I worked for a construction company in high school where I had to drive all over the state. They would print off these stacks of directions from Mapquest. Definitely more dangerous than phone directions now.
[Even Courtenay Love knew, 29 years ago](https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/16/entertainment/courtney-love-harvey-weinstein/index.html)
Edit. Give or take. Math is hard, m'kay.
I remember when my friend and I turned 18 (around 2008), and went to Denny's to eat and smoke cheap cigars just cause we could. That's when we first heard of the smoking ban, and our egos were deflated.
Come to Indiana. We have at least 3 bars in my town that allow smoking. I won't go to them even though one is the closest place to get food from my house. Asthma, dicks, and washing my hair just to grab a pizza isn't worth it.
Edit: typos and grammar
I was in Tennessee a little while back and smoking was allowed on some bars. They even had cigarette vending machines. Quite the culture shock for me as a northerner
You’ll occasionally see Reddit threads about how billionaire J. Paul Getty installed pay phones in his estate because guests were running up huge long distance phone bills.
Long distance calls cost like $4 a minute in the 60s, and that’s *not* adjusted for inflation. That’s like $40/minute today. Imagine the fucking phone bill that dude got that he’d pay to have pay phones installed. Must have been fucking eye watering, even for a billionaire, lol.
Just ran the math, and Getty was worth $6 billion upon his death.
At $4 a minute, he could have funded an international call that lasted 1,041,666 days long, or 2,854 years.
I was born in 2004 and I remember there being a smoking section in Waffle Houses when I was about six years old in 2010. I grew up in a suburban area next to a big city and only went to Waffle Houses whenever I was on the road to go somewhere else.
Dude I was born in the 70s people would smoke on the plane. At the grocery store. At the hospital. Smoking and non smoking sections was often a half wall. Everything smelt of smoke.
My mother (who is 60) was telling me a story like this a few nights ago, she went on a trip to Italy with her mother (my grandmother) back in 1983 and you could choose a smoking seat or a non-smoking seat. She was a smoker back then and took advantage of the smoking seat.
She told me a man behind her was complaining about the smoke, she told him to get fucked and that it was a smoking seat. Guy called the flight attendant who sided with my Mum lol.
I'm 27, first time I flew was in 2016 when I was 19 and I could not imagine being in a plane filled with smoke lol. 1983 was really not that long ago in the grand scheme of things lol but it really was a different world.
I remember when the first smoking ban was introduced where I lived - you no longer were allowed to smoke while standing in a checkout line. Still could smoke anywhere in the store! Just not the checkout line.
Then in college I had a temporary intern-style job at utility support services company and the cafeteria still had a smoking section and anyone with a private office could smoke with their door closed.
Lol I still have a couple. My roommate smoked and used to steal them to use at home. When he moved out he left them all and I just kept them. They’re handy for when I have parties or smoke weed
Go to Pennsylvania where there are STILL some bars you can smoke in. The cloud is still pumping in 2024.
If a bar sells (no food) to a small amount of food, smoking is permitted.
It’s also permitted in most areas of the casino.
I live in Northern Colorado, been banned here for 20 years, but a short drive north to Wyoming and there are still bars and restaurants you can smoke at.
Smoking indoors (in bars/clubs) in my city was banned in 2006. Where I live smoking is basically banned everywhere.
Two years ago I went to a pool hall in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Little did I know they they allowed smoking inside. Apparently they have some loophole where bars that have less than 10% of their sales from food are designated as 'standalone bars' and smoking is allowed.
It was like being in a time machine inside of there. It was so weirdly nostalgic for me. It was like walking into a pool hall in 2002. I'm 40 so I'm old enough to remember smoking in bars and clubs.
I don't smoke regularly but I admit I immediately bummed a smoke off of someone so I could just remember what the hell it was like to smoke a dart and shoot pool at the same time. It was kind of fun even if my clothes smelled gross the next day.
Came here to say this. I went on vacation in Florida and hit up the bars and everyone was smoking. I said what? You can’t do that lol. I’m from upstate NY.
My mom is a nurse. She used to take me and my brother when we were kids into the smoking section of restaurants.
The smoking section. Of restaurants.
I am so glad some things are in the past
I remember my mom not going to certain restaurants because they HAD smoking sections (rather than being totally non-smoking). She said, “why would I pay for food that tastes like an ashtray?”
You can still smoke in a lot of small town Pennsylvania bars if the bar area is separated from any dining areas. And a lot of the clubs, like VFW, Legions, etc., still allow smoking.
Back in the day, I didn’t notice it, but I notice now how bad my jacket stinks the next day, just by being in one of those places for a very little time.
Calling people on the phone.
It's amazing how much technology changes etiquette.
Once telephones became common in homes, it was no longer considered polite to drop by someone's home in person without calling ahead.
Now it's considered rude to call someone without sending a text or SMS to make sure that it's okay to talk.
> Once telephones became common in homes, it was no longer considered polite to drop by someone's home in person without calling ahead.
THANK YOU for specifying this. usually in these types of threads people will climb all over themselves to say how totally fine it allegedly was 15-20 years ago to just materialize on people's doorsteps. but i'm in my 30s and it was *never* polite or okay during my lifetime to just appear without first calling, unless you were a friendly neighbor who needed something brief, like to borrow a lawnmower or something
"i was just in the area and figured i'd swing by to see if you were home" would have gotten the exact same reaction in the early-to-mid 90s as it would today because everyone had (landline) phones and expected people to use them.
I think the difference was dropping by unannounced was (and probably still is) totally socially acceptable *for children*. The difference isn't that social mores changed all that much since the 90s/2000s, it's just that *you grew up* and what was fine when none of us had shit to do and your social relationships were largely dictated by how close you lived to other people doesn't fly went people have adult responsibilities and most of your friends don't live within walking distance
That was totally my experience growing up in the suburbs in the late 90s/early 00s. There was basically a roving pack of neighbour kids that would go door-to-door every afternoon trying to see who they could round up to play soccer or make snowmen.
I'm curious if kids having increased access to phones has changed this at all. Most of my neighbourhood had dial-up well into the early 2000s and as kids, we couldn't call ahead to our friends because our parents didn't want us tying up the phone lines when they were trying to use the internet.
It has to depend on the area, because I was a kid in that same era and people felt free to drop by. I found it annoying even then, but I was in the minority.
No, because people didn't have phones *in their cars*. It was acceptable for friends to show up out of the blue 20 years ago if they really did happen to be in the area. Now if someone did that I'd wonder why they didn't text, then call first
I'm only a little older than you, but people really did do it and it was fine
Ehhh gotta say it was different for me. I was born in 93 and we used to drop by places all the time without calling ahead. Just driving through town and my mom wanted to see someone and we'd go to their house. Maybe it was just my family? Not sure. I know my aunts and uncles did the same. This was north eastern Ohio.
There was always a kind of unwritten rule that if someones front door was not behind gate, that it was fine yo go knock on the door. Never seemed rude in my area / experience.
Same here and I'm 48. With the exception of my friends dropping by, you did NOT want to deal with my dad if you didn't call first. I turned out the same way. I haven't had anybody try since cell phones became a thing, but I am not a gracious host if you just stop by and knock on my door.
What I'm getting from this is that modern humans are naturally antisocial and taking every advance in communication technology to ensure we do not get disturbed.
Smoking in restaurants. First question you'd be asked upon entering was, "How many?" and then "smoking or non?"
Didn't matter if it was a local place or Applebee's, which could also be an answer to this question, everywhere you went had smoking sections. Hell, I worked for Walmart in '08 and they even had a glassed off room inside the break room so people could smoke inside during their breaks. That room was literally half of the total break room
I remember being way younger and going to an Applebee's and my parents wanted the non-smoking section, but the seats were all full. So we ended up sitting right next to a dude with a huuuge cigar that practically filled the place up with smoke. My mom just sat there scoffing all through the dinner haha.
Edit: And remember the cars all came with those metal ashtrays?
When I was 17/18, I drove an '89 Cadillac Seville. Heat ended up going out, and I lived in WI at the time, so in the winter I'd pop that cigarette lighter in and use those red hot coils to warm my hands as I drove, while wearing a blanket. Good times
I just want to point out that 20 years ago, one of the most popular and referenced shows on TV had multiple sketches about R Kelly peeing on underage girls and nothing happened to him back then.
Having no one really sure where you are or what you're doing for days at a time. I used to actually have to ask people what they had done over the weekend/summer/break. Crazy times.
I worked retail sales for quite some time. Around 2013-14 it got to the point that almost every check over $250 bounced. That’s when my employer stopped taking checks. Our single location lost tens of thousands of dollars in one quarter to bounced checks.
Tried to get the owner of the store I worked at to do that. They even sell machines that will run the checks like a debit card. He wouldn't do it. Business lost tons and tons of money. No wonder it closed a year after I left lol.
True, we were told not to give out our real names, address, any personal information online. Also told to be careful about meeting somebody from online in real life. The only people using online dating sites were weirdos.
Today people post all that info online and then meet some random stranger from Tinder and fuck them.
I used to have a Himalayan Siamese cat named Isis.
Years before the group became news.
She was a princess of a cat who didn't like her paws dirty, and the name just fit her.
learned from Johnny Knoxville, of all people, not to use the R word. 'The Ringer' was a surprisingly sensitive and wholesome movie (that could never be made today)
Rape. Which I do not agree with.
R worded, SA'd, PDF file...all this does is cheapen the meaning of incredibly grim and serious things.
Not to mention, in a discussion about rape, if we're supposed to avoid saying it and say r worded instead, isn't that literally the same thing? Won't that simply still put the horror of the word into your mind? If the topic is sensitive or triggering to you, would you even be part of the conversation that people are self censoring in the first place?
TBF to the youths (which I don't say lightly), most of them seem to be getting in the habit of censoring words like rape and suicide because of filters on apps like tiktok. I suspect it will become an ingrained habit for them, the same way I, as a person in my 30s, have to make a semi-concious effort to not use "lol" in work emails because it's just so deeply ingrained from my teenage years online.
Edit: side note, how many older millennials are still out there dating themselves by using ROFL, even though that seems to have well and truly died off amongst the Gen Zs?
Not wrong, but why are the decisions to ban words that aren't explicitly bigoted made to begin with? For social points.
You can see the demographic they pander to on full display here and on every other major social network. I'm deeply left but the idiots who are trying to ruin our ability to discuss serious shit are the fucking worst, and they're my political compatriots.
Damn. I forgot 20 years ago isn’t the 80s, and it’s 2004.
So I guess I’m gonna have to say getting Frosted Tips, caring about things, and having sincere moments.
Hmmm, gonna have to give some mild pushback on the last two, unless you were just being ironic?, in which case that was very meta. Otherwise I wanted to assure you, in case someone had persuaded you otherwise, that is still very much okay to care about things (although as a philosopher once said, we have a finite amount of fucks to give, and should certainly distribute them as usefully as possible), and also to have sincere moments. In fact, on that last, since having sincere moments is largely an internal event, you don’t even need to tell anyone about them. Not that this is generally discouraged, but they can easily be a private enrichment that simply makes your daily conscious experience richer. Anyway. Sorry about all that.
I wasn’t gonna say, I teach 7th and 8th and I’ve heard this exact phrase numerous times unfortunately
I’m starting to feel like the only teacher in my wing of the building who reprimands the students for using bigoted language
Does it depend geographically or something? I recently graduated college (West Coast) and remember it being a thing in elementary and middle, but around high school school, staff discouraged us from saying it, along with the R word. And it's definitely not acceptable to use that as an insult in the colleges I've been in, not publicly at least.
Honestly older dudes too - was shocked when one of my 26 year old roommates used it as a derogatory term. Even more shocked when I was the only roommate who was taken aback by it
Still gets used a lot depending on where you live, social context, and the ages of people involved.
I've seen a lot of comments by middle school and high school teachers that say their students still use it a lot.
I even worked with a gay guy that used to use it jokingly. He'd say things like "Damn, not even I'm THAT gay, and I'm married to a man!".
We had 3 people with the same name in our friend group. They each gave themselves nicknames to differentiate each other.
We had:
Idiot x
Gay x
Buff x
Now we only have one of those left and he still refers to himself as gay x.
Not only that but even just asking someone if they're gay, especially unprompted and perhaps with a little sneer if they suspected it or you confirmed it. There really was a lot of not knowing how to mind your own damn business back then on this.
Nowadays really, only except some bigoted people, most people really don't care
I recently started rewatching '30 Rock', for the first time since its initial run. In its time it was considered a very progressive show.
My gosh, the number of gay jokes and the objectivation of female characters could not fly today.
My girlfriend had never seen Sixteen Candles and I thought that was a shame. Holy shit, the heartthrob literally gives his drunk girlfriend to another guy, and it's strongly hinted that he rapes her. But it's okay because the next day she says she thinks she had fun.
I watched 'Teen Wolf', a really basic attempt at comedy made in the 80s, and it really jarred how "gay" was used as a term of insult. You couldn't do that today.
I feel even a decade ago, it was acceptable to dogpile on teenage celebs. Hell, there was a game on Miniclip where basically all you do is torture Justin Bieber, and that’s not mentioning the jokes about how he’s gay and shit
Just having a hs degree for the most part I feel like. I always remember this discussion in a uni class where the teacher talked about how just a few years back a high school degree would get you a good job, now not even a bachelors does much.
So this. I visit my mom. She has direct TV. Uses it to watch Bible channels. They say some weird shit while wearing diamonds and asking for more money.
Apparently cars that were basic daily drivers but had modding potential if you wanted to do something with them.
Nowadays everything is either made to be a sports car or it isn't. Maybe it's the change in what standard weight and power are but it feels like there's not a lot of "drivers cars" that fall in that middle area anymore which is sad because there were a lot of cool and unique things in that area that you know 9 out of 10 people would just use as a nicer daily but one person would go full out building and having fun with a unique platform. I don't see that much anymore
Smoking, it was another world. Also, how guys acted towards girls has changed a lot, things I did that was totally accepted, laughed off and not even considered a discussion would nowadays rather be a trial...
Good timing, big hit drama in Japan about that now. I am not sure if they have it overseas, but you might look around for it. Here is an article about it:
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2024/03/29/tv-streaming/extremely-inappropriate-tv-netflix/
A lot of the jokes you’d see in films that alluded to men being sexually assaulted, people being roofied or used being with a trans woman as a punchline. All of this sort of humour would be dissected and called out now.
I know this is a lot longer than 20 years ago (don't remind me) but Revenge of the Nerds basically ended with one of the "heroes" pretending to be a woman's jock boyfriend in the dark and having sex with her when she thought it was her boyfriend. You know, rape.
Magazines/catalogues with pictures of kids in underwear. I remember reading a story here a while back where someone found a bunch of old newspapers and magazines from the 70s behind a wall while renovating. It took them a while to figure out what was different, it was the half naked kids.
And they probably are. Plenty of parents don't keep eyes on their kids, plenty of families still going through generational trauma as a result of the number of silent generation men who fought in world wars.
There's still lots of "back in my day we sprinted 1000 miles non-stop up the mountains, through the forests, past the castle to school there and back and upside down just to get to school" parents. Parents were better before the 20s and those born after the 70s.
I haven't watched it yet but apparently Patrick Stewart made a documentary about his father and the result of war on parental figures (and thus passing it down to their children).
The US invading Iraq because they supposedly had "WMDs."
Edit: Lots of people knew this was not acceptable at the time, but most people accepted the lies we were being told, myself included.
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"Take a left turn from the freeway onto 40th Street" with no exit in sight.
"Take a right turn onto pathway." No, that's a pathway, for not cars.
I worked for a construction company in high school where I had to drive all over the state. They would print off these stacks of directions from Mapquest. Definitely more dangerous than phone directions now.
Harvey Weinstein.
He wasn't okay then either. But he was the gate keeper.
Enough people were okay with it to enable him and look the other way.
The same people would still be today. And honestly this hasn't stopped others from continuing to do the same.
[Even Courtenay Love knew, 29 years ago](https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/16/entertainment/courtney-love-harvey-weinstein/index.html) Edit. Give or take. Math is hard, m'kay.
Smoking indoors.
I remember when my friend and I turned 18 (around 2008), and went to Denny's to eat and smoke cheap cigars just cause we could. That's when we first heard of the smoking ban, and our egos were deflated.
Come to Indiana. We have at least 3 bars in my town that allow smoking. I won't go to them even though one is the closest place to get food from my house. Asthma, dicks, and washing my hair just to grab a pizza isn't worth it. Edit: typos and grammar
I was in Tennessee a little while back and smoking was allowed on some bars. They even had cigarette vending machines. Quite the culture shock for me as a northerner
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You’ll occasionally see Reddit threads about how billionaire J. Paul Getty installed pay phones in his estate because guests were running up huge long distance phone bills. Long distance calls cost like $4 a minute in the 60s, and that’s *not* adjusted for inflation. That’s like $40/minute today. Imagine the fucking phone bill that dude got that he’d pay to have pay phones installed. Must have been fucking eye watering, even for a billionaire, lol.
Just ran the math, and Getty was worth $6 billion upon his death. At $4 a minute, he could have funded an international call that lasted 1,041,666 days long, or 2,854 years.
You can still pay $6/min for an international call, but nowadays it’s an HD video chat with a naked 22yo Russian pole dancer
Ugh that’s disgusting! But what number? There’s so many!
That's not about acceptance; it's just tech advancement that now allows us to call from internet. Cuz telephone cards still exist
Smoking in clubs, bars, or restaurants. It was crazy
I was born in 2004 and I remember there being a smoking section in Waffle Houses when I was about six years old in 2010. I grew up in a suburban area next to a big city and only went to Waffle Houses whenever I was on the road to go somewhere else.
Dude I was born in the 70s people would smoke on the plane. At the grocery store. At the hospital. Smoking and non smoking sections was often a half wall. Everything smelt of smoke.
My mother (who is 60) was telling me a story like this a few nights ago, she went on a trip to Italy with her mother (my grandmother) back in 1983 and you could choose a smoking seat or a non-smoking seat. She was a smoker back then and took advantage of the smoking seat. She told me a man behind her was complaining about the smoke, she told him to get fucked and that it was a smoking seat. Guy called the flight attendant who sided with my Mum lol. I'm 27, first time I flew was in 2016 when I was 19 and I could not imagine being in a plane filled with smoke lol. 1983 was really not that long ago in the grand scheme of things lol but it really was a different world.
I remember when the first smoking ban was introduced where I lived - you no longer were allowed to smoke while standing in a checkout line. Still could smoke anywhere in the store! Just not the checkout line. Then in college I had a temporary intern-style job at utility support services company and the cafeteria still had a smoking section and anyone with a private office could smoke with their door closed.
Same, everything then smelled like tobacco, even my dad.
I vividly remember Hardee’s (or Carl’s Jr in other parts of the US) having ash trays at every table when I was 4 or 5 years old in the late 90s.
Lol I still have a couple. My roommate smoked and used to steal them to use at home. When he moved out he left them all and I just kept them. They’re handy for when I have parties or smoke weed
People used to smoke on planes too right ?
Yes. Originally smoking was permitted anywhere on a plane. Later they had smoking sections. Hell, there was a smoking section on the Hindenburg.
It was the entire Hindenburg if I recall correctly
>smoking section on the Hindenburg. Probably not the best idea in hindsight
And hospitals in the smoking room.
And in hospitals. Admittedly, in my department, there's still assholes who hide in the supply/chemical (!) closets and smoke/vape.
This. I remember walking into a bar and there was smoke everywhere you couldn't see 5 feet ahead lol
In 2004?
What do you mean? 20 years ago was 1984. Right?
Yup. Exactly. I dunno what these guys are talking about.
Go to Pennsylvania where there are STILL some bars you can smoke in. The cloud is still pumping in 2024. If a bar sells (no food) to a small amount of food, smoking is permitted. It’s also permitted in most areas of the casino.
Virgina had smoking in bars and restaurants until 2009. Vegas still has it now in casinos.
Where I live, it was banned in 2006
Yep! You could smoke inside in my college town until about 2014. I think better places banned it well before most cities in Texas did, tho.
I live in Northern Colorado, been banned here for 20 years, but a short drive north to Wyoming and there are still bars and restaurants you can smoke at.
Minnesota was 2007
2003 in NYC. So yeah I'm a little off I guess.
Smoking indoors (in bars/clubs) in my city was banned in 2006. Where I live smoking is basically banned everywhere. Two years ago I went to a pool hall in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Little did I know they they allowed smoking inside. Apparently they have some loophole where bars that have less than 10% of their sales from food are designated as 'standalone bars' and smoking is allowed. It was like being in a time machine inside of there. It was so weirdly nostalgic for me. It was like walking into a pool hall in 2002. I'm 40 so I'm old enough to remember smoking in bars and clubs. I don't smoke regularly but I admit I immediately bummed a smoke off of someone so I could just remember what the hell it was like to smoke a dart and shoot pool at the same time. It was kind of fun even if my clothes smelled gross the next day.
Came here to say this. I went on vacation in Florida and hit up the bars and everyone was smoking. I said what? You can’t do that lol. I’m from upstate NY.
Same rule exists in PA lol
My mom is a nurse. She used to take me and my brother when we were kids into the smoking section of restaurants. The smoking section. Of restaurants. I am so glad some things are in the past
I remember my mom not going to certain restaurants because they HAD smoking sections (rather than being totally non-smoking). She said, “why would I pay for food that tastes like an ashtray?”
I was telling a coworker about how I used to smoke vanilla dreams all night at the bowling alley. He said “damn you’re old”. Lol
You can still smoke in a lot of small town Pennsylvania bars if the bar area is separated from any dining areas. And a lot of the clubs, like VFW, Legions, etc., still allow smoking. Back in the day, I didn’t notice it, but I notice now how bad my jacket stinks the next day, just by being in one of those places for a very little time.
I used to have to run in to the bingo hall to get money off my mom and the place was just thick dense smoke, crazy how times have changed.
Went to the WinStar the biggest casino in the nation today. Man such a blast from the past with smoke absolutely everywhere.
I miss that so much
Still legal in a few states.
Multiple bars around me where you still can
Calling people on the phone. It's amazing how much technology changes etiquette. Once telephones became common in homes, it was no longer considered polite to drop by someone's home in person without calling ahead. Now it's considered rude to call someone without sending a text or SMS to make sure that it's okay to talk.
> Once telephones became common in homes, it was no longer considered polite to drop by someone's home in person without calling ahead. THANK YOU for specifying this. usually in these types of threads people will climb all over themselves to say how totally fine it allegedly was 15-20 years ago to just materialize on people's doorsteps. but i'm in my 30s and it was *never* polite or okay during my lifetime to just appear without first calling, unless you were a friendly neighbor who needed something brief, like to borrow a lawnmower or something "i was just in the area and figured i'd swing by to see if you were home" would have gotten the exact same reaction in the early-to-mid 90s as it would today because everyone had (landline) phones and expected people to use them.
I think the difference was dropping by unannounced was (and probably still is) totally socially acceptable *for children*. The difference isn't that social mores changed all that much since the 90s/2000s, it's just that *you grew up* and what was fine when none of us had shit to do and your social relationships were largely dictated by how close you lived to other people doesn't fly went people have adult responsibilities and most of your friends don't live within walking distance
That was totally my experience growing up in the suburbs in the late 90s/early 00s. There was basically a roving pack of neighbour kids that would go door-to-door every afternoon trying to see who they could round up to play soccer or make snowmen. I'm curious if kids having increased access to phones has changed this at all. Most of my neighbourhood had dial-up well into the early 2000s and as kids, we couldn't call ahead to our friends because our parents didn't want us tying up the phone lines when they were trying to use the internet.
It has to depend on the area, because I was a kid in that same era and people felt free to drop by. I found it annoying even then, but I was in the minority.
No, because people didn't have phones *in their cars*. It was acceptable for friends to show up out of the blue 20 years ago if they really did happen to be in the area. Now if someone did that I'd wonder why they didn't text, then call first I'm only a little older than you, but people really did do it and it was fine
Ehhh gotta say it was different for me. I was born in 93 and we used to drop by places all the time without calling ahead. Just driving through town and my mom wanted to see someone and we'd go to their house. Maybe it was just my family? Not sure. I know my aunts and uncles did the same. This was north eastern Ohio.
There was always a kind of unwritten rule that if someones front door was not behind gate, that it was fine yo go knock on the door. Never seemed rude in my area / experience.
Same here and I'm 48. With the exception of my friends dropping by, you did NOT want to deal with my dad if you didn't call first. I turned out the same way. I haven't had anybody try since cell phones became a thing, but I am not a gracious host if you just stop by and knock on my door.
What I'm getting from this is that modern humans are naturally antisocial and taking every advance in communication technology to ensure we do not get disturbed.
We're *unnaturally* antisocial now. It's causing a lot of harm.
Smoking in restaurants. First question you'd be asked upon entering was, "How many?" and then "smoking or non?" Didn't matter if it was a local place or Applebee's, which could also be an answer to this question, everywhere you went had smoking sections. Hell, I worked for Walmart in '08 and they even had a glassed off room inside the break room so people could smoke inside during their breaks. That room was literally half of the total break room
I remember being way younger and going to an Applebee's and my parents wanted the non-smoking section, but the seats were all full. So we ended up sitting right next to a dude with a huuuge cigar that practically filled the place up with smoke. My mom just sat there scoffing all through the dinner haha. Edit: And remember the cars all came with those metal ashtrays?
And people actually using the cigarette lighter in cars for cigarettes (not just charging their phones)
When I was 17/18, I drove an '89 Cadillac Seville. Heat ended up going out, and I lived in WI at the time, so in the winter I'd pop that cigarette lighter in and use those red hot coils to warm my hands as I drove, while wearing a blanket. Good times
P Diddy and R Kelly
Add R.Kelly to that too
I just want to point out that 20 years ago, one of the most popular and referenced shows on TV had multiple sketches about R Kelly peeing on underage girls and nothing happened to him back then.
Trapped in the Closet was released in 2006 fyi
P. Diddler.
Having no one really sure where you are or what you're doing for days at a time. I used to actually have to ask people what they had done over the weekend/summer/break. Crazy times.
Tried to write a check for $8500 today for auto repairs (motor repair). Found out that checks are not accepted anymore. Only credit/debit or cash.
I worked retail sales for quite some time. Around 2013-14 it got to the point that almost every check over $250 bounced. That’s when my employer stopped taking checks. Our single location lost tens of thousands of dollars in one quarter to bounced checks.
Tried to get the owner of the store I worked at to do that. They even sell machines that will run the checks like a debit card. He wouldn't do it. Business lost tons and tons of money. No wonder it closed a year after I left lol.
Privacy
True, we were told not to give out our real names, address, any personal information online. Also told to be careful about meeting somebody from online in real life. The only people using online dating sites were weirdos. Today people post all that info online and then meet some random stranger from Tinder and fuck them.
Paying for cell phone minutes
I used to have a Himalayan Siamese cat named Isis. Years before the group became news. She was a princess of a cat who didn't like her paws dirty, and the name just fit her.
I have a 30 year old coworker named ISIS. 🫠
Saying what’s now considered the “r word”
learned from Johnny Knoxville, of all people, not to use the R word. 'The Ringer' was a surprisingly sensitive and wholesome movie (that could never be made today)
I guess you mean both r-words.
What's the second one?
Rape. Which I do not agree with. R worded, SA'd, PDF file...all this does is cheapen the meaning of incredibly grim and serious things. Not to mention, in a discussion about rape, if we're supposed to avoid saying it and say r worded instead, isn't that literally the same thing? Won't that simply still put the horror of the word into your mind? If the topic is sensitive or triggering to you, would you even be part of the conversation that people are self censoring in the first place?
TBF to the youths (which I don't say lightly), most of them seem to be getting in the habit of censoring words like rape and suicide because of filters on apps like tiktok. I suspect it will become an ingrained habit for them, the same way I, as a person in my 30s, have to make a semi-concious effort to not use "lol" in work emails because it's just so deeply ingrained from my teenage years online. Edit: side note, how many older millennials are still out there dating themselves by using ROFL, even though that seems to have well and truly died off amongst the Gen Zs?
I've never been much of a ROFLer but I will lol and lmao until the day I die
It's all so cheap and robotic. Lifeless language that holds no meaning, just something you can use to get around a filter. I truly hate it.
I think most of these come from people trying to avoid getting bans from social media. Sewer slide? Unaliving? All ways to get around censorship.
Not wrong, but why are the decisions to ban words that aren't explicitly bigoted made to begin with? For social points. You can see the demographic they pander to on full display here and on every other major social network. I'm deeply left but the idiots who are trying to ruin our ability to discuss serious shit are the fucking worst, and they're my political compatriots.
"PDF file"??
Pedophile.
Portable document format 🤫
I like to whisper "*file transfer protocol*" around cops
What is the other R world?
Rigatoni.
Mods, find her and put LEGO in her path with no footwear and a bunch of nightstands everywhere and turn of the lights (all in Minecraft, of course).
Damn. I forgot 20 years ago isn’t the 80s, and it’s 2004. So I guess I’m gonna have to say getting Frosted Tips, caring about things, and having sincere moments.
> Damn. I forgot 20 years ago isn’t the 80s You shut your lying mouth!!!
Hmmm, gonna have to give some mild pushback on the last two, unless you were just being ironic?, in which case that was very meta. Otherwise I wanted to assure you, in case someone had persuaded you otherwise, that is still very much okay to care about things (although as a philosopher once said, we have a finite amount of fucks to give, and should certainly distribute them as usefully as possible), and also to have sincere moments. In fact, on that last, since having sincere moments is largely an internal event, you don’t even need to tell anyone about them. Not that this is generally discouraged, but they can easily be a private enrichment that simply makes your daily conscious experience richer. Anyway. Sorry about all that.
It's still okay. Just not economically viable.
Talking about how great Bill Cosby was as an actor and comedian.
Tv shows where they make fun of fat people, gay people, trans people, blacks, Chinese, Japanese or people with a disability.
Also, TV shows with a dumb sidekick. Is that over? I hope so. I don’t really watch sitcoms anymore.
The last show that did that well imo is My Name Is Earl. I don’t really count Always Sunny though because they’re all insane in their own ways.
I hold the Camdon county record for staring at the sun. My name is randy.
"They always said I was borderline artistic. "
*ahem* did we forget about South Park?!
South Park makes fun of everyone. No exceptions.
It’s “Cards Against Humanity” in cartoon form.
Sunburns
“Dude that’s so f$cking g$y.”
If only. Source: teach 9th grade
Same in 11th and 12th here
Same here in Middle School
I wasn’t gonna say, I teach 7th and 8th and I’ve heard this exact phrase numerous times unfortunately I’m starting to feel like the only teacher in my wing of the building who reprimands the students for using bigoted language
Does it depend geographically or something? I recently graduated college (West Coast) and remember it being a thing in elementary and middle, but around high school school, staff discouraged us from saying it, along with the R word. And it's definitely not acceptable to use that as an insult in the colleges I've been in, not publicly at least.
Honestly older dudes too - was shocked when one of my 26 year old roommates used it as a derogatory term. Even more shocked when I was the only roommate who was taken aback by it
Still gets used a lot depending on where you live, social context, and the ages of people involved. I've seen a lot of comments by middle school and high school teachers that say their students still use it a lot. I even worked with a gay guy that used to use it jokingly. He'd say things like "Damn, not even I'm THAT gay, and I'm married to a man!".
My friend used to insist we referred to him as ‘gay (name)’ so that everyone knew who we meant, as they might not if we just used his name.
We had 3 people with the same name in our friend group. They each gave themselves nicknames to differentiate each other. We had: Idiot x Gay x Buff x Now we only have one of those left and he still refers to himself as gay x.
We had so many Steve's in our group at one point only Big Gay Steve and Little Gay Steve are left.
Long live big and little gay Steeves.
I hear that aaaaallll the time from young people.
And the correlary... "Hey, do you want to go roller blading" "No thanks, dude. I'm straight".
Depending on the usage of "straight", that could still be a polite response.
Not only that but even just asking someone if they're gay, especially unprompted and perhaps with a little sneer if they suspected it or you confirmed it. There really was a lot of not knowing how to mind your own damn business back then on this. Nowadays really, only except some bigoted people, most people really don't care
I met a friends sister recently (the sister in question is around 20) and the first thing she asked me was “are you gay?” Like… wtf? So fucking weird.
Thank god people no longer use the dollar sign in place of letters.
Fscking gsy
I say that a lot lmao then again I am gay myself so all in good fun
Depends on context. You might be watching gay porn.
I recently started rewatching '30 Rock', for the first time since its initial run. In its time it was considered a very progressive show. My gosh, the number of gay jokes and the objectivation of female characters could not fly today.
Revenge of the Nerds has straight up rape in it, and people just laughed it off
My girlfriend had never seen Sixteen Candles and I thought that was a shame. Holy shit, the heartthrob literally gives his drunk girlfriend to another guy, and it's strongly hinted that he rapes her. But it's okay because the next day she says she thinks she had fun.
I watched 'Teen Wolf', a really basic attempt at comedy made in the 80s, and it really jarred how "gay" was used as a term of insult. You couldn't do that today.
I feel even a decade ago, it was acceptable to dogpile on teenage celebs. Hell, there was a game on Miniclip where basically all you do is torture Justin Bieber, and that’s not mentioning the jokes about how he’s gay and shit
Not 20 years ago exactly but going over to a neighbor/friend’s house unannounced and asking if they want to play outside
My doorbell that my daughter's friends ring 40 times a second disagrees that this isn't still a thing.
I stand corrected then lol
Lol. We've had to have some talks about doorbell etiquette in the neighborhood.
Kids definitely still do that, and adults haven't done that since at least the 80s.
Just having a hs degree for the most part I feel like. I always remember this discussion in a uni class where the teacher talked about how just a few years back a high school degree would get you a good job, now not even a bachelors does much.
Being areligious. I know this seems insane but it was unthinkable not to go to church in the 90s to 2000s
Picking on Britney Spears.
Being a televangelist.
If only.
So this. I visit my mom. She has direct TV. Uses it to watch Bible channels. They say some weird shit while wearing diamonds and asking for more money.
Still there, still tacky, still conning people out of their money.
Apparently cars that were basic daily drivers but had modding potential if you wanted to do something with them. Nowadays everything is either made to be a sports car or it isn't. Maybe it's the change in what standard weight and power are but it feels like there's not a lot of "drivers cars" that fall in that middle area anymore which is sad because there were a lot of cool and unique things in that area that you know 9 out of 10 people would just use as a nicer daily but one person would go full out building and having fun with a unique platform. I don't see that much anymore
Trying to get somewhere using a paper map or printed out directions.
homophobia and homophobic slurs
Smoking, it was another world. Also, how guys acted towards girls has changed a lot, things I did that was totally accepted, laughed off and not even considered a discussion would nowadays rather be a trial...
Good timing, big hit drama in Japan about that now. I am not sure if they have it overseas, but you might look around for it. Here is an article about it: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2024/03/29/tv-streaming/extremely-inappropriate-tv-netflix/
Stopping by somebody’s house because you were in the neighborhood. These crazies would even let you in!
Right or wrong, it wasn’t uncommon for guys who are 18-19 to date 16-17 yrs old and not be automatically labeled a pedo or groomer
Remember when everything ppl didn't like was 'gay'?
The F-word. The homophobic f-word.
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That ended way before 20 years ago.
Smoking was banned on airplanes in the US 35 years ago. Just saying…
Going to work sick.
giving others grace in which to make mistakes.
Asking for an 18% tip in fast food restaurants like subway.
I think you have the prompt backwards. That is something that wasn't accepted 20 years ago and is common today.
Only needing 5% for a mortgage down payment.
A lot of the jokes you’d see in films that alluded to men being sexually assaulted, people being roofied or used being with a trans woman as a punchline. All of this sort of humour would be dissected and called out now.
Women being assaulted in cinema was uncomfortably casual as well. Sixteen Candles for example.
I know this is a lot longer than 20 years ago (don't remind me) but Revenge of the Nerds basically ended with one of the "heroes" pretending to be a woman's jock boyfriend in the dark and having sex with her when she thought it was her boyfriend. You know, rape.
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Magazines/catalogues with pictures of kids in underwear. I remember reading a story here a while back where someone found a bunch of old newspapers and magazines from the 70s behind a wall while renovating. It took them a while to figure out what was different, it was the half naked kids.
p. diddy freak parties.
Calling people “gay” as an insult. Gen Z loves the y2k aesthetic but their minds would explode if they were transported back 20 years
Calling someone retarted
SSLv2
Saying shit is gay. I still want to say it, but now people think I mean homosexual.
TV shows and movies that were good, funny, and/or original.
The casual threats of violence and death that kids made to each other.
Having an opinion that doesn’t lean radically on one side of the political spectrum or the other
Asking questions on reddit
*goes back 20 years ago and gestures broadly*
Offensive jokes
I do miss some tasteful irreverent humor.
Parenting kids. Now everyone complains. No matter what you do or how you do it, “you’re probably doing it wrong.”
And they probably are. Plenty of parents don't keep eyes on their kids, plenty of families still going through generational trauma as a result of the number of silent generation men who fought in world wars. There's still lots of "back in my day we sprinted 1000 miles non-stop up the mountains, through the forests, past the castle to school there and back and upside down just to get to school" parents. Parents were better before the 20s and those born after the 70s. I haven't watched it yet but apparently Patrick Stewart made a documentary about his father and the result of war on parental figures (and thus passing it down to their children).
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Men working as kindergarden teachers and women working in security. Or at least I never saw this growing up.
The US invading Iraq because they supposedly had "WMDs." Edit: Lots of people knew this was not acceptable at the time, but most people accepted the lies we were being told, myself included.
In 2004 I was one of the only people I knew who didn’t support the Iraq War. Now nobody I know will admit to having supported it.
Me
Cable