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30 Currently Non-Existent Things That Were Part Of Some People’s Childhoods, As Shared Online
One could think that there is “nothing new under the sun”, referring to some important things that stay the same or change very slowly, yet it would be a mistake to underestimate the effect various, even seemingly minor, alterations have in shaping the human world. These people have demonstrated that a single person lives long enough to witness some quite significant changes by answering one Redditor’s question: “What existed when you were a child that doesn’t exist now?”
Do you remember something from your childhood years that no longer exists or is now rare? Please, share your thoughts in the comments!
More info: Reddit
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Freedom.
Starting around age 10 to around age 14, when I got back from school, nobody knew where I was until dinner, and nobody cared. The only rule was be home before dinner which was about 7:00 PM.
I would just hit my bike, join up with the knot hole gang in the neighborhood, and we would just ride all over the place and go where we wanted and do what we wanted.
Basically, we were the kids from Stranger Things, albeit with a lot less paranormal activity.
No cell phones, not even any pagers.
I'm 46 so this was some 35 years ago.
Seems like it could be 350 years ago now.
Now you almost never see a kid riding anywhere on his bike, and nobody knows their neighbors.
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#2
The freedom to be a kid without being influenced by the internet and having your worst moments immortalised on it.
PhaseWitFact 2 years ago
Having your worst moments immortalized on the Internet is horrible for kids. Worse yet is having an influencer for a parent.
#3
Actual toy prizes in cereal boxes
#4
A paper TV Guide that you used to find out when TV shows were going to be aired. Usually it came in the Sunday newspaper. Also newspapers.
#5
Taking pictures with film cameras and waiting for them to get developed until you could see how bad you looked lol
LizzieBoredom 2 years ago (edited)
Cost to develop 5 rolls of film left rolling around in the junk drawer since 1982: Priceless.
#6
9 planets
The solar system used to have 9 planets, but now only has 8. <...> Pluto was just reclassified as a dwarf planet, and we always had dozens of dwarf planets like Ceres and Make-Make.
Iampepeu said:
I know it's silly, but we all sort of collectively love and care for Pluto.
Marcellus II 2 years ago
It's Eris' fault. Her discoverers pushed for her to be a planet "Just like Pluto" because she's larger; so that made everybody take a step back and realize Pluto is just one in a whole class of between 10 and 150 "large asteroids", now gathered as the TNOs (further-than-Neptune-objects).
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Bouche and Audi and Shyla, Oh My! 2 years ago
The new definition of a planet is that it has to be spherical (sorry, flat-earthers) and a clear orbit. Pluto was demoted for being too small to ride the big planet roller coaster. BUT Pluto has four moons. Heck, Earth only has one! Pluto has been hanging out with his buds, orbiting the star he can barely see or feel, just minding his own business for all these millions or billions of years. I say that if he's been doing it all this time, he counts as a planet. He hasn't fallen off the roller coaster, so let him ride!
UpQuarkDownQuark (he/hey you) 2 years ago
It wasn’t demoted, it was reclassified. Peter Dinklage is a dwarf, and he and Pluto have one other thing in common: they’re both still f*cking awesome.
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The Darkest Timeline 2 years ago
What possible difference could it make to your life if Pluto is a planet or not? The obsession some people have with inconsequential stuff is mind-numbing.
BrownTabby 2 years ago
The extent of people’s hatred of change is a little disturbing and the fact that people are framing it as some kind of gesture of kindness is even more so.
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Tucker Cahooter 2 years ago
"My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets". Now how are we supposed to remember them?
Definitely a Human 2 years ago
Incorrect. I couldn't care less that Pluto is classified differently. That's just how science works. Deal with it.
BrownTabby 2 years ago
Same. I’ve been called too sensitive in my life but I never got offended by scientists reclassifying a celestial body based on scientific criteria.
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Noyfb noyfb 2 years ago
Many, many people’s understanding of science is JUST like the beliefs they started forming in Sunday school — fixed, dogmatic, unchangeable, dearly held as the final word. Those old “science” beliefs came from parents, teachers or fictional works, and when the student moved on in life, her brain remained frozen in the old timeless truths. Pluto as a planet, Neanderthals as brutish cave men, extraterrestrials as secretive abductors, etc etc etc. Too bad they didn’t also learn early on that scientific knowledge is so powerful because it’s always subject to revision, even major revision. Guess they weren’t hearing that in Sunday school either.
BrownTabby 2 years ago
The fact that people who agree with the OP are overwhelmingly being upvoted on such an anti-religion website confirms everything I have said about how we atheists are guilty of all the same character flaws as the religious.
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Melissa Robinson 2 years ago
It's c**p. It's like all of a sudden saying Dopey be can't be a dwarf anymore because he doesn't have a beard........
UpQuarkDownQuark (he/hey you) 2 years ago
In 1801 Ceres was discovered and declared a planet. In 1851, it was reclassified as an asteroid. When Pluto was discovered in 1930, it was assumed to be at least as large as the inner rocky planets, and to have a more standard orbit. If Pluto was discovered today, it would never have been called a planet in the first place. You’ve all heard it before, but I’ll say it again—we either have 20+ planets, or we have 8. It’s fine to disagree with the International Astronomers Union specific criteria, but the “it was a planet when I learned it in elementary school!” argument is childish. There were all kinds of things that I learned in 1976 that simply don’t apply today, and Pluto’s planethood is just one of them.
Michael Largey 2 years ago
I'm surprised that there isn't a conspiracy theory connected to this. "Biden made Pluto disappear because that's where Hunter's laptop is hidden!"
#8
Card catalogs at the library.
#9
Affordable housing
Laura Williams 2 years ago
Thank you airb&b. The people who buy. Houses for side hustle. Displacèin
#10
Playing outdoors without supervision and just returning home once the sun sets
#11
Saturday morning cartoons or weekly morning cartoons.
#12
An expectation of being unreachable sometimes. I went to school, and my mom couldn't reach me all the time. She lived. I didn't feel like picking up the phone, no one cared.
No 'Read' messages unanswered causing drama.
Being able to be 'Unplugged' and not getting s**t for it.
Being able to read a physical map and navigate that way.
#13
A sense of optimism for the future.
#15
Phone booths
#16
Privacy. Back in the day, the only way someone could know what I was up to was if they physically followed me. Now, my smartphone does that for them
LizzieBoredom 2 years ago
George Orwell predicted Big Brother would surveille citizens 24/7. As it turns out, citizens surveille themselves 24/7.
#18
Yugoslavia
Der Kommissar 2 years ago
Rhodesia. I am wondering if they now call those dogs Zimbabwean Ridgebacks
#19
Typewriters
LizzieBoredom 2 years ago
And White-Out ( which was invented by Monkee Michael Nesmith's Mom).
#20
Blockbuster
#21
The high beam switch in your car was on the floor by your left foot.
#22
Kmart Blue light specials. JC Pennies was upscale for us, and don't even talk about Macy's where the 1%ers shop. For you youngin's, a blue light special was they'd roll a cart with a blue police light on a pole, then announce some that an item was on sale over the speakers. It was like a IRL pop up ad. Those are some fond memories. And also all the racist joke books they'd happily sell an 8 year old. I was an adult before I realized the horrible stuff I read.
#23
McDonald’s ashtrays
PhaseWitFact 2 years ago (edited)
So gross. People used to smoke in restaurants. Some restaurants had smoking and non smoking sections. If you went to a buffet then the smoking section was closest to the food. 🤢 There were no good old days.
#24
Woolworths
Note: I'm referring to the business in the UK that dissolved in 2008.
#26
TVs with a fine tuning dial and were part of a huge wooden console.
#27
Cameras that had rolled up film which needed to be developed.
Laura Williams 2 years ago
I liked the negatives but I didn't like not knowing if the picture was a good one.
#28
Restaurant smoking sections
Der Kommissar 2 years ago
Airplane smoking section. You're out of luck if you were one row behind it and you didn't smoke. '
#29
# Dialup Connection Screeching Intensifies
Sans Serif 2 years ago
I miss the sound, the anticipation and the satisfaction when it went silent on connection...
#30
Cigarette machines.
LizzieBoredom 2 years ago (edited)
Another name for this 'Cigerette Acquisition Appliance for Underage Reform School Applicants'.
#32
Party lines. Local five digit calling. Rotary phone service.
#34
KB Toys
Laura Williams 2 years ago
I was a Toy's R Us kid. A huge store with only toys. I didn't even care if I got a toy just looking was fun.
#36
The twin towers
Multi colored ketchup
#37
Pizza Hut buffet
#38
Where do I start? Typing/shorthand class long distance charges Fast food branded ashtrays Adult free camping trips 29 cent hamburgers Cigarette machines
#39
Those coin-operated rides outside grocery stores and k-marts. They basically gave you a mild jostling for about a minute.
Edit: Glad to hear these are still teaching children the meaning of “anticlimactic” in various locations around the globe, though I never see them anymore in my corner of the US. My personal favorites were the ones at McDonald’s. I indistinctly remember one with a head shaped like a hamburger. Though I could be mixing these up with the McDonald Land characters that were various pieces of playground equipment when I was a kid.
#40
POCKET CRITTERS & POLLY POCKETS
Sans Serif 2 years ago
As a dad with two girls, stray Polly Pockets were even worse than stepping on Lego pieces...
#41
Leaded gasoline.
LizzieBoredom 2 years ago
Turning in glass coke bottles because $.50 would buy enough gas for my VW Bug to make it to the beach and back.
What do you think ?
PFD 2 years ago
Routine, socially accepted sexual assault - just to balance out the nostalgia. My older sister and I were talking about automatic massage chairs, and she said she hates them because their invasive prodding and grabbing is what it felt like being a young woman on the bus in the 1970s.
PolymathNecromancer 2 years ago
This is why I will always try to remanifest things in the present, but NEVER GO BACK
Load More Replies... Sky Render 2 years ago
Hand-drawn animated movies showing in mainstream cinemas! With the advent of CGI, this has gotten rarer and rarer outside of Japan (and even in Japan the hand-drawn stuff gets supplemented quite a bit with CGI). Used to be that every summer or fall a new Disney animated movie would hit the screens, all done in glorious pre-CGI animation.
Mike F 2 years ago
The whole movie experience. It was a whole day's outing, going to the movie theater. I've said this before, for 35¢ we got a cartoon and 1-2 movies (depended on the movie) and a box of popcorn. It was quite a bike ride to get there, but it was a great time.
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Sergio Bicerra 2 years ago
Only 4 tv stations. And gathering on sunday night around the TV for the weekly movie.
Susie Elle 2 years ago
I miss the excitement I felt everytime I stepped into the toystore as a kid, usually it was to just look around, but it was like a themepark
Jared Robinson 2 years ago
A childhood park near me I spent a lot of time at recently got destroyed in favor of an apartment complex.
David Paterson 2 years ago
Plenty of playgrounds still around. But wooden and steel ones have mostly vanished.
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Lydsylou (she/her) 2 years ago
People having good mental health. I read somewhere (idk if it's actually true) that a scientific study on the average stress levels of a teenager today are higher than those shown in a study on the stress levels of 1978 mental asylum patients
Apatheist Account2 2 years ago
Pretty sure the mental health of young men took a dive in 1914-18 and 1939-45.
Load More Replies... SuperChicken 2 years ago
This is a great post. It's nostalgic and brings out the kid in a lot of us, reminiscing.
PFD 2 years ago
Routine, socially accepted sexual assault - just to balance out the nostalgia. My older sister and I were talking about automatic massage chairs, and she said she hates them because their invasive prodding and grabbing is what it felt like being a young woman on the bus in the 1970s.
PolymathNecromancer 2 years ago
This is why I will always try to remanifest things in the present, but NEVER GO BACK
Load More Replies... Sky Render 2 years ago
Hand-drawn animated movies showing in mainstream cinemas! With the advent of CGI, this has gotten rarer and rarer outside of Japan (and even in Japan the hand-drawn stuff gets supplemented quite a bit with CGI). Used to be that every summer or fall a new Disney animated movie would hit the screens, all done in glorious pre-CGI animation.
Mike F 2 years ago
The whole movie experience. It was a whole day's outing, going to the movie theater. I've said this before, for 35¢ we got a cartoon and 1-2 movies (depended on the movie) and a box of popcorn. It was quite a bike ride to get there, but it was a great time.
Load More Replies... Sergio Bicerra 2 years ago
Only 4 tv stations. And gathering on sunday night around the TV for the weekly movie.
Susie Elle 2 years ago
I miss the excitement I felt everytime I stepped into the toystore as a kid, usually it was to just look around, but it was like a themepark
Jared Robinson 2 years ago
A childhood park near me I spent a lot of time at recently got destroyed in favor of an apartment complex.
David Paterson 2 years ago
Plenty of playgrounds still around. But wooden and steel ones have mostly vanished.
Load More Replies... Lydsylou (she/her) 2 years ago
People having good mental health. I read somewhere (idk if it's actually true) that a scientific study on the average stress levels of a teenager today are higher than those shown in a study on the stress levels of 1978 mental asylum patients
Apatheist Account2 2 years ago
Pretty sure the mental health of young men took a dive in 1914-18 and 1939-45.
Load More Replies... SuperChicken 2 years ago
This is a great post. It's nostalgic and brings out the kid in a lot of us, reminiscing.
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