things you remember from your childhood that zoomers will not get to have

[nah]

Libraries when they weren't homeless hangouts, that is when they had very few to no computers for them to look at pornography or play games on all day.

Watching international television for free because the satellites had no encryption on them.

 

[Power Ranger Monster]

The maze screensaver. Pretty handy on learning how circumventing mazes can be done.

That and society/faith in humanity not dangling from a string.

 

[Catgirl Enthusiast]

I grew up near a ton of boys and we would organize full-on wars with sticks. Throwing shit, hitting each other with our self-made “weapons”, and just having all out wars sometimes lasting days still bring a smile to my face. Can’t imagine that is allowed now either or that kids would even come up with it.

We would do the same but with bb guns. If airsoft was around, it wasn't around here. We shot steel at each other shirtless and shoeless.

 

[FatalTater]

Flea markets. Covid stepped on their neck but even before that they were dying out; everyone's a fucking ebay expert now so there was less and less incentive to just hawk things together in a western bazarr.

Ebay killed flea markets for sure. Can't find anything even slightly valuable for less than top dollar because all the dealers have looked the stuff up and know all about it. Back in the day the best of 'em had to rely on Kovel's guides for prices.
Yard sales got bad too, early 90s women's magazines ran too many articles about how someone made $500 at theirs and suddenly everyone thought they could get that much too, no matter what crap they put out.
Nobody carries cash anymore anyway so it's probably even worse for buyers as well as sellers. Imagine having a yard sale and having to tell dozens of people that you don't have cashapp or foursquare? Ugh. No thanks.

 

[GrammaNazi]

Ashtrays. They were everywhere. Ashtrays in the car. Ashtrays on the coffee table. Ashtrays in the restaurant's smoking section. Ashtrays on an airplane. Ashtrays on every desk in the office. You could even find ashtrays in the hospital.

 

[PFM]

The NBA before it was a no-contact sport.

Seeing the amazing jump in picture quality from VHS to DVD. I remember getting Platoon on DVD and was in awe of how great it looked.

Being excited about new tech. I worked at an electronics store when BluRay and HD-DVD were battling it out. TV tech was still something fun to pay attention to. DLP, plasma, LCD, etc... Electronics stores were still a cool place to go spend a few hours in.

Arcades. Fucking arcades. I went to a pizza place a few years ago that used to be known for having a good arcade. It's all ticket machine bullshit now. I have fond memories of playing Simpsons or Ninja Turtles and there'd be 4 of us strangers all playing together to beat the game. A kid would run out of quarters so he'd drop out but there'd be some other kid waiting to jump in and take over.

Shopping malls were fun to spend the day at. You could actually get girls numbers there. Now everyone lives in pods and the only social interaction that is acceptable is Instagram. I feel genuinely sorry for kids these days.

Being friends with people that didn't politically align with you 100%

It's already been mentioned but Blockbuster/Hollywood Video. Walking the aisles, picking up movie cases to read the back. Renting a movie because there was a nice set of legs on the cover.

People in public weren't zoned out staring at their phones, just the general ease of socializing back then was so......human....

 

[Chromeo]

I remember my very first iPod, and hearing SR71's 1985 in high quality for the first time. Holding so many songs in my hand at once, being able to scrub through at a moment's notice and there being no lag, not having to avoid shaking the iPod, it was just incredible. Of course literally everything in that moment was outmoded soon after, BUT, the sudden leap in quality and accessibility in music was so awesome.

But even then, the haptic feedback on things like VHS tapes, CD Roms, floppy disks, DVDs, remotes, mp3 players without touch screens, thick old keyboards and specific rituals like rewinding a tape or going to The Computer Desk to access The Family Computer, all these little things that are technically "drawbacks" but man. There was just something about it.

 

[Friend of Dorothy Parker]

Libraries when they weren't homeless hangouts, that is when they had very few to no computers for them to look at pornography or play games on all day.

Watching international television for free because the satellites had no encryption on them.

Libraries when they had a ton of books!

Netflix DVDs mailed to your house

I think a few years ago I finally tossed the Hurt Locker DVD I rented in 2010 and never returned.

 

[Cornfed]

Playing a game for the first time by having a friend rip it to a CDR for you. Got my first copy of StarCraft that way.

 

[Blue Miaplacidus]

Going to school without having to worry about what fucking pronoun the class retard demands to be addressed with.

 

[Forest Portal Triumph 747]

Born in 1994 here. This may have already been said in the thread, but: an Internet where search engines can be used to come across exciting (relatively obscure) websites and discussions via careful input of keywords, as opposed to what it's like now where typing those same keywords leads you to mainstream media websites, Wikipedia, Reddit, Quora, and other heavily policed globalist controlled psy-op centers

 

[DavidS877]

Born in 1994 here. This may have already been said in the thread, but: an Internet where search engines can be used to come across exciting (relatively obscure) websites and discussions via careful input of keywords, as opposed to what it's like now where typing those same keywords leads you to mainstream media websites, Wikipedia, Reddit, Quora, and other heavily policed globalist controlled psy-op centers

If it doesn't lead to one of those it will lead to a advertisement. "dimensions of M4 pan head screw" has mostly people selling them. Try and search for an image of something in use and all you get is advertising images.

 

[AWizard]

God this thread is hard to read, a good 95% of the points raised here are things most zoomers DEFINITELY experienced.

Shut up zoomer.

 

[Betonhaus]

Microsoft Clippy

 

[Zagrim]

teenage love is the biggest meme of all time, if you haven't found true love by age 9 you should probably consider suicide

 

[Jaimas]

Living in a high-trust society.

Smarm aside, some of things I was going to list, I've had to redact, because for the most part, we still have them. There are still good shows for kids, good movies being created, good video games being made, and good music being created - you just have to know where to find it now, which isn't that different from how it was when we were growing up, just taking a different form.

"What song is this? It's fucking awesome, and I've never heard it before."
"Oh, that just came out, their single is available if you want to get it."
"Nice."

"What song is this? It's fucking awesome, and I've never heard it before."
"Oh, that just came out, their single is available for download through their site if you want it."
"Nice."

One that really caught me off-guard was that a lot of the younger generation is catching on and realizing: "Yeah, sometimes the old ways work best." My young cousin was recently showing me old episodes of Battlebots, only for it to turn out he had the entire thing bootlegged, courtesy of a Korean dude who sold 'em, on DVD. He gets all of his favorite shows and movies that way so he can watch 'em even if the power's out on a portable player.

 

[Lieutenant Rasczak]

VHS tapes and a world before smart phones.

 

[skykiii]

September 13th, 1992.... MORTAL KOMBAT!!!

When a new game coming out genuinely felt like a life-defining event and not just a passing fad.

When anime was a niche thing only the one nerd in school knew about.

When cartoons were actually written for kids and not for mentally stunted adults, and actually had plots and characters instead of references to other media.

When jokes could be something other than just "hey I made a reference."

When video games (particularly point and click adventures) actually had puzzles that made you feel smart for solving them rather than ones where the solution is pretty obvious, and they weren't afraid to challenge you (though to be fair sometimes the puzzles were bullshit, like the Rumplestiltskin puzzle in King's Quest).

Transexualism being just a fodder for jokes and not something people took seriously.

 

[Betonhaus]

Microsoft Bob

 

[God's drunkest driver]

Pagers were kind of cool. I'm not old enough to have had one but I remember them.

But even then, the haptic feedback on things like VHS tapes, CD Roms, floppy disks, DVDs, remotes, mp3 players without touch screens, thick old keyboards and specific rituals like rewinding a tape or going to The Computer Desk to access The Family Computer, all these little things that are technically "drawbacks" but man. There was just something about it.

I agree on this one. I like my SSDs and memory cards but my old SCSI whining and grinding away in the tower and the feeling of inserting a floppy disk then listening to it read or even a high speed CD drive spooling up is something I miss. It was even cool to hear the CF2 microdrive in my old DSLR spin up when I took a picture. One thing I hate is fake haptic feedback and sounds. I hate that my iphone makes a crappy shutter sound if it isn't on silent and I hate the fake button feedback via the vibration motor with home button use.

Born in 1994 here. This may have already been said in the thread, but: an Internet where search engines can be used to come across exciting (relatively obscure) websites and discussions via careful input of keywords, as opposed to what it's like now where typing those same keywords leads you to mainstream media websites, Wikipedia, Reddit, Quora, and other heavily policed globalist controlled psy-op centers

The internet is absolute shit nowadays and search engines are mostly responsible. All of the good stuff used to be on relatively obscure independent websites, and some of them still actually exist (check your old bookmarks) but search engines do not get you there. You can search for a specific subject that some autist of old categorized on his independent website in very specific terms and it'll never come up on google.