Limewire.
Those square pizzas in the school lunchroom.
I raise you the hexagonal “Mexican” pizza’s
I remember choking those babies down. Definitely not my fave, but I made it work.
They don’t sell Totinos Party Pizza in your area?
Biggest false equivalence ever. :D
Life before cellphones and internet.
Did you know in 1990 only .25% of the world’s population (12.5 million) had cellphones and only .05% (2.8 million) had internet?
It feels like we sacrificed local community and connection for global information overload and disconnection sometimes.
GenX, here. You are so very, very wrong. Phones and internet have made anxiety disorders endemic. We’re constantly bombarded with information, alerts, opinions, information and misinformation…
Young people have never experienced what it’s like to have privacy. To leave the house and be totally unreachable. To get answering machine messages that you had no obligation to immediately respond to.
I’m in big tech and helped develop all this shit. We made it addictive on purpose. I’d love to go back to how things were in the 90s, and I’m not waxing nostalgic. Things were objectively better before all this crap.
I’m a millennial who’s old enough to remember those days. It’s an absolutely huge difference, though at least if you’re expecting a phone call, you don’t have to scuttle your whole day sitting by the landline.
meh. yeah it’s been bad for mental health but… what did you read while shitting, the back of the shampoo bottle?
Sometimes yeah, or your bathroom had a magazine rack
I don’t think you understand what anxiety is if you think being totally unreachable as a solution to modern anxiety…
Maybe I am, but I don’t think so. I’m a Xennial and also workin tech. You and I feel the same but I don’t think we’re in the majority. It might not be 90% but I think we are the ever shrinking minority that feels this way.
Heh. I read the title of this post backwards. You and I are saying the same thing!
I am a Zillenial and also think this way, lol.
Oh we killed local community before that
In 1990 my father negotiated a new contract for himself, with IBM. He’s a computer programmer consultant that can program in 72 languages including Cobol and Lisp.
The one thing he absolutely insisted upon was that he wouldn’t have to carry a pager. He still refuses to carry a cell phone.
The more people know about tech, the more they want to avoid it.
The one thing he absolutely insisted upon was that he wouldn’t have to carry a pager. He still refuses to carry a cell phone.
I’ve recently started a new job, and it’s the first I was unable to negotiate no pager, but I was a ‘motivated applicant’.
Wow, does it suck. This is also the LAST job I will have with an expectation of interrupted sleep and never-fucking-ending weekend bullshit. I will frame it as a reliability/change-control question that if after-hours changes are required, then the customer has a broken H.A set-up.
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Being able to eat, like, 8 meals a day and not feel like shit that night or the next day.
At some point my metabolism finally started to slow down.
I had the “hollow leg” of my youth clear into my 40s. But by 45 I could feel it noticeably collapsing, and by the age of 50 it was almost completely gone.
In my late 20s I polished off 7 full racks of ribs in one sitting. These days I have trouble getting completely through one full rack.
I was the same, but now that I’m working my ass off at 54, I struggle to get enough calories down the hatch. Feel like I’m 20 again.
at 54,
What, your body isn’t sounding like Rice Crispies every time you move? 🤣🤣🤣
7 racks? Wtf?
Yyyyyyup. Baby back ribs, my absolute favourite.
First time I ever had racks outside of home, was at a local restaurant called Kelly O’Bryans. I was in my mid-20s at the time. Decided to “Irish size” the order to two racks, not aware that they were already running a special that doubled the racks. Entire party stared in shock when four f**king racks came out balanced on a single platter. And I ate them all. Including all of the pachos (cross-cut fries with a house dip sauce).
Second time was when Montanas came to town a few years later. At the time they were still doing six bones a refill, instead of the current 3-4. Had the whole initial rack (something they also stopped doing, only half a rack to start these days) and then did 12 refills. So seven full racks of ribs. I still have that receipt somewhere filed away in my bookkeeping.
Pizza. Nightly.
Working in a bar
I love people. I’m a people-person, but I kno know that I am remembering it through rose-tinted lenses
Most customers were average, a few were great, a fair number were dicks
But the hours, the late nights, the cost to my own social life, the lousy pay, the inability to eat normal meals at normal times, all of that shit takes a toll
But I still have some fond memories and occasionally think about opening a bar with my woman
Oh, and I was running a place with a long-term partner. Doing that shit was the final nail in the coffin of our relationship, so fuck that…
Good Bartenders make a place.
We Salute You.
Great answer, exactly the kind I was looking for.
I was an 80’s kid, and we had the best Saturday morning cartoons.
Transformers, GI Joe, Scooby Doo, Thundar the Barbarian, Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, Superfriends, Hurculoids, etc.My alcohol addiction
Especially in our current timeline. My alcoholic tendencies are at an all time high. Sigh.
But damn it feels better than being sober and seeing the idiotic timeline come to pass.
I felt this one in my bones.
If you’re drinking you’re spending time and money that could be used for better purposes.
DM me if you want help.
This stupid timeline doesn’t deserve the benefit of sobriety.
No, you deserve the benefits of sobriety.
don’t listen to this guy, dm me your drinking money, that’ll take care of it.
promise to uh steward that resource ahem responsibly hic
A buddy of mine owned a video game store that I worked at for a bit. The pay was crappy and the hours were unstable and random, but I do miss working there.
As a teen, I worked at a restaurant as a cook. The pay was terrible, the hours were unforgiving, the amount of cuts, bruises, and burns I got deserved hazard pay, and my coworkers were overly dramatic backstabbers. Liked the cooking and getting through a huge rush of customers, loved that when I left for the day my responsibilities and thoughts about work were behind me.
Yeah, I can see this. My analogy was working in a campus dining hall. Everyone else hated working dish room but I loved it. So satisfying to keep up with a lunch rush, feed the machine as fast as people got done eating.
The floor was always covered with slime and water, but once I learned to walk on it, I could walk on anything without slipping for years after. It was noisy and hectic and rushed, but we could skate in with a huge cart of dishes and gave the satisfaction of turning into clean dishes and going back out almost as fast. Speed was paramount so even if you dumped a cart of hundreds of dishes, that’s just teasing, clean it up and work even faster to catch up again. FOOD FIGHTS! Every day someone would start a food fight in the dishroom, but since we were all covered in mess anyway no one cared. I remember it as a fun break from studying, with side effects for great balance and handling slippery floors. I imagine my roommate remembers a lot more stench on me and my clothes than I ever noticed, and I’m sure it would have been a horrible job if it lasted longer or if I had to work more hours.
I worked at a fast food joint in the early 90s where often I was the only person running the kitchen during lunch rush because we were understaffed. It was hectic and utterly batshit and the pay was minimum wage, but those times when we were super busy I felt like a goddamned superhero because I would just get into the zone and be the eye of the hurricane managing the chaos with grace and elegance. It felt so damned good during but especially after. It was a shit job and I was glad to move on to something better, but it had its moments.
Right?! I totally understand that. The place I worked at was a diner, and weekend breakfast rush was always insane. Would go through hundreds of eggs in a single shift to the point the grill would actually cool off if we went through them too fast. We’d always get a few stacks out and ready for whoever was on the grill, because that was the one position that you had no time to do anything except attend to what’s in front of you. But if we went to fast, we’d be using eggs that came straight from the fridge. I loved being on egg grill duty because I had only one job, no other responsibilities, people brought things to you, and I was damn good at it.
Yeah, I also see the appeal of just having one job and being able to focus utterly on that. In my case I was running the grill and making the sandwiches too, so I had to switch between them regularly without messing up orders or letting the meat cook too long and with frequent interruptions to run to the opposite end of the store to grab a new box of burgers from the freezer, and it was kind of the combination of doing multiple different things that kind of coalesced into the idea of being the calm amidst the chaos and somehow getting all of it right.
I worked at a dial-up ISP in the late 1990s and it was the most enjoyable job I’ve ever had (it also helped considerably that we could smoke inside). Sadly it paid really poorly and they weren’t willing to make me full-time because of budgetary concerns, so I was ultimately forced to take a job that paid double and had great benefits but that I hated.
If I could have any job from my youth it’d be the go kart track.
It was actually a ton of physical work, people were just as shitty back then as they are now, I got paid less than minimum wage ($5/hr in cash compared to $7.something in taxable income so it wasn’t too bad) and the owners were this crazy white-trash couple who screamed and yelled at everyone including customers.
But damn man that job was so much fun. I miss running tournaments and hanging out with the regulars and fixing karts and getting almost unlimited free track time.
Windows XP.
A security nightmare, had more unfinished backends than a plexiglass gloryhole… But goddamn could that machine run
My ex-wife it’s been six years since she left. She cheated on me, got knocked up and took off with the boyfriend.
She was super religious. She treated me like garbage but she prayed all the time.
All this time and sometimes I think of her coming back. I know better but my heart doesn’t.
Lunchables. I loved them as a kid but they are terrible
Also lead
Like many others have said, the old, lost internet was really something special. Every website was crude and janky, poorly formatted for some specific resolution that you weren’t using, and both animated clipart and midis were exciting to collect. There were websites dedicated to them. My brother and I used to fill folders on our desktop with sparkling or flaming banners, signs that read “Under Construction” and more. Same with midis. I’ll never forget the first time I discovered Sublime’s Santaria in midi form. It may have been my first favorite song.
I wish I could properly articulate what that all felt like. It was a similar feeling to collecting Pokémon cards as a kid. Everything was just a neat spectacle on the mid-90s internet. Then over time, as everything modernized and monetized, it lost that weird magic and became what it is today. I can’t remember the last time I gave a shit about exploring a website. I no longer come across spooky animated images of a skeleton peering out of murky water and excitedly tuck it away for future viewing pleasure. The entire thing sucks now, but it probably sucked then, too.
the internet before advertising, before it became a utility, before it became ubiquitous and essential… When it was just that weird thing that nerds toyed around with…
Gods those were the days.
No search engines, Had to find websites on the internet yellow pages, via a web ring, or because someone gave you a slip of paper with an address, that was always written out to include the http://… and visitor counters and guest books… people always filled out the guest book, and it wasnt spam, viruses, or bullshit. actual, legitimate comments from the majority of visitors.
all at the blazing speed of 28.8k
and now I am unbearably depressed and sad.
🎁🫶
Orbitz, a novelty beverage with little floaty gummy spheres
Tasted terrible, looked disgusting but I loved the look, texture and sensation. Haven’t found anything yet that matches
There’s always boba.
Oh and there’s these Aloe Vera drinks I get at gas stations that have Aloe pulp in them that I’m pretty sure 99% of people would think are nasty as fuck BUT they’re so good imo. You can chew the pulp or just crush it with your tongue in your mouth. I wish I knew what they’re called but I only get them occasionally cuz I don’t like to drink my calories. But they come in a square green bottle
Yeah but the boba sink to the bottom
Orbitz did all this research to get the little balls to be the exact same density as the water so they’d hover in the middle
My first vehicles as an adult in the mid to late 90s. Objectively cheap used jalopies that I bought for a few hundred dollars but were loved because they were mine.
My first car was a 1981 Dodge Aries K-Car. The front bumper got ripped off by a guy running with no headlights while I was delivering pizzas and I literally just threw the bumper on the back seat and continued on with my deliveries, then went to my local pick-a-part and took a replacement off a different one and bolted it on myself. You just couldn’t kill it.
I eventually replaced it with an 1984 Sentra that I bought at auction. I called it the “relationship killer” because the passenger door didn’t open from the outside so there was no way to “open the door for your date to get in first”, and half the time it didn’t go into reverse, so since my dates didn’t know how to drive standard transmissions, they were the one that had to push us out of parking spaces. It honked when turning left for some reason.
My point being, when things were wrong with them, they were cheap enough that you could just go to the local pick-a-part and get replacement parts. If it wasn’t starting for some reason, you could stick a screw driver in the carburetor valve to give it more air. You could “own” and “tinker” on those things in ways that doing so in a new car would terrify us.
Man I had my handful of these end of the line vehicles, loved them. I had one car so beaten up by me and my buddies, when it finally died one day I just left it on the side of the road and never saw it again - couldn’t afford to tow it and fix it and would have cost more than it was worth. I pour out a cold one for you, old ride. That one’s name was Blue Goose.
Those old beaters contain the best memories. Vehicles today are just kind of soulless. (IMO)
A while back I looked down a long street and didn’t see one red car; in fact all the cars were some ‘no color’ neutral shade that wouldn’t offend the next buyer.
My first car was my Dad’s old Chevette: we’d occasionally go on drives with a family of 6 plus dog. 6 people learned to drive a stick on that little car. My brothers and I started learning how to work on cars by installing an eight track player. At one point I replaced the springs and didn’t need a spring compresser. My little brother who got more into fixing cars said it’s great to work on because “it’s the only car I can pull the transmission and hold it one handed while still working on it”.
Even at the time, we all knew it was a crappy car, but we all learned to drive on it, all learned to fix cars on it, and we kept it on the road far longer than it deserved, with far more miles.
Borat
Explain?
Very nice
The amount of times I tried to download a tv show on limewire and it was just bestiality…