Have you ever stopped to think about all of the deaths the internet is responsible for?
We don't mean people (that would be a whole other, entirely more more morbid) - we mean businesses. Gone are the days when people used to hang out at malls bouncing from store to store.
In the age of internet, lots of young people literally don't know what a mallrat is! They'll never know what it is to go to specialized stores - why would they when we can get everything on Amazon?
Reddit user @stalingradsniper asked:
What business or store that was killed by the internet do you miss the most?
Come on folks, we're going for a walk down memory lane.
Arcades
Arcades for sure. My dad used to drop me off at a nickel arcade with 5 bucks. I felt like a KING.
- Hijack32
Toys R Us Kids
Giphy12 year old me misses Toys R Us. My son will more than likely never experience the joy of being let loose in a giant toy store.
Blockbuster
The old Blockbuster in my town had a game console that somehow always had new and interesting games to show.
My favorite Blockbuster story...
I was in 4th grade. My friend's dad took us to Blockbuster. As a joke, my friend grabbed Grease (which he had seen before and wanted to watch again) and Basic Instinct. He handed his dad both movies and said "I'm thinking about one of these, but I can't decide."
His dad just shook his head and said "haven't you seen Grease enough?" and took Basic Instinct to the checkout.
So yeah, that's how I got to watch Basic Instinct in 4th grade.
I honestly miss video stores. It was fun to wander around them and you might end up renting something you never heard of on a whim.
NOT Hobby Lobby
I miss really good hobby shops. I build plastic models usually World War II aircraft. Those high-end hobby shops have all the closed down, now all you can generally find are RC shops that have a shelf of a couple plastic models here and there, the only Exception in the greater Portland area is Tammie's hobbies but I'm pretty sure their days are numbered for plastic models as well.
- dlama
Radio Shack
I really miss radio shack. I used to always go in there with friends and look at all the remote control helicopters and the crazy tivo devices and everything that I thought was so awesome.
Its so weird how those things were so revolutionary and now its just like "Oh yeah you can get that at walmart for $5."
Radio Shack for me as well. Mostly for the small little electronics that i would need or tiny screws that are hard to find anywhere else.
For example, I really need to buy 2 replacement screws for my sennheiser headphones currently and i have no idea where to start looking as googling doesn't give me many options. If there was a radio shack i may actually be able to take the screw in and find another similar enough in size.
Books
GiphyUsed book stores. There's now only one in a 5 city radius that is only open Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1pm to 4pm.
I use thriftbooks now, it's cheap and they have a lot of different books, but it's not the same as browsing through stacks looking for treasures.
Nature
Did any of you guys have that Discovery nature store at your malls? It would have those native american rain tubes, that when placed on its top or bottom had the beads inside sound like it was raining. That and had a bunch of cool "seen on tv" toys and books. It was great, then one day it was just gone. Wish it was still around today, so that it would still be cool to learn.
Small Town Woes
Most of the shops in my small country town close because everyone orders everything off of Amazon. Now there's so many abandoned buildings.
Like Blockbuster, But Better
Hastings.
Hastings was probably similar to a blockbuster, but Hastings had movies and tv shows to rent, books, music, other stuff that I can't remember that you could buy. It was just so good but now their is a TJ MAXX in its place. It will truly be missed in my heart.
Sears Could Have Been...
GiphyThe Sears catalog.
I used to love going through that as a kid around Christmas and seeing what I wanted to ask Santa for. What's stupid is Sears could have been bigger than Amazon since they already had a head start on the "order from home" business, but they just didn't embrace the internet and now Sears is dying.
- -eDgAR-