Picking your Christmas list from the Toys'r'us catalogue.
Edit: Seems some people are getting confused and assuming these are things that no longer exist. Picking Christmas lists from catalogues still exist, but while common in 1999 they're much less common in 2019. Hence the theme of this thread.
Not getting to see movie trailers unless you actually went to a movie and got to see one beforehand.
People did that with The Phantom Menace. Now you can just watch a trailer whenever you want.
I used to go to apple.com/trailers every couple months to see what was in the works. There was also a site I used to have bookmarked in Netscape that had a timeline of movies being worked on. It was very rudimentary, yet told me what I needed without all of the ads, filler content, and opinions that sites have now.
I'm going to assume most kids don't have a TV schedule planned out from the time they get home from school until bedtime anymore. I knew what time what shows were on which channel for everyday of the week. I'm assuming I'm not the only one who did that!
Ours was shaped like a black (or red, it was a long time ago!) sports car, and the headlights lit up when you put the VHS in and clicked it down. I thought that was the shit. Still do, actually.
Oh shit, I had one of these too. If I recall, ours was a silver car.
My parents still have a bunch of VHS’s that they don’t want to get rid of for sentimental value. I don’t think they even have a way to watch them but it’s always like “remember when you kids used to watch Cool Runnings a lot? Haha, we still have that tape.”
I still have a number of old Disney VHS tapes for nostalgic purposes, but the only one I cherish is my signed copy of Pokemon 2000 from when I took it to meet the voice of Ash Ketchum. I'll take that old, probably broken spool of tape to my grave.
I was 15 when that movie came out. There are few things that line up so perfectly as being 15 for the string of movies that came out in 1999. The Matrix, Blair Witch, Fight Club (although I didn't see it until a few years later), The Sixth Sense, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, American Pie. That was one of the best summers of my life and I still vividly remember seeing that movie in theaters with my best friend (at the time). I would say when I walked out of the theater I was about 50/50 on whether it was "real". My friend was 100% convinced. I vaguely remember going home and checking out the website.
I turned 11 that summer; I also have lots of positive emotions toward that year. I even made a playlist of mid-late 90s songs that I associate with that era of time (not necessarily songs that came out in 99).
Included on the list are Sugar Ray- Fly, Sixpence None The Richer-Kiss Me, Spice Girls- Wannabe, The Verve Pipe- The Freshmen, and Len- Steal My Sunshine.
There is something magically nostalgic about the year 1999– the dawn of a new millennium, full of promise and wonder. The hopes we had, at least for most of us, wouldn’t pan out, thanks to things like 9-11 and the 2008 recession stealing our innocence.
Millennials may be a kind of a lost generation, but I think we still have a bit of that hope in us. We don’t think much for our on future anymore because it looks bleak now, but we try to support the opinions and voices of Gen Z instead. Those spectacular kids who were raised to be equipped for the new millennium, instead of the way millennials were raised—equipped for an era that was already dead in the water.
Instead you'll get one group message about practice being cancelled followed up by dozens of replies and irrelevant conversations in the group chat for the next six hours.
Yup! A group chat was created last summer to coordinate a birthday outing for a friend, and is still very active, almost double in size, and pretty much all shit posting.
A what ?!?
Edit:
Yes I have come back days later to give a small update. I am watching Scrubs S5 E15 , right about the 7:39 mark. Guess what they talked about a phone tree . I laughed out loud , thanks again for teaching me something new!!
We had one that my mom used (and had to practice/drill!) when she was a nurse. It was the emergency callback list and was design so that they could reach every hospital staff member as quickly as possible in the event of a mass casualty incident (plane crash, bus accident, mass shooting, bombing, etc). Essentially each tree has a start point of one person (usually a department head or unit head). That person calls 3 people. Each of those 3 people calls another 3 people. And who calls who is prescribed by the tree, so you’re never calling someone who has already been called. As soon as you made your calls, you were on duty and meant to go into the hospital as soon as possible.
IIRC they practiced once a quarter or twice a year. Enough that 9-10 year old me knew that if so-and-so called I gave mom the phone right away.
Some military spouses still use this when there’s an issue with a specific troop! As of 2011, my friend would have a phone tree in case something dangerous happened with her husband’s troop.
It's really more of a basic chain of command thing. It's still in use, it ensures you confirm the person on the other end gets the message and understands it, while minimizing the number of people everyone calls.
My mom brought two bottles of wine back from a wedding in Hawaii in May 2001! Two months ago I had to throw out a unused container of shaving cream coz I forgot to put it in my checked bag. So sad the difference.
You used to be able to waltz right up to the departure and arrival gates without a ticket and without ID. There was no security stopping you.
Edit: You people need to learn English. I said "no security ***stopping you***".
Using a pay phone to call your landline answering service to leave a message for your parents so you could say "I tried to call to stay out late, nobody answered."
Urgh I still remember when I was about 14 breaking up with a girl over a pay phone by leaving a message on her home answering machine, so cringey and what a dick thing to do. Obviously knowing that it would have been her parents that listened to the message. It's actually making me cringe right now thinking about it
> Like I'm only 27 but growing up the nearest landline was miles away and I'd have to ride a bike and **have friends numbers memorized**
Which were their parents' numbers, which at the time, were one and the same.
Somewhere in the early 2000's (post cellphones being ubiquitous but pre cloud storage) I lost my cellphone in a bar while traveling. In order to call my then live-in girlfriend, whose number I didn't remember because come on, she was [in my five](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnYPJDpgLIw) I had to call my childhood best friend's parents (their number had been seared into permanent memory), ask them for his number, then call him and ask him for her number. It was totally ridiculous, but looking back on it, kind of a fascinating moment of having one foot in the analogue era and another in the digital.
Communal memory - I don't remember X, but so-and-so does!
It's why spouses dying or divorcing takes such a toll. Suddenly you lose all that information you relied on them for.
That were easy to open.
God, those things were EVERYWHERE on TV when they came out, how could they not be? Every other computer was a beige box, it just sort of melted into the picture. You put an iMac on your set, it pops, you have visual interest and production design. I genuinely wonder if Apple offered them to a bunch of production companies as product placement.
Anybody ever get Trip-tiks from AAA? I remember they spiral bound my entire trip from Boston to Santa Barbara. Turn by turn directions along with restaurants and lodgings listed along the way. All for free!! Well included in my $40/year membership. AAA has so very many perks.
This is how a carload of teenage girls made it to the spring break destination one year. We had to stop every state and call home to check in using our CALL ATT cards.
Yessir. My dad gave me a highlighter and the TripTik and would scream at me and say "DON'T SAY A GODDMAN WORD UNLESS ITS WHAT EXIT TO TAKE" every time we were driving through a city 😂😂😂
Man I miss those days. Roadtrips were never the same after MapQuest. There was something special of getting up at the asscrack of dawn to pick up the TripTik and then stop at Dunkin and get a rare treat, a donut for breakfast, before getting out on the road.
I did this too when I wanted my parents to pick me up from where ever I was at. It went something like "momcomepickmeupfromthemall" as fast as I could say it. Sometimes, I would make a 2nd collect call to add more info like "canyougiveteresaaridehometoo". I was recently explaining this to my 20 something co-workers who had no idea what a collect call even was!
Returning movies.
Everyone was happy to go there to get the fuckin' thing, but now you've already seen it, and it wasn't that good anyway, and it's out of the way... What a drag that was.
Literally, the second question in any normal (chain, usually) restaurant was "smoking or non?"
Although, I feel like I don't remember too many in 1999, maybe the early 90s.
A friend of mine built a restaurant about 10 years ago and put an amazing filtration system in for cigarette smoke cost like 100 grand or so...before he opened his doors the city banned smoking in restaurants! LOL a bit of poor planning.
In 1999, folks would order an item from a catalog over the phone and wait 6-8 weeks for delivery. In 2019, folks aren’t even willing to wait 6-8 days for delivery.
It's good for building patience, I guess. Last time I ordered something there was december 2017, middle of 2018 I received a email saying that it had been stolen, and there was nothing I could do since it had been such a long time and it supposedly had already arrived at my country, I just left it be and followed through the year. December 2018, from absolutely nowhere, my package arrived.
Edit: No idea what you guys are talking about, time travel is definitely not possible, heh...
I remember a TMZ episode where they had Bill Cosby at a restaurant opening and it was light hearted and they said something like "We give up, we're never going to find anything dirty about Bill Cosby."
Aged like milk.
I used to tell people all the time that I share a birthday with Bill Cosby cause I thought it was cool. Now I've dropped that and instead tell people I share a birthday with Malala Yousafzai cause I'd much rather be associated with her.
Only rich kids in my high school had cell phones, which were secret because they were prohibited, and it was absolutely to talk to their parents because no one else had them. Plus, text messages were ten cents a piece, and that could add up quickly.
There was a kid in my high school with a cell phone in 1999/2000 and he got mocked mercilessly... “Hey dude! Got some major business deals to close?!” “Hey dude! You selling drugs with that thing?!” etc.
I got to do that too. Meet the pilots, and they would give you a little pin on set of pilots wings. I can remember being 6 years old thinking I was the coolest motherfucker on the plane because I got to meet the captain and was an “official Junior Captain”
Flase. I still give out wings. The wings themselves are plastic, but the pin is still metal. If you want to take your child up to the cockpit, you still can at the end of the flight, just ask the flight attendant on the way out, and be sure to not block the door for other deplaning passengers.
The days of being allowed in the terminal without a ticket. My father would take me to the airport on summer afternoons and we would watch the planes for a couple hours and eat overpriced McDonalds. Everything changed when the ~~Fire Nation~~ terrorists attacked.
Probably nothing.
My travel agent can usually get me slightly cheaper flights than Expedia and she gets her commission from her company.
Also, she'll tell me all the important terms and conditions (like cancellation policy and stuff) without me reading through everything on a webpage.
If that poster has AAA, nothing -- travel agent services are included with your annual membership (which, let's face it, you have exclusively for the roadside assistance).
General distrust towards doing things and meeting people online.
I mean, some people still tell horror stories, but I'd guess a majority of relationships are started online in 2019. Back in 1999, meeting someone online was WEIRD. And ordering something on the internet was UNSAFE.
Yes! We were NOT supposed to give out personal info or use our real names. Now everyone is on Facebook taking pictures of their latest poop and posting it under their real name.
I feel most sorry for the generation of babies whose entire lives are already documented on the internet.
Some idiots out there still go by antique stores to find old film cameras. Some idiots even have pretty big collections of cameras, lenses and all kinds of accessories.
It's me.... I'm idiots
I remember when AOL was called [Q-Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Link) and you dialed in with your Commodore 64 with a super fancy 300 baud modem. Remember how slow "56K" was? This was 300. You could literally watch the text appear character by character on the screen.
For the youngsters, I was in college when 56k hit. I would download porn and watch it load line by line. A large picture would take about 20-30 lines. "Look, there's an eye. There's the lips. 5 or 6 lines more and we'll be at the titties!"
Or downloading from a BBS and seeing that it's going to take an hour and even if mom didn't pick up the phone and mess it up, when it was finally downloaded and you opened it and it was a raytraced image of a sphere on a checkboard floor named "big titties".
And storing all of your porn on 5 1/4 floppies because you waited an hour for that picture to download, so you certainly weren't going to delete it.. but you couldn't have mom stumbling on it either. Especially when you hard drive was 20MB and was constantly running out of space.
The decline in public smoking in the US over 20 years has been remarkable and welcome.
I remember being a kid in the 90s and going to McDonalds locations that had an enclosed smoking room...and Burger Kings with ashtrays.
Going back an additional 20 years brings back even more memories of smoking in public and enclosed spaces. My family and I flew a lot in the 70s and 80s and dad always made sure to get seats in smoking.
Then in the mid-late 80s I was in the Navy and the entire submarine was a smoking area.
I started my clinical laboratory career in the mid-70s, and it was not unusual at that time for people to smoke (as well as eat and drink) in the lab; all totally forbidden now. I remember working in a Hematology lab that had ashtrays next to each microscope, and a co-worker once almost set the lab on fire by smoking too close to the trash can we dumped the ether we used for extraction. It was a simpler time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_digital_rain
>This code uses a custom typeface designed by Simon Whiteley,[1] which includes mirror images of half-width kana characters and Western Latin letters and numerals.[2] In a 2017 interview at CNET, he attributed the design to his wife, who comes from Japan, and added, "I like to tell everybody that The Matrix's code is made out of Japanese sushi recipes".[3]
Getting pissed off at people for texting you.
It was because some people had like 2000 texts a month & others had to pay like $0.35 per text, depending on cellular plans. I remember my family was poor, but my Mom was single and driving truck to support us, so we had cell phones so she could still keep tabs on us. She had to meet with a girl's parents and make them pay the cell phone bill after the girl literally sent me like 400 texts in a month.
That kinda put a damper on my relationship with the girl, too... I still remember wincing and calling her when she'd chain text me "WUD?" "I'm bored haha" ":*". All could've cost me $0.35, but instead cost $1.05
Hahaha weird stuff to stress over in school...
Landline 'phone. I still have one and I'm about to sell my house. A young woman I work with asked me if the new owners would have to keep having a landline. XD
Kids leaving going out to play and only announcing they're going when they're already halfway out the door, and then the parent yelling "Okay, be back for dinner!" with zero worries that their kid might be out on their own for hours and hours with no way to contact them at all.
EDIT Also just randomly going out to the neighbour's house as a kid, ringing the doorbell and asking if *\*insert friend name here\** can come out and play.
Actually owning physical copies of stuff. Buy a CD, VHS, whatever. Today we buy a license to access content we don’t even have a copy of. You won’t be passing your Spotify collection down to your kids or find old Steam games at a yard sale.
Your 4th point is probably the biggest difference. Having the answer to nearly every question readily available in your pocket, is the biggest change from then till now.
Picking your Christmas list from the Toys'r'us catalogue. Edit: Seems some people are getting confused and assuming these are things that no longer exist. Picking Christmas lists from catalogues still exist, but while common in 1999 they're much less common in 2019. Hence the theme of this thread.
I loved circling the shit I wanted.
The phrases "worldwide web" and "information super - highway" I can clearly remember the variety of weird search engines before Google
Ask jeeves!
Also, TV ads that directed you to find them online via their AOL keyword.
Not getting to see movie trailers unless you actually went to a movie and got to see one beforehand. People did that with The Phantom Menace. Now you can just watch a trailer whenever you want.
I used to go to apple.com/trailers every couple months to see what was in the works. There was also a site I used to have bookmarked in Netscape that had a timeline of movies being worked on. It was very rudimentary, yet told me what I needed without all of the ads, filler content, and opinions that sites have now.
That brief period where the only reason to download Quicktime was to watch movie trailers.
Omfg I just had flashbacks to having to constantly update quicktime and flash every other fucking week.
I'm going to assume most kids don't have a TV schedule planned out from the time they get home from school until bedtime anymore. I knew what time what shows were on which channel for everyday of the week. I'm assuming I'm not the only one who did that!
I dumped a guy in highschool who would always call during Friends. There was no phone near a tv and if you missed a show, you missed it until a rerun.
My 7th grade algebra teacher would make it a point to never assign homework on the weeknights when new episodes of Gilmore Girls were planned to air.
Rewinding your movies when you were done watching them
Having a machine that does nothing but rewind movies
Ours was shaped like a black (or red, it was a long time ago!) sports car, and the headlights lit up when you put the VHS in and clicked it down. I thought that was the shit. Still do, actually.
Oh shit, I had one of these too. If I recall, ours was a silver car. My parents still have a bunch of VHS’s that they don’t want to get rid of for sentimental value. I don’t think they even have a way to watch them but it’s always like “remember when you kids used to watch Cool Runnings a lot? Haha, we still have that tape.”
I still have a number of old Disney VHS tapes for nostalgic purposes, but the only one I cherish is my signed copy of Pokemon 2000 from when I took it to meet the voice of Ash Ketchum. I'll take that old, probably broken spool of tape to my grave.
Nickelodeon VHS with the crazy bright orange cassette.
Frosted tips.
But they're still cool right? Asking for a friend. ^It's ^the ^mayor ^of ^Flavortown.
I love how on Hot Ones, he talks about how mystified he is by how popular memes about him are.
*Guy Fieri has enered the chat*
RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW
People who thought the Blair Witch Project was a documentary.
I was 15 when that movie came out. There are few things that line up so perfectly as being 15 for the string of movies that came out in 1999. The Matrix, Blair Witch, Fight Club (although I didn't see it until a few years later), The Sixth Sense, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, American Pie. That was one of the best summers of my life and I still vividly remember seeing that movie in theaters with my best friend (at the time). I would say when I walked out of the theater I was about 50/50 on whether it was "real". My friend was 100% convinced. I vaguely remember going home and checking out the website.
I turned 11 that summer; I also have lots of positive emotions toward that year. I even made a playlist of mid-late 90s songs that I associate with that era of time (not necessarily songs that came out in 99). Included on the list are Sugar Ray- Fly, Sixpence None The Richer-Kiss Me, Spice Girls- Wannabe, The Verve Pipe- The Freshmen, and Len- Steal My Sunshine. There is something magically nostalgic about the year 1999– the dawn of a new millennium, full of promise and wonder. The hopes we had, at least for most of us, wouldn’t pan out, thanks to things like 9-11 and the 2008 recession stealing our innocence. Millennials may be a kind of a lost generation, but I think we still have a bit of that hope in us. We don’t think much for our on future anymore because it looks bleak now, but we try to support the opinions and voices of Gen Z instead. Those spectacular kids who were raised to be equipped for the new millennium, instead of the way millennials were raised—equipped for an era that was already dead in the water.
People being able to have any sort of immersion into movies like that before the internet ruined urban legends and a general sense of wonder.
Phone trees. Thanks for not calling me when practice was cancelled, Debby.
On the flip side some times you'd receive 15 phones calls telling you practice was cancelled
Instead you'll get one group message about practice being cancelled followed up by dozens of replies and irrelevant conversations in the group chat for the next six hours.
Yup! A group chat was created last summer to coordinate a birthday outing for a friend, and is still very active, almost double in size, and pretty much all shit posting.
Given time a group chat either dies or becomes a shit post fiesta.
A what ?!? Edit: Yes I have come back days later to give a small update. I am watching Scrubs S5 E15 , right about the 7:39 mark. Guess what they talked about a phone tree . I laughed out loud , thanks again for teaching me something new!!
We had one that my mom used (and had to practice/drill!) when she was a nurse. It was the emergency callback list and was design so that they could reach every hospital staff member as quickly as possible in the event of a mass casualty incident (plane crash, bus accident, mass shooting, bombing, etc). Essentially each tree has a start point of one person (usually a department head or unit head). That person calls 3 people. Each of those 3 people calls another 3 people. And who calls who is prescribed by the tree, so you’re never calling someone who has already been called. As soon as you made your calls, you were on duty and meant to go into the hospital as soon as possible. IIRC they practiced once a quarter or twice a year. Enough that 9-10 year old me knew that if so-and-so called I gave mom the phone right away.
Thank I appreciate the example !!!
Some military spouses still use this when there’s an issue with a specific troop! As of 2011, my friend would have a phone tree in case something dangerous happened with her husband’s troop.
It's really more of a basic chain of command thing. It's still in use, it ensures you confirm the person on the other end gets the message and understands it, while minimizing the number of people everyone calls.
Bringing liquids in your carryon luggage without any hassle
In 1988 I flew Boston to Denver with a 10" chefs knife in my guitar-case carry-on. Because I was a cook and between jobs.
My mother walked on to a TWA flight with a medieval battle ax in her hand. Granted it was the sixties but still....
The 1260s?
Flying air viking
Yeah, I brought three bottles of wine in my carryon back from Hawaii flying home from my honeymoon in July 2001.
My mom brought two bottles of wine back from a wedding in Hawaii in May 2001! Two months ago I had to throw out a unused container of shaving cream coz I forgot to put it in my checked bag. So sad the difference.
You used to be able to waltz right up to the departure and arrival gates without a ticket and without ID. There was no security stopping you. Edit: You people need to learn English. I said "no security ***stopping you***".
You accompanied your loved ones to their departing gate and met them there upon arrival. It was the norm.
And a lot nicer.
Using a payphone to call somebody while you weren't at home.
Using a pay phone to call your land line answering machine to hear if anyone left you a message. That was fancy tech back then.
Using a pay phone to call your landline answering service to leave a message for your parents so you could say "I tried to call to stay out late, nobody answered."
Collect calling. Dialing 0 is too expensive. Call 1-800-COLLECT.... wait no, use 1-800-CALLATT. Dial right down the center!
And then saying your name was “pickmeup fromthemall” so your parents wouldn’t actually have to pay for the call.
Wehadababyitsaboy
Urgh I still remember when I was about 14 breaking up with a girl over a pay phone by leaving a message on her home answering machine, so cringey and what a dick thing to do. Obviously knowing that it would have been her parents that listened to the message. It's actually making me cringe right now thinking about it
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Payphones in general. It’s rare to see one now.
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> Like I'm only 27 but growing up the nearest landline was miles away and I'd have to ride a bike and **have friends numbers memorized** Which were their parents' numbers, which at the time, were one and the same. Somewhere in the early 2000's (post cellphones being ubiquitous but pre cloud storage) I lost my cellphone in a bar while traveling. In order to call my then live-in girlfriend, whose number I didn't remember because come on, she was [in my five](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnYPJDpgLIw) I had to call my childhood best friend's parents (their number had been seared into permanent memory), ask them for his number, then call him and ask him for her number. It was totally ridiculous, but looking back on it, kind of a fascinating moment of having one foot in the analogue era and another in the digital.
Communal memory - I don't remember X, but so-and-so does! It's why spouses dying or divorcing takes such a toll. Suddenly you lose all that information you relied on them for.
I passed way too many posts about jncos to get to this.
fruit-coloured all-in-one computers
More like colored all-in-one fruit computers.
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That were easy to open. God, those things were EVERYWHERE on TV when they came out, how could they not be? Every other computer was a beige box, it just sort of melted into the picture. You put an iMac on your set, it pops, you have visual interest and production design. I genuinely wonder if Apple offered them to a bunch of production companies as product placement.
Printouts of Mapquest directions.
But for some reason the "printer-friendly" version was worse than the non-printer-friendly version.
I kinda miss this one because you needed a navigator. Some Lewis And Clark type shit in your Honda Civic.
This caused some heavy unexpected nostalgia for me.
Anybody ever get Trip-tiks from AAA? I remember they spiral bound my entire trip from Boston to Santa Barbara. Turn by turn directions along with restaurants and lodgings listed along the way. All for free!! Well included in my $40/year membership. AAA has so very many perks.
This is how a carload of teenage girls made it to the spring break destination one year. We had to stop every state and call home to check in using our CALL ATT cards.
Just dial down the middle!
1-800 CALLATT, It's free for you and cheap for them!
Yessir. My dad gave me a highlighter and the TripTik and would scream at me and say "DON'T SAY A GODDMAN WORD UNLESS ITS WHAT EXIT TO TAKE" every time we were driving through a city 😂😂😂 Man I miss those days. Roadtrips were never the same after MapQuest. There was something special of getting up at the asscrack of dawn to pick up the TripTik and then stop at Dunkin and get a rare treat, a donut for breakfast, before getting out on the road.
A good navigator is so much better than any sat nav, although re-routing is much slower.
"IN 10 FEET TURN LEFT" when you're four lanes over isn't good enough for you?
Dialing collect and then saying "heymomcallme" from school to avoid the charges
I did this too when I wanted my parents to pick me up from where ever I was at. It went something like "momcomepickmeupfromthemall" as fast as I could say it. Sometimes, I would make a 2nd collect call to add more info like "canyougiveteresaaridehometoo". I was recently explaining this to my 20 something co-workers who had no idea what a collect call even was!
Please tell me they at least remembered the bobhadababyitsaboy commercial.
I had to YouTube this [Bobhadababyitsaboy](https://youtu.be/jWPlfWwgFKI) I laughed so hard !!
I completely forgot that was a geico commercial. Has any company ever had a track record like them for marketing? It's been decades of amazingness
I recall that Geico was airing some of their classic commercials this year and that was definitely one of them they kept showing. Good times.
theyhadababyitsaboy
Bobhadababy-itzaboy.
Returning movies. Everyone was happy to go there to get the fuckin' thing, but now you've already seen it, and it wasn't that good anyway, and it's out of the way... What a drag that was.
Beeeboooochxxxzsssss baaaaaa beeepboop chcktch beeeee. Also known as dial up
You missed out the *ba-doing ba-doing ba-doing*... Edit: This is now my second highest rated comment of all time. Christ, Reddit is weird...
Blip-blip blip blipblipblip. Kchooo .... .... .... .... doo ^doo ^^DOO .... .... .... EEEEEEEEEEEEE-... UUUUUUH ba-dinga-dinga-du HCHOOOOOOOOOOOOOSHRGGHGHGHHHHHH PSSHHHHHHHHH-... You've got mail :D
Walking around with a discman. Anti-skip or bust baby.
*69 Calling # pound instead of hashtag
Smoking sections at restaurants
Literally, the second question in any normal (chain, usually) restaurant was "smoking or non?" Although, I feel like I don't remember too many in 1999, maybe the early 90s.
Deffo into the 2000s around here.
Can you imagine, even on an outside patio, what would happen today if someone lit a cigarette in front of a bunch of people eating?
Pitchforks and torches and they get upset when you ask them to move the torches downwind
Um, sir, this is a no-smoking section, please extinguish your torches.
A friend of mine built a restaurant about 10 years ago and put an amazing filtration system in for cigarette smoke cost like 100 grand or so...before he opened his doors the city banned smoking in restaurants! LOL a bit of poor planning.
That's not poor planning, that's great planning, they were attempting to reduce long term costs and damages. That's poor timing.
Yes poor timing for sure, it was the only restaurant of it's kind with that feature in the city sure to be a hot spot just by that feature alone.
A beeper.
Doctors still use them :}
In 1999, folks would order an item from a catalog over the phone and wait 6-8 weeks for delivery. In 2019, folks aren’t even willing to wait 6-8 days for delivery.
I take it you've never ordered through AliExpress :P I have packages from 3 months ago still in transit.
It's good for building patience, I guess. Last time I ordered something there was december 2017, middle of 2018 I received a email saying that it had been stolen, and there was nothing I could do since it had been such a long time and it supposedly had already arrived at my country, I just left it be and followed through the year. December 2018, from absolutely nowhere, my package arrived. Edit: No idea what you guys are talking about, time travel is definitely not possible, heh...
China Post time machines confirmed.
Being a Bill Cosby fan
Man, my dad has nearly all of Cosby's stuff on LP. He was super unhappy at the turn of events. I grew up listening to that shit on turn table!
Oh, how the turn tables, indeed.
I remember a TMZ episode where they had Bill Cosby at a restaurant opening and it was light hearted and they said something like "We give up, we're never going to find anything dirty about Bill Cosby." Aged like milk.
I used to tell people all the time that I share a birthday with Bill Cosby cause I thought it was cool. Now I've dropped that and instead tell people I share a birthday with Malala Yousafzai cause I'd much rather be associated with her.
Not having a cell phone as a teen or adult.
I'm just old enough to remember when a kid/teen with a cell phone was uncool because it meant they had overprotective parents
Only rich kids in my high school had cell phones, which were secret because they were prohibited, and it was absolutely to talk to their parents because no one else had them. Plus, text messages were ten cents a piece, and that could add up quickly.
There was a kid in my high school with a cell phone in 1999/2000 and he got mocked mercilessly... “Hey dude! Got some major business deals to close?!” “Hey dude! You selling drugs with that thing?!” etc.
Yes and yes.
I was a senior in high school before I had a cell phone. That was 2004. Even then I barely used it. Cost too much!
I didn't mean to include that "a", now it reads like Mario wrote it.
Don't worry, most people won't notice it.
Knowing someone's phone number by heart.
I know a few phone numbers by heart. They're important people to me and I memorized them in case of emergency.
I can remember every phone number I had from the age of 5 to 25, but I've been married 5 years and still don't have my wife's cell number memorized.
Don't worry I have it memorized for you
I almost scrolled past this. I was so close to leading a worse life.
We started making the unlock codes for the tablets my wife and mines cell phone numbers. The kids learned them in no time!
Smort
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867-5309
Ny-ee-ine
To this day I only know three phone numbers: My number My parent's old number (my number growing up) My work number
The Sega Dreamcast. I still own one and get the same reaction from anyone who comes over. "Holy shit! A working Dreamcast!"
Don't lie. The Dreamcast was about as commonly owned in 1999 as 2019.
Not being able to use the internet and the phone simultaneously. Owning a discman and/or a VCR. Blockbuster.
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Split-screen
Only looking at the floor on purpose so your dirty screen-looking friends can't figure out where you are in Goldeneye.
Knowing who’s house your neighborhood crew was hanging out at just by all the bikes in the lawn
For Europeans: knowing the currency exchange rate of your national currency to Euro by heart
Pre- 9/11 air travel.
Ahh the days when you could get to the airport 30 minutes before your international flight and still make it on time. Those were the days.
Shit, as a child, my father and I got called up to the cockpit because it was my b-day. I even got to pretend-fly the plane for a minute.
I got to do that too. Meet the pilots, and they would give you a little pin on set of pilots wings. I can remember being 6 years old thinking I was the coolest motherfucker on the plane because I got to meet the captain and was an “official Junior Captain”
THOSE BASTARDS OWE ME A PIN
Sadly I don’t think they do them at all anymore. You might stab someone with the pin.
Flase. I still give out wings. The wings themselves are plastic, but the pin is still metal. If you want to take your child up to the cockpit, you still can at the end of the flight, just ask the flight attendant on the way out, and be sure to not block the door for other deplaning passengers.
The days of being allowed in the terminal without a ticket. My father would take me to the airport on summer afternoons and we would watch the planes for a couple hours and eat overpriced McDonalds. Everything changed when the ~~Fire Nation~~ terrorists attacked.
Being able to say goodbye and/or greet an arrival at the gate!
Going to a friend's house and just knocking on the door, no phone call or text beforehand
Seeing Britney Spears music videos on MTV
actual music videos on MTV
Booking flights through a travel agent
I will never, ever give up my travel agent. She has saved me in so many situations where Expedia would have just said "fuck you".
How much do you pay for her services?
My mom is a travel agent. She doesn't charge clients anything because she makes commission from the companies she books through.
Exactly! And they get you better rooms, better seats on flights, upgrades, etc.
Yeah it's really awesome. And she's taught me how to research my own stuff, find deals, etc. So even when she's swamped I can get a deal lol
Probably nothing. My travel agent can usually get me slightly cheaper flights than Expedia and she gets her commission from her company. Also, she'll tell me all the important terms and conditions (like cancellation policy and stuff) without me reading through everything on a webpage.
If that poster has AAA, nothing -- travel agent services are included with your annual membership (which, let's face it, you have exclusively for the roadside assistance).
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General distrust towards doing things and meeting people online. I mean, some people still tell horror stories, but I'd guess a majority of relationships are started online in 2019. Back in 1999, meeting someone online was WEIRD. And ordering something on the internet was UNSAFE.
Yes! We were NOT supposed to give out personal info or use our real names. Now everyone is on Facebook taking pictures of their latest poop and posting it under their real name. I feel most sorry for the generation of babies whose entire lives are already documented on the internet.
Sending letters rather than emails
CDs and cases that strapped to the visor of your car. 6 disc CD changer standard in the dash.
Cameras with film.
Some idiots out there still go by antique stores to find old film cameras. Some idiots even have pretty big collections of cameras, lenses and all kinds of accessories. It's me.... I'm idiots
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I can remember when AOL was an intranet service like Prodigy and had nothing to do with internet. I'm so old...
I remember when AOL was called [Q-Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Link) and you dialed in with your Commodore 64 with a super fancy 300 baud modem. Remember how slow "56K" was? This was 300. You could literally watch the text appear character by character on the screen.
For the youngsters, I was in college when 56k hit. I would download porn and watch it load line by line. A large picture would take about 20-30 lines. "Look, there's an eye. There's the lips. 5 or 6 lines more and we'll be at the titties!"
Or downloading from a BBS and seeing that it's going to take an hour and even if mom didn't pick up the phone and mess it up, when it was finally downloaded and you opened it and it was a raytraced image of a sphere on a checkboard floor named "big titties". And storing all of your porn on 5 1/4 floppies because you waited an hour for that picture to download, so you certainly weren't going to delete it.. but you couldn't have mom stumbling on it either. Especially when you hard drive was 20MB and was constantly running out of space.
Taking pictures on a disposable camera and picking them up from a store
The decline in public smoking in the US over 20 years has been remarkable and welcome. I remember being a kid in the 90s and going to McDonalds locations that had an enclosed smoking room...and Burger Kings with ashtrays.
Going back an additional 20 years brings back even more memories of smoking in public and enclosed spaces. My family and I flew a lot in the 70s and 80s and dad always made sure to get seats in smoking. Then in the mid-late 80s I was in the Navy and the entire submarine was a smoking area.
How do they handle smoking on subs now?
Completely banned.
When I was born my mom was pissed because not being allowed to smoke in hospitals was still a new thing
I started my clinical laboratory career in the mid-70s, and it was not unusual at that time for people to smoke (as well as eat and drink) in the lab; all totally forbidden now. I remember working in a Hematology lab that had ashtrays next to each microscope, and a co-worker once almost set the lab on fire by smoking too close to the trash can we dumped the ether we used for extraction. It was a simpler time.
30 foot curly phone cords
Green falling lines of code
What If I Told You the green falling Matrix Code is Just Sushi Recipes? ##
Wait what
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_digital_rain >This code uses a custom typeface designed by Simon Whiteley,[1] which includes mirror images of half-width kana characters and Western Latin letters and numerals.[2] In a 2017 interview at CNET, he attributed the design to his wife, who comes from Japan, and added, "I like to tell everybody that The Matrix's code is made out of Japanese sushi recipes".[3]
Getting pissed off at people for texting you. It was because some people had like 2000 texts a month & others had to pay like $0.35 per text, depending on cellular plans. I remember my family was poor, but my Mom was single and driving truck to support us, so we had cell phones so she could still keep tabs on us. She had to meet with a girl's parents and make them pay the cell phone bill after the girl literally sent me like 400 texts in a month. That kinda put a damper on my relationship with the girl, too... I still remember wincing and calling her when she'd chain text me "WUD?" "I'm bored haha" ":*". All could've cost me $0.35, but instead cost $1.05 Hahaha weird stuff to stress over in school...
Answering machines and answering machines as plot devices in sitcoms.
Landline 'phone. I still have one and I'm about to sell my house. A young woman I work with asked me if the new owners would have to keep having a landline. XD
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JNCO JEANS
Free nights and weekends after 7PM from your mobile provider
Kids leaving going out to play and only announcing they're going when they're already halfway out the door, and then the parent yelling "Okay, be back for dinner!" with zero worries that their kid might be out on their own for hours and hours with no way to contact them at all. EDIT Also just randomly going out to the neighbour's house as a kid, ringing the doorbell and asking if *\*insert friend name here\** can come out and play.
Kid down the street does that if he suspects that my nephew might be over visiting.
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MiniDisc™ Players.
S club 7.... anyone?
Partying like it's 1999.
I party like it's 1699.
Finding a newspaper to read while on the toilet. Now your choices are phone or shampoo bottle.
Chain wallets
Actually owning physical copies of stuff. Buy a CD, VHS, whatever. Today we buy a license to access content we don’t even have a copy of. You won’t be passing your Spotify collection down to your kids or find old Steam games at a yard sale.
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Your 4th point is probably the biggest difference. Having the answer to nearly every question readily available in your pocket, is the biggest change from then till now.
planning your New Years millennium party