Share Your Knowledge About the Days b4 the Internet

[PG29 red0 Jr]

Eddie: "Checks out. OK, sir, you're free to go."
Moe: "Good, 'cause I got a hot date tonight." [buzz]
"A date." [buzz]
"Dinner with friends." [buzz]
"Dinner alone." [buzz]
"Watching TV alone." [buzz]
"All right! I'm going to sit at home and ogle the ladies in the Victoria's Secret catalog." [buzz]
"Sears catalog." [ding]

 

[MusterX]

Fuck I must be old. I remember a time before smart phones, before flip phones, we had to use beepers bitches.

Then when a phone number appeared on the beeper, you had to drive to a payphone and pay to call who just beeped you.

Forget about internet, I didn't even have cable T.V. We had channels 4, 5, 8, 11, 13 and if you were lucky a couple UHF channels like 27, 33, and 39. The television cut off about 2a.m. and stayed off until morning. When I was a kid half the cars on the road didn't even have seat belts.

 

[Fedorgasm]

It was great being completely oblivious to just how much defective human garbage is out there

Ha! That's so true. Back then I thought Florida was just another normal state...

 

[Mixedfights]

Fuck I must be old. I remember a time before smart phones, before flip phones, we had to use beepers bitches.

Then when a phone number appeared on the beeper, you had to drive to a payphone and pay to call who just beeped you.

Forget about internet, I didn't even have cable T.V. We had channels 4, 5, 8, 11, 13 and if you were lucky a couple UHF channels like 27, 33, and 39. The television cut off about 2a.m. and stayed off until morning. When I was a kid half the cars on the road didn't even have seat belts.

Lol...the beeper. Drug dealers and doctors had them lol. Gotta be "on call".

I forgot about the TV cutting out. That seems crazy now but your totally right. Dont know if your American or not l but here at like 2am they would play the national anthem then just go off air with a loud buzz and this

 

[Phlog]

I only found out about bands through my friends, everyone made mix tapes.

If a decent show was on one of the 3 TV channels absolutely everyone was talking about it the next day. Memes didn't exist, GIFs neither.

I used to go to a shop full of out of date information on paper which I could pay a subscription to regularly borrow.

In pubs we used to have conversations about things, like how many sausages a person could eat or if a person could knock out a horse.

 

[DM1982]

Future generations will be like


'Remember before the singularity when we had to access cyberspace from an external device like some sort of animal'

 

[HomeCheese]

Driving with a folded out map in the car trying to find someplace. Calling 411 and asking them to look a number up for you. You sed o be able to dial zero and the operator would pick up. Reading the morning news paper to be informed and knowing where the fun stuff happening in town was.

I don't know how the newspaper companies did it, I would go to bed at 10:00pm and the game would still be in the 8th inning. I would wake up at 7:00am and go outside and grab the paper off the sidewalk, flip to the sports pages and find out how the game ended.

 

[MusterX]

Lol...the beeper. Drug dealers and doctors had them lol. Gotta be "on call".

I forgot about the TV cutting out. That seems crazy now but your totally right. Dont know if your American or not l but here at like 2am they would play the national anthem then just go off air with a loud buzz and this

Hell yea I remember it. Every evening the T.V. would do the national anthem and then abruptly go off air.

 

[syct23]

I remember being able to waste an entire day at the gas station with some friends with like $5..

Get a group together and walk/bike to the station, all gas stations had at least two or three arcade games, usually a Street Fighter or something popular.

We would take turn playing games and if you didn't feel like playing you could just sit down and read all of the comic books for hours without having to pay for them..

The attendants didn't even care about lil guys chillin in the stores all day either. They were like babysitters back then, they knew our names, how long we were gonna be there, what snacks and drinks we were going to buy..

Coming home and the old man asking what we did all day,

"went to the gas station and played video games and read comics all day..".

Good times.

 

[orangecuse]

Had to jerk it to this

View attachment 522325

I grew up in an apartment complex. I was with a friend(we couldn't have been more than 10-11) and a Vietnamese kid a few years younger and we found a box of playboys in the dumpsters. We were excited and then the Vietnamese boys older brother or cousin/uncle rides by us on his bike. He barely knew any English, we should him what we found and he just excitedly yelled Playboys over and over again with the biggest smile on his face. He was even riding his bike in a circle just yelling it.

We terrorized our neighborhood in various ways, ding dong itch, throwing eggs or crab apples at doors, there would be a group of us and we would pretend jump one of us as cars drove by. Often times a sheriff would pull into our complex flashing a spotlight around looking for us and we would just haul ass.

We would throw snowballs off someones proch on second floor at cars/schoool buses. A lot of weekends when a friends mom was working we would prank call bars and the like with the usual Bart Simpson shtick of asking for funny names, it worked a lot. And also my friend did a good Macho Man voice so he would say stupid shit in Macho man's voice. We would record them on the answering machine and listen back. And in general a lot of sitting around talking shit to each other/making jokes, etc.

 

[MusterX]

Future generations will be like


'Remember before the singularity when we had to access cyberspace from an external device like some sort of animal'

My daughter doing her homework looks up on her i-pad in 10 seconds what would take me 2 hours at that age. I had to get my mom to drive me down to the public library. Use the dewey decimal system and look up a book that might contain what I needed. Then go search the shelves for that book and then go through the book reading for what you needed. You MIGHT find it in the first try, you might not. Meanwhile my daughter finds in seconds what took me hours. Typing it out, "hours to seconds" doesn't even do it justice. Its a difference measured in magnitude.

 

[MusterX]

I remember being able to waste an entire day at the gas station with some friends with like $5..

Get a group together and walk/bike to the station, all gas stations had at least two or three arcade games, usually a Street Fighter or something popular.

We would take turn playing games and if you didn't feel like playing you could just sit down and read all of the comic books for hours without having to pay for them..

The attendants didn't even care about lil guys chillin in the stores all day either. They were like babysitters back then, they knew our names, how long we were gonna be there, what snacks and drinks we were going to buy..

Coming home and the old man asking what we did all day,

"went to the gas station and played video games and read comics all day..".

Good times.

Here is one that will fuck with you. I started smoking when I was 14. Used to go in and buy smokes, nobody even carded or gave a shit. If you had the money, they sold you the smokes. Then later on people got serious and the rules changed and I was getting carded for cigarettes at age 25-30, but did not get carded at 14.

 

[esum80]

^that's how you know where all your friends are.

 

[Phlog]

I used to have to buy all the stuff I wanted from shops that I walked into..

Also I used to cycle to school on my own aged 6.

 

[method115]

I'll never forget just staring at the TVs scarmbled porn. Hoping for that one second that the screen goes semi clear and I catch a boob.

 

[ralphc1]

Baseball cards and comics had to be procured in actual hobby stores and shows instead of eBay.

When I was a kid, the only way to get baseball cards or football cards was to buy the gum and you got 3 cards. Comic books were sold in grocery stores for a dime, just like the dime novels.

 

[TeTe]

When I was a kid, the only way to get baseball cards or football cards was to buy the gum and you got 3 cards. Comic books were sold in grocery stores for a dime, just like the dime novels.

I guess I should have said at grocery stores and corner stores too... That's were I bought them a lot.

 

[syct23]

Here is one that will fuck with you. I started smoking when I was 14. Used to go in and buy smokes, nobody even carded or gave a shit. If you had the money, they sold you the smokes. Then later on people got serious and the rules changed and I was getting carded for cigarettes at age 25-30, but did not get carded at 14.

Yeah,

My uncle used to send my cousin and I to the gas station to pick him up a pack of smokes almost every day.

We were only like 8-12 at the time.. they would just give us the smokes, "tell your uncle I said hi"..

 

[marioh]

I grew up without internet.
Did things like talk on the phone to friends and going outside to play.
Going to a library to do research.
Using a freaking map!
Mentioned previously, but music was found either thru friends, the radio, or going to record store and buying random shit due to cool looking album cover.
Rewinding VHS and cassette tapes.
Recording music off the radio.
Finding out about concerts and other scheduled things like that through newspapers or radio or word of mouth.
Reading an actual newspaper and magazine.

 

[esum80]

I'll never forget just staring at the TVs scarmbled porn. Hoping for that one second that the screen goes semi clear and I catch a boob.

sometimes it clears up and you get the last 3-5 minutes

 

[ralphc1]

Calling a girls house and praying her dad didn’t pick up the phone

If you said you’d be somewhere at a certain time, you were there at that time

Haha!! Shit i forgot about that.. having to deal with girls' parents.. it took some guts back then..

Yep, same in reverse. If a girl called you you’d get the ‘who’s Deborah?’

Scheduling times to call so your girl would answer the phone and not her parents. Having a long cord on the phone so you could go in another room and close the door.

 

[method115]

sometimes it clears up and you get the last 3-5 minutes

Not in my world bro. I never got that lucky.