How boring was life before internet and social media became big?

Life was more exciting for most kids before the Internet.

You had dorks with no friends that had it bad back in the day, but most kids grew up with endless memories of cool shit they did. Bike wrecks, the big fight, parties, getting laid etc.

My nephew is 20, and he's done nothing but play video games his entire life. When he looks back, his childhood will be that one time he beat some game. He won't have memories of getting his truck stuck mudding on the mountain with his best friends or that time he took acid and tripped balls while camping with his crew. His life seems so meaningless compared to his dad's, or his Grandnpa's.
 
Bos Docken said:
Movies were also a real social thing. We'd get together and go to the video store and rent 3 tapes, order pizza and sneak beer and watch until super late.

No internet, so no research. Our movie choices were always based on the box cover, monsters and chicks. Had to be R-rated so we would be guaranteed boobs. So many B-movie memories. Galaxy of Terror, this giant slimy thing banged a chick to death, we were laughing our asses off.

Can never forget the time my buddy insisted we rent Reservoir Dogs because he thought the box cover looked cool with the two-gun faceoff. The rest of us were skeptical but then we were glued to the movie. My first Tarantino experience

Going to the theaters was also a big thing. We lied about our ages and got into Total Recall. It seemed like the greatest movie ever made. On the drive home we were proclaiming Arnold Schwarzenegger to be the best movie star of all time.
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Total Recal was just a killer fucking flick. Left the theater blown away.

See you at the party Rictor!

It didn't age as well as other Arnold movies like Conan, Predator, or the Terminator though.
 
freakroor said:
It was kind of boring but not as boring as it is now. As young men circa the year 2000 we just mostly hung out and drank / smoked weed, hustled , watched TV, and tried to get laid. Some guys rode skateboards , some played sports. Sometimes there were house parties. We went to the movies, went on road trips, camped out in the woods or went to the beach on the weekends. Lots of fights and breaking stuff. Lots of drugs and alcohol.

3-way calling was the original social network.
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Party lines were the original social networks. Early phone systems had several homes on each line. When you wanted to call someone, you contacted the operator who would switch you to the proper line and use the proper ring for the location on that line. Ring tones were usually a series of long and short rings like one long and one short, two longs, two short, one long 2 short, two longs one short, etc Whatever the sequence, the phone rang at every phone on that line. Even though the call wasn't for them, many would pick up and listen in on the calls.
 
I recall going to festivals before mobile phones were commonplace, if you lost a mate you may not see em again ha ha! One music festival we lost our mate who had all the weed, he just got stoned by himself all day!
 
It was pretty fucking awesome. Loading the boys up on Fridays and Saturdays nights and driving to find parties, some nights were a bust, other nights we would end up at a massive shaker, but ever night was a blast.

And every young man pre internet and cell phones remembers those nights with a new girl, just the two of you, no distractions, no one knew where you were or what you were up too. Damn I miss the 90s/00s.
 
People got by just fine before social media. Humans actually socialized and went out and did fun shit.
 
Porn woes! These days you can watch porn anytime. Being a teen in the 90s i had wait until my dad left. Sneak around and find it hoping he didnt move it to another spot. Bust a nut to some story filled 70s porn. Kay parker, seka, honey wilder etc. Rewind it to the exact spot and place the vhs tape back to where it was. The anxiety of waiting for days to watch porn was intense.
 
It was actually more exciting we were more active as people and we could do things without being cancelled on the internet and having our lives ruined. The only part that sucked baout no smart phones was finding addresses we had to learn to use a thomas guide and those werent always up to date. Traveling to mexico was also a pain in the ass as nothing there was mapped out outside of metro areas.
 
babyjay said:
Porn woes! These days you can watch porn anytime. Being a teen in the 90s i had wait until my dad left. Sneak around and find it hoping he didnt move it to another spot. Bust a nut to some story filled 70s porn. Kay parker, seka, honey wilder etc. Rewind it to the exact spot and place the vhs tape back to where it was. The anxiety of waiting for days to watch porn was intense.
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i remember the swapmeet porn guy making a fortune selling vhs he would copy from the original porn tapes he would sell them for 40 to 60 bucks each each porno was also 4 hrs long and grainy.
 
Jesus X said:
It was actually more exciting we were more active as people and we could do things without being cancelled on the internet and having our lives ruined. The only part that sucked baout no smart phones was finding addresses we had to learn to use a thomas guide and those werent always up to date. Traveling to mexico was also a pain in the ass as nothing there was mapped out outside of metro areas.
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Thomas Guide? AAA map all the way man. They were great.
 
rj144 said:
Thomas Guide? AAA map all the way man. They were great.
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I have never seen one of those. In the 90s every one had thomas guides laying around all over they were actually more useful than mapquest was in the early 2000s.
 
Didn’t have to worry about someone filming you when out and about hammered, thank god.
 
RentPayer said:
I'm 42 years old and I didn't have high speed internet until I was around 20 years old, back in 2000. Growing up without the internet and social media in the 90s was a blessing. We rode bikes around town with our friends, we hung out at the mall, we communicated face to face. We had mini adventures all day long well into my late teenage years. Plus, our attention spans were longer and the simpler things gave us happiness. And it wasn't the internet that was our real downfall as much as it was smart phones and social media; and it began with the iPhone coming out in 2007, and then when Facebook and Twitter created their smartphone apps, it changed our society for the worse, forever.
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44 year old crew checking in and this post is fantastic. Life is way more boring now, and of course part of that is b/c I'm older and not a teenager or in my 20s anymore, which were fun times.

Even kids now who have the smart phones and Internet get so bored so easily b/c they don't know how to interact or use their imaginations. They have every bit of entertainment just fed to them instantly. It's sad.
 
Gracious Warrior said:
I've been wondering about this lately. Pretty much my entire adult life and teenage years happened when the internet was big and then social media came along and made it bigger. I'm not so young that I don't remember a time without the net and SM, but it's a little foggy. I was very young. I guess during that time I played outside with friends, watched lots of cartoons, and played the occasional video game. My life then would seem depressingly boring to the average kid today who has endless options of entertainment.

I guess I'm more interested in what was life like for young adults before the net came. Like people 18-25. How did these people manage to have any fun and really enjoy life? I guess you always had bars and night life, but what about during the day and weekends and other times? Like it's just hard for me to imagine how young adults weren't bored before Internet and social media blew up.
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It was actually fun and exciting. We actually did real things spontaneously and used our imagination a lot. We seen the world from a different lense. A natural one.

I pity present and future generations.
 
I miss the gas prices before the age of social media.
 
Gracious Warrior said:
I've been wondering about this lately. Pretty much my entire adult life and teenage years happened when the internet was big and then social media came along and made it bigger. I'm not so young that I don't remember a time without the net and SM, but it's a little foggy. I was very young. I guess during that time I played outside with friends, watched lots of cartoons, and played the occasional video game. My life then would seem depressingly boring to the average kid today who has endless options of entertainment.

I guess I'm more interested in what was life like for young adults before the net came. Like people 18-25. How did these people manage to have any fun and really enjoy life? I guess you always had bars and night life, but what about during the day and weekends and other times? Like it's just hard for me to imagine how young adults weren't bored before Internet and social media blew up.
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It wasn't boring at all actually.
We just did shit instead of hanging out on the internet which a massive time suck.
 
TankAbbott4Eva said:
I recall going to festivals before mobile phones were commonplace, if you lost a mate you may not see em again ha ha! One music festival we lost our mate who had all the weed, he just got stoned by himself all day!
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Great example... getting lost at a festival or concert always resulted in an amazing night.
 
TeTe said:
It funny, it's almost as if a lot of the social issues that happen in our society don't actually exist when you don't use social media. Or they do and it's easy to not care when everyone's stupid opinion is put at the forefront of the internet when you don't go on sites like Twitter or Facebook. It's a race to the bottom when everyone can hide behind a computer screen instead of getting out into the real world and communicating face to face.
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Back then we also faced the consequences of our shit talking we couldn't be trolling people in real life like a coward behind a computer. you saw them face to face and either brought that same energy or didn't talk shit or else you might get beat up or have to beat someone up.
 
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