# Things from the pre-widespread Internet era that you're nostalgic for **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 7, 2010, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420 "2010-10-07T22:43:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![mack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mack)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420/21 "2010-10-08T17:36:31Z")
> [@twickster](#): > > I miss reference books. Big, fat books filled with facts. I used to be really good at finding the information I needed in them. It was a skill, people. Yeah, and the encyclopedia set. Pull out any letter, start flipping through, go on a little journey. It was pre-internet info-surfing. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420/22 "2010-10-08T17:40:16Z")
I don’t miss anything. The only thing I hate about today’s society is cell phones. Get rid of them and I’d be in paradise 😃 ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420/23 "2010-10-08T17:50:29Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > Nowadays my well-travelled colleagues and I get to have “Who’s Been To The Most Exotic Place?” discussions over lunch and people casually mention visiting places like Vanuatu or Singapore or Bali or Hawaii in much the same way they’d mention that they ducked down to Sydney or Melbourne last week to see a relative. Is this not a function of rising affluence (on your part personally and generally amongst lots of people) and cheaper airfares as much as the internet? When I was a teenager I went to NYC with my brother, it was an adventure because prior to that all my holidays had been with my parents, and only one or two had been abroad. Since then I and most of my friends have ratchetted up numerous destinations. I know within Europe at least, RyanAir et al have made visiting more countries cheaper and easier than ever before. ---
**Author:** ![FordTaurusSHO94](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f07891/32.png) [@FordTaurusSHO94](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FordTaurusSHO94)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420/24 "2010-10-08T18:53:31Z")
As far as the US goes, different places used to have different feels to them, even in the 90’s. Now, most places feel the same. You see all the same chains of restaurants and stores in just about every town or city. I don’t really even notice different accents anymore unless they are very extreme. ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420/25 "2010-10-08T19:15:09Z")
I’m 30, which is old enough to remember LPs, mixtapes, card catalogues, travel agents, encyclopedias, books forever lost once your library’s copy fell apart, rare songs, comics pages, the evening news, eating dinner in front of the TV so I wouldn’t miss my favorite show, the heartache of lost snapshots, and catalogue mail order–including the kind that you had to go to the nearest Sears to claim, and navigate the labyrinth of little cubbies full of other people’s packages. I honestly don’t miss any of it, and thank god every day for the internet. Sorry, folks. ---
**Author:** ![Registered\_at\_Last](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bc79bd/32.png) [@Registered\_at\_Last](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Registered_at_Last)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420/26 "2010-10-08T19:17:36Z")
Postcards. The thrill of a postcard from a friend visiting a far away land is just so much better than an email sent from a foreign land (but even that is better than a facebook update) ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420/27 "2010-10-08T19:20:39Z")
Ohhhhhh wait, smartass me thought of something. Keeping in touch via hand-written letters. I’ve somehow ended up with about a dozen boxes of stationery and nobody to write to. ---
**Author:** ![Skammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skammer/32/143_2.png) [@Skammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skammer)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420/28 "2010-10-08T19:24:32Z")
I miss being surprised by television shows. Not only not being spoiled about a plotline, but not knowing about major cast changes or plot points in advance (with rare exceptions). ---
**Author:** ![descamisado](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e480ec/32.png) [@descamisado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/descamisado)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420/29 "2010-10-08T19:26:56Z")
> [@Registered\_at\_Last](#): > > Postcards. > > The thrill of a postcard from a friend visiting a far away land is just so much better than an email sent from a foreign land (but even that is better than a facebook update) I feel the same way about letter writing in general. I never wrote great letters but up until my first couple of years of college, I loved writing and receiving them. That practice was already dying out, but now, with email, IM, Facebook updates, etc., that’s gone. (Didn’t see **Sattua** ’s post before) > [@Gestalt](#): > > **descamisado** , along those lines, I kind of think I was, in a way, better informed when I got all my news from Tom Brokaw and the local news guys. I think the available amount of information now is so overwhelming, and what it takes to be considered “informed,” requires so much more that my lazy-ass brain just gives up. I agree. I don’t know if it was necessarily better that news, by necessity, was filtered in through limited sources but I could digest it more easily. Now, although the Net is partially what helped awaken me politically, I find myself constantly “twisting and shouting” as bits of data constantly barrage me from left and right (;)). ---
**Author:** ![gallows\_fodder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8c91f0/32.png) [@gallows\_fodder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gallows_fodder)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420/30 "2010-10-08T23:14:23Z")
> [@Caricci](#): > > There’s only one thing I can really think of: the rarity of hearing certain songs. The elusiveness of hearing a song that didn’t get a lot of play, by an artist you would otherwise not care to hear was special. Now you can go on YouTube or buy it on iTunes and hear the song all you want and it’s not such a treat anymore. Same thing with a song you heard and loved but didn’t know the title or artist. Now you can just google the lyrics to find that info, but I remember hanging onto tapes I had made off the radio for years because they had that _one song_ I was dying to identify and couldn’t. I remember staying up really late in the summertime to watch “120 Minutes” on MTV (Sundays, 12-2 am) because that was the one of the only ways to learn about interesting new music. The other resource was a weekly radio show (IIRC Wednesdays, 11 pm - 1 am) on an otherwise classic rock station (WMMR in Philly; the show was called “Planet M” with Matt Cord, loved that guy) that I would record on my tape deck and keep my parents from catching me by turning the volume all the way down and praying that I didn’t sleep through the sound of Side A on the cassette tape clicking off when it ran out. Back in my day, we had to work to hear new music! Or you would read about a band in a zine or something and have a serious debate with yourself whether it was worth dropping $15 to buy their album sound-unheard just on the basis of a good review. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2010, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420/31 "2010-10-08T23:20:25Z")
The ability to get away from the fucking JOB ! :mad: A-hem. Excuse me. 😉 And it’s not just the internet, but cellphones too that has led to this. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2010, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420/32 "2010-10-09T00:04:30Z")
I miss the full time Record Shops that had knowledge employees. You could go in and ask for suggestions about a good, new Rock band. Best of all, they’d put the record on the store player and let you hear some of it for yourself. 😉 Try going to Camelot Music and asking for that kind of music advice. Especially if it’s a niche area like classic rock, jazz or whatever. Amazon’s “suggestions” for related music are sometimes very helpful. But, I’d still prefer the old Record Shops. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2010, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420/33 "2010-10-09T00:37:40Z")
> [@Sattua](#): > > Keeping in touch via hand-written letters. I’ve somehow ended up with about a dozen boxes of stationery and nobody to write to. I don’t personally miss this, even though I had a very enjoyable youth writing to pen-friends across the world; I am very excited by the instant social contact of the internet. But I am disappointed that new generations will never experience it the way I did. > [@Skammer](#): > > I miss being surprised by television shows. Not only not being spoiled about a plotline, but not knowing about major cast changes or plot points in advance (with rare exceptions). Me too. I am in a situation where I almost have to download TV shows instead of waiting months for local broadcast, just so I can avoid spoilers (as well as participate in threads discussing them). ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2010, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420/34 "2010-10-09T00:55:32Z")
I don’t miss the “good ol’ days.” The Good Ol’ Days were terrible. Long may they live. ---
**Author:** ![Kansas\_Beekeeper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c37758/32.png) [@Kansas\_Beekeeper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kansas_Beekeeper)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2010, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420/35 "2010-10-09T01:27:48Z")
Vacations before Wifi and cell phones. I like to camp in remote areas. I put in for vacation and my boss, after his hissy fit over me being gone for a week or two week (once a year), says something like “well, we’ll email or call if we need you.” Then he simply doesn’t believe me when I tell him that won’t be possible most of the time. ---
**Author:** ![Postariti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Postariti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Postariti)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2010, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420/36 "2010-10-09T04:46:46Z")
I love downloading music. I love having access to nearly any song I want. But I do miss used record stores. I used to hunt down used record stores in every town I visited. The thrill of finding some odd remix or bonus track I’d never heard of was wonderful. Of course record stores also had posters, pins, bumper stickers, fancy gatefold LPs, colored vinyl records, and even calendars. I don’t think being a fan is nearly as “stuff” oriented these days, because there’s no where to buy the stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2010, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420/37 "2010-10-09T05:39:19Z")
Having spare time. Because the internet has definitely eliminated that from my life. ---
**Author:** ![Shamozzle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shamozzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shamozzle)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2010, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420/38 "2010-10-09T07:35:20Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > > [@Shamozzle](#): > > > > Travel seemed much more exotic before the internet. > > > > There was no email, no planet-spanning internet chat with those back home, no on-demand video clips of any given exotic location, no Google Earth where you can zoom in on any given location and view any number of photos of said location, and no travel forums where you can read 500 threads detailing the travel exploits of those who have already been to the places you dream of… > > > > The sense that some place was “distant” was far stronger and you could still pretend that you were an explorer, that you were discovering something for the first time… It is much more difficult to do that now. > > Agreed. Going overseas (especially to somewhere “Exotic” or “Far Away”) really meant something and was worth some sort of status (and maybe even some free drinks!) amongst your friends. I spent a couple of months in the UK in the late 1990s and that was worth some serious credibility when I got home, not to mention making me the de facto International Expert amongst the group. Even trying to contact home from the UK (and we’re talking the late 1990s here, so not that long ago) involved complicated and expensive long-distance calls (from a fixed-line phone) and it sounded like the person on the other end was on Mars, with a noticeable delay between you speaking and them receiving your words and being able to compose a reply. > > It was just sort of _expected_ that if you were going to be gone for any length of time less that you’d be out of contact beyond the odd postcard and maybe one or two brief phone calls to reassure the family that you hadn’t fallen into the Thames and been swept out to sea or anything like that. Totally unlike nowadays, of course, where you can send text and picture messages from your cellphone with no hassle at all whenever you like. > > Nowadays my well-travelled colleagues and I get to have “Who’s Been To The Most Exotic Place?” discussions over lunch and people casually mention visiting places like Vanuatu or Singapore or Bali or Hawaii in much the same way they’d mention that they ducked down to Sydney or Melbourne last week to see a relative. > > Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact airfares are so affordable nowadays, but I do sometimes miss the feeling of being a sort of latter day Sir Richard Burton and having people be genuinely interested in your travel stories because it wasn’t likely they’d be going there anytime soon. 😛 Amen. Oh, and something I completely forgot: Google Street View. Google-Freaking-Street View. Now don’t get me wrong. I think it’s totally amazing and I’m more than happy that it exists. I mean, you are basically _there_, wandering around. All you’re missing is the occasional waft of sewer gas from a manhole cover. And can you imagine if, only 10 years ago, you had said, “Yea, in 10 years we are going to have this thing called 'Street View” and it’s going to work like this: blah, blah, blah…". They would have ruptured their spleens from laughing so hard. And then when they had collected themselves they would have punched us in the nose for wasting the calories burned in vibrating our vocal chords in spewing such drivel. And yet, here we are… So, yea. Google Street View. It’s mind-boggling alright, but quite the dream killer. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2010, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420/39 "2010-10-09T07:52:02Z")
> [@An\_Gadai](#): > > Is this not a function of rising affluence (on your part personally and generally amongst lots of people) and cheaper airfares as much as the internet? When I was a teenager I went to NYC with my brother, it was an adventure because prior to that all my holidays had been with my parents, and only one or two had been abroad. Since then I and most of my friends have ratchetted up numerous destinations. I know within Europe at least, RyanAir et al have made visiting more countries cheaper and easier than ever before. I think it’s a combination of both. I mean, back in the late '90s, booking an overseas trip was a fairly complicated procedure that involved travel agents, trying to work out the best times to travel, organising hotels (or staying with relatives), all done via snail-mail, maybe fax if you were lucky, or expensive phone calls. It’s not like nowadays where you can jump on the airline’s website and book your flights, whilst checking out [wotif.com](http://wotif.com) to sort your accommodation, and sending of an e-mail to your cousin in Paris to let them know you’ll be in town Tuesday after next if they want to catch up. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2010, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420/40 "2010-10-09T08:04:26Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > Even trying to contact home from the UK (and we’re talking the late 1990s here, so not that long ago) involved complicated and expensive long-distance calls (from a fixed-line phone) and it sounded like the person on the other end was on Mars, with a noticeable delay between you speaking and them receiving your words and being able to compose a reply. I backpacked around China in 1995 with my then-girlfriend, and we placed a long-distance call to her parents, because my parents were visiting them. We had to book the call in advance, about three or four hours beforehand, then return to make it. It was touch and go if they’d be in to pick up the call. No voicemail so if they weren’t there we’d have had to book another call and return the next day to try again. We stood in a draughty booth and these reedy crackly voices came up the line after very long pauses. It was quite an eerie experience, and it felt weird actually to be _talking_ to people so far removed. Other than that, to communicate less expensively we would create long handwritten missives on air mail paper, one at a time per recipient and no cut-and-paste, and in return we used the Poste Restante system: friends and family would vaguely know what city we would be in and when, and write long letters to us c/o the city’s post office, that we’d pick up. I remember my delight at finding 16 letters from friends waiting for me when I arrived in Bangkok after China, and taking a day or two to savour reading them. Now, 16 emails? Not quite so exciting. The other aspect is the relative lack of worry from our families: they didn’t expect us to be in contact for several weeks at a time. Now if you are off somewhere exotic and go silent on email, Facebook or SMS for two or three days, people assume that something nasty has happened. I’m off to Bangladesh on a boys’ adventure holiday in a couple of weeks and my girlfriend, who will be in central America at the time, has made me promise to buy a local SIM card so she can be sure I’m OK (and she’s doing the same, so vice versa, which will be better for my peace of mind too). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-from-the-pre-widespread-internet-era-that-youre-nostalgic-for/556420.md?page=3)