“Even worse, calling your crush and having to do the whole ‘Hi, is so and so there?’” —DOCKING_WITH_JESUS “And just assuming someone else in either house had another phone and was listening."—woahdude12321
“I am just thinking the mere fact that you couldn’t miss a show resulted in higher viewing numbers and, of course, higher ratings. Also the limited number of TV shows and that inconvenience meant more money to the TV people.” —brkh47
“As a third-grader, I was dying to see the Tiny Toon Adventures prom episode. I always missed it. I knew the order of episodes, and I knew if I missed it, it would take months to see it again. When it came back around, I usually had a doctor’s appointment or my parents needed the TV. Bullshit. I finally saw it years later in high school when I was home sick and Nickelodeon or whatever was running four episodes of Tiny Toons in the middle of the day. Of course by then I was in high school, so I didn’t give a shit and just saw it for completion’s sake, then went back to puking.” —StoolToad9
“Or you manage to get the timer set, and upon watching the show you discover that it was preempted by a breaking news story or weather report. Or started 10 minutes late due to a ball game running over.” —No_Information_8973
“And when you borrowed a movie from Blockbuster, there were always those stickers that would say: ‘Be kind — please rewind.’” —Mataurin-the-turtle “Just imagine the number of people who used to live on nice quiet streets until GPS routing became a thing, and suddenly they were on the before-unknown shortest path between two points.” —GaymerGuy79
“I remember spending a week downloading a 25 mb RealPlayer video of a single episode of Sailor Moon Stars in potato quality. Dial-up was the worst."—iglidante “First part: Trying to download a 30-second clip, but it keeps failing at 98%."—AstroINTJ “There were times in my childhood when my mom didn’t want to talk to someone and she would tell me or my sister to get on the internet, LOL."—Mataurin-the-turtle “I recently found out you weren’t meant to do that; apparently it puts moisture onto the little metal connectors on the inside and makes them less effective over time, making it harder to get the game to work, plus causing me to blow it more often."—Psychological_Pay_36 “But it was always so exciting to go pick up your pictures! It was an envelope of surprises! You totally forgot like one-third of the pictures in there. Then you go home and put them in a photo album. Good times.” —Noyoucanthaveone
“Finding a pay phone that worked.” —Henchforhire “I can still hear the sound of that machine…ka-chunk!"—Move_In_Waves “International long-distance phone calls that cost a week’s salary and sound like you’re talking through a speaking tube to the bottom of the ocean."—the2belo “Or when all else fails, going into a gas station and asking or just flagging down some guy on the street.” —moonbunnychan
“Theaters had phone hotlines in the ’90s you could call, but they were on a loop, so if you called in the middle of it you had to wait until it started over again!"—CJMyself “Ours wasn’t a loop; it was basically an answering machine that would start playing when you called. If someone else was on the line you’d get a busy signal. I remember calling that line all the time just as like, a form of entertainment. Not even intending to see a movie; I was just curious what was out since the recording also gave a brief synopsis of the movie. That would sound like insanity to a kid today, but there wasn’t a lot of stuff to do. Sometimes I’d also just call the number for the time and just let it play till it eventually disconnected.” —moonbunnychan
“And you had to do that a few times per day, because it would crash for no reason."—RenaKunisaki
“As much as I enjoy having movies available with the click of a button, I do kinda miss the anticipation of going to the video store."—PersonMcNugget “Friday night. You wander up and down the aisles, hoping for that gem. Then you hear an employee dump the drop bin! Think of all the new releases waiting to be re-shelved!!!” —Positive-Source8205
“I remember thinking, I wonder who started/invented this? And then thinking it wasn’t worth my time trying to find a way to look it up.” —obscureassassin “Also having no way to fact-check liars. ‘Hey, that secret code you told me about doesn’t work.’ ‘Yes, it does! You’re just not doing it right! My uncle works for Nintendo and gave me the code. It’s real!’ Reallll easy to solve that sort of standoff these days.” —God_Save_The_Tea
