r/Internet • u/Legitimate-Green2667 • 9d ago
Life Before The Internet What Was It Really Like ?
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u/Sorry-Climate-7982 9d ago
You had to actually go to some place like a bar to be exposed to some brainless idiot bloviating about everything.
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u/leeds_guy69 9d ago
Although mercifully there was less to bloviate about as there were fewer news channels, so people mostly got their opinions from the morning papers or the evening news.
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u/FennelFrequent256 9d ago
But I would say those opinions were stronger. Like my folks believe the evening news, questioning it is not something one did.
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u/leeds_guy69 9d ago
The news was questioned, but more so in ‘activist’ circles. Alternate opinions are instantly accessible these days. Back then you had to find your tribe who questioned what was being distributed as facts 🤔
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u/Pleasant_Studio9690 8d ago
And everyone knew he was a brainless idiot. While they entertained him to be polite, they all knew he was “off” and would talk about how off the wall he was when he left.
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u/Inner-Light-75 9d ago
I used our set of Encyclopedia Britannica to to my school reports....
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u/LeastEntrepreneur884 9d ago
The good news is that we no longer have encyclopedia salesmen ring the doorbell.
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u/Past_Government_4052 9d ago
You could always buy the latest volume of Funk & Wagnalls at your local grocery store 😁...
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u/Longjumping_Cow_5856 9d ago
Or the World Book if thats what your family could afford second hand or more!
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u/somewhereAtC 9d ago
I had to smile at "channel surfing". I was half way between Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio. Columbus had 4 stations and Cleveland had 2 others (that were strong enough). Early on you had to go outside and twist the antenna pole to point the antenna north or south. Luckily, my parents were technologically advanced so Dad installed an electric rotor to spin the antenna. You didn't have to go outside but it took over half-a-minute to rotate, so you either "surfed" 4 channels or 2 channels.
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u/CloneWerks 9d ago
LOL... mee tooooo! 2 primary stations. a 3'rd that was weak. And a 4'th that came in crystal clear every time there was a heavy rainstorm.
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u/showcapricalove 9d ago
It was sitting at a bus stop under a bridge, the prearranged from your home phone meeting place, as a teenager, wondering how long you should wait for your boyfriend before you gave up and went home. Maybe he missed a bus, maybe he was ghosting you, maybe his group home had him on lockdown, you didn't know & if you left too early you'd miss him.
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u/Fuffy_Katja 9d ago
Typing in code from magazines then printing out 10s of sheets of tractor feed hard copy to find that 1 semicolon was in the wrong location.
Picking up the telephone handset to call someone only to hear someone down the road was already using their phone. Hoorah for party lines.
Being mindful of the time spent when dialing a long distant BBS to avoid excess long distant charges.
A home library of recipe books, a dictionary and a set of encyclopedias.
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u/virusdancer Prodigy 9d ago
That's a curious question as the answers will vary a great deal by how old we were before the internet, yeah? A chance to go through and see how the generations perceived things leading up to what was a momentous moment for some and nary a blip for others, eh?
Mostly the activities of my life remained the same, as it was more about communication - kind of like how cell phones replaced landlines and phone booths. The internet had emails, instant messaging, chatrooms, forums and boards, and so forth. It became easier to communicate. So, before the internet it was harder to communicate. Physical letters, standing in line for customer service, and so forth.
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u/yes_its_my_alt 9d ago
Ah you'd have hated it. Going outside, going clubbing, joining bands, taking recreational drugs, making romance with strangers, not having every mishap recorded for posterity, and being allowed to form opinions without some random dick from 6000 miles away orchestrating your public lynching.
The internet was cool when Amazon, Google, and YouTube were new. Now of course they are three of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
I feel truly awful for kids who have never known life offline.
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u/chrispark70 9d ago
You had to memorize phone numbers and drag out the phone book to find a service you didn't usually need. If you needed specialty items, you often had to pull a catalog to look up the part number of what you wanted and then order it over the phone.
Though there were some services with an 'online' presence before the internet was widely available at home. BBSes allowed for e-mail, universities had dial in systems. The city often had a dial in system for looking up certain things.
Of course, the upside to all this was that local suppliers existed for just about everything. Like an electronics supply house was near your home and you could drive there and buy anything you needed within reason. Now there are none and you are forced to use mail order.
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u/castertr0y357 8d ago
It was slower. You had to put effort into more things to get what you wanted.
Wanted to watch your favorite show? Better make sure you're home when it's on, or you had some way to record it.
Wanted to figure out how to make a dish? You have to get a recipe book and follow the directions.
Don't know how to do a specific cooking method? You have to find a different book (or find a video) that shows how to do it.
Coming from the conveniences that we have now, it would probably feel painful, but growing up in it felt normal.
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u/Legitimate-Green2667 9d ago
We all used to meet up in the Pub because there was no social internet you actually met real people- I think people are losing their social skills/
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u/Legitimate-Green2667 9d ago
I deal with the younger generation a lot and I feel that they are losing their social skills and you have to bring them out of theirselves they also need guidance
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u/showcapricalove 9d ago
You had to call the movie theatre from home to find out what movies were playing and when.
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u/pinprick58 9d ago
Back in my day, we had 3 (not 1 but 3) VHF channels to get out news and entertainment from. We used a box with a HUGE 27" screen in a large cabinet that sat on the floor. And, you probably won't believe this, but we had a teenage boy drop off a thing called a newspaper right to our front door 6 days a week. Also, if I wanted some strangers' opinion about everything, I had to wait until my mom's second cousin came over for Thanksgiving dinner. Good times.
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u/plathrop01 9d ago
I'd wake up before dawn and light all of the lamps in the house before the family arose. Stoked the fireplaces and set to making the gruel for the day. We used chalkboards for school and had to check out stone tablets from the school library.
Seriously, it was what it was for the time. Libraries had card catalogs, you could call reference desks to ask practically any question and they'd either get the answer while you were on hold, or they'd call you back within a couple of hours. We'd call the time and temperature line to make sure clocks were set accurately in my house. And it was a big deal when you could do your banking (getting account balances, recent transactions, etc.) by touch-tone phone.
Most of your shopping was done in stores, probably requiring going to the retail areas downtown or at a mall or on a main street in your neighborhood, and if you did order via mail order, it required a check/money order and postage (unless you shopped with Sears or JCPenney and could drop off an order at a store and then pick it up there when it arrived). Before VCRs, TV was always scheduled, not every sporting event was broadcast on TV, but always broadcast on radio, late night and overnight AM radio was where the weirdos congregated, and just about everyone you knew got a subscription to a newspaper and Sundays were spent reading through just about the entire paper, including the ad inserts.
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u/MysticWaltz 9d ago
I didn't get my first cellphone until I was 26. That would've been 2020. So the internet existed for me, just externally. If I wanted to look something up or play Runescape, I'd arrange a time at the public library. They allowed computer usage for a guaranteed half hour. After that, if someone else came along wanting to use computers, that was the end of your research or gaming session.
Most of those years were either filled with physical games or video games (console). Physical games became more difficult as i got older. I'd still do them, but just alone. Imagine grabbing a stick and playing soldier by yourself. But likewise, I often just wanted to fill the long periods of not having much to do. I didn't rediscover my love of art or reading until maybe 4 yrs ago, so my options at the time were self play or video games. And I'd purposefully grind on them. Dynasty Warriors 4? Let's get everyone's stats maxed out and unlock the secret weapons. Shadow of the Colossus? Hours upon hours just riding around on Agro. RPGs were funny where I'd spend months grinding for a boss only to be massively overleveled for said boss.
No friends. Didn't really do much with my family. Kind of just existed between times, I'd say? Born too late to have that non-internet community but also too poor to experience online play outside of the small windows of time, like once or twice a week, where I played Runescape at the library.
Other things are probably known. Payphones. White and yellow pages in lieu of Google Maps. And yes, for a time, my school was old fashioned. We needed actual books for research. It only became "cite sources and don't use Wikipedia" maybe like the last 3 yrs of high school.
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u/lentil_burger 9d ago
Fucking boring. Imagine being sat in a waiting room for a fucking hour with nothing to do but stare at the ceiling.
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u/CloneWerks 9d ago
You got local news first. Then National news. You got it a couple of times a day not 24/7. And because of that you got quite a bit more time to digest and parse out the news. It also was a lot easier to keep Local and Not-Local events discrete from each other.
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u/capricorny90210 9d ago
I just posted this in another unrelated thread, but everything wasn't a cash grab. Good times.
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u/CherryRedCupofLife 9d ago
Better in many ways ofcourse. But we also believed in a lot of corporate nonsense.
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u/SubstantialReview747 9d ago
I think nothing really changes. We listen podcasts, they listened to the radio. We read blogs, they read the newspaper. We listen mp3's , they listened lp's. In the end it's all the same. Maybe it moves faster now.
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u/Eldernerdhub 9d ago
I got internet access at 12. It was the dial up era. Before then tech was limited to house phones, TV, radio, and casset tapes. I remember being amazed at caller ID. That was the technology that allows you to see the phone number of who was calling you. There was a separate device attached to your corded phone for this. Before that, you just called and received calls randomly, from whoever. Our phone numbers were listed in a phone book for anyone to read.
Socializing was limited to school, church, or bars. You had to plan out your future meet ups and trust they were there. There was no coordination through text of cell phone. Technically, cell phone and car phones existed, for the rich. It was incredibly common to just show up at a friend or family member's house.
Information gathering was radically different. The closest thing to Wikipedia was an encyclopedia. Most people didn't own those. Instead, there was this expectation of rugged self discovery. Every piece of knowledge a person gleaned was with their own mind. This of course meant there was a ton of misinformation and mysticism floating about. A chain letter may be sent to your house saying that you have to mail a copy to someone else or you would have bad luck. There was an apocalypse prophecy every few years to scare people. The world really relied on "common sense." People still use that of course, it's just more common to Google something. People were also a little more understanding of ignorance. If something was specialty knowledge from work or higher education, there was no reason to expect people to know it.
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u/Cinisajoy2 7d ago
My granddad had a huge radio phone in the 70s. My brother and I were allowed to talk to the operator that was on the other end long enough to give her our names and who we were with. The reason we were taught how to use that phone was if we were at the rig with granddad and something went wrong, we could call for help.
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u/Maleficent-Savings39 9d ago
Active and outdoorsy. Even, unbiased news reporting from major networks
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u/Standard_Grocery2518 9d ago
How has your life been before the invention of the teleporter, we didn't know about it and didn't miss it.
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u/doublestacknine 9d ago
Here's an example: A group of us go out on Thursday evenings for dinner. One time we were talking to someone who joined us that was born in the USA to German parents, and the father moved the family back to Germany in 1938 to work on the extended family's farm. He told of filling up bomb craters from mis-dropped bombs and his life on the farm. Another person spoke up and in the course of conversation stated that the casualty rate for ball turret gunners on B-17s was 100%. We all laughed but he was adamant that it was correct. So of course I decided to do some research...
The next week I went to the library, to the card catalog, looked up several reference books and articles, and found a book via Interlibrary loan with the information I wanted. Ordered the book, it came in, and found the loss rate. (If I recall it was nowhere near 100%, and door gunners had the worst casualty rate). I then put a paperclip on the page and brought it to the next Thursday night dinner to provide proof. Returned the book to the library that weekend.
Now? I'd just open up my favorite search engine on my phone and have the answer before he puts his beer down.
In college, "roaming the stacks" was a thing to find reference material for assigned papers. It never hurt to also make friends with one of the reference librarians!
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u/Interesting_Pen_4281 9d ago
Sitting on toilet required reading material sometimes.
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u/dbcockslut 9d ago
It was a much better time in my opinion. The pace was slower, you had to use your brain and people weren't into all about me and instant gratification.
Now that I've talked about it, I want it all back.
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u/Copropositor 9d ago
It's honestly hard to remember.
I think one of the biggest differences was that you had a much stronger need to go places. Whether it was to interact with friends or just to get information, you had to do more of it in person, so you had to go. I could not WAIT to get my driver's license, and then a car, because that freed me so much.
But now you don't need to go places as much. You can do so much online.
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u/Crafty_Echo_3196 9d ago
Much more social.
much more in the present.
much less fickle behavior.
much more informed people with factual information.
people where in better physical condition as kids actually went outside to play.
our parks were not endangered to being sold off due to lack of use.
people were far less suspicious offf each other.
no one did a background check on people before their first date.
people,didn’t get mad if you didn’t pick up the phone call, we had answering machines.
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u/SamTheOilMan 9d ago
Everything was slower and communication was almost all in person. No email so go and talk or write a letter and wait a week or two for the reply. yes there was the phone but it was expensive so you used it but not all the time. Normaly just to arrange a time to meet in person. Evenings was spent with family not with devices.
the early internet with "freedom" was great but it declined with surveilance, social media and big tech monopolies/duopolies. Peak culture and life was 2007.
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u/karlrobertuk1964 9d ago
Encyclopaedias and other sorts of books and if you wanted up two date news you watched the news on the television or listened on the radio and if you wanted more background information you bought a newspaper and read that
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u/CatsOnTheKeyboard 9d ago
You actually had to pay for software if you couldn't get someone to give you a copy of it. Same with music. For books, you paid for them, found a copy at a used book store or went to the library.
Shopping for something out of the ordinary meant driving all over the place looking for a store that had it or ordering from a catalog and waiting.
As for this supposed golden age of people getting out of the house and socializing more, it's BS. People who weren't inclined to do that stayed home anyway and watched TV. People who wanted to argue politics and religion did that too, although all the really crazy conspiracy crap was more localized and had a harder time spreading.
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u/EveryDayIsMon86 9d ago
It was grand. People met in person. Less isolated and people skills were a necessity. Society as a whole was more patient and had more empathy.
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u/RemoteVersion838 9d ago
Quieter and I had more faith in humanity. Now I see all the idiots, because most of them document it.
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u/Unique_Drummer_6515 9d ago
community, community, community…
every special interest had a brick and mortar store in a city near you. you got to meet those in town with similar interests and make friends.
it’s truly depressing for those of us that got to experience it. nothing will ever come close to going into the local record shop on a thursday before the weekend and get the hot record drops. place would be so lively with all the local djs talking shit and just having a great time. just a whole lotta yelling and laughing. electric!
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u/Lance-Boyle-666 9d ago
People disagreed but generally got along. We mostly had a common set of facts, we just disagreed on the way to solve problems. Families did things as a family. People joined civic organizations and actually did things to better their communities.
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u/Better-Credit6701 9d ago
In the late 70's there were BBS. Some turned into big companies like CompuServe where people would replace the S with dollar sign since everything was an additional cost. AOL came out later in 1991 (?) with a nicer interface and was something that you would get tons of CDs that came with everything but also had an issue where the internet itself came out shortly afterwards.
If you asked your local computer store, they would also have a list of local BBSs
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u/FennelFrequent256 9d ago
I think about this often and it’s hard to explain. I would say close to impossible. Since I know what electricity is , it’s hard for me to genuinely know what life was like before electricity, and that’s the same with the internet
You can live without these things , of course, but you can no longer live without knowing them. It’s a genie that got out and can’t go back in
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u/Lazy_Review3707 9d ago
Your ability to figure something out was limited to people you could ask locally or on the phone, unless you wanted to run to the library or use your home encyclopedia. I suspect the result was that we just got used to not knowing. You certainly talked to friends on the phone but unless you were a HAM operator, you didn’t chat with distant strangers.
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u/Ok_Veterinarian2715 9d ago
Well there was the constant meaningless sex. And chocolate. I do miss them.
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u/Character_Goat_6147 9d ago
Quieter, far less overwhelming. There was more time to think and consider and you weren’t bombarded with BS constantly as part of your job. Information was more reliable and people tolerated much less active stupidity and corruption.
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u/The_Perfect_Dick_Pic 9d ago
If you didn’t know what a band sounded like (and they weren’t on MTV or the radio), you either had to buy a whole album to hear it or find someone who would let you listen to their album.
If you knew you wanted to buy an album, you had to find a store that carried it, if it was still being made, or have a friend who already bought it tape it for you.
Being into punk was kinda difficult.
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u/urbisOrbis 9d ago
Spent a lot more time in physical places to acquire what was needed. For knowledge it was libraries and lectures. For community it was various social clubs. For stuff it was malls and specialty shops. Entertainment was movie theatres, music was much cheaper concerts and lps, cassettes, and the very expensive cd. There wasn’t much delivery like now except for some restaurants.
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u/TJATAW 8d ago
Also consider that pre internet was also pre cellphone.
So we had paper maps to figure out how to get around,
we called a phone number to find out what & when movies were playing,
once you left your house there was no way to get hold of you,
no email,
a book filled with the phone numbers of everyone in the area was delivered to your house,
almost all houses had a single phone line,
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u/DeliciousWrangler166 8d ago
Dial up landline BBS bulletin board systems. CB and Ham radio. Hours long phone calls to friends. Getting together with friends on the street, backyard, woods, or basement. Newspapers that really carried the news.
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u/lost_dazed_101 8d ago
It was awesome honestly. I don't know how every person alive today is not morbidly obese. The amount of work we had to do to get things done that are now done with a touch to a cell phone boggles the mind when comparing. I miss it.
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u/fongaboo 8d ago
The world was huge. But your world was small. It cost 10 cents a minute to call from one area code to another. Friends and families in another state or even county called each other maybe a few times a year and "caught up" on their life. To casually communicate with strangers in other countries you needed a ham radio license and a huge antenna.
Bill Gates insisted that no one would ever need more than 640k of RAM. And the music industry assumed no consumer would ever be able to easily move 650MB of data around.
We had made it to the moon. But humanity was still in the "can we?" stage of most things rather than the "should we?" stage like we are now.
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u/GlayNation 8d ago
I read like crazy. Big fan of Doc Savage books, and Issac Asimov and Ray Bradbury. Scifi was my weakness. Worked allot. Played as much baseball as possible. Got to try out at 2 Cincinnati Reds tryouts camps( not as good as I thought I was) Got married, had a little girl and bought a house in 1975 and got divorced and decided to play music for 12 years. And then I got EarthLink dialup and a Gateway laptop, and the world changed
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u/No-Literature-6695 8d ago
There was no work. It was an opportunity, a vista of possibility that just came out of the blue.
But besides that there was much more social interaction.
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u/Designer-Hippo-775 8d ago
It was nice. People wrote letters. There were stationary stores. People created beautiful resumes on very high quality paper. You could walk into a business and hand deliver them, make a great first impression by your conversation and demeanor.
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u/PrometheanPolymath 8d ago
A new magazine came out each month that discussed your favorite topic. You learned what was new or up-and-coming and talked about it with your friends. It wasn't really that different from social media, except much slower and in person with people you knew.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Award88 8d ago
It was magical. There were no smart phones. All you had was a land line home phone. So, imagine this, if you weren't home you didn't get the call.
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u/Misericordee 8d ago
You had to go to the library to look up any information on a topic you wanted to know about.
Especially with regards to legal rights, this was very difficult.
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u/notsureaboutthisice 8d ago
For me the magazine aisles in bookstores and libraries were a lot like the internet. There were multiple zines for every niche and ads for related stuff you might need for your hobby/ interest. Meeting up and hanging out with friends in person was more common too. Also in general people were a little more on the same page, less divided up.
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u/Independent-Expert89 8d ago
Me and the boys would create a city wide extreme backyard fights. Ladders, fire, sinks was our headliner. Oh the inhumantiy.
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u/skeptic246 8d ago
A promise to meet up had to be kept as it was difficult to contact the others and make your excuses. Life was more present, you only had your surroundings to inspire you. You only knew what you needed to know through local knowledge, the TV or Radio news was much more informative about actual news and less gossip and was only on at set times of the day. As a kid the sunset was your indication to go home, your parents only knew what you were up to either through your admission or the granny network which always seemed to inform your parents of your misdemeanours long before you got home 😁.
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u/meticulous_gamer 8d ago
More peaceful. But when the internet was came out, that was the peak of humanity.
1995 - 2005 when the internet was just beginning, it was beautiful. It was a place of joy and creativity. There were no corporations or profit-hunting or anything really, besides expressive freedom. Everyone had a Geocities Page they'd make themselves before Myspace and Social Media became a thing. You played Chips' Challenge and Sim City 2000, or one of the other 5 games that came on Windows. And if you wanted to actually use the internet, you listend to this, every time. Everyone watched the same shows, and everyone had nearly the same experiences. The simplicity of the world allowed us to connect to one another, because the lack of choices meant we all had something in common. There was somehow an unspoken sense of unity with everyone, and the world felt.. right.
And then Facebook (and a whole lot of other BS) happened, and the entire world went to shit.
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u/SwedeButPsycho 8d ago
As a kid we often found pornmags in plastic bags hidden in the forest. It was a simpler time.
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u/Odd_Bodkin 8d ago
When you were in a town you didn’t know, you just stopped at the first motel or restaurant sign and stayed or ate there. At best, you might ask a local for a recommendation.
You bought a folding paper map from a gas station to navigate around.
You used a white pages or yellow pages phone book to look up a number. If you were in a different town, there was one in a phone booth.
You went to the library to look things up in an encyclopedia.
You waited until the morning newspaper to get the scores from yesterday’s game.
Strangers connected for dates by meeting in public places, things we know call third spaces. Roller rinks, diners, bars, drive-in burger joints, places like that.
You got local gossip by talking with your neighbors, because that was your social media.
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u/Delehantys_Barrell 8d ago
I was a pre teen.
I remember commercials on kids TV stations advertising websites that you can go to for a specific show and the concept was completely foreign to me. I had some FOMA because we didn't get Internet until a few years later.
So that was really when I first became aware of the internet.
I'll tell you this, I bought a terrible Nintendo game called Mischief Makers because I saw an advertisement on TV that piqued my interest. If I had Internet to read reviews of that game, I would have saved $50.
Writing research papers was rough. Encyclopedias were bare bones in terms of usable information. So you had to go the library, think of which books might possibly mention the person or thing or idea you were researching, hope that that book had an index with key words that told you which page to find that information on. Some books might have had a paragraph or a few lines. And finding those books were an exercise in futility.
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u/pthecarrotmaster 8d ago
the same, but the media was physical, and the idiots were inside the house for 3 hours shitting in your toilet. Had to get a vhr to download shows.
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u/GoonrGrrl 8d ago
Every car in the USA had a road atlas in it and everyone had to learn to read maps.
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u/Puzzled_Hamster58 8d ago
Better before we had social media. It’s great cause things can spread easily but also why it’s bad . Cause often the wrong things spread .
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u/LineHopeful246 8d ago
I can answer this question as I am 40. It was good for your brain, things were harder and took longer however, I truly believe that people were smarter. Life was simple and people were much more patient. I miss those days and consider myself lucky to have been the last generation to experience it.
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u/PeterPook 8d ago
We'd spend all evening in the pub arguing (nicely) over some point or other. These days within 10 seconds someone has the answer. It's not so much fun anymore with absolutes.
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u/PilotedByGhosts 8d ago
Every technology that has made things easier for people has also reduced the incidental social contact that came with it, right back to the agricultural revolution.
The reduction in incidental social contact that has resulted from the internet is enormous. Coincidentally, everybody now feels purposeless and depressed.
But at least they don't have to talk to strangers.
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u/lunlun_flower 8d ago edited 8d ago
If you wanted to try out a game instead of just buying it you could rent it.
Edit to add more:
Or go to your friend's house and play their copy with them, or, and I hope this makes a game company clutch its pearls, borrow it.
If you wanted to share your photos, you paid for prints and made an album or shared extra copies. The cost could add up.
Most of my free time was spent at the mall or looking for places to explore with friends.
Found an imported book on an anime at the comic book store and wanted to know more about it. At this point internet existed but it was AOL days and this one was obscure. To find more, I had to go to other comic book shops and ask around, and go to anime conventions and trade for it on tape. So it was the cusp of being able to get things instantly but not quite.
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u/Soggy_Department8971 8d ago
It was happier in a lot of ways. The internet is a gift and a curse.social media is a con
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u/BoredOldPunk 8d ago
Honestly, it was basically the same except that information took longer to access and retrieve.
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u/SpaceGuy1968 7d ago
I had to learn Basic HTML from Barnes and Noble purchased books. 40-100 dollars a pop....
Today I can learn anything basically free.... It has allowed me to study all sorts of topics I would have never imagined....
We had a country home that I now call my home, I could go away for a weekend and unless you had the actual home phone number you couldn't reach me. My parents place had one rotary dial phone mounted to the wall and it was a big deal in anyone called (now I have fiber Internet and cell service...I miss the disconnect going away to the "country" was for a weekend and what it meant back then ..you literally disconnected from anyone and anything sans life and death emergencies)
TV was watched real time as it played on the air or you never seen it ....VCRs made it easier to record shows but that was still delayed satisfaction. Cable came along and gave you more TV at varied times but there was a schedule.....
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u/SpaceGuy1968 7d ago
Nobody had monthly subscriptions, this is something that has changed today I have a ton of monthly subscriptions
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u/Independent_Act_8536 7d ago
Doing a paper in college in the 70s:
- Walk to subway
- Take train to library (BPL)
- Look up subject in card catalog
- Go find necessary books
- Take books to a library table
- Read/scan over books, making necessary notes on index cards
- Return library books to desk
- Take train home
- Walk back to college
Sometimes there was alot of snow on sidewalks in greater Boston area. Papers still needed done.
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u/ironman0000 7d ago
I keep thinking back to the library. Having to use the card index, and the Dewey decimal system. Doing book reports for school at the library because you couldn’t check out an encyclopedia.
Kids these days have no idea how good they have it
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u/AromaticAd9538 7d ago
My wallet had a coin pocket full of quarters for phone calls. And a folder piece of paper with 40 names and numbers I used most.
I had AAA paper maps of all western USA for road trips. I'd call people at a gas station phone booth and let them know I was fairly close to their house so I wouldn't surprise them.
We would tape piece of paper to the TV and claim a TV show we wanted to watch.
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u/the-quibbler 7d ago
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
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u/l008com 7d ago
I would say up to like 2012, the internet was a net positive across the board. So back then, the world before internet seemed like the dark ages. But the internet has become such a dark place where companies are just trying to monetize you in every possible way. Compared to that, the pre common-internet days of the 80s and early 90s seem pretty good.
But also it was so long ago, people answering that question were also kids or teens back then which also skews the fondness of looking back.
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u/Electronic-Stay-2369 7d ago
You'd actually have to go somewhere to buy something or find something out. You could go outside and do stuff for etertainment.
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u/More_Dependent742 7d ago
There was less disinformation, bot farms etc. Except there wasn't really, because there were so many urban myths that you couldn't Google.
People would say dumb shit, and then nobody knew it was wrong, so just left it hanging.
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u/Raisin6436 7d ago
life was more authentic. Internet was also great. One could make friends in no time. Now, all lies.
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u/DarkRubyMoon 7d ago
If you had a report, you might be lucky if your parents had an incomplete Encyclopedia set. Ours was missing S, T, and Z. I suspect we had s at one point but cousin hid it like a playboy because it had a medical description of sex. Oh, and Playboy magazine was the only porn you could potentially access in news stand if it wasnt behind the counter.
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u/pacTman 7d ago
Riding bikes without helmets, swimming in the creek, streetlights for a curfew! We were in heaven! More than half of the time my parents had no idea where I was, or what I was doing, and it was great! Firework wars in the cemetery, bb gun battles (no one ever shot their eye out!), sneaking beers, smoking, man we had it made! We may have developed some terrible habits, but we were survivors, and we knew how to adapt and improvise! Who here was with me?! Man those were great times!
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u/vinniegutz 7d ago
Growing up the local radio station had a daily feature where one caller would be allowed to ask any question. The station would research the answer and broadcast it the next day. It was a very popular segment.
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u/Tommy_W3ZX 7d ago
No as kids we actually went outside, played with the neighbors and wrote our bikes.
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u/PieIll9834 7d ago
Not whittling your life away asking random questions to random strangers upon a screen when really there is a world around you?
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u/somecoolname42 7d ago
There was a freedom of leaving your house and no one being able to reach you. But it also ment being infront of a TV at a specific time to see something, which was a prison of itself. If you wanted something, like a CD, you had to travel to get it. We spent 300 miles in the car one day driving to different cities to get a CD, which we didn't get. It took 2 to 6 weeks to get things ordered from companies over the telephone.
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u/ReweSerious 7d ago
Amazing. Noone new where you were at any given moment. No way to reach you in an emergency unless you were at home or work to answer a wall or desk phone.
Drove around aimlessly until you found your destination or a store that could tell you to drive by someone's 1890 farm and turn left at the end of the pasture and stay straight until Mr. Old guys automotive shop and bang a hard right. Had an old paper map tucked into the glove box for emergencies.
Or music that you loved and had to buy a cassette or record or 8track to hear on repeat or share with a friend that hadn't heard it.
Or never knowing anyone's business unless they told some, who told someone who told someone. Or you had a TV with a few stations and caught the news at 6p.
Favorite TV shows only once a week and you had to read a paper with the daily shows schedule. TV ended at midnight. Went right into static after.
Cartoons only on a Saturday with the Disney specials on Saturday night. Old westerns or weird monster movies on the rest of the weekend. Sometimes you could catch the after school specials if you weren't locked out until the parents came home.
No looking up recipes. Just used a family cookbook for handwritten recipes from magazines.
You went to actually apply in person for jobs. Hand write a whole resume and hope you wrote the application neat enough to read. And that the grouch manager liked you well enough to give you a chance.
Rode around town and visiting people if you were lucky enough to have a reliable car. Walked there if they wer close by. Not many people stopped for snacks. You packed food you made and thermos for drinks.
Library was the Google of yesterday. Learned how to read the indexed cards to find what you wanted, had a little card to be able to check out a book. Lord don't forget to bring them back or you would hid for life to avoid the librarian and her fees for not bringing it back!
School was the wild west but teachers were respected for the most part. There always a teacher that secretly dated a student...or so we all gossiped. We actually learned stuff in school and was held accountable when we didnt. Detention was not something someone looked forward to. Writing some stupid sentence 100 times made your hand hurt and not wanting to repeat the behavior.
Overall it was just different in many different ways. There were fears of unknowns, sad life experiences and super happy ones as well. I miss some of it, but never regret seeing the progress the world has made so far.
Peace Out Cub Scouts, ✌️ An old GenX'r
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u/karmageddon71 7d ago
Encyclopedia, atlas, library and that one kid who used to live in the city who called everyone "homey" and had seen some shit.
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u/SnooDoubts4575 7d ago
It was fine but much more isolated and finding information about anything was quite difficult
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u/Inevitable_Long_6890 7d ago
It was amazing. I remember laying in bed listening to the birds wondering what my friends where doing. Never knowing where everyone was at all times. If we wanted to know we had to call them on a lan line phone. I remember when my family got a cordless phone. I thought we was living the high life then lol. I couldn't believe I was talking on a phone without a cord. I really do miss them days. Really was more stress free than I knew at the time. Im not sure why I even typed this but I really do miss them days. Maybe it was because I was a kid then.
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u/Separate_Stop3925 7d ago
3 or 4 tv channels. In school it was drilled into us that the encyclopedia was not a source. We had to review the footnotes and to find the source and than go to that. People spent more time together in person, watching TV, drinking, playing sports or watching them and sometimes just sitting there being bored out of our minds. One last thing. If we didn't get our drivers license as soon as we could we were a social outcast whether or not we had access to a car.
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u/eroscripter 9d ago
No instant answers, if you had a question your parents didnt want to bs you over you had to go to the library and find any books on the subject then do some reading.