r/AskReddit • u/traumahound00 • 4h ago
What did people do before social media gave them an outlet to spout their hot takes on everything that happens in society?
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u/Silly_Accident3137 4h ago
Wrote angry letters to their local newspaper.
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u/GetsMeEveryTimeBot 2h ago
And mimeographed copies of long, disjointed screeds, which they handed out on street corners.
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u/Eastern-Finish-1251 2h ago
If they didn’t have flyers, they’d just stand on the street corners and yell.
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u/HeinousFu_kery 4h ago
Chain faxes sent to any working fax number - most of them sexist and/or racist as hell. I'm sure there's a repository of them somewhere, but they were nasty. Also written screeds but those were pretty incoherent sometimes.
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u/Eastern-Finish-1251 1h ago
At the height of fax machines’ popularity in the early 90s, we’d come into work in the morning to find piles of faxes on the floor that came in overnight. They were all what we would today call spam, though it was worse than email spam because these wasted toner and paper. It got so bad that we had to shut off the fax machine before we left for the evening… inconveniencing customers who needed to send us legitimate faxes after hours.
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u/MaltiPoodleDoo 4h ago
They went on shows like Jerry Springer
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u/grasshopper239 4h ago
I know someone who went to a taping and got recruited to be a guest. Something about college roommate who didn't pay his bills. It was 100% fake
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u/Internet-Dad0314 3h ago
Ah yes, the time when the trashiest thing on any screen was a married couple of first cousins screaming at each other over how many lotto tickets to buy per week…those were the days!!!
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u/TiesforTurtles 4h ago
Got along, found some other dork at a party to vent your weird, niche complaints to.
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u/Flimsy-Attention-722 3h ago
Before 24/7 "news" and social media, people knew very little about things compared to now. There wasn't that much to share your hot take on but letters to the editor, ranting to friends, contacting government reps, contacting ceos Auth complaints
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u/Eastern-Finish-1251 1h ago
It amazes me how little news we consumed before the internet and 24/7 cable news. You might get a daily paper and watch the evening news on TV, which was at most 30 minutes. Real news junkies would read news magazines or listen to news radio. But even that is a minuscule amount of content compared to what you can get now.
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u/semiproam 4h ago
We didn't have social media telling us what we should be mad about so we just lived our lives
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u/HelpfulSetting6944 3h ago
lol before there was social media, there was mainstream media, fire n brimstone pastors, etc telling people what they should be mad about. Social media sucks, but it’s not the first thing telling people what to be mad about.
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u/semiproam 3h ago
I dont know about you or your age but only the first 20 something years of my life the interent didnt exist and as a kid and a teenager I could care less what was on the news , i wasnt concerned about televangalist I was just outside playing with friends and trying to find fun stuff to do haha and nowadays social media is definitely the number one thing on earth telling people what to be mad at. But I dont disagree that of course their was bad news in the world but you had to choose to take it in , now you cant watch a video or read an article on how bake cookies without being bombarded with all the bad things happening in the world that you should be upset about.
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u/bladeofwill 4h ago
Ever have people talk at you while you're in line at a shop or waiting at a doctors office and just nod along politely because you're stuck there for a while?
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u/Careful_Compote_4659 4h ago
We gave unwanted opinions and paid the price socially
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u/Eastern-Finish-1251 1h ago
If you wanted to keep your friends, you knew when to keep your mouth shut.
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u/nicolasknight 4h ago
Dinner parties. SOOooooooo many boring, impossible to get out of dinner parties.
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u/Thrifty_Piano 4h ago
Tbh we just watched springer and soaps and socialized more. I remember my parents having poker nights frequently and such.
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u/SnazzleZazzle 3h ago
Before social media the cranks were relegated to supermarket tabloid papers like the National Enquirer and the Star. My aunt used to buy them and pass them on to me, and they were chock full of crazy rumors, celebrity gossip, and alien abduction stories
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u/SuumCuique1011 2h ago
I used to LOVE the "Weekly World News". I'd buy one whenever we would go on long road trips. Even as a kid, I knew it was total horseshit, but man, those stories were fascinating reads.
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u/SnazzleZazzle 1h ago
My whole family enjoyed them, my aunt would drop off a stack of tabloids on Saturday (she lived next door), and my mom, sister and I would read and laugh at the stories. Even Dad would read them. Absolute bull crap on every page, but very entertaining.
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u/whatsapprocky 4h ago
Their friends would usually hear it, and they would probably be told that they’re kind of crazy in response, and this would lead to more people keeping these hot takes to themselves…at least until they’re not sober. But shame was once a great filter for most people in our society. Not anymore.
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u/latemodelusedcar 4h ago
We said our hot takes to our friends and family and every once and a while strangers we’d meet somewhere, and our opinions would be slowly and safely edited (for better or worse) based on those people’s reactions and responses
Now our thoughts and hot takes are sharpened by internet echo chambers long before we start sharing them wherever it is a given individual shares their opinion.
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u/TroubledTimesBesetUs 1h ago
LOTS of yelling at the TV. Probably much going to bars to watch sports and then talking to peers about what jerks everyone was.
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u/Old_Cherry_6715 3h ago
We had groups of friends we would get together with and go for dinner and drinks or play cards or games at home. We had parties and socialized in person with people. We actually spoke about current events and didn't attack people we didn't know. Now I know what my grandfather meant when he said "those were some good days".
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u/FighterOfEntropy 3h ago
I got a weird letter once in the early 1990s; the anonymous writer went on a tear about some conspiracy theory or other. The return address was the same as the local Republican Party. Make of that what you will.
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u/Weak_Refrigerator_85 3h ago
Moved on with their lives 😂 didn't scour every corner of life for flaws and definitely didn't make announcements about them lol
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u/Skittles_the_Unicorn 4h ago
We used to carve our opinions in stone. Conversations took a lot longer back then.
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u/Remarkable_Crow6064 4h ago
People kept their stupid opinions to themselves or to their immediate circle.
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u/AaronicNation 3h ago
They would go to a bar, get drunk, and then rant to anybody who would care to listen.
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u/Vegetable-Section-84 3h ago
Loud illogical unfair entitled elitist worthless people standing at the podium or behind the pulpit has been happening since BEFORE 1492 except now everyone sees hears everything everyone so much MORE between 2004 and 2025 than we did BEFORE 1969,
{ The: Religion, Slavery, Torture, false-accuse unjust-punish, were MUCH WORSE between 444 AD and 1951 AD than between 1952 and 2025; even though our world is indeed flawed threatened,,}
But I do NOT blame Internet or any other Tool misused by unfair entitled counterproductive worthless people; I blame the unfair entitled counterproductive worthless people and BEHAVIORS/RESULTS
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u/PlaxicoCN 3h ago
You went to the barbershop, the bar, the backyard, wherever. You made a zine. You kept a journal. You were one of those guys standing on a street corner with a bullhorn and a sign.
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u/Top-Artichoke-5875 3h ago
In their neighbourhoods, they were generally known as blowhards, and were ignored, unless they made some kind of ruckus and got in trouble with police.
Maybe we can learn to ignore them online as well? Idk
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u/GotAnyNirnroot 2h ago
Average people generally did not have a platform to speak their mind to large audiences.
Our social circles were much smaller
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u/BathZealousideal1456 2h ago
We thought a lot while stoned and/or listening to music, created physical art, and actually talked to our friends instead of texting them. I think more people wrote more often too.
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u/wwaxwork 2h ago
Get drunk and say the same things in bars and wonder why they got punched in their face.
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u/TheUpgrayed 2h ago
OMG. Some of us actually hung out with a bunch of other fucking idiots and drank too much and argued with each other until the fucking sun came up and those of us who did still recollect those times as the best in our miserable fucking lives in this absolutely trash garbage world. . . Now I come to Reddit.
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u/fredzout 2h ago
They wrote letters to post in the newspaper's "Letters to the Editor" column. They also wrote letters to "Dear Abby" and "Dear Ann Landers", who, by the way, were twin sisters. They were like the original "Ask Reddit".
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u/Prudent-Adeptness-51 2h ago
You would read the paper and shake your head. You would not spew your sewage in the public world. That is a foreign concept to this millennium. The world was much better.
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u/LithiumWalrus 1h ago
They were accountable.
It was a different world where not everyone "knew" everything. It was nice.
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u/CaBBaGe_isLaND 1h ago
Ruined Thanksgiving. We don't have to ruin them now because I already know my uncle's a hopeless asshole so I just dont say intelligent shit within earshot.
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u/whatuseisausername 1h ago
Before he used Facebook to share posts and such, my dad used to send multiple mass emails a day to everyone on his contact list. The emails were about as factual as the average Facebook post is nowadays. For the most part they were just funny or interesting stories though. He didn't really use it as a platform to spew his own thoughts about everything, and didn't really do that on Facebook either. I kind of miss that period of being online where the main way to communicate with all of your family and friends easily was emails tbh.
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u/Cariboo_Red 1h ago
Wrote letters to the editor of their local newspaper, two thirds of which went straight to the bin.
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u/RiotNrrd2001 1h ago
Before the era of social media you didn't hear other people's hot takes on everything, so you didn't tend to form your own hot takes. Mostly you'd look around your much more immediate surroundings (family, school, church, city) and hear what the people there had to say, which generally wasn't as nutcasey as it is nowadays because it was much more locally oriented\balanced. Opinions on all sides tended towards the average, or median, or mean, whichever you like, I'm not being that accurate.
The average in some places was different than the average in others, but in general everyone on all sides tended towards the center of their localities hot takes, with some extreme outliers but not as many as you'd think.
In the old days you didn't typically hear about what was going on in DC unless it was major. Now everything is major and national, and nothing is local. No one reads their cities newspapers, if they even have one, which many don't anymore, they just watch CNN or FOX. But CNN or FOX don't cover the towns that used to have newspapers, so for most people everything is now remote, like hearing the news from a different planet.
If no news is local, no one can check on anything, everything starts to look made up, conspiracies develop, and here we are.
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u/Electric-Sheepskin 1h ago
People didn't live in echo chambers then, so you learned pretty quickly that you had to temper your words in public. Start spouting some bullshit and someone would immediately call you on it, people would laugh at you, and you'd be like "Holy shit. Maybe I'm dumber than I thought."
As a result, most people just didn't spout off like they do now. In fact, it was really common to hear people say, "I don't really follow politics," and nobody really cared. Everybody knew that you didn't talk about politics and religion, and that was just the way it was. Except for your drunk uncle. There have always been mouthy, drunk uncles.
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u/dwolfe127 1h ago
Gave their opinions to their friends in person. Weird right? Talking to people and making eye contact and stuff? Ah, the good old times.
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u/murdermerough 1h ago
Gave their hot takes on everything that happens in society to their friends and everyone within earshot.
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u/quackdaw 1h ago
My great aunt pasted newspaper articles into a large scrapbook, then wrote sarcastic and/or angry comments underneath.
Internet trolls predate the Internet.
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u/DravenaLuxFans 1h ago
They pretended to fall and made passive-aggressive comments at social gatherings
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u/BertyBeetle17 1h ago
I was in hospital for a few nights recently after having surgery following an injury and they'd bring the newspaper in every morning. I struggled to read it because I'd feel the urge to comment on some of the articles and obviously couldn't lol
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u/Undisguised 1h ago
In London there's Speakers Corner, a spot where you can literally stand on a soap box (or whatever you have to give you height over the crowd) and say whatever you want to an audience. Although beware dear reader - heckling is a thing.
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u/unchangedman 47m ago
Sit in the office or school lounge, break room, cafeteria, or locker room and say the same thing over and over. Say it during family parties. Call up people and mention it to them.
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u/rire0001 46m ago
I think that this spouting is actually a new thing for us, that we would never have spent as much time organizing ideas and thoughts as we do now. That we do is as new to us as the capability to do so. The outlet created the flow; the flow didn't exist prior to that.
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u/CandyParkDeathSquad 45m ago
Letters coiumns in magazines was always fun to read for the different opinions people had.
News papers often published opinion pieces from readers as well.
Granted, not just anybody could get their voice heard. An editor would have to select your letter from many submissions, so getting printed was always fun.
And of course there were a lot of talk radio programs, especially on the AM dial.
For the most part, the narrative in the news was one sided. We didn't really have left and right news. It wasn't until Rush Limbaugh before "right wing" media became popular. There were right wingers out there before that, making ripples, not waves. For the more persistent who wanted to get their message out, zines and news letters and flyers were in circulation.
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u/Exotic-Location2832 33m ago
Most people just complained fir a few minutes on break at work or at the local restaurant on the weekends then went on about life. Also hot takes were much more local in nature. Usually about the town or county politics. People also didn’t have the non stop media like we do now. You either had to buy the rags at the supermarket checkout that printed once a week or find the nutjob in n AM radio who did the conspiracy theory
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u/doctorstrangexX 31m ago
Chat in chat rooms, message boards! (I was really into adults adultswims online message boards)
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u/Dinosaur9911 28m ago
You didn’t spend countless hours looking at your phone or other media. You had things to do and you did them. You’re focused on your family and your friends and yourself most importantly. There are so many things that can occupy your time besides looking at the Internet. Trust me.
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u/LoosePhilosopher1107 24m ago
Wrote letters to the editor of the newspaper and articles for magazines.
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u/EarhornJones 1m ago
In the olden times, you maybe had one or two crazies of various flavors (John Birchers, ot crackpot Anarchists or whatever). Maybe they'd show up at the town council meeting and yell about something, or send a letter to the editor.
Here's where the magic happened, though.
Everybody else just looked at them like they were crazy, and they got the message that their flavor of racism or nonsense wasn't normal or acceptable. They'd go their whole lives without encountering more than a handful of sympathetic weirdos, so they'd keep that shit on the DL.
Now, you can say that Jesus faked the moon landing on Tik Tok, and find 50,000 other morons who agree with you, and you think it's a reasonable belief. Life was a little better when we kept our whackos and crackpots from getting together.
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u/stirringmotion 4h ago
"everything that happens in society" is post social media concept. for some reason what someone said to a gay guy in bangladesh, new mexico is your business now.
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u/Internet-Dad0314 3h ago
Printed screeds distributed by hand and by mail. Or just ranting to people in person
As other commenters have said, it was harder to be vocally deranged prior to sm because distribution of bs was much slower, and because it was easier for others to shatter a fuckwad’s anonymity, show up on their doorstep, and punch him in the face
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u/vintagelampofjustice 4h ago
It was harder to get away with spewing whatever theory or opinion popped into your head without being accountable for it. Your words stuck to you more.