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.
People of Reddit, what did you get to 'before it was cool?'"
The Big D!
Giphy"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"
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
"(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.
Giphy"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.
Giphy"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."
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....
Giphy"I started drinking La Croix 15 years ago, back when it only came in glass bottles of lemon or lime."
StanzoBrandFedoras
All the Rage...
"Flight of the Concords A friend of mine saw them play at a small venue while she was out of the country and played me their music one night. I tried for awhile to get other friends into them, but their humor was too dry for a lot of people. A few years later they were all the rage. I still listen to the original CD I burned of their music sometimes."
morbidnerd
Talking Bobbles
"Grew up listening to the Talking Heads, so I liked them before they became a meme with 'Once in a Lifetime.' In her college days, my mom also saw the band perform in places like tiny cafes before they made it big. She went to a lot of concerts and got to witness the entire new-wave explosion first hand which is pretty cool."
Taman_Should
Yuck Inducing
spicy bill hader GIFGiphy"Sriracha. We always had a bottle of that crap at my office a looooong time ago. I was actually pretty sick of it by the time everyone else started discovering it."
lupuscapabilis
Puff Away
"Vaping. I started vaping when they were first coming out. Before any vape stores. Before it was called vaping (just called electronic cigarettes back then). Before the good flavors, good vape production, etc. It didn't last long because it was expensive and not that great but I was still one of the pioneers!"
"Vaped on and off for years, alternating with real smoking and finally quit smoking completely like 3 years ago and just quit vaping completely 2 months ago. I feel so much freeer now!"
jetteh22
Straps
"Backpacks. To the best of my knowledge, I'm the innovator of the use of a backpack for school. I'm old. In the early 70s I was in college with a very book intensive major. I went to an army surplus store and bought a backpack. To my detriment, I was a one-strapper."
RonSwansonsOldMan
These people really knew how to set a trend.
Do you have similar experiences? Let us know in the comments below.
Those who work in different fields all have their respective anecdotes that are sure to keep listeners engaged.
But certain jobs that keep employees away from land are sure to have the most intriguing stories to share.
Seafarers shared their unique experiences bordering on hair-raising phenomena when Redditor tylo144 asked:
"For those who have careers that keep them out at sea for long periods of time, what is the creepiest thing you’ve seen out in the water?"
Mariners shared their wildest stories from their time out at sea.
Fierce Gale
"Not so much what I saw but what I experienced. I was once underway in the Gulf of Alaska during a November gale. Waves were up to 35 feet with some rollers hitting 45. An uncommon occurrence on the diesel electric ship I was on was a cyclo-converter tripping. When this happened the ship would temporarily completely lose power and propulsion until some electricians could reset everything. This happened during that gale. I simply can’t explain how strange it is for the boat you’re on to all of a sudden go so quiet, that you can clearly hear waves slapping the ship and metal bending and flexing. Knowing you’re completely at the mercy of the sea. Knowing that if the ship lost its bearing and went beam to there was a real possibility of capsizing. It’s easy to forget when you’re at sea that the only thing keeping you alive is a bunch of steel welded together. At that moment I was fully aware and it humbled me. Thankfully we trained frequently for this and had everything fired back up relatively quickly."
"Another time I recall was when the ship took a rogue wave. They are absolutely real and I believe they account for a massive number of shipwrecks. It was late at night and I was on the bridge. We were passing through a storm and we’re taking the waves off the bow with no visibility. As the ship moves there’s normally a pretty standard pattern. You ride up a wave for a bit and then you fall down the wave for a bit. Well we started riding up a wave and got to the point where we should have been starting or ride down…but we just kept climbing and climbing. And then it happened. We started our ride down the back of this massive wave. All of us braced ourselves and tried to find something to hold on to but we all fell to the deck any way. Anything that wasn’t secured for sea fell down all around us. Manuals, tables, computers, printers, you name it. Our captain who was sleeping called up to the bridge asking if we hit something. It woke the entire crew up. Rogue waves are real, and they’re terrifying. I can’t imagine being in a smaller boat or taking one of them broadside."
– red_pimp69
Series Of Bizarre Events
"I was in the US Navy for about 10 years, and have 10s of thousands of miles at sea in an aircraft carrier. Countless nights on the flight deck in the middle of the night and middle of the ocean..."
"Creepiest: A HUGE patch of the ocean glowing. Like nuclear waste in the Simpsons glowing. I've seen bioluminescent algae of a few kinds and this was nothing like it. I've never seen anything like it before or since."
"Weirdest thing: hundreds of mile out to sea from land and there was a MASSIVE fire on the water. It was like the top of a gas refinery, but on the water with nothing under it but water. Flame going a few stories into the air."
"Funniest: 2 flying fish collide mid-air. I was smoking when we were in the Persian Gulf and saw the fish fly from a pretty far distance towards each other. I remember thinking 'there's no f'kin way they're going to hit' them SPLAT SPLASH! I was in tears laughing but no one saw it. Everyone just thought I was a weirdo, but I got to see a miracle of nature lol"
– BBQQA
Lone Yacht
"Some 20 years ago..."
"On the MV Explorer (since sunk) down near the Antarctic circle, sailing around the 'bergs and occasionally making landfall..."
"We rounded into a small bay area, and there, amongst the ice and coast was an unmarked sailing yacht. Which is odd as generally yachts have some identifying markings on them."
"To add to it, they didn't respond to any radio contact, and whilst I wasn't privy to the conversation (and it was a long time ago), some crew went across via Zodiac and were refused boarding."
"So basically a yacht, not a particularly large one, that was unmarked was hanging around in the inhospitable waters of the Antarctic and didn't want any help or contact."
"Proper weird."
– ThanklessTask
These Redditors have fearlessly plunged into darkness.
Dark Dive
"I used to be an oilfield diver in the Gulf of Mexico. I'd say about 80% of the dives I logged were at night. Mostly 500 ft and under DSV's."
"It's very eerie feeling sitting on the downline doing in water decompression in the middle of night. I'd always ask topside to turn off my headlight."
"Like a worm on a hook. Just bobbing in the darkness."
– Comrade_Fuzzybottoms
A Dark Calm
"Not even nearly as extreme as your story but it evoked a memory, I did a scuba diving open water course and then did the advanced course which included a night dive in a freshwater lake."
"I was only 5m underwater, pitch black darkness with two other guys, we were on a platform and we could either face the dam wall or the open water, and I turned to the open water while the other guys were behind me, I turned off my light (we did have little lights on our backs)"
"Just the deepest, calmest dark I’ve ever felt and seen. Not a single source of light anywhere, just immense darkness. Still remember that feeling and it was like 15 years ago"
– circleinsidecircle
Things get more interesting.
Water Glow
"The bioluminescent animals (or whatever they are) in the water is pretty amazing. Our toilet would fill up with seawater and if you took a piss in it in the middle of the night it would agitate the water and it would glow sometimes."
– Tub-a-guts
"Ominous Red Snow Angel"
"Always love the bio-luminescence flickering around the hull at night. They're almost like a cushion of little stars guiding you safely along. On those really dark, moonless nights, I'd almost beg for them to arrive."
"I sailed 70ft yacht around the world a few years back. Southern Ocean, Cape Horn, Good Hope, Roaring Forties, Furious Fifties, two equatorial crossings; the full deal. Plenty of terrifying moments, boring moments, funny moments and beautiful moments."
"A creepy moment that is burned into my memory involved a near catastrophe halfway between NZ and Cape Horn. We ended up hitting really bad weather and absolutely huge seas - 50ft swells with massive troughs in between. We were running with the swells for days as they grew, skidding down them like a bloated surfboard, always worrying that the next wave would break behind us and roll us over."
"At night it's pitch black down there in bad weather - the sky and sea just form a huge black mass. The most terrifying thing is the sound of an invisible wave breaking behind you. At night, you run red light to preserve night vision, so there's basically just an eerie red glow emanating from below deck."
"At about two in the morning, I was at the helm when a monster wave broke directly over the back of us without a seconds warning. Time slowed down like it does in those moments, and the last thing I saw was my own silhouette in the wall of water, lit up like an ominous red snow angel - and then nothing but cold blackness as the boat sunk into the sea."
"Fortunately, she popped straight back up like a cork after a few eternal seconds - almost like a submarine surfacing - and we were still in one piece. Still cant forget that glowing red apparition of myself though. The memory of it has woken me up in a cold sweat more than once."
– Le_Rat_Mort
Coming Up For Air
"Somewhere in the Atlantic, nice cold as f**k night, decided to step out and look at stars. About ten minutes on and a boats mast pops up, sits there a few minutes and then back under. No alarms, nothing. Just some sub boys getting a bit of late night o2 in the middle of nowhere next to some friends."
– MyMomsSecondSon
When I worked on cruise ships, I was always captivated by the green flash on the horizon.
The optical phenomenon occurs just as the sun goes down or before sunrise, with the tip of the sun barely visible.
It emits a flash of green light that I found absolutely thrilling to witness every time.
It's not necessarily creepy, but still a wonder for sure.
No matter how long ago we saw it, there are some scenes or images from movies that still send shivers down our spine or keep us awake at night to this very day.
Pennywise appearing in the sewer in It, Janet Leigh surprised in the shower in Psycho, Freddy Kreuger's tongue popping out of the telephone in A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Of course, some of the scariest, most disturbing, or most emotionally traumatizing scenes from films might have been featured in films outside of the horror genre.
Even more shockingly, some of these films were primarily marketed towards children!
Redditor alina_love was curious to hear which non-horror films the Reddit community saw as children still send shivers down their spines today, leading them to ask:
"What's a non horror movie that traumatized you as a kid?"
It Was Tim Burton, After All...
"'Pee Wee's big adventure'."
"Large Marge scared the crap out of little me."
"I was even scared of the fortune teller."- BlueStarrSilver·
With A Title Like "Temple Of Doom"...
"'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom'."
"The scene where the guy gets his heart ripped out traumatized me for years."- Pbhf
That Funeral Scene Though...
"'My Girl'."
"Fear of death, fear of losing a friend, fear of bees, fear of puberty."- heidismiles
macaulay culkin kiss GIFGiphyJurassic Park's Got Nothing On This...
"'The Land Before Time'."
"Watching Little Foot’s mother die was awful."- HourglassSass
He'll Always Regret Not Bringing Her To The Museum...
"'Bridge to Terabithia'."- jumpstart-the-end
"Everything goes so well and it falls apart SO FAST and your left absolutely traumatized."- VortexDestroyer99
The Reason People Hold On To Their Appliances For As Long As They Do...
"The Brave Little Toaster'."- Catgurl
"The junkyard scene alone was responsible for so many nightmares."- ManChildMusician
brave little toaster animation GIF by Coolidge Corner TheatreGiphyAnd Let's Not Forget The Coachman's Smile...
"Disney’s version of 'Pinocchio'."
"The scene where kids are turned into donkeys and kept on the island and then resold was f*cking weird."
"You felt bad for that bully kid after he looked sad and nobody understood what he said because he was a donkey."- earnestlikehemingway
Few Things More Sad And Scary Than Deforestation
"'Ferngully: The Last Rainforest'."
"That evil tree scared me so bad."- slutsdotnet
Anything But "Truly Scrumptious"...
"The 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' Childcatcher guy!"
"I'm still scared of him!"- Jet_Maypen
child GIFGiphyOffing Children One By One...In A Children's Movie!
"'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' boat scene."
"Honorable mention of claustrophobia when Augustus gets stuck in the chocolate tube."
"UGH!"- looseseal-bluth
At Least We Know He Had A "Sole"...
"Who Framed Roger Rabbit."
"That poor shoe….."- dalalice5555
At Least The Song Is Catchy...
"Neverending Story."
"Not even Artax, which was awful, but the Rockbiter and his good strong hands."- marxychick1
Neverending Story 80S GIFGiphyDorothy Gettying Electro Shock Therapy Says it All...
"Return to Oz."- Jeff_Steelflexx
"Horrifying! What about the animated wig heads?"- weensfordayz
The Reigning King Of Childhood Trauma
"Old Yeller."- IceTech59
"I remember watching this on TV during, I think, Wonderful World of Disney (Sunday nights were Disney night on TV)."
"Cried and cried and cried."
"I've never been able to watch it again and I've never shown it to my kids!"- crowwitch
Not All Friendships Are Tenable... A Terrifying Thought
"'The Fox and the Hound'."
"Still makes me incredibly sad, lol."- mental_reincarnation
best friends friendship GIFGiphySometimes, writers and filmmakers simply overestimate what might go over a child's head.
Or, for that matter, they might underestimate their emotional capacity.
Regardless, ask any of Fairuza Balk's fans which is scarier, Return to Oz or The Craft, and their answer will be immediate...
(... and it won't be The Craft...)