If you grew up in the ’90s, this decade probably doesn’t feel like all that long ago. But when you stop and think about how much things have changed, it sounds more like a different lifetime. So Redditor Psychological_Sky_58 asked, “What did people do casually in the ’90s that wouldn’t be accepted today?” Here are some nostalgic aspects of this bygone era.
1.
“You used to be able to meet people right at the airport gate without going through security. We would go all the way down to the gate to greet friends getting off the plane from somewhere far away. I really miss that.”
2.
“I’ll never forget calling Moviefone for showtimes. I can still hear it on the other line: ‘Why don’t you just tell me the name of the movie you’d like to see?'”
3.
“There were literally ‘invisible walls’ in restaurants that delineated smoking from non-smoking sections. One side of the McDonald’s had ashtrays. They would really ask you to move to the smoking section if you smoked in the non-smoking half, too.”
4.
“The distances we traveled as kids would be considered absolutely terrifying to kids today. And we often did it on a bike. Without a phone.”
5.
“Printing out MapQuest directions and praying you didn’t miss a turn because recalculating meant pulling over and crying.”
6.
“People would leave their doors unlocked. We just left ours unlocked all the time, and my brother’s best friend would show up and come in whenever he wanted. Sometimes he’d come in, make himself at home, and then see what everyone was up to.”
7.
“Knocking on someone’s door when you’ve arrived instead of sitting in your car texting ‘I’m here.'”
8.
“Waiting for a certain time of day for a certain TV show, and if you missed it, you missed it.”
9.
“Going into the airplane cockpit to see all the buttons, the view from the front of the plane, and chat casually with the pilots.”
10.
“The TV Guide. It was a special CHANNEL where it just scrolled through the TV schedule repeatedly… I had it on constantly.”
11.
“Having your full name and number printed in a phone book that strangers could flip through. And calling a friend meant talking to their parents first, no texts, no heads-up, just vibes and landlines.”
12.
“Dancing in public without worrying that it might be posted online.”
14.
“Answering the phone without knowing who was calling.”
15.
“Letting kids go out for hours and hours without supervision, and not always knowing where they were, or leaving them at home with another young child to babysit.”
16.
“Life was undocumented on social media. Growing up, I could get in trouble, do dumb stuff, etc., and the only people who would know about it were my friends. But now, if you do something compromising, it can live online forever. So that dumb thing you did when you were in college is now online, and there’s documented proof of you doing that dumb thing.”
17.
“Spending hours customizing your Myspace profile like it was a digital diary…and those brutally honest Top Eight friend dramas. Back then was simpler chaos.”
18.
“Video rental stores. Something about browsing for a movie by just looking at the box was way more fun than browsing Netflix. Sometimes a bizarre, random movie you never heard of would catch your eye from across the room, which just doesn’t happen with streaming.”
20.
“Payphones. This is one of the things that I think is so hard to explain to young people that weren’t around. Payphones used to be EVERYWHERE. Rows of them in large public spaces. There was a payphone in or outside of shops on every corner. Restaurants had pay phones in quiet booths. They were so ubiquitous for decades, and now they’re just gone.”
21.
“Waiting a week to see that selfie that ended up being blurry or with red eyes. Then having to pay extra to get red eye reduction or for three-day or overnight photo processing.”
22.
“Pay a ton of money to make a long-distance phone call. The next town over from us was ‘long-distance’ when I was a kid. I had friends from school that I couldn’t call because it cost too much.”
23.
And finally, “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.”
Do you have something to add? What is something that was common when you were growing up that kids these days won’t experience? Tell us in the comments or in this anonymous form.
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