The early mass-adopted Internet, where every company aimed at kids had a website with free games, where everyone who wanted to share about themselves or their interests did so in their own little corner so you could rabbit-hole your way through the link trees, most stuff was non-monetized or had easy-to-block ads, and no tracking of your behavior was really happening.

Software/Apps costing a fixed, one-time amount rather than subscription models for everything

Netflix being the only streaming offering.

The internet.

end of soviet union to 9/11

Pre-algorithm driven social media.

Blockbuster and similar video rental stores. Shit was magical before streaming or even getting movies in the mail.

Pokémon Go. Those first few weeks and months were nothing like anyone could have imagined from a mobile game. People were outside and enjoying a game with other people. I remember seeing videos of people all running because a rare Pokemon had spawned somewhere and everyone was helping each other to get to it.

The game itself was a simple affair anyone and everyone could play with no paywalls or subscriptions. Now it’s just paywalled events, Pokemon locked behind those events and it’s just a slog to play now.

I’m glad I got to be a part of those early days.

Democracy
Human rights
Rule of law

Hanging out and house parties after high school let out, with no cell phones

My knees.

Movie theaters. Post-pandemic, tickets are more expensive, cinemas are more run-down, and movie theater etiquette has gone out the window.

24/7 stores is an easy one, same with the early internet.

Personally, I'd say commuting. People are getting way crazier with how they drive these days, more distracted overall, and just plain stupid.

Amateur porn.

Now it’s all OnlyFans and Christians doing hate campaigns to shut it all down.

the transparent electronics vibe, the whole y2k was a fast and awsome era

Windows XP and 7. Before all the “AI”, bloatware and unnecessary features. Oh and that pinball game that was on xp.

Geocities

StumbleUpon was what I personally cite as the peak of the internet.

It was a website where you made an account and selected what categories of things you were interested in. Then click the button and it would take you to a random piece of content on the internet related to that. I remember thinking at the time it was like Pandora, but for the whole internet rather than just music. Eventually it got bought and shut down.

Mint would be another one. A free, ad-deiven website with optional premoun features that allowed you to easily link all of your financial accounts. It would automatically categorize transactions, but you could manually change them and change the categories themselves. It worked great back in the early 2010's. Then Intuit bought it and it slowly got shittier. They reduced the visualization options. Eventually a few years ago they shut it down to try to get people to move to a different, paid product. Personally I moved to HomeBank, an open-source self-hosted solution. But it means I need to manually import everything.

Cheap take out and delivery. Where I live at least shrinkflation and inflation have hit very hard and it's just not worth it at all.

Digg, reddit

Friends and I used to be able to throw DJ parties at clubs. Now corporations make the artists sign non-compete contracts so they cant play anywhere else in the city for several months surrounding their show with the company. So the DJs just stick with that company

The internet without megacorps. Ok, the world without megacorps.

My youth.

Bioware before (and a little bit after) EA.

Actually that applies to Origin and Westwood as well.

Okay so maybe EVERY dev before EA buys them out.

y/a answers before i jumpted to reddit, then oracle killed it.

INDEED FORUMS, and glassdoor reviews before the astroturfing, legal threats.'

the golden age of shows/movies pre-2010, everything after that were replications of each other, and mostly filled with boring titles and copaganda militaryganda, funny enough started appearing around P45 first term. sci-fi had a pretty bad streak after 2010s, if any was remarkable enough to be re-watched. the decline of cinema quality correlated with the rise in streaming.

Life in Rome under Appius Claudius Caecus

Season cliffhangers.

Young people will never understand me in 1990, banished up to my parent's bedroom to use their TV because they had a movie on downstairs, watching William Riker calmly say "Fire" on a borg cube containing HIS CAPTAIN, and then the music du-du-du-du-duuuuu and the words "to be continued"

And then having to wait an entire goddamn 3 months to find out the outcome.

Ending seasons on cliffhangers was magical. It's still attempted sometimes today, but in the age of binge-watching and in some cases years between seasons, most shows just wrap up one season arc and start a new one. Kind of sucks.

'murica? Can I say that? Too soon?

Hope

The golden era of videogames (around -90 to 2000?). The music was rad too.

Restaurants. Used to be actually self made. Atleast in germany 80% of german restaurants use convenience to variouse big degrees. Some sell souces and soups from the package to premium prices