People born before/around 1990: Often it’s asked what things you think people born after then are worse off without. What’s something you’re GLAD young adults and kids today will never have to experience or understand?

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Interesting_Tea_6734@reddit

When your teacher required you to tear the perforated edges of the paper from a dot matrix before turning in an assignment.

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OshetDeadagain@reddit

I still have a whole box of that printer paper. My only regret is that I have no printer to make banners with it!

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unlovelyladybartleby@reddit

Missing an important episode of a tv show and knowing you might never see it again.

People moving away and just being gone forever except for the occasional letter with a blurry out of date picture. A five minute call to close relatives on the other side of the country was a big deal, good luck getting to talk to a friend who'd moved to another country (hell, I wasn't allowed to phone friends from a nearby town that happened to be coded as long-distance even though we were in the same high school).

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Sufficient_Turn_9209@reddit

Omg you just triggered a memory. We moved away from my hometown for a few years when I was 10, and I had to leave my best friend from birth. About a month after we'd moved my mom gave me permission to call so I took the cordless to my room and we talked for I don't even know how long. I came back downstairs after to tell my sister all the news, and my mom suddenly realized... "Wait, have you been on the phone this whole time?!" That was probably a ridiculous phone bill.

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mareimbrium53@reddit

In... Probably 92 or 93 I had made friends on prodigy (we were online kinda early) and called and talked to a friend in Texas for three hours and I the bill was like $30-40. I was in big trouble.

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CrouchingDomo@reddit

I remember Prodigy!

There are dozens of us 👍🫡

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Kade7596@reddit

...and CompuServe and EarthLink (still around by name, at least, I think)... never used any of those, though, always little local dial-up ISP's until we finally made the jump to coax cable... and now 1Gbps symmetrical fiber. 🫠

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Ok-Potato-4774@reddit

I honestly didn't see the second part of the Punky Brewster episode "The Perils of Punky" until I was an adult and streamed it. I don't know what we were doing when that episode was broadcast, but I remember missing it and being so mad.

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Aggressive_Economy_8@reddit

It’s wild to think that we can see all of most of the things we missed, but we never knew it at the time.

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PreposterousTrail@reddit

I immigrated to the other side of the world as an adult, and I still see and talk to my family every week! It would be so much more difficult to handle living far from home without current technology.

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MrThouu@reddit

Or if you went away for a long summer holiday and when you came back, some people in the neighborhood were just... gone.

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lmstr@reddit

That terrible command prompt line syntax required to use any computer program in class. It had all sorts of slashes and dashes, and meant absolutely nothing to any of us, except it sometimes would load Oregon Trail

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randoperson42@reddit

Meant absolutely nothing to you...

I certainly understood what I was doing, and I imagine many others did, too.

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lmstr@reddit

Mr 1984, considering what I'm talking about was only present in the late 80s, you were in Kindergarten.im talking Commadore 64 syntax, when I was in 1-3 grade.... So I'm sure you knew exactly what that syntax meant ..

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randoperson42@reddit

Ooh you're an entire 3 years older than me Lmfao

Get a grip

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Melraiser81@reddit

I'm glad new drivers have an app for maps and directions. Mapquest was great at the time but god forbid you missed the exit or had to go another route because of closures or whatever. Caused me alot of anxiety going on unfamiliar road trips.

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twofister@reddit

In mother Russia, road forks you!

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Plane_Chance863@reddit

I used to write down the road names before my turn, so I knew when to start looking for the turn. I found this made me much less likely to miss it. I think generally if I missed my turn, I just found a way to turn around, or pulled over and pulled out my map book.

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Ok-Potato-4774@reddit

I remember the Thomas Guide my dad gave me when I got my license. It was just a general highway map of the state of California, with mini-maps of Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco. I bought a guide to LA and Orange Counties which I still keep in my car in case my phone dies, but I know freeways and streets pretty well now.

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hacksawomission@reddit

You didn't carry a Rand McNally road atlas?

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BookMan78@reddit

Thomas Guide bay-bee!

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CaptPotter47@reddit

Someone gave me a road atlas for my high school graduation in 2001 with a quarter taped to it. A really nice message about traveling the country and remembering to call home on a pay phone.

It was nice and thoughtful, but ultimately pretty useless.

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MildColonialMan@reddit

You know, in Rand McNally, people wear hats on their hands, and hamburgers eat people!

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TheVexingRose@reddit

I remember the panic driving home alone from college for my first holiday break. Everything was find while the highway signs were saying the city name, but one missed exit and suddenly I was lost. Had to use a pay phone to call my dad and write down the directions he gave me.

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Bacch@reddit

Shit, I had a road atlas in my car when I delivered pizzas in 2000.

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canisdirusarctos@reddit

I’m planning to do a trip with no technology for navigation with my kid soon to teach navigation by atlas. How to find places using the key, how to calculate distance, how to be a navigator reading the map, etc. Yes, it’s a weird archaic skill, but I think it’s good for your brain to be able to translate abstract information into the real world and vice versa.

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wosmo@reddit

I think that's a great idea.

I'm glad I don't have to run. I'm glad nothing's chasing me. But I think it's important to be able to.

I see paper maps the same way. It's an important skill that I'm glad I know, and I'm glad I don't need.

(although as an aside, I think there's a mental 'thing' about being able to translate your mental understanding to a map and back again. And that's a muscle that needs exercising.)

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Melraiser81@reddit

That's a great idea. I'm not good at using maps which is unfortunate.

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yelloworld1947@reddit

On my first ever trip to California in 2004, I had printed directions to get to my hotel in San Diego. I got my rental car after dusk and took the I-5 remembering something like La Jolla Drive as the name of the exit I needed. When I get close, I see options named: - La Jolla Village Drive - La Jolla Villa Drive - La Jolla Drive

I then spent the next hour trying to get to the hotel. 😂

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DangerousLoner@reddit

Ugh yes La Jolla is very proud of itself. The main road into La Jolla from the 52 West was always named Aradath Rd when I was growing up but like 20 years ago they changed it to La Jolla Parkway and I could not roll my eyes hard enough. I was working off Prospect at the time and was just like, “Great another one to add to the vaguely similar La Jolla Street names.”

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apolliana@reddit

I remember missing my exit in the very early 2000s and calling my dad, who got out his Rand McNally road atlas to tell me what to do.

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heyheybluejay@reddit

My dad used to make photocopies of the relevant pages from Rand McNally and highlight the route for me. Like my own personal mapquest before Mapquest was a thing. The tables turned when I eventually got to teach him how to use google maps.

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fallen_couple@reddit

That's what AAA triptics were. I had one in 1990 when I drove from MN to Yellowstone to work for a summer.

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apolliana@reddit

That's so sweet!

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jojocookiedough@reddit

When I got my license, my dad gave me a set of jumper cables and the big Thomas Guide book for our region.

To this day, those were the most useful gifts I've ever received in my entire life.

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Melraiser81@reddit

I always would backtrack and try again when I did that. I rarely asked my dad because it always turned into a lecture on why learning to read and use maps is important. Which ofc he's right but I didn't want to hear all that.

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KerissaKenro@reddit

In the days before Mapquest, there was a section of the phone book that listed streets and had coordinates for a grid so you could try to figure out which section of the city you were supposed to go to. (At least my city did) Then you drive around in circles until you find the right street sign

I moved to another state five years ago, and I still comment about just how much I love GPS and the ability to type in an address and get directions

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Melraiser81@reddit

I was so thankful for GPS when I moved states.

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dlrust@reddit

Second hand smoke while out to eat

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gxslim@reddit

Had flashbacks of this when I went out to eat in japan

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ManateeNipples@reddit

In the car with all the windows up because it was winter and dad didn't want to be cold. While on the way to elementary school. 🙄😑

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CallidoraBlack@reddit

Or worse, with all the car windows open, which is fine until someone decides to flick ash out the window and it hits you in the face.

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Bacch@reddit

On an airplane. Was still a thing when I was little (born in 80).

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scizzix@reddit

Yeah, just the amount of cigarette smoke everywhere, all the time. And pretending that being in the non-smoking section of a restaurant (or airplane!!!) meant you weren't exposed.

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CaptPotter47@reddit

Some restaurants had a separate room with a door (ihop and dennys for example), so that was nice. But others just literally said this side of the room is non-smoking and this side is smoking (I’m looking at you Steak and Shake!)

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SpaceLemur34@reddit

Around 2008, the city I was living in passed a smoking ban that required smoking sections to be closed off and have a sperate ventilation system. The the state passed a full indoor ban like a year later.

There were a lot of restaurant owners pissed off about all the money they'd just spent on their, now pointless, smoking sections.

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TheVexingRose@reddit

This, almost all of my friends growing up had asthma thanks second hand smoke inhalation.

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koei19@reddit

Or really anywhere in public. It's so, so much better now.

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cheeker_sutherland@reddit

Now it’s just weed smoke everywhere.

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brankinginthenorth@reddit

That and vaping. Vaping fucking everywhere.

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CaptPotter47@reddit

The company I was working for in 2015 had to send an email company wide explaining that as far as policies go, Smoking and vaping were the same thing and we weren’t allowed to vape inside or on property.

There were people really upset “it’s not additive or bothering anyone! This is so dumb”

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moonbunnychan@reddit

At least vaping doesn't create that awful smoke cloud And bother everyone around you. Unless I'm looking directly at them I can't even tell when someone is vaping.

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hacksawomission@reddit

Unfortunately that's still pretty common outside California.

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koei19@reddit

I've spent maybe 8 days out of the last 20 years in California. Pretty uncommon everywhere I've been.

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hacksawomission@reddit

Guess you've never been to Arizona or Virginia then. Still very common in both.

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Havah_Lynah@reddit

I live in Arizona, it’s definitely not.

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hacksawomission@reddit

I grant I haven't been to Tucson since COVID but there were restaurants that still had smoking sections (and according to some quick interwebs searching there still are). Here in VA I regularly have encounters with smokers immediately outside the door of businesses despite that being illegal. Just last weekend in fact (haven't been out at all this weekend). Now is it as ubiquitous as it was in the 80s, no, but it is still around.

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Havah_Lynah@reddit

I moved here in 2004, it was already illegal to smoke in bars, unless is was a designated patio. I can’t think of any restaurants that allow smoking, again, unless it’s an outdoor patio.

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Neither-Principle139@reddit

That’s where all the poorer boomers migrated. The wealthy ones went to Florida…

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koei19@reddit

I've been both, I live in MD and spend time in NOVA pretty regularly. Less time in AZ (Sierra Vista and Phoenix) but still more than "never been.". Never noticed excessive smoking in public, though I could see it being more common in parts of AZ.

Still a far cry from "everywhere outside of CA."

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warm_sweater@reddit

No it’s not? What a weird comment.

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MyKidsArentOnReddit@reddit

and airplanes, subways, public transit, everywhere really.

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Loose-Recognition459@reddit

The smell, it got real evident especially after it stopped in bars and clubs. Suddenly you very aware of the smell. I know some night clubs that I can’t imagine what the BO was like during packed Saturday parties if there wasn’t the dominant musk of second hand smoke.

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FormalDinner7@reddit

I remember some nights in college when I’d come home too late to shower without waking my roommates and febreze my hair just to get the smoke smell out until morning when I could wash it.

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bitsy88@reddit

Axe filled that niche for a little while lol. I swear, it went from a cloud of smoke to a miasma of cheap body spray.

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don51181@reddit

Limited phone call time. (Long distance charges or minutes on a phone). Now we can video call family.
Limited ability to experience music. Instead of purchasing CD, tapes or listen to the radio you can listen to any album on YouTube or another app. I’m rediscovering a lot more 1990’s music I missed out on.

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Entropy907@reddit

Spending what was a LOT of money on a CD, only to hate it. Yeah, I’m looking at you, R.E.M. “Monster.”

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Constant-Industry262@reddit

Both of these things. Trying to explain to my Gen Z co-workers why I didn't talk to my parents or my partner every day in college because of limited phone minutes blows their minds. Trying to explain why I had to wait until after 9 to have any lengthy phone conversations blows their minds. Hell, I had to explain to one of them how a phone card worked.

Also, while I know there are problems with Spotify and other streaming services, the ability to pull up almost any song at a moment's notice is amazing.

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don51181@reddit

Yeah I remember tracking my minutes or text. I hated it.

As you said, the music streaming market is not perfect but much better that the 80/90’s. I love making different playlist for workouts or drives from any music I want.

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BenSkiBoard@reddit

Being able to FaceTime my parents with my kids who live on the other side of the country has been such a great blessing. When I was little we lived overseas and barely got to speak with my grandparents during those three years.

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don51181@reddit

Yeah we are factoring a grandchild that is far away. They can actually see and hear us to get used to us between visits. It’s great to see people between visits.

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TonyNoPants@reddit

Viet Nam vet dads who turned to alcohol instead of therapy.

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lgndk11r@reddit

Backlit LCD displays.

You young 'uns complaining about HDR and 120Hz, we had to point our Game Boys to lights just to see anything!

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TheVexingRose@reddit

Children are found much faster now than they were before the 90s. Amber Alerts weren't a thing prior to 1996. Now we have GPS tracking, cell phones and smart watches, not to mention how many cameras there are in the world now. Amber Alerts made milk carton posters obsolete, and the recovery rate for abducted children is up like 90% now.

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BlueProcess@reddit

You know how people got aggressively stupid during covid? I remember everyone being like that all the time when I was a kid.

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siorusapmarc@reddit

Getting chickenpox. Also, having your parents take you to a family-member or friend's house where someone had chickenpox to intentionally infect you with it.

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HazelMableMyrtleMaud@reddit

Surprised how far down I had to scroll to find this comment. This one. Chicken pox were awfulllll.

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Spamberguesa@reddit

When I was a kid, I was constantly hearing how having chicken pox prevented shingles later in life. It wasn't until I was in my 20s that I discovered it's the other way around.

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Dr_DennisH@reddit

Having shingles later in life prevents chickenpox as a child?

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Spamberguesa@reddit

I phrased that wrong. I meant that having chicken pox as a child is how you get shingles as an adult.

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Tzunamitom@reddit

Well technically speaking having chickenpox as a child does reduce likelihood of shingles in later life…for society as a whole. It’s believed that regular exposure to chickenpox throughout life “tops up” protection from shingles, which is why in the UK they’re only now making the chickenpox vaccine available on the NHS, as only recently has a shingles vaccine been developed.

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Spamberguesa@reddit

I was only offered the chicken pox vaccine as an adult when I was 39 or 40(I'm 43 now); I'm not sure if that's when it was first made available to adults here in the US, or if it just made its way to my small town late. We can't get the shingles vaccine until age 50, which is BS because an increasing number of people are getting shingles in their 40s.

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Dr_DennisH@reddit

Yes, I was being facetious.

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Spamberguesa@reddit

lol gotcha. I can't always tell via text.

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RedSolez@reddit

The terror of your car breaking down when you don't have a cell phone to call for help

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DrMcJedi@reddit

Getting HIV from a blood transfusion.

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MetaverseLiz@reddit

The AIDS crisis. The younger generations don't understand just how many people we lost to it. COVID was highly dangerous when it first appeared, but HIV/AIDS was a 100% death sentence for near a decade. Then imagine that if you got COVID you were considered dirty and immoral. Instead of family not being able to be by your deathbed because it was contagious, they chose to not be by your deathbed because you were an "abomination."

At least in the US, smoke everywhere. You could smoke in restaurants, in hospitals, just about everywhere. As someone who had pretty severe childhood asthma, that environment didn't help me at all.

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moonbunnychan@reddit

It's still wild to me that in my lifetime AIDS has gone from a death sentence to totally manageable with medication.

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omnes1lere@reddit

We're the first generation to be told that sex can KILL you from a young age.

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wosmo@reddit

I'm a little too young for that to personally affect me, but it hurts to this day, that we lost Freddie over something we could treat today.

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cjwi@reddit

On the same note, there's an HPV vaccine now. Great for everyone, especially women!

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Tinyhulk27@reddit

Paper checks/ paper standard billing.

You get paid on Friday but your employer gives you an I.O.U. that's worthless if you didn't get it to the bank in time or you can go to a 3rd party business who will give you cash for it but takes a cut.

I remember driving 20-30 minutes and then waiting in line for another 30-45 at the customer service desk of the power company to make a payment.

It was due in 2 days and with the weekend if it was sent via mail it wouldn't make it in time so I'd get a late fee.

Today I remember... oh shit it's the 12th,... I pull out the phone and pay the power bill due that day while stirring a pot of noodles for tonight's dinner.

Today my kid goes to dinner with friends, they don't take her form of payment or she forgot her wallet so she vemos money to another friend, who moves it to their bank account and everyones even before the appetizers hit the table.

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moonbunnychan@reddit

I remember as a kid once a month my dad spent an entire day just driving around to stand in a line and physically pay whatever bills he owed places.

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PrincessSarahHippo@reddit

I feel like an antique everytime I remember I used to pay for stuff from eBay by mailing a paper check.

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wosmo@reddit

I'm in my 40s, and I'm pretty convinced I'd be homeless with paper billing. Not because I can't pay, but because I'm lazy af and procrastinate like it's an olympic sport.

Being an adult for me, is having everything on direct debit. As long as I keep getting paid, they keep getting paid, and I can carry on in my 12yo-43yo-world.

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reluctantrevenant@reddit

Ah...the days of standing in line on payday to deposit your check. Just chatting with strangers and having nothing else to pass the time with.

I remember getting my first job with direct deposit and being so excited to have those hours of my life back.

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stealthyliz@reddit

Mailed pay cheques

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heyheybluejay@reddit

Ugh paper billing and checks. My last summer of college I had a short-term lease in another city for an internship. My last electric bill either got lost in the mail or didn’t get forwarded after I moved out. Fast forward however many months, and I get a new bill with exorbitant late fees. I was a broke college kid and cried after opening the envelope. Online billing was a real game changer.

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ThePicassoGiraffe@reddit

That happened to me, but with a credit card

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aliceinadreamyland@reddit

We’re ALL born before the 90’s to be a xennial.

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Worth_Concert_2169@reddit

Being denied health insurance because of pre-existing conditions.

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DangerousLoner@reddit

Everywhere else it’s just considered Medical History, but the Insurance Companies are pure evil and punish people for Preexisting Conditions like they’re something shameful.

gif

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elcheapodeluxe@reddit

Eh. Not saying many of these companies aren't evil - but this is the definition of insurance. Insurance companies don't underwrite risk for something that is already happening. The premiums would be even higher and even fewer healthy people would participate and then the premiums get even higher and... we end up where we are now. We really need to move away from the idea of receiving health care through an insurance product.

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__ohno_notagain__@reddit

No, that is the capitalist definition of insurance. That’s not an inherent requirement of an insurance product.

There are still some insurance organizations that create insurance products that are not predatory.

These used to be far more common. Another example: Geico originally started as a self-funded member organization that made its own insurance products for its members, but then they started selling outside of their membership to become a for profit entity.

These orgs were strong and growing, but then their boards got greedy and voted to sellout to profit, like a credit union becoming a bank.

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elcheapodeluxe@reddit

Even "self funded member organizations" didn't insure risk that had already materialized. The actuarial tables just don't work out for that.

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__ohno_notagain__@reddit

A member-funded organization would not refuse to insure its own members. If they did, they’d lose members.

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DesdemonaDestiny@reddit

That will be coming back if things continue like they have been.

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I_Dream_Of_Oranges@reddit

Being stranded at night with a broken down car and no cell phone. Yeah technically it can still happen but it’s much less likely now. It happened to me several times (I drove some really crappy cars), and as a teenage female it was terrifying having to rely on strangers in those type of situations.

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Lower-Tomatillo-9513@reddit

Enduring the awful music of Kurt Cobain. And then the terrible tragedy of his death.

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Blackboard_Monitor@reddit

The easy use of slurs and how accepting it was to mock gays, people of color and women.

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Spamberguesa@reddit

I grew up in a pretty liberal place (not far from Seattle), so there actually were a number of openly queer kids in my high school. The use of homophobic slurs was so normalized that even the queer kids called people f*ggots. Racial and sexist slurs were a big no-go where I lived, but casual homophobia seemed to be so baked-in that even the queer kids parroted it. (There was also the habit of saying "that's so gay" when describing something a person thought was stupid.)

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Havah_Lynah@reddit

I grew up in a suburb of NYC, and was a theater kid - so a bit more of an accepting environment. But I also remember that outside of theatre, it was less common to be out, especially for younger people. I had a couple of friends who were out only to those of us in the theater group, but not at school.

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wosmo@reddit

dialup.

On the plus side, I miss when connecting - and disconnecting - to the internet was a conscious decision. So there's that.

But holy crap, an hour or two to download a song. Several evenings to download a video, just to find out it wasn't what it claimed it was - and instead of seeing britney spears nude, you've just witnessed your first warcrime.

I miss the internet screaming in terror every time I connected - a warning we probably should have heeded. And I miss online/offline being an actual decision. But I do not miss sssllloooooowww.

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BookNerdUnicorn@reddit

Second hand smoke and chicken pox

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BirdLawOfficeESQ@reddit

I’m glad they’ll never experience losing an entire school project because they forgot to hit “Save” and the computer froze.

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Neither-Principle139@reddit

Com-pew-there? For school projects? What’s that?

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wosmo@reddit

We used to have a thing .. we called it a word processor, it might have been an electronic typewriter. It looked like a printer with a keyboard, and could store files on floppy disks.

That's where I did most my homework, and it feels like such an oddly specific moment in history. A weird inbetween.

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Apprehensive_Hat8986@reddit

The pain of waiting after dialing anything higher than 5.

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Exotic_Dragonfly_435@reddit

Kids are nicer to each other now. When I was a kid in the 90s if you were “weird” you were mercilessly teased, by the adults and the kids. We’re much more accepting now I think.

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ryguymcsly@reddit

Analog life bullshit.

Having to go to the water company office to get your water turned on. Having to pay the electric bill at the other office because they always take too long to process checks mailed in. Having to keep a paper log of your checks and then head over to the bank to make sure the balances match up. Having to always carry cash because nowhere takes card and the ATMs all have fees. Having to physically deposit paychecks.

Media access too I guess. While I think having deliberately curated media collections (music, movies) is cool and better than subscription services: finding new movies, books, and music is so much easier now no matter where you live. Good luck finding an obscure punk record or french films in a small town in the 90s.

Having to talk to a human to do anything at all.

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WeTravelTheSpaceWays@reddit

“Wait six to eight weeks for delivery”

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Typical-Assist2899@reddit

Tying up your house’s single phone line talking to your girlfriend for a few hours only to hang up and realize there’s 5 voicemails on the machine from your raging father who’s been stuck at the airport trying to call home.

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hacksawomission@reddit

Voicemail on the line? In the 80s/90s?

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nikdahl@reddit

Voicemail became common in the 90s

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Typical-Assist2899@reddit

Answering machines. I used the term voicemail for the same reason we don’t say “I’m going to [video]tape it” anymore unless you want confused looks.

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nikdahl@reddit

I was trying to help you, but now you’re messing it up.

An answering machine isn’t going to have any messages at all if you were using the phone line.

Voicemail is what would have messages, which became popular and widespread in the 90s.

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Typical-Assist2899@reddit

Maybe i wasn’t clear. By then we had tapeless, but we had answering machines ever since I was old enough to remember.

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hacksawomission@reddit

Which didn't work if the line was busy, thus completely defeating you original point.

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Typical-Assist2899@reddit

Ours did, I don’t know what to tell you. I distinctly remember the “boop-boop” I heard each time there was an incoming call, then my mother playing the increasingly angry messages afterward.

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Menteerio@reddit

I understood what you meant, funny how people went straight to “fake news” due to your use of a common term.

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Typical-Assist2899@reddit

Probably because a lot of this sub is filled with those without the lived experience and yearning for that time. I don’t blame them, too much.

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Typical-Assist2899@reddit

We had “voicemail” in our household (early on in the form of the cassette answering machines) going back to the late eighties at least. The incident I’m referring to happened in ‘98-‘00. If you were born in the 90’s or after, chances are you weren’t tying up the phone line with a girlfriend yet, which is why I included it.

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hacksawomission@reddit

I mean...I was in college with a cell phone by then so sure. We had a tape answering machine that evolved into a solid state recorder answering machine. I have no idea when my parents got voicemail, but it was after I'd moved out.

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pineneedlemonkey@reddit

Yeah, that wasn't a thing

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eufooted@reddit

Did he skin you alive? Have you been living without skin since? Poor dude xD

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Typical-Assist2899@reddit

I was afraid for my life when I heard the message he left, stuck at JFK with no ride home. Thankfully he cooled off by the time he got back, but I was banned from using the phone and the internet for a while (since they used the same line).

I had actually tried to hang up multiple times before, my girlfriend was a pain and would keep me on the phone forever, or she’d cry and mope. I wasn’t old enough to understand the manipulation at that point.

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eufooted@reddit

Haha that’s fun to hear. Good you didn’t get skinned! I also had a girlfriend like that.. To this day I haaaate being on the phone. We eventually had to get two lines (internet/calls). Later *69 came and that was handy 😁

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geezorious@reddit

He went back in time and hooked his parents up. Told them if they ever have a kid and he ties up the phone line while one of them is trying to call from the airport… go easy on him.

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DifficultMinute@reddit

Being kicked out when you graduate and/or turn 18.

So many of my friends were thrust into adulthood with basically no safety net. It wasn’t even discouraged, and often celebrated, that you booted the kids as early as you were able.

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Here4CatPics@reddit

Casual sexual harassment/assault.

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SadApplication2316@reddit

Access to unlimited knowledge without having to go to libraries and universities.

Smog in big cities. I remember visiting Anaheim as a teen and the pollution was so bad it covered cars in soot overnight.

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Ailly84@reddit

Don't worry, the smog an air pollution is coming back. People keep voting for "less regulation", so it has to be what they want.

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Chlemtil@reddit

As the internet got monetized, though, it turns out disinformation and misinformation are more profitable and, therefore, more readily available. That wasn’t a problem in the libraries!

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DangerousLoner@reddit

Yeah driving to see my Grandma in Inglewood or heading to Tijuana for the weekend the smog always left my little pink, San Diego lungs hurting.

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elmiguelo10@reddit

Being exposed to holdovers from previous generation’s technology like rotary operated phones, TVs that needed the tubes to warm up before you could see any picture, and those weird spring operated remote controls with only 4 buttons.

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Profeshinal_Spellor@reddit

These stupid questions

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Canesjags4life@reddit

Nights and weekends only. When texts were .10 cents a message.

When you had to physically go to a library or own a set of encyclopedias in order to do research.

When you could only physically buy software

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Aneko21@reddit

I miss physically buying software. Or, more specifically, actually owning software...

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Spamberguesa@reddit

A huge reason I refuse to "upgrade" to the shitty excuse for an OS known as Windows 11 is that a lot of the older programs I actually do own won't work on it, and I completely refuse to move to a subscription and/or use the online free version that allows a company to spy on me. I'm really glad they've extended support of Windows 10 another year, and I hope they take it as a sign that people really, really don't want Windows 11, which already seems like the same kind of shitshow lemon Windows 8 was.

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Canesjags4life@reddit

Seriously.

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animus218@reddit

How is born around 1990 a Xennial?

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monkeysknowledge@reddit

It said “before/around” so it’s inclusive of everyone born before 1990.

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meltedchocolatepants@reddit

"Before" 1990 in a discussion includes those born 13 years earlier?

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monkeysknowledge@reddit

I interpreted it to mean they want the experience of people who were old enough to be aware of the world before social media and smart phones. Interpret it however you want and then move on with your life.

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animus218@reddit

Yeah, that's a stretch

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MrThouu@reddit

This is a crosspost from an askreddit thread, so this is more a 'hey you might be interested in this too' type of post, not worded for here specifically.

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Sufficient_Turn_9209@reddit

"Before/around". 87 -92 around Xenial before

It made sense to me. Especially considering the subject.

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rekt_ralf@reddit

For those of us not in the US, having to wait 6-18 months for new media to cross the Atlantic. Or in the case of video games, sometimes never even making it to Europe.

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CriticalChop@reddit

Funny enough i had that experience in America a few times with exclusive japanese games, but im sure you guys had it worse.

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DangerousLoner@reddit

Music too! I ordered a CD from Japan because I wanted one remix of a song and it wasn’t a CD available in the US.

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CriticalChop@reddit

Japan almost had us all learning japanese with all that great content. 😅

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JeanEtrineaux@reddit

Suitcases without wheels.

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monkeysknowledge@reddit

Broad social acceptance of child abuse. Spanking a child was a point of pride for some parents and beating the hell out of a child was generally ignored.

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AshDogBucket@reddit

In Evangelical circles this is still widely accepted :-/

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Neither-Principle139@reddit

And really sad how much was SA, especially from the church members in positions of power…

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AshDogBucket@reddit

Yep... wrote my Master's thesis on exactly this

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DesdemonaDestiny@reddit

Some "pastors" still encourage it.

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AshDogBucket@reddit

Yep. The Dobson method of abuse is still alive and well.

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j7style@reddit

Having your thirst for knowledge, creativity, or wonderment stifled due to a lack of access to information or intelligent adults. I was a very curious child, but only had access to a small local library. By the time I had constant internet access in my late teens, I had essentially been conditioned to just give up if the answer wasn't in the encyclopedia.

I'm also glad kids today don't have to just accept adult lies. Bullshit adults would say like "Dinosaurs aren't real" or "all gay people have aids" ending with something like "because I said so" can now easily be disproven. I realize some children are still stuck in these situations, but not nearly as much as it used to be.

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Kellbows@reddit

Pictures. Unless you had the expensive Polaroid set up you had no way of knowing if you got the shot until it was too late. Hope you got it. Hope your film wasn’t messed up. Hope people weren’t caught in a blink.

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yelloworld1947@reddit

Losing your way because you missed a turn in your printed directions

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Khris777@reddit

The stench of leaded gasoline and no catalytic converters.

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yeahoksurewhatever@reddit

Moving an encyclopedia from one room, or one house, to another.

Not finding your answer after 4 minutes of tracking down all the possible pages in all the possible volumes your answer could be in.

Fuck encyclopedias.

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One_Market_9335@reddit

Being bullied without having this knowledge

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floodums@reddit

These are all weak examples and really price how good we had it

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Frosty_Ad_5472@reddit

Trying to use credit at the store. Cashier had to get out the clunky manual credit card machine with the carbon copy paper. Ka-Chunk!

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Adrasteia-One@reddit

Complete misunderstanding, or lack of understanding or concern, for basic mental health. That, and the stigma that came with seeking help for that.

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Loose-Recognition459@reddit

The abject boredom of long car rides. ESPECIALLY vacation driving.

Your parents not seeming to give a fuck where you were over the course of a day in the summer.

Cartoons doing their damnedest just to sell you toys more so than a story or lesson or complex morality. (that curse has never left me… where are my figures?!!)

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AshDogBucket@reddit

Most of them are reversing or on the verge of reversing 🤬🤬🤬

Queer people having to hide, women having no autonomy, etc - these things were fixed for a while in my lifetime and are now going backwards.

One that is fortunately staying is AIDS. Kids today shouldn't have to deal with AIDS anxiety like we did.

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MyNameIsNot_Molly@reddit

I'm really worried about the Conservative retrenchment a lot of Gen Z are attracted to, but the fact is right now, society is MUCH more accepting of general differences than when we were young. Uniqueness, not homogeneity is the goal.

If you were into some weird, nerdy or quirky stuff in the 80s, you knew to keep your mouth shut or you'd get the shit kicked out of you. Kids were teased mercilessly for playing DnD or liking Star Trek. Now my kid's middle school has a VERY popular DnD club and kids proudly wear their geek merch around. Remember the conversation in Home Alone about the bird sweater in 3rd grade? Now Cool Kids buy their clothes at thrift shops.

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