People Are Sharing What Things Look Strange Now, But Were Completely Normal 20 Years Ago In This Viral Thread
There are no objective criteria that separate normal and abnormal. I mean, for some, eating dinner past 10 pm is totally fine, while for others, it’s all about putting cereal before adding the milk. Are you about to say that’s totally not okay? There you go. There is a yin and yang to any normalcy, and as long as we have people whose experiences are fully subjective, we will have both sides.
Except we’re talking the year 2000. When someone asked on r/AskReddit “What was normal in 2000, but strange in 2020?” it surely hit close to home for many. 41.1k upvotes later, the illuminating answers are in.
And on this one, we may once and for all come to an agreement on millennium things that look really heckin' odd today. Like saying dot com out loud ‘cause it felt like the cool thing to do, or burning a bunch of CDs, we've already started...
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2000: Your parents telling you not to believe everything you read on the internet.
2020: Your parents believing every post they see on Facebook.
Good parents are still telling to not believe everything you see on the internet.
Recording songs off the radio to make a personal mix tape. Always got annoyed at the DJ for talking over the end of the song
Buying a stack of blank Cd’s so you can make your own custom mixes
I have about 20-30 blank CD’s from over 5 years ago because USB’s came in and hold more memory. I don’t know what I should do with them coz I don’t know anyone who uses them these days.
2000, which feels like a whole eternity away, was one hell of a year. Do you remember the millennium bug, for example? It was supposedly going to cause global chaos, like planes falling out of the sky, missiles firing by accident, all simply because the dates on computers had to be reset at midnight on January 1, 2000.
Nothing happened and we’re still rolling in 2020. However, from how the world has been doing so far, it seems this time, we're gonna need some more luck.
Watching a show weekly at the same time to catch new episodes
Memorizing a phone number.
The same year was a golden age for retro mobile phones and marked the rise of the legendary Nokia 3310. Everyone at the time was either playing Snake on their phone, or Solitaire on the computer. We lived in the world of phone calls and SMS messages, and no one was frightened to death by a random call like we are now.
2000 was also the time when reality TV changed television for good. It was the year when Big Brother aired on screens, gaining worldwide popularity. According to Esquire, the allure of it was that “it could 'turn your life around.'” You could win £100,000 and leave your life behind while 10 million people would watch their idols on eviction nights.
Pay phones. If you see one now it’s like spotting a leprechaun, genie or unicorn and you ask it if it grants wishes
I remember 25 years ago getting on a plane and realized I forgot some important paperwork in the car. The flight attendant let me get off the plane and I ran through the terminal and out to the parking lot to my car to retrieve it. Then quickly ran back in, zipped past the security screener, out onto the tarmac and climbed up the stairs to the plane. It was a rather small airport so it took less than 5 minutes. But I doubt I’d be allowed to do that today.
Printing out your route from Mapquest before leaving the house
My parents still prefer to have print-outs in case the phone doesn't work properly. However, nowadays they get them from Google.
Telling people to call you back after 9pm bc that's when minutes are free
If it wasn't after 9 or on the weekend then it better have been an emergency. Amazing the day the started free mobile to mobile minutes if your friends had the same phone company.
Not freaking out when someone calls you out of nowhere
The ring on those phones were loud and obnoxious. If your house was quiet or your mind was in another place, the phone's sudden ring would scare you.
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I always did. Nowadays ar least I can see the caller's number and then decide not to answer :o
l took to giving my niece her own ring tone so that when she rang l knew who it was straight away and could decide whether l would answer or not...she can be a trifle annoying...
Load More Replies... Nothing's changed. My cellphone causes the same reaction. Any unexpected loud noise would make anyone jump.
My phone has the "fade-in" settings for ringtones and alarms. It starts quietly and gradually gets louder. It really prevents sudden noises and jumpscares.
Load More Replies... It's a rotary phone. I remember having a wall mounted one from the 70s. I was born in 88 so by the time I was a teenager my friends were starting to get the cool new phones that were see through (like the one Clarissa had in Clarissa explains it all). Meanwhile I was still using my wall mounted dinosaur to call people back after they 911"d my beeper. You use it by sticking your finger through the hole of the dial on top of the number you want and then slide your finger/turning the dial to the right until you reach the finger stop (the curved metal on the right). Then you remove your finger and it spins back to its original position. Then you do it again for the next number you want. Dialing and waiting over and over for each number for how ever long the dang thing takes. Ones like these aren't too horrible because at least you could carry it around a little bit after all the work dialing. If you got two long cords you could get some decent distance. Better than a wall mounted.
And it never made sense that the number you need to dial quickly and in an emergency was the one that look the longest (999 in England).
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This was old even in 2000. Mom was a girlscout leader back then and had a new batch of Brownies. They went to use her dial phone to call home to let their mom's know the meeting was over. (Yes, back then kid's didn't have cell phones.) The girls stuck their finger in the hole but didn't know what to do after that.
The bizarre relationship generation y (z?I can never remeber) has with actual phonecalls really astonishes me.
Every telemarketer, spam, and scam company didn't have access to your number then like they do now, and spoofing numbers was next to impossible. Back then, even if you weren't expecting a call, you could be fairly sure it was like someone you knew, something bill-related or appointment-related, or occasionally a telemarketer
my best phone call as a child. 11 am I am awakened by the phone. I run up sleepy, the male voice in the receiver asks why I am sleeping at this time. sleepy, explain myself and then the man asks if dad will come with an excavator. surprised I say no. the man rethinks and asks again if dad is an excavator operator. I answer NO. the man apologizes for the mistake and hangs up the phone. Da bum tss... and I went to sleep...
My son only lives an hour away and we see him 3-4 times a month but he's still a caller. My heart skips a beat every time. He's the only 27 year old I know that still prefers calling.
Ummm I never stopped doing this. I hate talking to people on the phone and really hate being the one to make the call.
Going to Blockbuster on Friday nights
Writing down an address or telephone number to store the information for later.
Smoking in bars. Hell, even going to bars
I remember the smoking sections in restaurants being a thing too. My uncle would do this take a puff, take a bite, then exhale the smoke from his nose while chewing. Usually with just a slide divider that could be rolled around to make the smoking or non smoking sections bigger depending on what their customers were mostly.
T9 texting
Every number had 3 or 4 letters for them. 4 letters for less used letters like 7 (pqrs) and 9 (wxyz). Space and # (pound sign) were on a button beside 0 and ?.! were normally on the other side of 0. 0 was often backspace. 1 (held down) was normally voicemail. Once you know what number the letter you want is assigned to, you press that number 1,2,3, or 4 times to pick the letter. So, "Hi Foxxy" would be 4 pressed twice, 4 pressed once, space, 3 pressed thrice, 6 pressed thrice, 9 pressed twice, 9 pressed twice, 9 pressed thrice. Waiting too long between pressing would automatically choose whatever letter you last were at before. Example if you want L and press 5 twice but not fast enough to get the last press in than it would pick K. If you wanted a new letter on a number you just used for a letter than you had to wait a second for it to register before pressing for a new letter or it may think you were still entering the last letter and then you accidentally go past your letter.
Saying that technology is useless. Or that you won’t always have a calculator in your pocket
No one could have imagined we would all have mini computers in our pocket
Having a school project to do and busting out the Encarta disk.
Smoking or non-smoking” was the first question you were asked when entering a sit-down restaurant.
Being pleased your new car had a CD player AND a tape deck.
Switching to channel 3 to play video games
Is this an American thing? We had to change the channel to AV to play video games.
Teen magazines (Tiger Beat, M, Mad…) that you could take posters out of and hang in your room
I was obsessed. I can still smell the smell of the grocery store isle, and fresh printed magazines as I ripped out the pages starring my crush.
Pretending the internet was not gonna be much. Saying "Oh yeah, when the internet runs the world?" Or something dismissive like that.
At one point if it was on social media, people said "But it's on social media, so it doesn't really matter."
People in 2020 lose careers over their posts on social media.
Waiting for the internet to connect. Yelling at someone in the house for being on the phone when you can’t connect.
I kept a folder of music lyrics that I ripped out of Dolly/Girlfriend magazines. Also loved reading the booklet inside the CD of all the lyrics.
Recording songs off the radio to make a personal mix tape. Always got annoyed at the DJ for talking over the end of the song.
di do di do do dit dooo.... ke ching CHING CHING Ching... crackle.... kre kre kre ......
I used paper maps to deliver pizza in 2001. I paid like $30 for a map book of my city so I can deliver fast and efficient plus not get lost.
When the apocalypse comes and there is no internet anymore, these will be worth gold.
Saying dot com at the end of everything because it was cool to do.
Frosted tips.
Note: this post originally had 38 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
it was kinda funny because a lot of them i still did and im only in high school
Me too. Born in 1986 and I can relate to everything on the list.
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It's faster to dial a number than to go through my contacts to find it.
Hell, I remember buying ALBUMS! You'd run home from the record store, put it on, and sit there reading every word on the album cover/inserts. Double albums! Spread the cover out and hold close to check out the art. And of course, album covers were the best for cleaning your herb and rolling a joint!
it was kinda funny because a lot of them i still did and im only in high school
Me too. Born in 1986 and I can relate to everything on the list.
Load More Replies... It's faster to dial a number than to go through my contacts to find it.
Hell, I remember buying ALBUMS! You'd run home from the record store, put it on, and sit there reading every word on the album cover/inserts. Double albums! Spread the cover out and hold close to check out the art. And of course, album covers were the best for cleaning your herb and rolling a joint!
