Be ahead of the curve. That is a life motto. Be like Madonna.... she has always been ahead of the curve. So often many of us are onto what will be the next thing long before the people. And the people will of course judge us. But when we know, we know the cool, trust, you know it. Look at all the vintage revivals. The new generations will always judge. Just be cool.
Redditor u/Toxic-Waffles wanted to know how they are psychic in the cool arena by asking.... People of Reddit, what did you get to "before it was cool"?
The Big D!
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I got to have a bag of 50 empty Doritos locos tacos shells a month before they released because I knew someone who was up in the chain.
J4c3l33t
Alright honestly THIS is some legit stuff. My brother and I were just wondering when they would start selling them in grocery stores.
persephone_cap
The Web.
The internet. '93
EDIT: I founded one of the first internet access providers in Europe. A stack of modems in my bedroom. Crazy times.
raarts
Email 1978
Emailing FORTRAN homework to our professor.
My father worked for a defense contractor. I remember him bringing home an "ASCII art" picture of Snoopy in the early 70s.
TVLL
Infinity....
I got an infinity tattoo. This was before smart phones and during the early days of Google. I took a piece of paper and made a moebius strip to help explain what infinity was to the tattoo artist. Went to to library and tried to find an image of it online, paid a quarter to print it, and the artist ended up doing a really good job with very little knowledge of the symbol. I still love it, but am bummed at how cliche it has become.
lil_suprises
Lil Dicky.
I discovered Lil Dicky early on when he released his first video... early enough I even got a DM reply from him after I reached out to tell him how much I enjoyed his work.
thevhspodcast420
This happened with me but with Hopsin. I was playing MW2 and some random guy was playing some of his old stuff. We were pubstomping together and he's like yo you gotta listen to him he's gonna get huge.
Icy9kills
GOT!
Giphy
Read Game of Thrones in 2000.
(Haven't watched show yet)
(Was on a flight while reading GoT and happened to be sitting in the first coach seat on the aisle. Stephen King was on the flight, flying coach no less, and when he walked past me he checked out what I was reading. I was super psyched it was a good book!)
Theseus44
Avril Forever.
When I was 19 and going clubbing regularly, I started wearing a tie with a t-shirt. Everyone thought it was cool for some reason (this was in that post-grunge era of 2001), I just was doing it because I thought it was funny.
Then 6 months later Avril Lavigne became a thing and people just thought I was copying her.
HappyTimeHollis
G1...
I had a google G1 on launch day. Google basically dropped support for it within a year and I learnt to never be an early adopter again.
Itxi
I even switched cell phone providers to get a G1. Man, those were the days.
Cookie-muensters
PSY.
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My cousin showed me Gangnam Style like two weeks before it exploded. I dismissed it as being "another stupid song with an even stupider music video."
ATotallyRandomGuy
I actually got an email from YouTube congratulating me on being one of the first people to see Gangnam Style. A friend sent it to me, only watched it the once.
albertdunderhead
LEGOS.
Being a fan of LEGO on social media long before the 2014 movie. I'm in my mid-30s and have been collecting since I was a small child, and I have tattoos on mini-figures on my right forearm that I got almost a decade ago. I've even had my stuff published in actual magazines like Nintendo Power and Official Nintendo Magazine UK a long, long time ago.
Edit: since people asked, this is my YouTube channel for demos and animations, and here's my Flickr for high-res photos.
vonbrunk
2side-1brain.....
2side-1brain, this Okinawan band I became friends with when I was stationed there during my time in the Air Force. Good times and me and my friends got to know them and played with them at the local rock bars on the island and had a great time singing Nirvana and Deftones covers on those small stage, and then after a while, they went on tour in the US and made three more studio albums after that.
64hitcombo
Webkinz.
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Webkinz. My mom randomly picked me up one for Christmas before anyone knew what they were.
Two months later and everyone in my class had like 50.
orangecrushh99
Ebay Away.
Ebay member since Aug 1998.
WilyWalloo
I miss those days -- back when you knew who you were bidding against. I remember times I decided not to snipe someone because I'd already beat her/him out a couple times.
It was, somewhat, more of a community feeling in some categories.
displaced_virginian
Champions.
Wearing champion clothes. I used to get roasted for that crap in middle school cause they had it in Walmart and it was for broke ppl. Now it's like a designer brand and high quality? Get out of here 😂
Thegib3
Eat avocado on toast.....
Eat avocado on toast without some idiot commenting on it. My dad ate that for breakfast all the time as an adult so I grew up watching him do it and eventually I liked it to and so now i do. I appreciate I can get it on a menu but really people? It's just avocado on toast calm down.
justhewayouare
Hey hey Coachella....
Giphy
I was wearing crop top belly shirts as a 5 year-old boy before any of these Coachella fools started wearing them. And yes, looking back I have no idea how my parents didn't suspect that I was gay.
throwawayd4326
Back in the '80s.....
If you bicycle-commute in San Francisco from the Richmond District to downtown, you can go quite a ways east through the park and down the panhandle. Then you face a maze of streets between you and Market Street, to the south. There's a route through those streets called the Wiggle, or the "Duboce Wiggle," that takes you through without going up or down any steep slopes. And then you are a block from Market and, in my day, anyway, could make a speed run downtown -- you had no choice, or the trucks would eat you.
Back in the '80s, a few of us worked it out by trial and error. I maybe saw one other bike on the route during commute hours, usually. Now The Wiggle has its own Wikipedia entry, direction lines painted on the pavement to guide you through, and I'm told is fairly heavily used.
Tall_Mickey
Tuck It.
About 25 years ago in PE I realized the plain white t-shirt I was wearing (part of the uniform) had a pretty big ketchup stain on the left side over my hip. So I tucked that part into my shorts so nobody saw (since tucking the whole thing in would look lame, right?). 5 minutes later I looked around and saw all the other boys in my class had tucked in their t-shirts in one side.
For that one hour of PE I felt like a fashion god. I've never been cool and have worn odd shoes several times, but this one time, 25 years ago, I got to make something cool.
finzaz
Ooops....
A friend of mine played My Chemical Romance's debut album for me when it first came out. I thought, well these guys sound pretty good, but I'm sure they're just another one of the indie bands he likes that will have some small underground success but no commercial breakthrough or fame.
Oops.
helix274
Mo Bamba?
You know that song Mo Bamba? Well I heard it on SoundCloud about a year before it blew up and I showed it to my friends. They all told me it was trash. A year later one of my friends says "you guys here that new song mo bamba?" And they all told him it was great and it was the most popular song for a good 3 months.
It's not that I loved the song but every time I hear it I'm reminded of how all my friends only liked it once it was cool and popular.
lafleurricky
La Croix....
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I started drinking La Croix 15 years ago, back when it only came in glass bottles of lemon or lime.
StanzoBrandFedoras
Do we even have a clue that they're the "one" that got away? How long until it sinks in? And how do we not know there isn't another "one" coming behind them? I have no answers. Just asking...
The Draft
Episode 1 Omg GIF by RuPaul's Drag RaceGiphy"The girl who summoned up the nerve to ask me out towards the beginning of high school. I was so humiliated by the life my family was living that I stalled until she gave up."
"Betsy, if by some stroke of dumb luck you're reading this... I'm so sorry. It was 25-27 years ago, but I still hate myself for that. You were beautiful, intelligent, a good person, and if I had anything resembling a stable, presentable home I would've said yes in a heartbeat... I had a crush on you since 7th-grade 'intro to drafting.'
I Love Her
"Weird, I was just confiding in my mom about this last night. I'm late but for catharsis's sake I'm going to post. My first girlfriend is a classic case of you don't know what you have until it's gone. She's the complete package. Beautiful, intelligent, compassionate, and so kind. We started dating when I was 17 and broke up when I was 21."
"For reference I'm 30 now. I was an idiot. I wanted to play the field. I wanted to party and hook up with college girls. It was fun at first but after a while I felt this gnawing hole in my heart. The feeling of doubt crept up slowly and still, a decade later my chest feels tight thinking about it."
"I didn't realize until my later serious relationships that getting along with your SO's family is so important. Her mom and step dad genuinely treated me like a part of their family. It's not a stretch to say I literally grew up with these people. I spent some of my most formative years with them. Birthdays, Thanksgivings, Christmases, you name it. They celebrated me and my accomplishments. They genuinely cared about me. Just amazing, salt of the earth, lovely people."
"Her birthday was in March and I sent her a text and we ended up talking for a bit. She's happily married and stable with a daughter and a second on the way. I'm genuinely so happy for her. She deserves happiness. I just wish I was a part of that. Sitting at work 10 years later I'm tearing up. I numbed myself out to it for years, it's so strange to me that I've been so stuck on her lately. Is this normal?"
- direct07
15 Years Later
"My very first real love. I was a teenager and I didn't really know how to be comfortable in myself or with myself. I played silly teen girl games and lost him even as a friend. Now 15 years later I still think about R from time to time. I genuinely hope he's happy in his life."
"Edit: Wow this blew up while I was sleeping. Thanks for all the sweet words and to everyone with their "one" congratulations! I suppose I hadn't looked him up on social media because I'm scared, scared he won't respond, scared he will respond, scared he'll think I'm a stalker. I'm in a happy relationship now, but what if... Etc etc etc. But I'll give it a Google."
Missed You Much
rhythm nation dance GIF by Janet JacksonGiphyA girl I dated in high school. Went on a date one time she took me out parking and I was too stupid to realize it.
"She always talked about moving away as soon as she got finished with high school. I always thought I would stay in a little town the rest of my life. Turns out I was the one who left and move to another state. Later I heard that she had told someone that I knew that she thought that we would be married at some point. Missed it by that much."
Ok... I've been a bit blind to the light. People can be cruel, but also highly creative. Why not just lead with the truth? It'll always hurt more after lies.
Chuck E.
Chuck E Cheese Wink GIFGiphy"Ah the rare AskReddit question I can answer."
"I met a wonderful woman circa 2013-2015. We worked at what I can best describe as an upscaled Chuck E Cheese. Or ghetto Six Flags. Your choice."
"We hit it off instantly, though at the time I was rather romantically inept. Eventually, she says she's leaving to join the Air Force. I tell her I'll miss her, and wished her well. The thought of asking for her number so we could stay in contact didn't even cross my mind."
"Cue the next day, I stop for lunch on my way to work, and as I'm walking to my car I hear my name being called. I turn around, and it's her, running toward me. Universe giving me a second chance, right? Wrong. My dumb butt still didn't ask for her number. She looked a little upset, and I still think about her often. Desiree, I hope you're doing well."
The Getaway...
"He was my first and last love. I was 16 and he was 18 when we met. We bounced around like idiots, on again off again, finally got together mid 20s. We both fell into bad habits - drugs and alcohol, more booze for me, more drugs for him. We had some bad things happen that were pretty detrimental to staying sober. We would split, reconcile, get sober, fall off the wagon, split, etc... repeat as necessary. We realized we were very bad for each other unless we could BOTH just get sober for ourselves, and split."
"Ten years later, I was sober for 7 years (still am, going on 18 years end of this month, actually! Woo, go me!) and he was beginning to come back, sober about a year. He contacted me, we met, talked about trying again. He said that once he had been totally clean for a year, we'd do it. That whole "Don't make any changes for a year" thing. I would visit him, tho, things were good."
"He woke up one morning feeling bad, thought he had the flu. (This was pre-now) I stayed around because he was sick, but neither of us thought he was drastically bad, just the flu, right? He got worse and worse, finally we called an ambulance because he got up from a nap and couldn't breathe. He died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Aortic dissection."
"He got away, but someday I'll see him again. I never stopped loving him, and him me. We just weren't good for each other."
Ce la vie...
"My most serious Ex."
"Don't think I truly understood love until I met her. Loved her more than I ever thought I could love anything. It eventually ended when she told me that, through no fault of my own, she had fallen out of love with me. That was 2 years ago, still hurts to think/talk about."
"Ce la vie..."
The Avoid...
"I'm in the middle of trying to avoid that right now actually."
"It's not worth the heartache trust me. I fought to stay in a relationship for an entire year. If I would've just let her go the first time she wanted there would've been a lot less pain. We would've left on good terms. I would've lost a lot less sleep. Rip the band-aid off because once the band-aid starts peeling it's inevitable it'll fall off with time."
Kim Tate Eye Roll GIF by Emmerdale"My ex and I broke up over 3 years ago. Mutual breakup through a lack of communication on both ends I feel."
"Thought I was over that hill until this week she messaged just to say hey and ask an innocent question. We text for the best part of the day and it's brought up a lot of old feeling. Feeling pretty bitter sweet right now."
Love is a mess. Why even bother trying if you can't be true? It's not hard to just spell out the situation. And if you're the one needing to put together the words... look closer. The dialogue shouldn't be difficult.
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