Do you remember what it was like before cell phones?

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Globeblotter85@reddit

My thoughts exactly. Please take the Internet away, 90% of us are addicted and it is stealing our lives.

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Y’all mfers nostalgic for a time without cell phones are wildin. Life is so much better now. Yes, Facebook is toxic. TikTok is toxic. Insta is toxic. Do I fucking install those apps? No I do not. Am I able to never get lost again? To always have something to play or watch in an airport? Am I able to always phone a friend or family member for help? You bet your ass.

Saying “cell phones are bad” is like saying “movies rot your brain.” You’re painting using waaay too broad of a brush. There are some movies that rot your brain, and there are some that enrich your life. You just gotta be smart enough to not reach for the brainrot.

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nakedonmygoat@reddit

Yep. My phone is a tool for my convenience, not for everyone else's. Even my analog phone had a way to silence it back in the day, and I used it!

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Acrobatic_Hurry828@reddit

Tell me how you really feel.

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Throwaway7219017@reddit

I fondly recall my first pager. Still have the same number - now for my phone, 28 years later.

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nakedonmygoat@reddit

My first pager was for a job that required me to be on call every other week, including the weekend. It didn't matter what I was doing, date night, at the ballet, NYE party, sister's high school graduation, I had to drop everything and call back, with no idea whether it was even an emergency or not. I don't remember that pager with fondness.

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Mededitor@reddit

In the early 2000s, cell phones (often referred to as mobiles) were taking over fast. And one day I locked my phone and keys in my car and needed to make a call. I remembered where a pay phone was, but when I got there I discovered that it had been vandalized. After a lot of walking, I found one still working. And that’s the last one I’ve ever touched.

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icedyoga@reddit

Vividly remember the last time I used a public phone- about 2005? Locked myself, kids and two of their friends out of my car on a hot day at the zoo (mobile was in car of course).

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the_real_Beavis999@reddit

Same time frame. I was walking across a parking lot in a shopping center. This girl comes up half frantic asking for a quarter since she was one of those freaks without a cell phone yet. Ironically I had just gotten one.

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EquivalentStart2595@reddit

A young person asked me recently how we found stuff without GPS. Map and atlas in car, gas stations used to have city maps posted near the cashier.

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nakedonmygoat@reddit

My brother says some of the young people he works with can't even get to work and home again without GPS, which is serious wtf territory. When I started learning to drive independently, I taught myself the way home from tall landmarks until I learned the city well. Lost? Head toward whichever landmark is closest until back in familiar territory.

Then there's just the simple art of reading signs. My husband once insisted on using GPS to find our airport at the end of a vacation. I saw the signs for the airport and pointed them out to him, but he was determined to follow GPS. It took us to an "airport," all right. An Air Force base!

When I had to pick someone up at an airport in a city I hadn't lived in since I was 10, I found the airport easily because I remembered we had lived in the north part of the city, near the loop, and the airport was nearby. So I simply got on the loop heading north and drove until I saw the signs. Then I followed them.

Back in the '90s, I had a job that required me to drive all over a large city to work on customers' computers. No GPS. The customer or a coworker would give me verbal directions and I'd write them down and use them.

GPS has its place, especially when it can steer you around construction. But it's also pretty important to have at least a basic understanding of how to get around without it.

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Agent7619@reddit

Don't forget the lost art of reading interstate signs. Want to get to Kansas City from Chicago? Follow the interstate sign that says "St Loius"

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EquivalentStart2595@reddit

On a road trip to Colorado in the mid 80s my dad assigned 12 year old me as the atlas reader and to tell him where to turn...it was so stressful LOL

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SweaterSteve1966@reddit

In 1985 I was driving to my honeymoon resort with my new wife and I thought I knew the location of the hotel so I left the maps at home. I passed the turn to the hotel 6 times going back and forth before finally confessing I was lost and pulling up to a gas station wearing my baby blue tux. Thank goodness they helped me out or I would still be doing circles looking for that damn turn.

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shawncollins512@reddit

Thankfully, I stopped commuting by train as they were becoming more common. So many dumb conversions about what’s for dinner.

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Abject_Pilot_7567@reddit

Still don’t have one, and I sure can tell the difference in the way my friends communicate—they don’t.

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Local-Equivalent8136@reddit

It was glorious. Public clocks were common.

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Reader47b@reddit

I mean, I still arrange a time and place to meet, and punctuality is still valued. I just arrange it by text instead of by phone call.

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GoWestGirl@reddit

Fewer people needed anti-anxiety medications.

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Accurate_Doubt3426@reddit

and she goes running for the shelter of her mother's little helper...and it gets her through the day...what a drag it is getting old...

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GoWestGirl@reddit

…the pursuit of happiness just seems a bore.

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ancientastronaut2@reddit

Yep. And sometimes you'd need to call around to several peoples' houses to track someone down.

"Nope, he's not here, said he was going to Jimmy's".

"He was here, but just left to pick up Jen"

"You just missed them, but they're probably at Taco Bell"...

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un1ptf@reddit

We had at least a good 15-20 telephone numbers memorized: family, friends, parents' jobs, neighbors' houses, and probably a few more categories I'm not remembering. We knew how to get places because you paid actual attention to locations and street names and landmarks and details while driving places. We had sets of maps in the cars - either folded paper ones or those large format books - and new how to use them to figure out where we were, where our destination was, and how to get there, and new how to use them to navigate along the way. After business hours, work was over, because your boss didn't have your cell phone number and email address to reach you 24/7/365 and the corresponding expectation that just because they could reach you you owe them your personal time as work time. When we gathered together, we actually paid attention to each other and talked about things, and we enjoyed it. When we were doing that, there weren't a million interactions from phone calls and text messages and app notifications and addiction to social media to cause us to ignore each other, and to constantly drag our attention away from each other. We understood how to relate to each other, instead of just sending each other memes and short videos. We had attention spans that lasted longer than 30 seconds. There's more, I'm sure, but that's all for now.

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AnnieBobJr@reddit

Very much so because I was late to the game even getting a cell phone

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inigo_montoya@reddit

As I pondered how the heck we managed this, the lyric "back when spoke was spoke" came to mind.

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Mysterious-Vehicle72@reddit

We used our fancy new cell phone in the 90s to agree on which movie at Blockbuster to rent and what type of snacks were needed, he running errands and me watching the kiddos. Now I send stupid memes to my 30yo kiddos. I think I might not be using technology to its full extent. :)

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stuartcw@reddit

I was reading somewhere about the 17th Century London diarist Samuel Pepys. A visitor travelled several days to come and see Pepys and happily camped out in his office waiting to see him when he finally arrived. I think they had previously came and left a name card and were told that Pepys would be expected to be there sometime the following day.

This kind of situation was probably common until the 1920s when telephone became ubiquitous in business and official offices in my father’s generation. I seem to recall in the 1970s it was still considered a bit of a luxury to have a phone at home and, at least in the UK, it was frowned upon to make trivial calls to friends.

My first purchase with my salary was an answerphone with a tape. I really felt I was Jim Rockford.

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Agent7619@reddit

History is full of instances like this. It wasn't unheard of to travel several days or weeks and then wait days, weeks, or even months before being granted an appointment or audience.

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Motor_Struggle_3605@reddit

I sold cell phones in the 90s, before I ever owned one myself. They were analog and reception was spotty. I remember thinking that I would never have any use for one. 🤣

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Accurate_Doubt3426@reddit

but free long distance >9pm and on weekends was SO COOL!!!!

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VecchioDiM3rd1955@reddit

I remember that the only way to talk with other people while driving was using this, and few people had one.

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JiveTurkeyII@reddit

All my friends and I had CB's. from cheap to super expensive. Bought the nice K-9's from Radioshack, SWR testers, little Alan wrenches for the adjustments.

Guy called "Kicker" down the road would twist the knobs in the guts on your little store bought 40-channel to really give it some reach. The guy could turn garbage to gold. I had a Uniden 40-channel that this guy tweaked. I could hear my friends out at the lakes outside of town talking with one another form the other side of town. This was crazy distance for that little nothing radio.

I loved it. I loved tinkering with them. I loved those days.

Damn you Nokia and your Indestructible Technology.

I remember sitting in my car late nights, underage drinking a beer (college town) and listening to the whistles and distant voices waaay out there in Spanish or Russian or some language you didnt understand through the static and "space noises"

Felt really lonely but something else too... There was nothing like it.

I miss doing that.

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Familiar-Average3809@reddit

That's a great memory.

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Accurate_Doubt3426@reddit

My mom asked if I had dime...then a quarter on me if I needed to call her, lol. Pay phones were easy to find and I think that cost increase was my first real encounter with obvious inflation as a kid.

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Hedonistic_Yinzer@reddit

Yes, and it was glorious.

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Waesrdtfyg0987@reddit

Do you know the importance of a sky-page-er?

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TreasonalDepression@reddit

gif

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Firstcounselor@reddit

It feels like just a few years ago that we were buying a Thomas Guide to help navigate the new city where we moved. That and printing maps from Mapquest were key to navigating new places.

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azchocolatelover@reddit

I used Mapquest to move from the middle-eastern coast of FL to the Phoenix AZ burbs in 2006. 10 pages of it was "stay on the I-10 W". It took me and my co-driver 4 days (the first day was just getting to the AL/FL border). Never got lost though, even with the major detour around the New Orleans area.

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ExtraAd7611@reddit

If you were trying to reach someone, you might have to go somewhere to find them.

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tky@reddit

“Would you like to accept a collect call from ImReadyToBePickedUpAtSchool?”

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Sufficient_Focus4174@reddit

Yep. I try my best to limit my reliance/use of mine (as you can tell I am currently failing miserably). Nothing makes me feel more pathetic than having hours of usage per day. I do like that Apple keeps detailed track of that and lets you know about it.

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Slablanc@reddit

At the mall for six+ hours on a Saturday with $0.35 to call home when I was ready for a ride. Good times.

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CrowdedShorts@reddit

I remember when they upped the pay phone from 25 to 35c…

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cbrworm@reddit

I remember thinking it was crazy when they went from 10c to 25c. Who would pay 25 cents for a call!

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RespondOpposite@reddit

It wasn’t that long ago that we’d forget.

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WestEvening2426@reddit

I looked it up, for kicks, and it said that in 2002, only approximately half of Americans owned cell phones. Interesting fact. 😁

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nietheo@reddit

Sounds right. That was the point where I got one because more and more people I knew had them. I didn't text though, it cost extra and it sucked anyway to click through to get to the right letter.

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WestEvening2426@reddit

Oh I had texting down to a science! Haha!! I had to figure out short hand though, because we had a super low number of characters allowed... AND unless it was a night or weekend, you had better have an extreme emergency to text because it was a quarter per message for a while!!!

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drifter3026@reddit

25-30 years wasn't that long ago?

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RespondOpposite@reddit

Good for you buddy.

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Specialist-Fan-1890@reddit

I used to remember all my friends numbers. Now I’m boned if my battery goes flat.

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the_answer_is_RUSH@reddit

Cell phones were really great and made our lives easier and more fun. Smartphones ruined evening.

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Specialist-Fan-1890@reddit

Agreed.

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LDawnBurges@reddit

Yes I do…. It was glorious! No evidence of the things we did!🤣🤣

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kboleen@reddit

I didn’t get my first cell phone until 2007. Didn’t get my first smart phone until the Galaxy S 6, whenever that was.

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Correct-Condition-99@reddit

Yes. And I've been trying to figure out why we call these new devices phones at all. No one used them to talk anymore..

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Poneke365@reddit

People would call on the land line and make plans to catch up or see each other at the pub. Good times.

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dirtybo0ts@reddit

Life was so much more peaceful.

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Chibi-Skyler@reddit

Yep. We always carried dimes, in case we needed to call the parents. There was a bank of pay phones at the mall near the bus stop. My high school had a pay phone near the gym and the admin office.

I got my first cell phone in '96 and my first smartphone in 2019. And I've had the same number this whole time.

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raf_boy@reddit

Bliss.

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ToxicAdamm@reddit

I held out for a long time. Didn't get my first one until 2016.

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ONROSREPUS@reddit

Yep and still pretty much do that.

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blackpony04@reddit

Yes, punctuality is frickin everything, and I know it's because it was beaten into us as kids. But it is a matter of respect, first and foremost, and with modern tech there is no reason for it to happen outside extreme circumstances.

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ebeth_the_mighty@reddit

I got my first smartphone in 2016.

Yeah, I remember.

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Jordangander@reddit

Yes.

I remember being able to completely disappear easily.

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this_kitty68@reddit

Yes, and I’d go back to that world in a heartbeat. I’m considering getting a flip phone or a landline.

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Revolutionary-Fan235@reddit

I would watch a movie or tv show from that time and think, a cell phone would have saved the day.

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NOGOODGASHOLE@reddit

I lived the majority of my life phone free. I must admit I enjoy life now better. Last night I learned to make schnitzel, while I listened to 80's R&B, and found a new new breakfast place this morning.

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fridayimatwork@reddit

Last night I listened to the REM catalog while playing games and needlepointing

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Appropriate_Oven_292@reddit

We went from not being all that busy and thinking that these things will save us so much time to answering “I’m so busy” or “I’m tired” whenever asked how we are doing.

Also, I don’t know if the word is simply accelerating or if there always was so many significant events happening every day. But, it just seems like there are significant historical events happening very frequently. I don’t know if the phones are causing it or just bringing events to our attention that otherwise we’d have ignored.

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PoisonMind@reddit

I remember IRC, ICQ, and AIM culture. You were glued to your desktop all day.

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D05wtt@reddit

The “random chat” feature on ICQ was awesome. Met a lot of women from around the world. A few in person. One became a good friend that I still talk to and meet up when I’m in her city.

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BadAtVideoGames130@reddit

Oh yeah. Part of being grounded was having my cool clear phone removed from my room so I had to use the phone in the kitchen (you all know the one, it had the insanely long cord). I don't specifically recall punctuality being a huge thing in those days but I do know that I am big on punctuality now. I'm always concerned about being late so maybe you're on to something there?

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KingPabloo@reddit

Yes it was fantastic, guess what - it still is.

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daftbutdandy@reddit

we left a lot of notes on the table or fridge, some families graduated to chalk or whiteboard to organize the fam

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Neptunes-Mom@reddit

Peaceful

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Detroitdays@reddit

Glorious.

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AldruhnHobo@reddit

Better. Much better.

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Ok-Actuator8579@reddit

My first cell phone mid 90s I think and I often turned it off unless I had to make a call 😂

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evilJaze@reddit

Same. I had a pay-as-you-go because my early cars were shit boxes and unreliable and I often drove between cities on remote highways.

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CompetitiveForce2049@reddit

I remember breaking down in cars before I had one.

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MaximumJones@reddit

Cell phones suck (posted from my iPhone 16).

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theghostofcslewis@reddit

I don't know if punctuality was valued just because we didn't have cell phones. People have always been late; we just didn't have a cell phone to call them to tell them they were.

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Honeybee71@reddit

Of course!

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ThatLiberalGirl@reddit

Yep. Was married and had a child a few years before I owned my first one.

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tesyaa@reddit

I was well into my 30s before I got my first one. Still lived longer without one than with one. So yeah

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IndependentlyGreen@reddit

The handwritten note passed between classes sufficed as a proper invitation to the time and place. Otherwise, a call from the telephone in my room solidified any party arrangements. As a young adult, a message left on my answering machine kept me up to date on important details.

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Quix66@reddit

Yes, I do. PITA finding a pay phone or a nickel/dime/quarter to use it.

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Mindless_Career_1608@reddit

GLORIOUS

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Guilty_Eggplant_3529@reddit

Definitely more peaceful all around than now.

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Maleficent_Bit2033@reddit

Yes, it was peaceful. You could take time for yourself without people calling. No one had the entitlement of needing to know where you are, every minute.

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PoorGovtDoctor@reddit

I had a pager and everyone thought I was dealing drugs. I wish, lol! It was really just an early version of an electronic leash (parents: you have 5 minutes to call is after being paged or you’re in big trouble!)

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FormerLaugh3780@reddit

If you were out running errands, you'd drive past your friends house to see if their car was home. If it was, you stopped to say hi and see what the plans were for the weekend. We'd be better off without the effing cell phones, what a curse on humanity they have become.

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Md693@reddit

Yes it was like that

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Ordinary_Passenger79@reddit

I was playing vampire LARPs in 1994 and we treated “having a cell phone” like a magic power that wealthy monsters had to instantly call in favors.

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Princess_Jade1974@reddit

I could actually focus on the thing I was reading for more then 10 minutes.

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Diocletion-Jones@reddit

Back before phones I can't think of one device I'd get anxious about making sure it was charged daily. Like the tiny additional mental strain of making sure my phone is charged everyday for the last 30 years with another 30 years in front of me. Ending each day with a percentage charge and starting the next with a fresh percentage charge, over and over and over and over until I die. This is some Black Mirror bull shit.

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EmotionalVegetable48@reddit

Plans Fri/Sat were vague. I (and the boys) would arrange 1 house to meet at (around 9, etc) then go to a party. Our friends at the party heard we were stopping by and that was as detailed as the plans got.

Beepers enabled a little more flexibility in plans.

Conversations in person were better because the conversation was the entertainment.

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Silver_Draig@reddit

Quieter.

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This-Cartoonist9129@reddit

I’m not senile

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QueenShewolf@reddit

Yes. It was awesome.

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Boring_Menu_5962@reddit

Yes. My upstairs neighbor broke into my apartment and called the psychic hotline with my phone. I got a stupidly high phone bill because of it, which was actually less than what I pay now for cell phones. But money was worth a lot more back then.

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Cute-Patient-91@reddit

The good old days! You'd use a landline or actually organize in person to see them at a specific time/place - if they weren't there after 10 minutes, you'd assume they had

a) a better offer, or

b) been grounded or

c) been kidnapped by a serial killer

No way to check, just ignore & get on with life. Zero f*cks given.

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BigDougSp@reddit

Those were the days... :(

Also, if you didn't answer the phone, folks could leave a message on the answering machine, as long as you got it before your parents deleted it, you were golden.

Fast forward to a decade (or so) ago...

Friend: Hey you never called me back?

Me: Uh, I didn't think it was important... you didn't leave a message?

Friend: Why would I? You can see the missed call.

Don't get me wrong, I love tech and the possibilities it brought, but... something got lost along the way.

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SimpleVegetable5715@reddit

Yes. We didn’t know it at the time, but we had more freedom and privacy.

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73rd-virgin@reddit

I didn't get a cellphone until 2005, after I'd been delivering pizza for almost a year. It was one of those cheap burner phones that you bought cards for so you could load minutes on to it.

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No-Jump-9601@reddit

Yes, I’ve had one for over 30 years but I still miss the freedom of not having one.

When you called a friend, you spoke to his parents first. You knew to make a plan, set a meeting place and time, usually under the bus station clock and you arrived on time. Phoning a girl was the same but with the added danger of her father answering, I knew I was gay but he didn’t.

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Significant-Walrus94@reddit

Yep. But everyone had landlines and there were phone boxes everywhere. Got stuck on a highway at midnight when my car broke down and I was really scared. South Africa in the 90's was as unsafe as it is now. But people stopped and helped me.

My first experience with a cellphone was awful. I was a journalist for the national broadcasting company in '94 and because I was bilingual I got to cover Nelson Mandela's inauguration. I had a massive satellite phone and one of the first cellphones in the country. And my heavy tape recorder. Had to go live on air for the morning news programmes and the damn cellphone kept on cutting out on me. Switched to the satellite phone. Must have been quite the sight - me lugging around all my stuff while trying to be coherent on air while running away from the crowds who were singing and dancing just to make myself heard. I only caved and got a cellphone in 1999.

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JakeBanana01@reddit

Many was the time I'd go to meet up with a pal and nobody was home. Was he going to be there in 10 minutes? 20 minutes? An hour? At some point I'd need to find a pay phone and call him at work to see how long he'd be. And of course, just as I decided, there he was!

Like any new tech, cell phones have created problems. But overall I think they've been very beneficial.

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