People born before 1990, what’s something you experienced that younger generations will NEVER understand ?
November 26, 2025
People born before 1990, what’s something you experienced that younger generations will NEVER understand ?
42 comments
I saw Star Wars in the theater. People used to clap after a great movie.
Having to wear a suit to get in to a club
Going to the video store
Waiting your turn to make a phone call, to wait for your dad to fax before making a call, to have specific hours for the internet because only one computer could use the phone line at a time… and when you were on any of the above, people couldn’t get in touch with you and they just called back later.
Memorizing more than 20 phone numbers.
Watching your favorite TV show, then running to use the bathroom and get a snack during a commercial break. Then waiting months if a show’s season ended on a cliff hanger.
Being completely unreachable day-to-day. I left the house and you had zero ways to message me. I still leave my phone at home and people get so mad that I dont text them back right away. It is insane how plugged in we are and how we are expected to be available to respond all the time.
Party telephone lines.
Going to Blockbuster.
Actually talking on the phone for hours and sometimes not clicking over when I had a beep for call waiting.
Being able to go to the park and play around the neighborhood sun up to sundown.
Leaving notes to tell people where I went for my family and friends.
Taking the telephone line out so I could use the internet.
Back benchseats in stationwagons that faced backwards, so you were back to back with the what most people associate with the back seat in a normal car. You got out by lifting opening the hatchback of the stationwagon.
Being 5-10 and waving at the drivers behind you was all kinds of entertainment growing up.
Oh what else, getting audio books on cassette tapes at the Library to listen to while being driven around. You’d get these hefty books of cassette tapes and would listen to side A, then side B. Put it back, get the next one out and listen to side A, then side B. Each side would be 25-30 minutes of audio. I listened to endless volumes of books as a kid while in car going on the weekly grocerystore trip, or long roadtrip to see extended family on some weekends. This was all in the early 90s. Late 90s, we had $30 CDs to replace cassette tapes. I remember when the CD monopoly got broken up and the price on CDs at Borders overnight dropped to $10/CD. Still had the $30 sticker underenath. This was late 90s.
People were mainly happy and got along with each other in the main.
More liveliness outside. Think of all the people that stay inside and pour their attention and energy on their screens. Now imagine all of that energy and people but outside, doing stuff.
Kids everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE. people talking and chilling.
Not everything costing money when you go out.
No grind mindset. Politics taking a much lesser place in our day to day and personalities. You could hang with people that aligned completely differently from you.
Trying to catch a glimpse of skin through the static and fuzz on the naughty channel. And Skinamax showing soft core porn on regular cable after midnight.
Waiting for dial-up internet to connect feels like a lifetime ago.
Writing a research essay for class back when the only sources were printed material like books, magazines, journals, and encyclopedias.
These days wikipedia is so comprehensive it provides a solid intro to any topic and google will find you all kinds of information instantly. Back then encyclopedias covered much much less so for a lot of topics you had to start by going to the library and pulling a bunch of related books off the shelves. You’d hunt through their indexes or even skim the book itself if the index didn’t include what you were looking for. It was slow work, but it could also be satisfying and kind of fun when you found good sources.
Complete anonymity and the ability to disappear.
When you wanted to hear your favorite song. You had to either buy the record, wait for it to come on the radio, or be lucky enough to find it in a jukebox and put money in it for it to play.
Paying by the minute to use the internet or make a phone call more than a few miles away
Back in the day TV was very different.
You couldn’t record it. You couldn’t stream it, you couldn’t binge watch it, and social media didn’t exist.
You HAD TO WATCH IT WHEN IT WAS BROADCAST. I knew sorority girls that arranged their college class schedule so they could watch General Hospital every day.
If you were a kid you didn’t binge watch your favorite shows… what you did was you made sure that you were at home and able to watch when your show was on… and Lord protect you if you got between a 4 year old and his favorite cartoon.
Also EVERYONE WATCHED THE SAME THING. There were 3 networks. There was PBS.. and in big cities there were independent stations… that was it.
A hit show.. EVERYONE watched it. During it’s first season CHARLIE’S ANGELS… literally half the people watching TV at that time were watching that show. something like 1/3 to 1/4 of everyone in he USA. You would talk about the show at work or school the next day because EVERYONE saw it.
Waiting three to six months to watch new TV shows from the US on local TV. Having 9 channels with. Lot ending by 1am and coming back at 7am.
Also Teletext being used to get news,weather and cinema listings. When you oi kef the cinema listings you had to have a pen and paper to catch the cinema times or wait for the pages to cycle back. Then ringing and agreeing a time to meet and no communication people in between.
Listening to the radio when you’re NOT in the car. Even that isn’t super common anymore.
And listening to the radio all day so you can hear your favorite song and record it on a cassette tape. Then, listening to it back and pausing it every couple of words so you can write down the lyrics.
2030 sounds like something deep in the far future.
Walking around with a walkman and pockets stuffed with tapes
Buying an album because it has one song you like on it
Calling a guy you have a crush on and having to speak to his mother first
Not being allowed in the in the house. IYKYK
Having to wait to buy an album then not being able to easily skip any songs you may not like. That and not being able to have your own playlists on demand, making a playlist (Tape) took a whole night to achieve
Eating fish in the 90s was awful, it was FULL of bones. The music and film industries were incredibly exciting!
Having to actually have the courage to ask someone out face to face and worry about the rejection… now days people just go on dating apps and swipe one way or the other .. if I had to enter the dating game again I would be considered a creep for talking to girls in person and not behind a screen
Looking at photos and being 99% sure that they were an accurate representation of someone’s appearance.
Renting a VHS or DVD. I remember going into the store and finding the latest releases. And then the feeling of disappointment when they were all rented out lol.
Living offline, with phones on a wire. There is no way to explain it or for your people to understand it. It’s just so abstract that it’s impossible to explain.
Having to wait an hour for the bus on a Sunday with no devices to pass the time.
I don’t think this generation will ever understand how much patience we had to have. You had to wait for everything before!
Recently found my mini phone book with all my high school friends numbers and emails in it.
Hands Across America as a kid in 1986.
There weren’t televisions in every waiting room like there is now. And the news was only on TV a couple times a day.
If you didn’t see a movie in the theater, you had to wait until it got shown on television. VHS movies were expensive to rent, especially new releases.
We used to have a lot of shared experiences. Everybody watched the same few cable stations, listened to the same few radio stations, went to the same few movie theaters. I come from a generation that can communicate entirely in movie quotes. Kids today don’t have a lot of shared experiences like that. Unless you count 67, and half of them can’t tell you where it came from.
Being a child allowed to walk to the store and school by yourself. Ride your bike down the main road to the next neighborhood miles away- and your adults never even knew. If one of us had gone missing, they wouldn’t even know where to start looking.
Physical film for cameras, and the agony of deciding single prints or doubles. Glossy or matte finish. What size to get. And then where / how / whether to keep the negatives!
Needing to always have a quarter on your person in case you had to make a telephone call.
H.R puffnstuf
Having to pump the gas pedal on a carburetor equipped truck/car as your cranking it over to start.
RENTING video games. The build-up to go to the video store alone, walking (rushing?) in to see if they had the game you wanted was something else.
Toys R Us – a whole store, the size of a literal supermarket, filled with nothing but TOYS. And video games.
The internet being a fun, nerdy experience. Waiting for a computer to startup, waiting to log on. AIM, emails with virtual pen pals. Chat rooms!
Listening to music on a portable CD PLAYER (which is huge compared to our phones and iPods) .. With awkward headphones with a wire dangling around.
Cheesy 80s cartoons.
Awesome movies.. Where it seemed like you’d have, like, 10 high-quality, IMDb top 50 type movies, came out a YEAR. See: 1984 (Ghostbusters, Karate Kid, Beverly Hills Cop, Indiana Jones & Temple of Doom, Gremlins), 1999 (The Matrix, Fight Club, Magnolia, American Beauty, The Green Mile, Eyes Wide Shut, The Sixth Sense, Toy Story 2, etc!).
McDonald’s actually had playgrounds for us kids to PLAY… And, the decor was cheerful, FUN… Not the current modernist, drab grays, shoebox shaped turds..
Being 13 and grabbing a coffee and a pack of cigarettes before catching the bus for school.
42 comments
I saw Star Wars in the theater. People used to clap after a great movie.
Having to wear a suit to get in to a club
Going to the video store
Waiting your turn to make a phone call, to wait for your dad to fax before making a call, to have specific hours for the internet because only one computer could use the phone line at a time… and when you were on any of the above, people couldn’t get in touch with you and they just called back later.
Memorizing more than 20 phone numbers.
Watching your favorite TV show, then running to use the bathroom and get a snack during a commercial break. Then waiting months if a show’s season ended on a cliff hanger.
Being completely unreachable day-to-day. I left the house and you had zero ways to message me. I still leave my phone at home and people get so mad that I dont text them back right away. It is insane how plugged in we are and how we are expected to be available to respond all the time.
Party telephone lines.
Going to Blockbuster.
Actually talking on the phone for hours and sometimes not clicking over when I had a beep for call waiting.
Being able to go to the park and play around the neighborhood sun up to sundown.
Leaving notes to tell people where I went for my family and friends.
Taking the telephone line out so I could use the internet.
Back benchseats in stationwagons that faced backwards, so you were back to back with the what most people associate with the back seat in a normal car. You got out by lifting opening the hatchback of the stationwagon.
Being 5-10 and waving at the drivers behind you was all kinds of entertainment growing up.
Oh what else, getting audio books on cassette tapes at the Library to listen to while being driven around. You’d get these hefty books of cassette tapes and would listen to side A, then side B. Put it back, get the next one out and listen to side A, then side B. Each side would be 25-30 minutes of audio. I listened to endless volumes of books as a kid while in car going on the weekly grocerystore trip, or long roadtrip to see extended family on some weekends. This was all in the early 90s. Late 90s, we had $30 CDs to replace cassette tapes. I remember when the CD monopoly got broken up and the price on CDs at Borders overnight dropped to $10/CD. Still had the $30 sticker underenath. This was late 90s.
People were mainly happy and got along with each other in the main.
More liveliness outside. Think of all the people that stay inside and pour their attention and energy on their screens. Now imagine all of that energy and people but outside, doing stuff.
Kids everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE. people talking and chilling.
Not everything costing money when you go out.
No grind mindset. Politics taking a much lesser place in our day to day and personalities. You could hang with people that aligned completely differently from you.
Trying to catch a glimpse of skin through the static and fuzz on the naughty channel. And Skinamax showing soft core porn on regular cable after midnight.
Waiting for dial-up internet to connect feels like a lifetime ago.
Writing a research essay for class back when the only sources were printed material like books, magazines, journals, and encyclopedias.
These days wikipedia is so comprehensive it provides a solid intro to any topic and google will find you all kinds of information instantly. Back then encyclopedias covered much much less so for a lot of topics you had to start by going to the library and pulling a bunch of related books off the shelves. You’d hunt through their indexes or even skim the book itself if the index didn’t include what you were looking for. It was slow work, but it could also be satisfying and kind of fun when you found good sources.
Complete anonymity and the ability to disappear.
When you wanted to hear your favorite song. You had to either buy the record, wait for it to come on the radio, or be lucky enough to find it in a jukebox and put money in it for it to play.
Paying by the minute to use the internet or make a phone call more than a few miles away
Back in the day TV was very different.
You couldn’t record it. You couldn’t stream it, you couldn’t binge watch it, and social media didn’t exist.
You HAD TO WATCH IT WHEN IT WAS BROADCAST. I knew sorority girls that arranged their college class schedule so they could watch General Hospital every day.
If you were a kid you didn’t binge watch your favorite shows… what you did was you made sure that you were at home and able to watch when your show was on… and Lord protect you if you got between a 4 year old and his favorite cartoon.
Also EVERYONE WATCHED THE SAME THING. There were 3 networks. There was PBS.. and in big cities there were independent stations… that was it.
A hit show.. EVERYONE watched it. During it’s first season CHARLIE’S ANGELS… literally half the people watching TV at that time were watching that show. something like 1/3 to 1/4 of everyone in he USA. You would talk about the show at work or school the next day because EVERYONE saw it.
Waiting three to six months to watch new TV shows from the US on local TV. Having 9 channels with. Lot ending by 1am and coming back at 7am.
Also Teletext being used to get news,weather and cinema listings. When you oi kef the cinema listings you had to have a pen and paper to catch the cinema times or wait for the pages to cycle back. Then ringing and agreeing a time to meet and no communication people in between.
Listening to the radio when you’re NOT in the car. Even that isn’t super common anymore.
And listening to the radio all day so you can hear your favorite song and record it on a cassette tape. Then, listening to it back and pausing it every couple of words so you can write down the lyrics.
2030 sounds like something deep in the far future.
Walking around with a walkman and pockets stuffed with tapes
Buying an album because it has one song you like on it
Calling a guy you have a crush on and having to speak to his mother first
Not being allowed in the in the house. IYKYK
Having to wait to buy an album then not being able to easily skip any songs you may not like. That and not being able to have your own playlists on demand, making a playlist (Tape) took a whole night to achieve
Eating fish in the 90s was awful, it was FULL of bones. The music and film industries were incredibly exciting!
Having to actually have the courage to ask someone out face to face and worry about the rejection… now days people just go on dating apps and swipe one way or the other .. if I had to enter the dating game again I would be considered a creep for talking to girls in person and not behind a screen
Looking at photos and being 99% sure that they were an accurate representation of someone’s appearance.
Renting a VHS or DVD. I remember going into the store and finding the latest releases. And then the feeling of disappointment when they were all rented out lol.
Living offline, with phones on a wire. There is no way to explain it or for your people to understand it. It’s just so abstract that it’s impossible to explain.
Having to wait an hour for the bus on a Sunday with no devices to pass the time.
I don’t think this generation will ever understand how much patience we had to have. You had to wait for everything before!
Recently found my mini phone book with all my high school friends numbers and emails in it.
Hands Across America as a kid in 1986.
There weren’t televisions in every waiting room like there is now. And the news was only on TV a couple times a day.
If you didn’t see a movie in the theater, you had to wait until it got shown on television. VHS movies were expensive to rent, especially new releases.
We used to have a lot of shared experiences. Everybody watched the same few cable stations, listened to the same few radio stations, went to the same few movie theaters. I come from a generation that can communicate entirely in movie quotes. Kids today don’t have a lot of shared experiences like that. Unless you count 67, and half of them can’t tell you where it came from.
Being a child allowed to walk to the store and school by yourself. Ride your bike down the main road to the next neighborhood miles away- and your adults never even knew. If one of us had gone missing, they wouldn’t even know where to start looking.
Physical film for cameras, and the agony of deciding single prints or doubles. Glossy or matte finish. What size to get. And then where / how / whether to keep the negatives!
Needing to always have a quarter on your person in case you had to make a telephone call.
H.R puffnstuf
Having to pump the gas pedal on a carburetor equipped truck/car as your cranking it over to start.
RENTING video games. The build-up to go to the video store alone, walking (rushing?) in to see if they had the game you wanted was something else.
Toys R Us – a whole store, the size of a literal supermarket, filled with nothing but TOYS. And video games.
The internet being a fun, nerdy experience. Waiting for a computer to startup, waiting to log on. AIM, emails with virtual pen pals. Chat rooms!
Listening to music on a portable CD PLAYER (which is huge compared to our phones and iPods) .. With awkward headphones with a wire dangling around.
Cheesy 80s cartoons.
Awesome movies.. Where it seemed like you’d have, like, 10 high-quality, IMDb top 50 type movies, came out a YEAR. See: 1984 (Ghostbusters, Karate Kid, Beverly Hills Cop, Indiana Jones & Temple of Doom, Gremlins), 1999 (The Matrix, Fight Club, Magnolia, American Beauty, The Green Mile, Eyes Wide Shut, The Sixth Sense, Toy Story 2, etc!).
McDonald’s actually had playgrounds for us kids to PLAY… And, the decor was cheerful, FUN… Not the current modernist, drab grays, shoebox shaped turds..
Being 13 and grabbing a coffee and a pack of cigarettes before catching the bus for school.