How did we learn random stuff before the Internet?

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questions6486@reddit

I was a nerd and I would legit sit and read the family encyclopedia for fun sometimes.

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Baxtir@reddit

Hello, fellow Xennial nerd! I still have those books, and I'm going to read them again tomorrow for nostalgia. They may be outdated, but man, they gave me many happy hours!

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PNWoutdoors@reddit

Specifically, those books sold as bathroom readers. Lots of trivia, good for Jeopardy! preparation.

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arcxjo@reddit

I thought that until it was time to put up or shut up.

On the bright side, I can legally sing Weird Al karaoke now.

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Mattimvs@reddit

They were such a good christmas present too

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BubbaMonsterOP@reddit

Like that was an actual thing. I found some in an outhouse -it was a double seater outside an off grid fishing cabin way up north. Those guys liked a full bush.

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IngvaldClash@reddit

It was the style at the time, like tying and onion on your belt.

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NotReallyButMaybeNot@reddit

Found a discarded collection in an illegal dump… perspectives were changed

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paper newspapers were the best. when i was in college a bunch of different papers would just float around the classroom buildings. you would grab a section, read it, leave it for the next person. most days I probably read three or four different papers....New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times

magazines were more expensive, but we kind of had a similar system. you'd buy a magazine every few weeks and when you were done with it just leave it at a table by the classrooms. i still go to the library every few weeks to read the expensive ones that are paywalled.

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mikeyfireman@reddit

We had the best magazine store where I grew up. Any hobby had its own magazine.

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Slippery-Pete76@reddit

And using a card catalog to find them!

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breakfastBiscuits@reddit

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CharismaticAlbino@reddit

Thank you, came to say this

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Just_call_me_Face@reddit

I never read anything before Reddit

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Outrageous_Lettuce44@reddit

r/hookedonphonics

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FreyaNvra@reddit

This is not your personal friend group with your personal abbreviations. Also you are probably wasting a lot of syllables saying all those extra letters for no reason, when you talk to your friend group. Your post is unreadable.

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FreyaNvra@reddit

It's called existing .

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WithaK19@reddit

You asked the smartest person you knew

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Visible_Inevitable41@reddit

from your friend whose cousin went to jamaica. your not gonna believe what happens next!! well their stuff got stolen except their camera and toothbrush. and when they got home and devloped the film boy were they suprrised!!!

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thenzero@reddit

Library. Renting videos, checking out books, using the computers.

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Gr00mpa@reddit

Encyclopedias.

The Big Book of Tell Me Why.

Other books

Adults.

Friends. In fourth grade, my classmate told me that his doctor praised him and told him that he was producing four gallons of semen a day. And that’s how I learned that fourth graders should be producing four gallons of semen a day.

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arcxjo@reddit

I must've had a vitamin deficiency or something. Luckily my uncle was there to slip me the difference, and he was such a mensch he even promised not to tell my parents as long as I didn't either.

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djsynrgy@reddit

I can't decide if this is dark humor or trauma dumping (or both.)

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arcxjo@reddit

Yes.

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Jupiter68128@reddit

This explains so much.

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_NoleFan6@reddit

We read books, magazines, advertisements, cereal boxes, newspapers, pamphlets, asked grandparents lol, etc.

Salute fellow Nole Fan!

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Tony_Tanna78@reddit

I learned random stuff from encyclopedias, books, magazines, urban legends and tips from older people.

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Bacch@reddit

My kids have such a hard time understanding why I have huge gaps in my 90s pop culture knowledge. I moved to a foreign country in 1990. Came back in '95, then went back abroad again '97-'99. By the end of that decade the internet was just becoming more widespread, but not like it is now. If I didn't see a show on TV, I was likely never going to see it, or at least not until years later when it came on as a rerun. They have a really tough time grasping that.

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djsynrgy@reddit

It's kinda like you lost access to monoculture about a decade before everyone else.

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ahz0001@reddit

I learned skills like changing a bike tire through hands on experience, trail and error. No one helped me, and of course I didn't watch a YouTube video.

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djsynrgy@reddit

This. Earnest curiosity paired with general intuition, carried me through pretty much everything.

"How does that work? Let's take it apart and find out." 😆

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Melancolin@reddit

Snapple

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FoppyRETURNS@reddit

I 'member

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fuzzimus@reddit

‘member Chewbacca?

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djsynrgy@reddit

Oh yeah, I 'member.. 'Member the Ghostbusters?

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HomelessKitchenCat@reddit

Nothing like learnin' while you get a sugar rush

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toejampotpourri@reddit

Animaniacs

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LiquidSnakeLi@reddit

Watching Jeopardy!

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Famous_Tumbleweed346@reddit

We had 2 sets of encyclopedias at my house. I would flip through that, reading random articles. I would read dictionaries. I learned the lord's prayer by pausing and rewinding a scene from the Crucible over and over.

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Justkeeptalking1985@reddit

Reading available information, radio shows filling time with random stats that were factual, jeopardy

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PhiloLibrarian@reddit

Ask parents, check encyclopedias, wonder…,

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4444444vr@reddit

Those door to door encyclopedia salesman

I started reading letters

Teachers would be like “why/how tf is my middle school student who is barely passing quoting to me the origins of political party symbols?”

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mmoonbelly@reddit

Encyclopedia Britannica.

Really wish there was a print version today for my kids

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LougieHowser@reddit

we asked our drunk uncles, and they told us some bullshit that we believed for 30 years

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Unable_Apartment_613@reddit

The news taught me a lot of history and geography.

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Unable_Apartment_613@reddit

High functioning autistic people.

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Historical_Stuff1643@reddit

Encyclopedias. Books. Just realizing you might not know it.

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Iko87iko@reddit

So my wife parents were in town so i had to show the around gulf coast the entire day/night. So i taped the gane avoided all sports bars, radios, etc. It was a bitch doing so, but I did it. Dropped them back at their rental, went home and got settled in like i was watching it live and boy what a game. Its down to the last drive, last play of the game and the fucking tape ends. Nooooooooo are you kidding. It was like 2 am so i couldnt call anyone. I had to turn sports center ans cnn on to find out the final score

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humanist-misanthrope@reddit (OP)

Holy shit that is a brutal! And I’m not even joking when I say I thought it was brutal when I watched the game after the funeral service for my dead beat dad when everyone was telling me how much I “looked like” or “reminded them of” him. I’m being 100% serious.

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Tedanki@reddit

Books, magazines, TV, but I think the biggest thing was that you HAD to remember the things you learned. If you forgot them, they were essentially gone.

Now, you don't really need to remember anything. Most people don't even know their spouses phone number, but they remember grandmas land line from 1988.

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morosco@reddit

Now, you don't really need to remember anything. Most people don't even know their spouses phone number, but they remember grandmas land line from 1988.

I think this is the best answer to OP's actual question. He didn't learn a team fight song in a book or magazine. He probably heard it on TV, during a game, or a commercial, or on Sportscenter, and retained in a way that we just don't retain things today.

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DetroitsGoingToWin@reddit

Half the time you’d get it a little wrong to, but you thought you knew it, so you’d say it and fuck other people up.

For the most part it was no big deal because random bullshit doesn’t normally do much for you.

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Automatic-Arm-532@reddit

The Library

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brotatochip4u@reddit

I remember that Marilyn Manson got an extra rib taken out to perform auto-falacio. Also, Lil' Kim had to get her stomach pumped for various reasons. These are facts

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GMHGeorge@reddit

Madonna had her stomach pumped in my era

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Ok-Concert-6475@reddit

I totally remember hearing the Manson thing in the 90s. But is it actually true?

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BeefSupremeeeeee@reddit

Amazing how far reaching the Marilyn Manson rib thing was!

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joeinternetib@reddit

Encyclopedias

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CarnitaLove@reddit

Older brothers

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whyneedaname77@reddit

Talking

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Dry-Discount-9426@reddit

From your mom

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proper_specialist88@reddit

I hung out with old dudes. My dad, friends' dads, friends' dads' friends, etc. Old people know things and guys I grew up around were more than willing to share their wealth of knowledge on any given subject.

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thepuncroc@reddit

by reading, listening to things, attending lectures and events

And crucially

By making a point to invest in relationships with smart and interesting people.

I think social.media has destroyed that last one for the younguns.

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desertdweller2011@reddit

older brothers! i have a weirdly vivid memory of being like 9 or so rising in my brothers car and the radio dj interrupted someone awkwardly to say the station call numbers…and that was how i learned about orson welles and war of the worlds lol

i also remember that he subscribed to nintendo magazine so he always knew the secrets that now if just google. and the number you could call for help with a game !

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supergooduser@reddit

There was a whole market of silly or even avant garde magazines that talked about weird shit. I remember books of "1,001 crazy coincidences" and shit like that. The Bathroom Readers were big for stuff like this.

It was there, it just wasn't as specific as it is now.

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desertdweller2011@reddit

and every regular magazine had sidebars galore with random facts….”did you know?”

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elkniodaphs@reddit

Klutz had stuff like this too. I remember a book of factoids that had an entry about the guy who brought flush toilets into the mainstream, >!Thomas Crapper!<.

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Bibblegead1412@reddit

Yes!!! The bathroom readers!!!

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FoppyRETURNS@reddit

The checkout line rags and Hard Copy somehow misinformed people less than the internet.

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FoppyRETURNS@reddit

The library, magazines, TV, and urban legends

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BadAtExisting@reddit

Marilyn Manson totally removed ribs so he could suck his own dick!

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humanist-misanthrope@reddit (OP)

Can’t dismiss the value of urban legends

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MiniTab@reddit

I spent hours at Barnes and Noble reading magazines during college. Everything from “Performance Bikes” (UK sport bike mag) to Wired, Flying, and everything in between. I used my library card quite a bit too, even as a young kid.

It’s funny how much I miss that, even though I have instant access to digital versions of everything now.

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miserabeau@reddit

...the library

Jesus. I've learned so much from the library.

I was a latchkey kid. Mom worked 14 hours a day (6am-8pm) so instead of walking home where my abusive older (18 years older) half brother would make my life hell, I'd walk to the library (about a mile) and stay til the vacuums came out.

I listened to languages on tape (my favorites were Latin, Spanish, and Greek), I read recipe books and taught myself to cook (because when mom got home she had no energy to do anything but dump chef Boyardee in a microwavable bowl), learned so much about sewing and other crafts...

I mean the whole world can be learned about in a library. And i had to do it the slow way because the internet wasn't a thing til I was a junior in high school

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BadAtExisting@reddit

There was this collection of books called the Encyclopedia. The information they contained was organized in alphabetical order A-Z. They were about 20 books total and were updated annually. Almanacs were another book that held this kind of information. These were thick and also updated yearly. We also had the Guinness Book of World Records.

Books, books, and more books

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irate_alien@reddit

Did anyone else use KU Info? It was a 1-800 number (remember "toll free"?) to the University of Kansas library reference desk. You'd talk to an undergrad doing their work study job and they'd look stuff up for you. They would either put you on hold while they went looking for stuff or sometimes just leave the phone sitting on their desk and you could hear all the other people in the background. I think they were open 24/7 because I swear I remember calling them during drunken arguments over stupid trivia questions at 2 in the morning.

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qtjedigrl@reddit

Reader's Digest, rumors from friends.

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irate_alien@reddit

1) KU Info

2) this buddy of mine named Dave--dude knew everything, and then lost on Jeopardy!

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No-Fox-1400@reddit

Funk and Wagner

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StephInTheLaw@reddit

Funk and Wagnalls?

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No-Fox-1400@reddit

lol. Yes. That was the stupid name

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XennialToothFairy@reddit

Reader’s Digest, Trivial Pursuit, TV, pop culture.

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Treadingresin@reddit

There used to be a zine for everything. Public television filled in the blanks.

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humanist-misanthrope@reddit (OP)

I actually (briefly) wrote for a music zine as the Internet was taking off. They were a fun way to share info and music reviews.

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Treadingresin@reddit

Zines were great and I miss them. What was the name of yours?

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ThepalehorseRiderr@reddit

I remember listening to songs very, very carefully and transcribing them to learn all the lyrics. We have literally had family fun days where we got a hair up our ass about a certain topic (Bermuda triangle) and we spent hours at the library combing through the Dewey decimal system.

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ShillinTheVillain@reddit

First off, go Gators.

And second, we learned if from the Encyclopedia Brittanica. If it wasn't in there, we asked our parents, whose sources were often questionable.

We mostly repeated lies, misconceptions and urban legends until the Internet came along

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humanist-misanthrope@reddit (OP)

Yeah, while FSU got smoked tonight at least my Alma Mater, USF, got it done in the Swamp. Great win by UF tonight.

And yeah a lot of misconceptions and flat out bs was regurgitated. Not that the internet hasn’t done the same thing but at least there are generally more sources you can check beyond having a single source like a friend, parent or random person.

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olduglysweater@reddit

Guinness Book of World Records, maps I stole from natgeo, Variety and Siskel and Eberts movie almanacs, Webster dictionaries and thesaurus, of course movies, tv shows and school

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vegaslocal46582@reddit

We argued in bars for hours. Sometimes fights ensued.

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humanist-misanthrope@reddit (OP)

Only a few near fights for me, but many, many drunk arguments about trivial and consequential things.

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JackSpadesSI@reddit

We asked our parents and they made up the answer.

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humanist-misanthrope@reddit (OP)

Underrated response. Man, I can’t tell you how much BS my mom thought she knew.

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OutcomeLegitimate618@reddit

If you had access to the Rudy movie I think the ND fight song was in it

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Smoky1279@reddit

Guinness Book of World Records

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amindfulloffire@reddit

Books

TV/Movies

Whatever random stuff we learned in school

People

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CommercialPhone69@reddit

Common sense

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middlepathways@reddit

Failure, other people, books, TV, movies, even video games...and stumbling onto things randomly

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Beneficial-Finger353@reddit

Encyclopedia

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affectionateanarchy8@reddit

Books, magazines, educational tv shows, even regular tv might encourage you to pull out your dictionary on a Friday night

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PersonOfInterest85@reddit

I subscribed to, at one point or another: Sports Illustrated, Spy, Esquire, and Details.

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Retro_Hoard@reddit

There were people who would talk a lot at bars. People believed they were lying but they were proven right as they checked their Encyclopedia.

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PersonOfInterest85@reddit

The World Almanac and Book of Facts was a good resource.

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_buffy_summers@reddit

TV.

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Independent-Ad3888@reddit

I called the library wants to ask the reference librarian how soap works. I still remember the answer.

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On_my_last_spoon@reddit

The Guinness Book of World Records! Didn’t we all get a new copy every year or at least one of our friends had it

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jemimako@reddit

Pop-Up Video

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CompletelyBedWasted@reddit

Word of mouth, like our forefathers. Lol. Seriously though, I doubt everything I think I know because it was just my aunt Laurel being passionate af when she told me horoscopes....

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LockieBalboa@reddit

Books, trivia games and shows, magazines, educational television.

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PuzzleheadedAbies678@reddit

Ency

gif

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SilenceDoGood4@reddit

Johnnys cousin Steve

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Metamodernist82@reddit

Talking to strange people and reading from weirder magazines... The zines were everywhere...

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moronomer@reddit

Your friend who's uncle worked for Nintendo.

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elkniodaphs@reddit

I don't know about anyone else, but I would read the dictionary for fun. Eventually, I got into our encyclopedias and started writing essays on my word processor (not for school, for me). I kept my printed essays in an office filing cabinet I had in my room. I was, and still am, very clerical.

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SubstanceFearless348@reddit

Our friends older brother

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Next-Tomatillo-5712@reddit

Those encyclopedias on CD-ROM, and before that, actual encyclopedias

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Jub_Jub710@reddit

Encarta. God, I loved that. I would spend hours on it, just pouring over everything. What I wouldn't give to get baked and play around with it again.

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RealityOk9823@reddit

People, who were often wrong.

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anakusis@reddit

Uncle John's bathroom reader

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nautilus2000@reddit

Books on specific topics sometimes read in full and sometimes read in small parts at bookstores, TV (especially documentary series like Frontline which is still great today), magazines (again, might just read snippets at a bookstore or even grocery store), school/college, talking with other people, attending lectures on specific topics.

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