What are some things that today's kids will never get to experience?

[RetroMG]

I tried to explain to my 5 year old what watching TV was like when I was her age. That we didn't have streaming or DVR. That we had to just watch whatever was being broadcast at the time. That we didn't get to pick what episode we watched of whatever show was on.

Predictably, she thinks I'm crazy.

 

[NippleViking]

Waking up early every morning to see the latest episode of Dragon Ball Z/Yugioh, and the entire schoolyard/sandpit culture surrounding it sans internet - i.e. discussing with peers, speculating, 'my older brother's uncle's best friend went to Japan and there he saw x/y/z..'

 

[Coen]

Anonimity.
Parents these days feel the need to document and share a kid's every move, from the moment they leave the womb to the moment they leave the house. I apologise to an entire generation on behalf of mine.

 

[Johnny Cage itS]

Having to masturbate to scrambled pay tv images

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^ this

 

[Johnny Cage itS]

Walking up to the check out counter at Blockbuster nervously. ...Hoping you will still have enough money to rent that new PlayStation, N64 game you want to play so bad, even after all the late charges the Blockbuster clerk will most likely force you to pay from your previous game rentals before renting said new game.

-"Soooo....That would be $4 to rent Tekken 3 for two nights and another $52 for Late charges on Soulcalibur you rented back in April"

-"Can I just rent Tekken 3 now and pay my late charges later ?"

-"No"


-"Ookay" ...*walking out Blockbuster empty handed and sad.

 

[The Real Abed]

Most kids won't be able to experience the majesty of the Pizza Hut lunch buffet.

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I used to fill my plate with a huge salad bar at the Pizza Hut then still had room for a whole Personal Pan.

Man I miss a good salad bar.

the monstrosity that is ez squirt ketchup

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We got the green one and I couldn't bring myself to even taste it because it wasn't red.

 

[Goldenroad]

Heroin syringes leftovers in kids parks. Very common here in the 80's.

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The opioid epidemic is still something that kids get to experience.
Heroin is still abundent, and paraphanilia can be found lying around in lots of public areas of my city. Lot's of crackpipes and condoms too.

 

[HiLife]

Saturday morning cartoons.

Parents taking you to blockbuster on Friday after school.

Getting viruses on limewire.

Dial up speed and making sure nobody picks up the landline.

Mapquest.

Flip phones.

Not having a screen that lights up on a handheld device (the gameboy color)

 

[Kitsunebaby]

I imagine they won't get much in the way of snow days anymore, what with the possibility of distance learning.

 

[data west]

this shit

 

[Pankratous]

Home ownership

 

[Jerm411]

Another oddly specific thing I remember is the fast food places have special tie in items, like the Batman Forever mugs at McD's, and trying to collect them all….Monopoly at McD's used to be crazy too.

 

[Johnny Cage itS]

Ripping the video game section page out of Consumers Distributing catalogue, fantasizing about owning all the consoles on the page. Especially the Sega Game Gear with the added TV Tuner peripheral for saaaay like $750 Canadian bucks total (back in the 90s mind you) that your parents had no chance to ever buying it for you. :/ but a boy could dream.

 

[DigitalOp]

Tryna play gameboy on a family night road trip with no light so you try to use the passing street lamps to see the screen

 

[UraMallas]

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Is that the mom from Modern Family at 6 seconds?

 

[AaronMT]

Looking through the enormous Sears and Consumers Distributing catalogues for toys and video games and circling each item you want for a birthday or holiday

 

[Doggg]

Old age

 

[Darth Pinche]

Looking through the enormous Sears and Consumers Distributing catalogues for toys and video games and circling each item you want for a birthday or holiday

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That was the closest thing to the internet we had back them. One place we're we could browse for things we wanted and dream about. The excitement when that catalog arrived was real.

 

[TheGhost]

MTV as it was originally intended and Saturday Morning Cartoons or the Cartoon Express

oh wow yeah that's sears wishbook catalogue was next level shit.

 

[teruterubozu]

A time when boomers didn't glorify the past with every internet post.

 

[Walter White Walker]

They'll never be able to be on the phone and slam it down to emphasize the other person can fuck off. All you can do now is press a button to end the call.
Yes, I am rewatching Seinfeld.

 

[Reizzz]

Having only 1 line and needing it for internet and phone calling...

 

[chaostrophy]

The subtleties of standard, expanded, and extended RAM- how managing them to get a game to run was a kind of puzzle game in itself.

 

[Artdayne]

A world without the internet.

 

[jb1234]

A stable climate.

 

[SmackDaddy]

Riding around on bikes with the neighborhood kids and doing dumb shit

 

[i hate cheaters]

having to disconnect the internet whenever you wanted to make a phone call

 

[Sanatana]

Going to the malls was a thing I and my classmates used to do before the big 2008 recession. Because of this I have a keen fascination with dead malls lol.

 

[smurfx]

console generations being a huge leap. i really treasure seeing new console games and arcade games and seeing the huge leap in graphics. e3 being a thing you actually wanted to go to.

 

[Unicorn]

calling their friend's house land line and having to ask if ___ is home

edit: similarly, just knocking on the door to see if they wanna come out and play

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Fuuuuuu

 

[Darkspellmaster]

Being able to go to a theme park without paying an arm and a leg.

Having to wait till your photos came back from the place you sent them to be developed.

Film in general (though that looks to be making a sort of comeback)

Having to figure out which cord plugged into what on the back of the tv to hook up the game system

Bake Sales (a lot of places are not allowing them in schools for health reasons)

Dangerous playground equipment

Not having to deal with Active Shooter drills and just fire drills

Texas Instruments games for their calculators.

Mascot theme songs for commercials

Cartoons on in the afternoon after school

Renting from a video store

Catalogs in physical form, and having to wait a week to see a show.

Theaters having certain toys or other things as giveaways during certain movies.

Mall crawling in general though this seems to be making a come back along with arcades.

 

[Toxi]

Obsessively sorting over the library's Animorphs collection to try and figure out which books I hadn't read and what happened in those ones.

Never knowing what time it is.

The start of a new millennium.

Being able to tell other people any bullshit you want without them being able to correct you on the spot.

Rewinding a movie in a VCR.

Fan sites (Keep fighting the good fight Serebii).

Fixing the tape on a VCR tape.

Hilariously shitty DVD menus.

Flash games.

Tiny shops selling imported Pokemon merch. People never talk about how easy it was to find weird Japanese Pokemon stuff in the US back then.

Static on the tiny TV screen.

Worrying more about some hole in the ozone rather than the collapse of civilization due to climate crisis.

Channel guides.

VCR noise lines.

Holding your Gameboy at the right angle so that you can actually see the screen in unoptimal lighting conditions.

Panicking because your Gameboy's light is red.

Causing a major ecological disaster with the number of AA batteries you waste on your Gameboy.

Bringing a disposable camera to the photo developer.

 

[ThatBigDude]

Owning a house and a world not ravaged by global warming. Is this the right way to do this thread?!

 

[Toxi]

 

[Deleted member 99254]

A stable and rewarding life in a just society where human dignity is the benchmark of the law.

 

[ThatBigDude]

A stable and rewarding life in a just society where human dignity is the benchmark of the law.

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This one too. I was going to say "not knowing there wasn't a gig economy."

 

[Eros]

having the cassette ready in the stereo to hit record when your favorite jam hits the radio. crumpling up little bits of paper to put into those square holes at the ends of the cassette so you were able to record on it.

 

[mAcOdIn]

A stable and rewarding life in a just society where human dignity is the benchmark of the law.

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When was that? We didn't have that in my lifetime.

 

[giallo]

I always loved going to a new video rental store or arcade, and seeing what different movies and games they had compared to the stores/arcades I was familiar with.

I still miss that.

 

[TheeFanatic]

playing football on the streets.

the water slide at Golf n Stuff

 

[Irishmantis]

Blowing memory cards and constantly wiping faulty scratched discs then getting super hyped if there is a slight progress in the loading bar

 

[Grunty]

Walking in to a Sears, Toys R Us or even Wal-Mart and playing a demo of an upcoming game or full version of an already released game.

 

[i hate cheaters]

having to download and install game patches manually

not even knowing whether or not a new patch was available

 

[PinkSpider]

A world which is not burning to the ground?

Also playable console demos in Toys R Us and various electronic stores. We basically lived in those as a kid.

 

[Cess007]

Using Encarta to make your homework

 

[RecLib]

Also playable console demos in Toys R Us and various electronic stores. We basically lived in those as a kid.

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Maybe they were more prevalent in the past? But the last time I was in a Toy R' Us (not that long ago, I live in canada where they still exist) they had a switch set up that you could use to play trials of various switch games. This was just pre-covid though, they probably took it out because of it being a high contact area now.

 

[Vault Boy]

Everyone's talking about the internet, but cellphones are just as major a change. When you left home you were on your own, with no way to contact anyone other than finding a payphone somewhere. Have a breakdown or flat and pull off to the side of the road? Gotta wait around and hope someone helpful comes by, or else start walking. Meeting someone and they don't show? Go all the way back home and call them.

It had benefits too — you weren't expected to be on call or reachable 24/7. There was definitely a freedom in that, which has now disappeared. If you wanted to get in touch with someone and they weren't home, too bad…you just have to wait until they get home.

And that's just the actual phone part of the changes brought about by cellphones.

 

[PinkSpider]

Maybe they were more prevalent in the past? But the last time I was in a Toy R' Us (not that long ago, I live in canada where they still exist) they had a switch set up that you could use to play trials of various switch games. This was just pre-covid though, they probably took it out because of it being a high contact area now.

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I think it was (In the UK at least) also a case of more dedicated stores. Not even our GameStation has them in now though and that's the only dedicated game store. I remember lots of playing games in the N64 and PS1 era and when I found the Dreamcast in Toys R Us (I think they no longer do games here) I begged my mum and got one for Christmas.

 

[T002 Tyrant]

Not having a mobile device. My mother always made me take money for a pay phone in case of emergency. I think she worried more too since I could be out and there was no way she could check up on me and my whereabouts.

 

[RecLib]

I think it was (In the UK at least) also a case of more dedicated stores. Not even our GameStation has them in now though and that's the only dedicated game store. I remember lots of playing games in the N64 and PS1 era and when I found the Dreamcast in Toys R Us (I think they no longer do games here) I begged my mum and got one for Christmas.

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Yeah. Letting people actually play a game was probably very good marketing. Especially back then before things like twitch and youtube where you can watch ample gameplay easily.