Without revealing your actual age, what something you remember that if you told a younger person they wouldn’t understand?
Staying up late waiting for the really good shows to come on is more emotionally rewarding than being able to watch whatever you want whenever you want.
Having to be on Channel 3 to play videogames.
Rewinding a VHS tape and watching the characters jump about crazily in reverse to rewatch a show, instead of restarting like a DVD.
Begging your parents to get cable so you can watch high school musical on disney channel and stop being a social outcast at school
Not being able to watch Doctor Who because BBC America only showed the specials and SyFy only played Series 4 on a loop, so having to watch it in pieces on YouTube quickly before YouTube found it and took it down.
Being able to fill my tank for $5.
Passive-aggressive AIM away messages.
Also? Napster. So much Napster.
Not being able to watch Doctor Who because PBS was running a FUCKING PLEDGE DRIVE, and they moved it to 0200 Monday from 1600 Sunday.
Getting hooked on All Creatures Great and Small (and Peter Davidson as Tristan) as a consequence.
Only being able to watch cartoons on Saturday morning – that animated opening for Soul Train meant they were over for the week!
Missing an episode of a show and not knowing when or even if it would be repeated.
Video rental stores with $50 annual membership fees (on top of rental fees).
Friday Night Videos.
The excitement of being connected to the Real Internet and not just a local BBS.
The feeling of talking to your crush on AIM when someone else in the house picks up the phone :l
Waiting for that song to come on the radio with your fingers over the play and record buttons of the tape deck, just hoping that asshole didn’t talk through the ending.
asking grandma to wake me up at 6am in the summer so i could catch pokémon indigo league on tv
The thrill and anxiety of turning on live typing in ICQ so the person you were talking to saw every typo as it happened.
I explained to a teenage classmate that I’d also listened to Tupac at her age. She said I didn’t seem that much older than her. I replied, “yes but when I was a teenager, Tupac was ALIVE.”
Her face. 😱😭😂
Going to do my hair while I waited for AOL to load my emails, because that’s how long it took.
Not being able to make a phone call because someone was on the internet.
Pager codes.
Paying for the internet by the minute.
Switching AOL accounts every 30 days or so when you got a new AOL CD in the mail to get around paying for the internet by the minute.
Spending hours browsing USENET groups to find the things relevant to your interests.
Having 10+ Internet Explorer (or Netscape!) windows open because tabs were not a thing.
The BbbbeeeEEEEEEeeeeeeeEEEEeeeeEEEEEeeeep PSCHSHSHCHSHCHHSH SCHSCHSHCSHCsHSCHSCHCHSHCShHSchSHCSHHPPP! sound of the modem connecting to a BBS, or AOL/Prodigy.
Be kind, rewind.
Buying a game on several 5 ¾" floppies and typing c: run.exe to play it
having to type in a request for the directory when run.exe didn’t work and looking for all the other executable files
staring at the back of the game box wishing your mother let you call the (900#!) hints/tips line because you can’t figure out how to beat the game on your own
faxing a photocopy of a fake id to a random lady to gain access to a slash listserv
sending a blank VHS tape in the mail to a dude to get anime fansubs
related to that last one, tape trading with a penpal in canada to get the 3rd season of reboot
Probably trying to remember the DOS commands that I needed to put in to get Sierra games to run.
My middle school library had a few video games on cassette tape. I believe they were for the Commodore 64. My elementary school used old punch cards as scrap paper for taking notes.
Mooncustafer 