Things from a bygone era you remember

I remember my mom reading me books before bed or me reading books, most children don't seem to read real paper books anymore, all on phones or tablets. I remember being the first class to start computer typing lessons in 4th grade which shocks me that it was the start of the digital revolution.

 

I remember playing KidPix in my 3rd-5th grade during computer class. Computer class was mainly to teach people about computers and how to use them. We were using Windows XP at that time.

Now they don't even have video games on those computers anymore. Kids just go on flash game websites or YouTube. At least they upgraded to Windows 7.

 

Oh boy oh boy, where do I begin?

• The aforementioned 'rabbit ears' fiddling that Otter mentioned. I remember it well, on those rare occasions when I wanted to watch TV. Of course, that died out when my interest in TV died out, which was years before LCD TVs were popular.
• The sound of an internet modem, and having to pay for an AOL account. (It stands for America Online, for those who aren't aware.)
• Going off the above, an Internet connection that had to be manually activated, would die if you picked up the phone (or would just render the phone inoperable while active). Technically, dial-up connections do still exist, but they're rare.
• Using physical encyclopedias for research and learning. Things such as Google and Wikipedia would be totally unheard of.
• YouTube memes from 2005
• Pen pals.
• Having to use Game Boy Link Cables to play games multiplayer - or finding the one boy in the neighbourhood with the Nintendo 64 and four controllers.
• I can't really say "memory cards for consoles" because those still technically exist in the form of SD cards. Unless you use a PlayStation Vita. Then I pity you.
• Learning Cursive writing. Thankfully, that is dead and will stay dead, where it's always belonged.
• Pretty much any computer game that ran on Windows 95. Only about half of them can still run on XP and newer OSs.
• The time when Macintosh computers (not Macs) weren't mainstream.

There's probably more, but that's all I remember at the moment. That may be all that's applicable.

 

welll, a lot of that doesn't make any sense to me because either a) im not american or b ) it hasn't yet changed (for instance we still have dialup internet here, it's not that rare in a place that doesn't have a modern alternative). Also, I can tell you as a teacher, we still are required to teach cursive here so it's certainly not dead yet

things I can think of:
- a time when there was no computers/internet at all
- no more plastic bags in shops (long since banned)
- things like donuts and sausage rolls being sold in schools (now also banned)
- when the most used social media site was bebo (aka the thing before myspace, but also when it moved to myspace too)
- having a mobile phone twice as tall as my hand and three times as thick, with a long pull out antannae for signal
- when mobile phones were all flip phones and typing with the multiple letters to each key
- when butterfly clips and stick on earrings and plastic chokers were the rage
- when hey hey it's saturday was a popular program (something only aussies will understand haha)
- using video tapes and recording on them (we only stopped using those a few years ago but I know everyones well and truly moved on haha)

I agree about the encylodaedia's for school projects and actually having to go to the library to make the big carboard projects we used to do :'D

 

• Also the rabbit ears, also dad rigged his to get cable w/o paying lols
• Cartoons like animaniacs!
• Old cellphones, esp Nokia
• BACKSTREET BOYS/NSYNC/ETC
• Netscape
• Windows 95 lol
• Neopets (Still up, I still play it)
• DIAL UP NOISE

 

Dial up (used to give me massive headaches, and every time mom or dad had to use the phone I lost everything I was doing, lol), Saturday morning cartoons, cartoons could have violence cause people had common sense when it came to shows (ah..Looney Toons, what did they do to you?), kids could wander around without a ton of parent supervision....

 

VHS tapes. Floppy disks (still have one with a buttload of my old stories on it). Games on CDs (most nowadays are downloadable or online itself i think). neopets as someone mentioned before. habbo hotel. (do people still play that? i used to until somewhat recently). that's all i can think of.

 

Most of the things have been mentioned already in other posts so I'm not going to rehash those too much, but I can remember when a TV was basically considered a piece of furniture and many of them came encased in decoratively carved wood. Old floor-models, you know. Somewhat related to the analog broadcasts mentioned in the first post, I remember when TV stations actually signed off at a certain time of the night, would play some national anthem video, and then display a test pattern and tone for hours until the start of the next broadcast day in the morning. Now every channel runs 24/7, typically with infomercials taking up what was previously the test-pattern down time.

I can remember a time when you could smoke indoors in offices, airports and restaurants.
I can remember when unfunny flash animations and YTMND were king, before YouTube existed/took off.
I can remember when people thought these dumbass jackets looked good and not in some "ironic" hipster way either

Spoiler

I can remember when people were less sensitive about every single little thing and rights didn't end where feelings began. Oops, controversial....
I can remember the existence of the WCW hotline and WCW in general, it's now been defunct for longer than it was active.
Also, Pogs. Everybody going nuts over little circular pieces of cardboard with random stuff printed on one side. I still have some in a big plastic tube. Talk about easily amused.

Oh, and Tim Hortons at one time would serve actual cake, like you could see a cake behind glass and buy a slice and they would just cut it for you and hand it to you. Those days are long gone and now they just have their specific set of donuts and muffins and cookies. Also, they would serve your coffee or hot chocolate in actual glass mugs of theirs if you went inside to eat/drink, the now ubiquitous paper cups were only for if you were getting a hot drink and taking it somewhere else.

 

Xat.com. I miss those days with @[member="Satix"] and many others. :')

 

The stock avatar things available on xat were fucking great, there were (I guess are still too, pretty sure it still exists) thousands of them and some of them were really weird things like obscure Simpsons characters. My favorite one in the times I lurked around various little xat chats was deformed Ken Griffey Jr. from that one 1992 episode of the Simpsons. You know, that episode that ends with that awesome softball song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkpyZws4bJ8
But what a strange obscure choice for a tiny avatar.

Speaking of that, The Simpsons being good is something that appears to be bygone now.

 

Xat really does have some of the most iconic, silly little avatars.

 

Those days were actually good! I remember:

- Junk food was sold all over the canteen until the second year of my schooling
- Cartoon shows taught kids moral instead of unspeakable horrors. And live action shows were actually funny and original.
- People weren't obsessed with their phones and actually socialised with one another
- The tiny Nokia phones and the game Snakes.
- Houses were cheaper in Australia
- Australia was somewhat empty, and there weren't many crowded places
- People were less sensitive

Even though I'm quite young, I still remember how great society was in the early 2000's and earlier. I like going over an old photograph album, and I feel hugely nostalgic looking at old photographs, even though I wasn't born yet.

 

Wait, I've just remembered one more thing I remember from years gone by...

Fax machines.

Now, I know that may sound foreign to a lot of you people, so I'll explain it in brief by saying fax machines were the precursor to email attachments in that they were used to send documents and attachments via phone lines, usually to businesses of some kind.

It's an odd case because fax machines are still used in some professions, particularly those that deal with legal or otherwise sensitive information, but the prevalence of e-mail has caused their usage to wane dramatically.

In other news, whoo, 2222 posts.

 

VHS tapes, going to play outside in the backyard, big bulky computer monitors and TVs, the nintendo 64, walkmans, cassette tapes...

 

walkmen, cassette tapes, answering machines with cassette tapes, floppy disks (used to use them every day!), DOS, windows 95, toonami during weekday afternoons, kids wb, star trek voyager being a family sit down event, the original season of survivor, Who wants to be a millionare?, and last but not least gas prices being below $1.60 a gallon.