind before returning. If you didn’t rewind, you might be hit with a rewind fee. For avid renters, owning a standalone tape rewinder (a small device dedicated to this task) was a lifesaver—and probably saved their VCR from early retirement.
Burning CDs
Making a playlist wasn’t as simple as dragging songs into Spotify. You had to burn your favorite tracks onto a blank CD using a computer with a CD burner and specialized software like Nero or Windows Media Player.
Burning a CD wasn’t foolproof. If there was a glitch (or if your blank disc was scratched), the whole process could fail, wasting both time and a blank CD. A successful burn, however, meant you had a personalized disc with your mix of songs, perfect for gifting to a crush or blasting in your Discman during a road trip. Of course, you could only fit about 12-20 songs on one CD—no endless playlists here!
TV Guide
“Looking forward to Monday’s newspaper having that week’s TV guide so you could see what movies were on that week,” said one commenter. Before the days of Netflix, Hulu and cable tv menus, everyone had to wait for the guide in the snail mail!
The Future
Before the year 2000, the sound of that date just sounded so futuristic to everyone. It was even referred to as ‘the millennium’. One user said, “The year 2000 seemed like some year way off in the future. Now I have lived more than half my life in the 21st century. Heck, we had a technology show called ‘Beyond 2000’.”
Manual Checkout
One commenter shared, “70’s kid here. Checkout ladies in supermarkets (yes, it was mostly a ladies job) used to manually type in the prices of every item purchased. (Every item had a price tag stuck on it by another member of staff). Their fingers could really fly around a numerical keyboard. It used to fascinate me as a kid.”
The Early Internet
“What you can’t simulate is what the Internet used to be… there was no “good” search engine and your bookmark field had an actual purpose. Wikipedia didn’t exist, the closest you got to something like that was a list of links at some random website: Want to know about ants? Here’s a link to a site with pictures in wildly different resolution and a background made to mimic old parchment. You couldn’t use the internet to listen to music, you could barely use it to look at low res pictures and you’d be lucky if even half the features of anything functioned,” said one commenter.
Dial-Up Internet
Anyone who was around for dial-up internet days knows that screeching sound of trying to log on. One user said, “I tried to explain to my nieces that you used to get the internet through your phone. They were all like ‘yeah, duh’. Then I had to explain that the phone line had to be connected to a special box which had to be connected to a computer that you could only connect to the internet if no one else was using the phone.”
No Social Media
“People just went away, and you never saw them again or had any idea what they were doing with their lives. Without social media, everyone but your closest friends or family disappeared from your life forever, and you had no clue what they were doing (remember you can’t google them either). Ex boyfriend? I heard a rumor from an old hs buddy I ran into at the mall that he moved to New Jersey. Camp buddy? Randomly ran into him two decades later, and he was totally different. It’s why kids don’t understand the point of stuff like [high school] reunions,” recalled one commenter.
No Googling
“If you wanted to know something your family or friends didn’t know, and you couldn’t find it in the library, you were unlikely to find out the answer. This applied to all sorts of things all of the time. I doubt younger people today can really imagine the difference immediate information availability makes in our daily lives,” said another user.
Appointment Television
“Missing the new episode on TV, having no way to see it again, and be completely clueless when it was all anyone at school or work talked about,” said a commenter. Before streaming services, tivo, or DVRs, there wasn’t an easy way to catch shows if you missed the original airdate. You’d have to wait months or even years for a re-run!
Pre-9/11 Flying
“Flying solo at 8 and having my parents meeting me at the gate! Quickly getting on flights (most cases). It was great!” recalled one user. Before the tragedy of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, security at airports was fairly non-existent– no metal detectors, no removing shoes, no ticket needed to get to the gate.
Memorizing Phone Numbers
Before cell phones, everyone had landlines, and that meant no computer memory to store phone numbers. You’d either have an address book or Rolodex, or you’d just have to remember it by heart. Everyone knew at least a dozen numbers by heart.
Smoking
“Smoking was not illegal anywhere. You could smoke on airplanes. Restaurants, in the mall, in the stores. School parking lot,” said one commenter. As the risk of second-hand smoke became more evident, the prevalence of available places to smoke dwindled. It started by separating smoking sections, to moving it outside, to moving it several feet away from a building.
Landlines
There was a time when everyone had to share the same phone number and the phone was stuck in your house. One user remembers, “One phone for the entire family and you could only go as far as the cord would stretch.”
Source: Reddit
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