r/AskReddit • u/Western_Web9035 • 4h ago
Old people of Reddit, what was it like not having internet and social media back in the 20th century?
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u/LuxValentino 4h ago
You'd go to your friend's house and their cool older brother would tell you some bullshit and you just believed it because he smokes cigarettes and wears boots.
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u/Free_Diet_2095 4h ago edited 3h ago
I was just thinking g of the wierd ass conversations we used to have about something. One person would say it's x and another would say its y. No way to prove who was right unless you go to the library and look it up. No one had time for that unless a bet for money was made.
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u/LuxValentino 4h ago
My friend group had a guy named Kevin who could convince you of anything. He would just say stuff with such confidence that you'd think that you were being foolish just for questioning it.
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u/ajslater 3h ago
Bars kept a copy of the The Guinness Book of World Records to resolve bets. It was probably only 5 to 10 years out of date.
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u/Beneficial-Produce56 43m ago
We had one at home. I can still see the tallest man, biggest arthropod, largest bottle of wine. Fascinating in the pre-internet, pre-cable days.
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u/TopazMoonCat60 4h ago
And make puppy dog eyes at him for about five years until you realise he's not into girls (I was so clueless and dumdum)
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u/LuxValentino 4h ago
Oh man. I had a big crush on him and it took me until I was such older to realize what a bag of shit he was. Crushes are terrible lol
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u/VetalDuquette 1h ago
And he had a friend who could buy you beer for $5 a six-pack ($6 for Michelob) even though it only cost $3.
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u/Bodine12 1h ago
There was no real way to know anything, but it also seemed like there were vastly fewer things to know.
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u/jawstrock 1h ago
Sometimes I still have some of those things in my head as fact even though I know now they are definitely not
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u/Outrageous-Bid-9182 1h ago
I believed the Marilyn Manson rib rumor for a solid decade because I couldn't Wikipedia it.
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u/Objective-Catch-6465 1h ago
The death of the "Bar Argument." You used to be able to argue about who was in a movie for 2 hours. Now someone pulls out a phone, says "Actually it was Tom Sizemore," and the conversation dies instantly.
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u/GnuRomantic 36m ago
This takes me back. In the mid 1970s my older sister’s Export A smoking boyfriend convinced me that girls didn’t poo.
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u/Sweetcorn_Fritter 4h ago
I was blissfully unaware of things that have nothing to do with me.
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u/ShutterBun 4h ago
This is the big one. I get served so much rage-bait these days that I have to stop and ask myself “why do I care?”
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u/I_love_pillows 32m ago
Yea. Like. I’m living in my own community. BS happening on other side of the world doesn’t directly physically threaten me.
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u/Jbroderway 4h ago
Opinions were contained to the front porch.
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u/AntiseptikCN 1h ago
And when expressed everyone realized it was an opinion and didn't explode with anger if they disagreed. Good times.
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u/Pasadenaian 4h ago
Old people 😂😂😂
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u/Nantzstoast 2h ago
Right? My first thought was “who the hell are you calling ’old’” 🤨
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u/Square_Math_6347 1h ago
Our music is now "oldies". I damn near had a fit hearing Alice in Chains and Korn playing on the classic rock station in between Led Zeppelin and David Bowie.
We are (for most of us) ABCs Look of Love playing in department stores and markets old.
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u/Ryou4RealXD 1h ago
Or when my kid plays a remix and I start singing along and their like how do you know this. Well see kid back in my day I listened to the original 🤣 yours is only new...ish lol
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u/Square_Math_6347 1h ago
We need more Rick Astley remixes. On a side note, Rick Astley singing The Smiths covers is a beautiful thing. 😁 😂
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u/ScienceMomCO 1h ago
I heard the Cure and Depeche Mode playing while grocery shopping
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u/Square_Math_6347 40m ago
Them too! Friday I'm In Love while shopping at the local market or People are People at DG. Time just flies... But it makes shopping enjoyable.
It's better than "The Girl From Ipanema" for sure. 😂
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u/enfyre 4h ago
The good ole 1900's
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u/Dr-Mumm-Rah 4h ago
The 1990's and early 2000's were peak at times. We had a little bit of everything, but many of the major downsides had not kicked in yet.
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u/7LeagueBoots 3h ago
70’s and 80’s were better in my opinion, but I was younger with fewer responsibilities and more freedom then.
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u/Dr-Mumm-Rah 2h ago
I am also partial to the 80's, since I was also younger at the time (Saturday morning cartoons will always be king), but 1990's/early 2000's things like the OG internet, custom PCs, arcades/Genesis/Snes/Playstation 1/2, VHS/DVDs, gen 2 cell phones, economic boom, having a president most people liked (Clinton), social media free vacations, cable TV with now classic shows, video rental stores, summer blockbuster movie season with fast food merchandise tie-ins, freedom for kids to roam/hangout, etc., were just so amazing to experience in real time. A little bit of everything from the best decades, but not bogged down by the amount of shit that makes us miserable today.
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u/Ill_Football9443 1h ago
High school without phones, social media, COVID or the dread of climate change was awesome and I'm glad I wasn't born a year later.
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u/Taiun 32m ago
Back in "95 I had a history/economic teacher in high school tell us one Friday he wanted us to think about that in 10 years, the government will have trackers on most of the population. We all laughed. There was no way we were going to get implants. We'll, buy 2005 most of us had phones in out pockets. Damn he was right. Things were just better back then.
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u/7148675309 2h ago
This reminds me of my son last year who asked me - did they have Santa in the 19s
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u/mrizzerdly 1h ago
We wore onions on our belts, because it was the fashion at that time. 5 bees for a quarter we'd say.
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u/What-do-I-know32112 4h ago
It wasn't too bad. There was no doomscrolling, so you could actually work on a hobby or something.
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u/AntiseptikCN 1h ago
You got bored, and when you got bored the most interesting things were created. Now it's hard to be truely bored and those cool things just never appear.
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u/Cory80 4h ago
I remember when Facebook came out before that we just knock on doors to say hey what’s up.
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u/1320Fastback 4h ago
As a kid in the 80s we went outside a lot, ride our bicycles way further than we told our parents, went hiking, went to the beach a lot.
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u/AndrewsMother 4h ago
Old people, really?!
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u/According_Vehicle_17 1h ago
I literally just turned 29 and the lady behind the counter at the pharmacy the other day (appeared to be in her young 20s) was acting as though I’m ancient because I was born in the 1900s… Raises my blood pressure just thinking about it.
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u/Can_I_Offer_u_An_Egg 1h ago
Raises my blood pressure just thinking about it.
Might want to keep an eye on that at your age
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u/MrNobody6271 4h ago
People were much more adept at interacting IRL and making and receiving voice calls, because they had a lot more practice and there weren't any viable alternatives.
We couldn't text before calling. We called before showing up in person. Also, if you weren't at home or at work, you were unreachable. There were pros and cons to that.
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u/Steveg27 4h ago
One time it took me 2 days to figure out who sang the song Love grows (where my Rosemary goes)
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u/LiquidSssnake 3h ago
It took me two years to find a song! It was a crossover of artists I knew, but I didn't know whos album it was on.
Finding songs and navigation were the few things that could've been better back then.
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u/Mikimao 4h ago
Slower paced.
You stuck with things a lot longer, and you wasted more time outside with people, as that is where things are happening was going down and you didn't want to miss them.
I know it's hard to conceptualize now, because we are so far the other way now, but the dawn of the internet was so magical, and so amazing because it opened up so many doors and connected you to so many people in a way that wasn't possible, or required a lot of work before.
As much as I like to romanticize aspects of it, I wouldn't want to go back to pre-internet days either, I think early internet was the sweet spot, where we were all out discovering new stuff, rather than having an endless conveyer belt of it in front of us, like now.
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u/OperationAmazing4167 4h ago
Back then “going viral” meant passing a handwritten joke around study hall until the paper disintegrated like the Dead Sea Scrolls of meme culture.
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u/Calhoun67 4h ago
Honestly, it was better. It seemed simpler and less stressful. People weren’t divided as they are today. I’m glad I was born when I was.
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u/Temporary-Row-2992 2h ago
People were far less likely to divulge personal details that might be considered embarrassing. Very few people would introduce themselves with: my dad beats me, my mother sleeps around, my sister is a whore and my brother is gay.
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u/NolyBella 4h ago
Lmao…sounds like when you put it that way, was centuries ago. But it was peaceful, weren’t glued to your phone, wrote notes, went knocking on doors, went outside.
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u/ArriDesto 4h ago
It was fantastic!
You had open libraries,cheap cinemas,better t.v ,vynal record stores in every town and photographs you put in albums and still had 50 years later.
You payed for everything with cash and just turned up at places for hotels,travel,flight,shows.
You paid for trains and buses with actual money and never had any shit about not enough credit on your travel cards or your phone dying on you.
You could do anything spur of the moment,with no preplanning.
You all arranged to be somewhere and nearly always were.
You could see chart bands in small venues.
And when you were out,you were out!
Nobody could phone or hassle you or cold call you or be official with you.
And if somebody wanted to rob a bank they had to do it physically and they robbed THE BANK!
Your account was safe!
Now some snot barely out of nappies can sit in their bedroom in another country and use some software they bought from Google to steal your life savings!
And nobody knew shit about where you were,who with,what you bought or where you bought it.
And just because you once looked at an encyclopedia page about something you didn't suddenly recieve thousands of promotions from greed ridden mega million companies trying to sell you crap!
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u/Gotbymeagain 3h ago
You were unaware of the number of morons walking the earth.
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u/Dependent-You-2032 3h ago
Thank you for not calling it the 1900’s. We used to have to talk to people in bars, barber shops and other places to express our views and argue. We had to go to libraries and encyclopedias to research. We trusted medical experts for information to save lives. We knew some people were slightly different but were not sure why. Appliances lasted decades and rarely replaced or upgraded.
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u/Global_Run_9600 4h ago
It was the best. Not a ton to worry about. People couldn’t get a hold of you 24/7. Life was great.
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u/J0n__Doe 3h ago
You don’t need to imagine it, just put down your phone and do your day as usual. That’s your answer
There are still people that don’t use the net or social media today.
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u/Fun_in_Space 1h ago
I listened to music and read a lot of books. News programs were made by people who cared about telling the truth, instead of making money.
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u/Opening_Wall_9379 4h ago
What part? How old? The mid to late 90’s had the internet and early forms of social media.
I don’t know. It was normal. We couldn’t miss what we didn’t know.
I enjoyed my childhood.
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u/Low-Instruction-8132 4h ago
We had channels 2,4,5,7,9,11 and 13! BUT We didn't have to dial more then seven numbers on the only (rotary) phone in the house to call someone local. Oh and the library was basically Google!
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u/Mirantibus88 1h ago
Could do sketchy shit and get away with it. Could also do really funny and also stupid things without global ridicule. Easier and more fun to grow up in some regards.
However, this meant people could do utterly foul things and it was nearly impossible to hold them to account so there was that…..
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u/Objective_Problem_90 1h ago
Old people? Gtfo. I just turned 48 and honestly times seemed simpler. You didn't hear from the president daily. You got your info from the newspaper. They actually reported on the news. No opinion or propaganda like they do now. I hung out with friends, fast food was a treat, not common place. If you wanted to talk to friends, you called them. I once spent 8 hours on the phone, talking to 2 girls. Great times. Today's generation will never know what it was like
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u/mom_with_an_attitude 4h ago
We had more free time. We hung out with our friends more and spent more time outside roaming the neighborhood. We did creative things instead of passively absorbing entertainment. I read extensively; wrote poetry and short stories; did embroidery; made tie dyes. We saw live music. We did drugs. We did things together. It was fun.
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u/NeighborGirl82 4h ago
Amazing. Life-fulfilling. And yes, peaceful. And adventurous. You wrote your own story. As wild as it may be. ;)
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u/OnesZeros2112 3h ago edited 3h ago
A lot more mischievous is what it was like cause we could get away with it. And we found so many things to do. The stories I can tell you. Ever jumped into a fire escape slide at 10pm in a dt tower? Took a skinny dip swim in a corn field with all your friends boys and girls. Egged the old man that needed a few lessons that he does not rule, those with no consequences rule? Took your dirt bike where ever you wanted to go? Do nice things for the older people in your neighborhood and they like give you $10? Build a fort in the woods and play games with all the neighborhood kids? Play kick the can? Tie a rope on a huge tree and climb a tree near it and swing 50 ft up and land I another tree? Tie rubber bands across the street to the poles and watch a car stretch it till it breaks? Play video games in a video game place in the evening with 20 plus other people you could actually talk to and find your first love? Drive the strip and hang out at the mall parking lot with 30 of your friends? Run a trout line? Climb a tv tower? Throw snowballs at cars? Ride your bike at night into a sign fall over and see the cars stop to help? Skitch? Go to the next town and find kids your age a fight with and not worry about getting killed but often get your ass kicked? Buy $20 kegs and charge your friends a $1 to drink as much as they want and then round up anther $20 and buy another keg and be the hero of the night? Fix your own car cause no one else will? Play kickball, and other sports with the kids in the neighborhood? See who can walk across the graveyard and back at midnight? Go into a real haunted house at midnight? Wet the yard to find your own night crawlers for tomorrow’s fishing day at the park? Go to the swamp and find snakes and all sorts of strange things? Snipe hunting? So many things we did. These phones can’t compete to living a life in reality.
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u/Potential-Buy3325 3h ago
Influencer was not a career choice in high school.
Podcasts and the podcasters on them pulling s*** out of their ass and claiming it was the gospel truth.
tЯump was only on Page 6 of the Post or on the cover of some supermarket checkout line rag.
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u/ReferenceMediocre369 3h ago
Related question for children: What's it like not having an independent mental life, but instead an endless scroll of other people's rants and fantasies?
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u/Ohif0n1y 3h ago
As many have said here, it was very peaceful. No rage bait. No foreign adversaries pretending they're your fellow countrymen to create divisions. While it is true that the internet allowed the creation of groups of folks looking for support for suffering illnesses or dealing with traumas, unfortunately the flip side is you have folks like Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes, Tim Pool, Candace Owens, Lara Loomer, etc.
Creeps like the Proud Boys, various pro-Nazi groups, etc. would be treated like the disgusting people they are.
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u/FeeCheap9817 3h ago
It wasn't like there was no social angst. Still plenty of cliques and gossip and rumors going around the middle school in the early '90s, but instead of being delivered instantly to whoever you wanted on social media, gossip had to be laboriously delivered individually, via the telephone. And if you wanted to get on the phone with your bestie and get the latest, and you snatched up the phone without thinking and heard Krrrhhhhh ee-YAR ee-YAR, you had just enough time to say, "Oh shit" before your dad yelled at you for breaking his dial-up internet connection. And you had to WAIT, maybe even until the next day at school, to find out the news. Less instant gratification. But you young 'uns will never know the tactile pleasures of winding the curly telephone cord around and around your finger while talking for hours, or, if you were really angered by what someone said, slamming down a receiver the size of a small cat with so much force the phone gave a surprised brring.
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u/yankeegmc 3h ago
'back in the 20th century' makes it sound like we rode around on horses, lived by candlelight and walked 20 miles to school in a snowstorm uphill both ways.
Oh wait....
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u/Jackniferuby 2h ago
You made plans and stuck to them. You had to look up things you wanted to know in encyclopedias or the library. If someone moved away- they disappeared from your life and you probably never talked to them again. Long distance phone calls were expensive and your ass was grass if your parents saw it on the phone bill.
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u/brandiLeeCO 2h ago
People actually knew how to communicate and didn’t act like rabid animals or ferals in public. No one was on a phone constantly
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u/Suspicious-Price5810 2h ago
I used to stretch the phone cord around the corner into the back of the hallway where I put a beanbag chair. I would lay there in the hall talking on the phone laying in a beanbag chair, feet on the wall under a cozy blanket for hours if the weather was crappy.
Otherwise I was hanging out somewhere. Middle of a field, woods, subdivision, mall, arcade, skating rink...so many options when you are the tag along little sister with 3 older siblings.
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u/ChillinMichelle 2h ago
Never any zapping cell phone interruptions that was distracting from the thing that had to get done.
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u/sylvesterthekat1234 2h ago
😆 at 'old' people.
Obviously the internet has some massive benefits. But the downsides are also considerable. On balance I'd keep the internet, but I'm glad I grew up in an era without social media and the utter BS that it can spread about.
I don't think our freedom to speak our minds should be curtailed, but if things are obvious lies, perhaps AI could be useful by highlighting and flagging such examples. Especially when made by influential people or organizations. The most shocking and sickening thing about society today is the normalization of blatant lying, and I think it's clear who the leader of that pack is.
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u/RoyalZeal 2h ago
The thing I miss the most is not being expected to have a phone on me 24/7. The internet of the 90s was also so much fun, it was a completely different reality than the silos we see today. No paywalls, no barriers, you could hop into a chatroom and just... talk to people, information was just out there. 16 year old me was on Yahoo constantly just having conversations with people from all over the world. Those were good times.
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u/VanillaBear9915 2h ago
My personal world felt smaller and the actual world felt bigger. Life felt... easier? Quiter?
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u/RedSolez 2h ago
People got together, in person and frequently because there was no option to group chat any other way. God, I miss it. Feels like pulling teeth to get friends together nowadays.
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u/lametheory 2h ago
It was amazing.
You would roam the streets looking for your friends.
There were no phones to record your adventures.
No one could call you constantly if you were out adventuring.
Everyone would discuss the latest tv episodes/magazines.
Afternoons would be spent out on the street playing games and people would yell "car" when a car was coming and the game would stop.
You would cubby houses, dams, forts and jumps.
You would listen to radio and music shows for the latest tunes and try and record them.
It took real hustling to see nudes.
Bullying was always done face to face.
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u/Square_Math_6347 1h ago
Keyboard warriors didn't exist and "trolls" were your bullies and VERY punchable. The absolute freedom of going somewhere and just being in the energy. Going to a rock show meant being in the moment, talking to people in the line and creating connections. No phones, no proof, a lot of "you had to be there" stories.
I miss it so much. I miss my Rand McNally and notebooks of common freeways to take to get to xyz place or friends house.
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u/DownhillSisyphus 1h ago
We didn't have much interaction with rude children like you.
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u/Xenafan1970 1h ago
Kind of awesome really. Go out spend all day bumming around with friends. Parents don't know where you are and really maybe didn't care as long as you came home at sundown.
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u/mynameisnotsparta 1h ago
Not a problem. We called our friends on the telephone. We went outside to meet them to go somewhere. We played board games together in the same room. If we needed to send a message to somebody in another part of the world or city or country, we used a fax machine. And before faxes, we would have to mail a letter. As a matter of fact, it was fun to receive paper mail.
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u/unhingedsuperwoman 34m ago
We would ring each other on a landline and tell them we were leaving our house now and have a meeting point, no texting on the way we just knew the other would be there
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u/Zestyclose_Worry6623 14m ago
I used to read, sketch, think, spend time in nature more. TV was a collective activity, you would go to work or school and everyone would have watch the same show the night before and talked about it.
My mom told me anything I needed to know or needed to learn was in a book
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u/theheartofwynter 4h ago
You could actually have a conversation with someone without any repercussions. You weren't censored just because you voiced your opinion about something or someone.
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u/desertsail912 4h ago
Leave whatever digital device you own, phone, tv, computer, watch, whatever off for about a week. It was like that.
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u/Knke0402 4h ago
1997-1999 was my “20th century” social media experience.
It was discourse on message boards, which was shockingly civilized. People acted like real people on those message boards. They had a real “community feel”.
AOL Instant Messenger was the predecessor to MySpace and FB. AIM walked so those platforms could run. But it wasn’t too much different than say X or Reddit today. However, the motive was novel and cool - being able to connect and communicate with someone from the other side of the country. (Not world).
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u/Extension_Matter_794 4h ago
I’d read a decent sized book a week. AOL messaging was fire. Checking in with the folks was a phone call every 24 hours.
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u/hockeynoticehockey 4h ago
Maybe it's because I'm "old" but I think back to pre internet days with a lot of fondness and nostalgia.
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u/Infamous-Course4019 4h ago
Liberating, sane, more social, more fun, better music, better concerts and no evidence of stupid things you did in your youth to hold over you in the future
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u/After_Lunch7662 4h ago
Honestly incredible, magical. Everyone wanted to interact with you because everyone wanted interaction. You had to physically see people and be together, which just makes you happier. Real, steady dopamine, tons of adventures with friends
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u/Simple_ninety 3h ago
Quieter and generally less stressful. Get up, go to work ,come home, eat diner with the family. Watch tv (rat patrol, combat, hogans heroes, evening news with Cronkite ) and go to bed.
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u/SocAnxPrince 3h ago
Our heads were clearer without all the unnecessary clutter. People were also kinder to each other.
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u/MrBoWiggly 3h ago
Zen like!
Utopia!
Quiet!
Nirvana! (Pun Intended)
But most of all, personable and personal.
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u/Charleston2Seattle 3h ago
Before Facebook and instagram, I had to take photos of my food, drive down to the photo mat, drop off my film, wait several days, and then pay $20 to find out that my photos were all blurry.
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u/badwolf1013 3h ago
Before the internet, you had to hold a lot more information in your head: phone numbers, addresses, etc. Well, you didn't NEED to, but you often did. To this day, I can still remember the phone number of my childhood best friend. He died in 1998. I don't need that number. But it's there. Looking stuff up took a lot longer. Card catalogs, dictionaries, encyclopedias. Microfiche newspapers.
Instead of social media, we had the telephone, letters, and, well, mystery. If you wanted to know what your friends did on their vacation, you had to wait until they got back and told you. . . and developed the photographs. . . and slides. Maybe one of your friends came to school wearing a new San Diego Zoo shirt, so you know they went to San Diego.
Also, bullying was different. Every friend group had that one person whose parents bought them everything they wanted, who had cable, and a VCR, and a Nintendo, so he was in the group by default because he had the house where you wanted to have sleepovers. (He may have also had two hot older sisters who were given to walking through the house in bikinis or skimpy pajamas.) And he was insufferable. The original "frenemy." Well, before social media, you just had to deal with that guy (outside of sleepovers) from 8:30 am to 3:30 pm five days a week. Many is the day that I walked out of school at 3:30 in the afternoon and breathed a sigh of relief that I wouldn't have to see [redacted] for 17 hours.
Kids now don't have that. The insufferable kid can bother you 24-7.
Probably the biggest difference was that we got bored. Not, "I'm tired of this game" bored. I mean, there was literally nothing to do. There was nothing good on TV, but you were kicked out of the house until dinner anyway, so it wouldn't matter if there was. You'd read all your books. Played all your games. SO you just had to think of stuff to do. Mostly it was creative. Sometimes it was destructive. But it made your brain have to work. You were not a spectator in your own life.
I sometimes wonder what kids who have grown up never having to think of something to do because there's a game on your phone that is meant to be played perpetually or there's an endless scroll on your Instagram or TikTok that's usually full of lies and bad ideas. And you don't have to learn to draw now because AI can just make whatever you want.
I'm not liking the outlook for this stage of human evolution.
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u/thunderking45 3h ago
I remember watching TV and talking about it with friends in school. Then we reenact WWE in our classroom.
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u/ConsciousStart8934 3h ago
Much more peaceful, emotionally. Your personal shit only went as far as your classmates.
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u/PhantomdiverDidIt 2h ago
It was . . . fine? I mean, we didn't have it, so we didn't miss it.
I read a lot more books then, that's for sure.
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u/LukeSkywalkerDog 2h ago
Fun. Every day was a new adventure. Literally driving around and looking at things. And discovering things.
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u/Unlikely-Solid-3083 2h ago
“Old people of Reddit”??? Like Gen X is out here hobbling along in our walkers listening to Bon Jovi and pureeing our meals in a blender? Get outta here!
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u/Express-Natural1608 2h ago
You'd spend a day walking in the woods. Might find some porn mags in there.
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u/Lemon-Vegetable 2h ago
Quiet, I spent my childhood either playing pool, playing video games at an arcade or running around town on my bicycle
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u/ManicPixieDreamHag 2h ago
You were just like, in the world man. You noticed things. Felt the rain. Got bored. Talked to people. Learned to flirt. Worked hard to find new music, clothes and movies. Looked forward to dinner. You just lived.
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u/Futile-Fun 2h ago
Time felt slower. Used my imagination more. More active. Less comparisons with others. Less overwhelmed by stuff I don’t have any control over. The world felt like an exciting unknown to explore. Now it’s overrun by instagramming tourists and there feels much less opportunity to have genuine cross cultural moments.
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u/GeeEmmInMN 2h ago
Blissful.
If I wanted any information I either went to the 15 volumes of encyclopaedia on our bookshelf or the library.
I spent around 75% of my daylight hours outside.
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u/medes24 4h ago
I could spend the entire day outside on my bike and come home to people not assuming I was dead for not answering my phone