Ask Lemmy

I miss old PC Games from the early 90's.
I've reinstalled all that I remember and they sucked, but back then, they didn't.

Life before cellphones and internet.

Did you know in 1990 only .25% of the world’s population (12.5 million) had cellphones and only .05% (2.8 million) had internet?

It feels like we sacrificed local community and connection for global information overload and disconnection sometimes.

The smell of leaded gasoline.
The smell of a fine cigar: I quit smoking 14 years ago but I miss that.

And I'm 200% sure they were awful.

Working in a bar

I love people. I'm a people-person, but I kno know that I am remembering it through rose-tinted lenses

Most customers were average, a few were great, a fair number were dicks

But the hours, the late nights, the cost to my own social life, the lousy pay, the inability to eat normal meals at normal times, all of that shit takes a toll

But I still have some fond memories and occasionally think about opening a bar with my woman

Oh, and I was running a place with a long-term partner. Doing that shit was the final nail in the coffin of our relationship, so fuck that...

I was an 80’s kid, and we had the best Saturday morning cartoons.
Transformers, GI Joe, Scooby Doo, Thundar the Barbarian, Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, Superfriends, Hurculoids, etc.

Connecting to dialup and listening to computers scream at each other over the phone line.

Trusting the government

1990s internet. Yeah it had to start somewhere and a lot of them were butt-ugly for design. Now 2000s internet up until roughly 2009, that's the shit.

A buddy of mine owned a video game store that I worked at for a bit. The pay was crappy and the hours were unstable and random, but I do miss working there.

Like many others have said, the old, lost internet was really something special. Every website was crude and janky, poorly formatted for some specific resolution that you weren't using, and both animated clipart and midis were exciting to collect. There were websites dedicated to them. My brother and I used to fill folders on our desktop with sparkling or flaming banners, signs that read "Under Construction" and more. Same with midis. I'll never forget the first time I discovered Sublime's Santaria in midi form. It may have been my first favorite song.

I wish I could properly articulate what that all felt like. It was a similar feeling to collecting Pokémon cards as a kid. Everything was just a neat spectacle on the mid-90s internet. Then over time, as everything modernized and monetized, it lost that weird magic and became what it is today. I can't remember the last time I gave a shit about exploring a website. I no longer come across spooky animated images of a skeleton peering out of murky water and excitedly tuck it away for future viewing pleasure. The entire thing sucks now, but it probably sucked then, too.

Reddit.

Those square pizzas in the school lunchroom.

My alcohol addiction

My first vehicles as an adult in the mid to late 90s. Objectively cheap used jalopies that I bought for a few hundred dollars but were loved because they were mine.

My first car was a 1981 Dodge Aries K-Car. The front bumper got ripped off by a guy running with no headlights while I was delivering pizzas and I literally just threw the bumper on the back seat and continued on with my deliveries, then went to my local pick-a-part and took a replacement off a different one and bolted it on myself. You just couldn't kill it.

I eventually replaced it with an 1984 Sentra that I bought at auction. I called it the "relationship killer" because the passenger door didn't open from the outside so there was no way to "open the door for your date to get in first", and half the time it didn't go into reverse, so since my dates didn't know how to drive standard transmissions, they were the one that had to push us out of parking spaces. It honked when turning left for some reason.

My point being, when things were wrong with them, they were cheap enough that you could just go to the local pick-a-part and get replacement parts. If it wasn't starting for some reason, you could stick a screw driver in the carburetor valve to give it more air. You could "own" and "tinker" on those things in ways that doing so in a new car would terrify us.

Come to think of it, I miss school and I miss the military. They were both godawful, but I was young.

Being absolutely sure about everything.

Being able to eat, like, 8 meals a day and not feel like shit that night or the next day.

At some point my metabolism finally started to slow down.

Lunchables. I loved them as a kid but they are terrible

Only knowing small TVs. Step by step, displays have inarguably improved massively, and I do love my giant OLED flatscreen. But watching TV was still great fun in the before times, people still watched the hell out of it, so can we say it brings people more joy now? Or is it just technically and visually better?

I think if you're the kinda person watching beautiful premium shows, that's an experience you couldn't really get before. But I like TV that I can have on in the background, while I'm doing the dishes, and now we're expected to pay attention to details on screen. Back when half the audience had tiny, grainy or monochrome displays, shows were written to suit listening as much as watching. And it's not just scripts, shoddy visuals allowed costumes, sets and design that was evocative but cheap, in a way that cannot pass muster today.

And by comparison, it's reduced the justification for going to cinema, and even kinda made the real world look bad. It used to be worth going somewhere in person because it would look infinitely better than seeing it on a screen. But now, it can actually be a disappointment, as the carefully composed filmed version with post production actually looks more impressive than irl. It's the Connoisseurs Paradox, has it really deepend my pleasure, or merely raised my standards so much that I'm actually less satisfied?

Going out with friends between 1991 and 1997. It was a great time looking back, but most night probably were just a lot of (underage) drinking and not much else.

My Uncle.

Websites with frames.

My ex.

Lawn Darts

The wait before things worked.

Yes, it's better to get what you want no delay. But the pace of life, the rhythm, has changed. I'm old, it's true, but I'm still gonna throw it out there.

Yes, it's 90% better now. But I miss waiting.

Candy cigarettes.

Bad tasting sugar. Trains you for holding a real one.

But they were at the gas station a mile from home and near a park. Freedom from family and responsibilities. Just spending time with friends, eating candy, enjoying the sun shine. Dreaming of smoking.

E-cards. I got at least some cards for my birthday...

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The Gameboy Advance. Fuck you. It was like a mini Super Nintendo in your hand. Suck my dick. Fuck you.

Little Caesar's as a traditional pizza parlor.

Random things I liked as a kid. I was obsessed with Spy Kids for a bit.

Borat

Kid Cuisine