# Things you're suprised under-30s don't recognize **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 26, 2010, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101 "2010-07-26T21:06:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**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:** [July 28, 2010, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101/161 "2010-07-28T10:01:39Z")
> [@Jeff\_Lichtman](#): > > This thread seems to have drifted from the original topic to things we don’t expect under-30s to recognize. > > Other things that I wouldn’t expect the under-30 crowd to know about: > > [ul] > [li]TV test patterns[/li][li]Door-to-door milk delivery[/li][li]PCs without hard drives[/li][li]Mimeographs[/li][li]Mechanical adding machines[/li][li]Reel-to-reel audio tape[/li][/ul] I’m in Ireland and 28 and we had tv test patterns. We still have door-to-door milk delivery. I had an Amstrad CPC and most of my age group had Commodore 64s, PCs without hard drives. I know what a mimeograph is but have never seen one. I think my mother had a mechanical adding machine, I’ve seen them before. My dad recorded various reel-to-reel tapes in the '50s/'60s that we still have. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101/162 "2010-07-28T10:22:15Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > [Quote=Candyman74] > I did a course last year which was flled with 18-year olds. I am 36… Hardly any knew what a “Ghostbuster” was. I’m surprised by that, because they sell [Ghostbuster t-shirts](http://www2.jcpenney.com/jcp/X6.aspx?GrpTyp=PRD&ItemID=182da72) in the teen boys section at J.C. Penney. I saw them there just yesterday. The website indicates that these t-shirts are “seriously retro”, but this very mainstream department store apparently feels young men will be interested in the logo. [/QUOTE] That doesn’t mean people buying those know where the pic comes from. The other day there was a girl in a Ramones T-shirt at the coffee machines; one of my coworkers asked whether she liked the Ramones. She didn’t even know that the shirt she had on bore the logo of a music group, she just thought it was pretty. ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101/163 "2010-07-28T11:11:30Z")
> [@Jeff\_Lichtman](#): > > This thread seems to have drifted from the original topic to things we don’t expect under-30s to recognize. > > Other things that I wouldn’t expect the under-30 crowd to know about: > > [ul] > [li]TV test patterns[/li] [/ul] TV Test patterns would be a great band name. Another thing that kids of a specific age Don’t Get is 24 hour a day Cartoon Channel. Back In The Day it was a few hours on Saturday Morning and We were Happy To Have It Then! ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101/164 "2010-07-28T11:23:16Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > Pillsbury Doughboy > Nipper (the dog from the RCA logo) > Full-service gas stations > National Geographic magazine > A black Michael Jackson > When Michael Jordan had hair (actually, I remember when he was balding, which is why many people thought he went with the bald look.) > Combovers, or balding men who keep the tuft of hair over their ears and around the back of their head > coke-bottle glasses > When the 49’ers, Royals, Pirates, 76’ers or Mets were the best teams in their leagues. > Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom (TV) > The Wonderful World of Disney (TV) Nearly everything on this list still exists. It might not be instantly revognizable to kids under 10, but I’m sure they have some inkling who the _Pillsbury Doughboy_ is (since he’s still in many Pillsbury commercials) and most people 10-30 grew up with the 49ers and Mets being great, a black Michael Jackson and The Wonderful World of Disney. And believe it or not, but new episodes of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom are still being produced. ---
**Author:** ![EvilTOJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee59a6/32.png) [@EvilTOJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EvilTOJ)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101/165 "2010-07-28T12:05:25Z")
The other day I had a house full of kids, and so I decided to make popcorn. I hadn’t owned a microwave for awhile before moving into my house and so I still had a bag of the regular popcorn that you make in the pot on the stove. I figured I could make it in bulk on the stove for the kids to devour. So this 11 year old boy walks into the kitchen and sees me making it. He asks what I’m doing. I tell him I’m making popcorn. He did a good impression of the Dreamworks Face and with total bewilderment asks me how, since the microwave wasn’t running. That’s when it hit me. He’d never had popcorn that hadn’t come out of the microwave. I just had to laugh otherwise I’d cry. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101/166 "2010-07-28T12:08:40Z")
Full-service gas stations are mandated by law in some states, so they still exist. ---
**Author:** ![DragonAsh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/db5fbb/32.png) [@DragonAsh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DragonAsh)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101/167 "2010-07-28T12:20:17Z")
Sports are a great example. Yellow lines marking the line of scrimmage? Having to wait until the next morning to find out scores from the West Coast? Probably less than half of your baseball team’s games were on TV. Now I’m in London but I can still watch every inning of every game of every team in the league. Tennis matches shown on tape delay! And edited. If one player was down 2 sets to 1 and it was 15 minutes before the hour - you knew who was going to win. ---
**Author:** ![drastic\_quench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e36b37/32.png) [@drastic\_quench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drastic_quench)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101/168 "2010-07-28T12:58:36Z")
> [@Shirley\_Ujest](#): > > I had to explain to the whippersnappers at work exactly what Slips & Cami’s are for. We get buttloads of Tank tops in and handfuls of cami’s in, so I have to do a 101 class on a regular basis. So we don’t have Cross Contamination Issues. > > “It’s to opaque the dress you are wearing so no one gets a glimmer.” > > “What?” What’s a glimmer? It’s not coming up on any alt or slang definition.searches that fit this context. Is it a regional thing for glimpse? ---
**Author:** ![Harvey\_The\_Heavy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Harvey\_The\_Heavy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harvey_The_Heavy)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101/169 "2010-07-28T14:01:18Z")
I have co-workers _over_ thirty who don’t know what a Betamax was. So I regale them with harrowing tales of my service in the early 80’s Format Wars. My cell is loaded with ringtones of random sound effects from old 80’s arcade games, which result in the greatest WTF faces ever. ---
**Author:** ![Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swallowed_My_Cellphone)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101/170 "2010-07-28T14:03:04Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > and while I’ve always _known_ what an intermission is, the only time I’ve actually experienced one in a movie is the 4+ hour 1993 epic _Gettysburg_. I think they had one for Kenneth Branagh’s unredacted _Hamlet_ too. Anyone else remember the national anthem being played before movies? I don’t remember it in the U.S. although my mom told me they had it there too, but I do remember it in Canada because they had cool footage of skiing in the Canadian Rockies. ---
**Author:** ![Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swallowed_My_Cellphone)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101/171 "2010-07-28T14:07:45Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > Maybe off topic: why don’t men have smallpox scars? I’ve seen women from all over the world with it, but no men. Perhaps they’re hidden by all the hair on our shoulders. My smallpox scar is totally visible. I have hairless shoulders. (Palms on the other hand…) ---
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101/172 "2010-07-28T14:20:36Z")
> [@Jeff\_Lichtman](#): > > My guess is that most washboards today in the U.S. are used by musicians. They are common in Cajun, zydeco and jug band music. I’ll also add the Amish, back to nature/off the grid types, and those using them for kountry kitsch decorator items. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101/173 "2010-07-28T14:30:10Z")
> [@6ImpossibleThingsB4Breakfast](#): > > And to the list, I’d like to add Tippex. > [@Spoke](#): > > How about **white out**? For the purposes of pan-Atlantic harmony, I’d just like to point out that these are the same thing - the most popular brands of white correction fluid (although it’s actually Wite-Out). I doubt there are many kids who don’t know what they are, though. They still have to write things down at school. > [@AHunter3](#): > > And drive-ins! With those low-fidelity 40 pound speakers you had to hook onto the top of your window glass after rolling your window down midway. There’s a [drive-in movie theater](http://www.silvermoondrivein.com/home.html) in Lakeland, Florida. I imagine there’s one near most large US cities. > [@kunilou](#): > > My daughter is 28 and has something few of her friends do. A vaccination scar. My brother is 38 and has a BCG (tuberculosis inoculation) scar on his shoulder. I thought kids in the US still got those? I don’t have one because I got the shot when I was an infant. > [@Superhal](#): > > A black Michael Jackson Probably won’t be long before kids don’t even know who Michael Jackson was. His music seems to have largely disappeared from the cultural landscape. Maybe because he didn’t do movie soundtracks (did he?) > [@An\_Gadai](#): > > I had an Amstrad CPC and most of my age group had Commodore 64s, PCs without hard drives. Luxury! I’m a year younger than you, and I had a BBC (Acorn) Micro I inherited from my brother. With 32 kilobytes of memory. I didn’t get a PC until 1997 or 1998. ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101/174 "2010-07-28T14:36:09Z")
About 10, maybe more years now, my daughters were teenagers. They didn’t know what a Swastika was. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101/175 "2010-07-28T14:42:52Z")
> [@elmwood](#): > > Back on topic. Here’s one the under-30 crowd can’t comprehend when I’ve talked about it - the pre-Web Internet. Email, IRC, FTP, Usenet news, MUDs, and Gopher, but not the Web. They see the Web as _the_ Internet. I don’t think this is a distinction based on age, actually. Most Internet users well above forty - or fifty! - didn’t go on the Internet at all prior to the early-to-mid-nineties. Before that, they either used proprietary walled-garden dialup services (Prodigy, or Compuserve, or AOL’s old service), or did without. I’m 26, and I know about the pre-WWW days of the Internet because I’m a giant nerd - but I wouldn’t expect most middle-aged folks to know much about them. ---
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101/176 "2010-07-28T14:53:09Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > … I’d just like to point out that these are the same thing - the most popular brands of white correction fluid … I doubt there are many kids who don’t know what they are, though. They still have to write things down at school. School kids using correction fluid on hand-written material?? Perhaps I’m sheltered, but I’ve never seen that. ---
**Author:** ![3waygeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/e95f7d/32.png) [@3waygeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3waygeek)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101/177 "2010-07-28T14:58:09Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > Maybe off topic: why don’t men have smallpox scars? I’ve seen women from all over the world with it, but no men. My dad, born in Iowa in 1941, has one and it’s very visible. I was born in 1962, and I don’t recall having had a smallpox vaccination; I don’t have the scar, so I suspect I never got that one. I got plenty of others, though… ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Excellent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f19dbf/32.png) [@Mr.Excellent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Excellent)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101/178 "2010-07-28T15:03:47Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > On registration day all the departments set out tables in the auditorium and when it was your group’s turn to go you went around and literally signed up for the classes you wanted. I went to a small school so this wasn’t too much of a mob scene. In some ways it was more convenient than online registration because if you needed to get a pre-requisite waived then the professor was usually right there to sign the form for you. Oh, man - that’s how we used to register for classes in high school. They called it “Arena”, which I always thought a rather apt way of describing a process that seemed to have been cribbed directly from a Roman gladiator film, Mad Max, or both. They did this for all four years I was there: 1998-2002. Freshmen in particular would be reduced to tears on a regular basis. I wonder if they’re finally switched to online scheduling? I hope so. > [@Jeff\_Lichtman](#): > > This thread seems to have drifted from the original topic to things we don’t expect under-30s to recognize. > > Other things that I wouldn’t expect the under-30 crowd to know about: > > [ul] > [li]TV test patterns[/li][li]Door-to-door milk delivery[/li][li]PCs without hard drives[/li][li]Mimeographs[/li][li]Mechanical adding machines[/li][li]Reel-to-reel audio tape[/li][/ul] You really wouldn’t expect us to recognize PCs without hard drives? My elementary school ran on Apple IIGS machines. Two floppy drives, no hard drive, and all the Oregon Trail you could play. (It’s educational! And you get to shoot things!) > [@JoelUpchurch](#): > > [li]Acoustically coupled modems.[/li] These actually made a very brief and limited comeback in the nineties - there was a company that sold them for PDAs. The idea was that, back in the days before inexpensive smartphones, this would be a cheap and portable way to get email on the go - you’d hook up your PDA to a payphone or hotel phone, and grab your email at a blistering 14.4 KBPS. ---
**Author:** ![6ImpossibleThingsB4Breakfast](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/6/e19adc/32.png) [@6ImpossibleThingsB4Breakfast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/6ImpossibleThingsB4Breakfast)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101/179 "2010-07-28T15:05:05Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > > [@6ImpossibleThingsB4Breakfast](#): > > > > And to the list, I’d like to add Tippex. > > > [@Spoke](#): > > > > How about **white out**? > > For the purposes of pan-Atlantic harmony, I’d just like to point out that these are the same thing - the most popular brands of white correction fluid (although it’s actually Wite-Out). > > I doubt there are many kids who don’t know what they are, though. They still have to write things down at school. Close, but no cigar, **Really Not All That Bright**. Tippex was a paper-backed white chalky strip that you used to correct mistakes on a typewriter. The method was to backspace to the error, and hold the strip between the key and the typed paper to type the error again - thereby filling the letter(s) with the white chalk. This enabled you (depending on the length of the mistake) to type the correction in black ink. It was an art in itself - sometimes involving half spaces, manually holding the roller, or releasing the paper. And we won’t get into carbon paper and triplicate… The liquid White Out to which you refer is also known as Liquid Paper for the purposes of pan-Atlantic harmony… ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2010, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101/180 "2010-07-28T15:06:07Z")
> [@Bytegeist](#): > > > [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > > > … I’d just like to point out that these are the same thing - the most popular brands of white correction fluid … I doubt there are many kids who don’t know what they are, though. They still have to write things down at school. > > School kids using correction fluid on hand-written material?? Perhaps I’m sheltered, but I’ve never seen that. It just occurred to me that term papers and things are supposed to be typed now, so they probably don’t ever need to use it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-youre-suprised-under-30s-dont-recognize/548101.md?page=10)