Those who grew up between the '80s and early 2000s have a long memory of items and experiences that either went out of style or disappeared completely.
From early PC games to Blockbuster to favorite snacks, there's a lot to miss from childhood.
But the odd thing is how quietly some of these things went away, and how few people seemed to notice.
Feeling nostalgic, Redditor lukiiiiii asked:
"What quietly went away without anyone noticing?"
Top-Notch Abbreviations
"ROFL (Rolling on the Floor Laughing) dropped off of the face of the planet, and now we just go straight from LOL (Laughing Out Loud) to LMAO (Laughing My A** Off)."
"I've been using it way more lately because of this. ROFL; can't let the classics die."
- habofi2125
Save Those Box Tops!
"Actual toys in cereal boxes and Cracker Jack boxes."
- GuttMilton
The Early Facebook Years
"Facebook 'Poke' wars."
- Hot_buttered_toast
How the Times Have Changed
"People calling them 'camera phones.'"
- NecroJoe
Advancing Technology
"When you turn off the TV, how the image would shrink to a dot before slowly fading away."
- ConcreteCubeFarm
TV Connection
"When you turn off the TV and then you run your finger on the screen and hear the crackle and feel the static on the glass."
- iwannaberockstar
Positive Environmental Change
"Acid Rain."
"It was a huge environmental issue in the late 70s through the early 90s. Rain was acidic and damaged fertile areas among other things."
"In the US, there was much research done, and eventually industrial regulations were put into place. Companies were allowed to decide what approach they chose to take as long as the results showed the appropriate amount of reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions."
"Unfortunately, positive news doesn't sell, so news outlets did not do justice to reporting this success. As we went into the 2000s, hardly anyone remembered what was done."
- GurglingWaffle
Can We Say, 'Nom Nom Nom'?
"McDonald's all-day breakfast menu."
- EmeraldAlicorn
Old Pastimes
"The pandemic killed a lot more than just people. I really miss McDonald's all-day breakfast."
"And being able to go to Walmart at 2 AM."
- LyrMeThatBifrost
The Days of Landlines and Cords
"I live in a rural area and have to pay for landline service to have internet. Since I have to pay for something so stupid, I figured I'd have to get something stupid."
"...So I got the hamburger phone from the movie 'Juno.'"
"Not gonna lie, the landline has come in clutch a few times, and holding a hamburger to your ear is amusing every time. 10/10 would recommend."
- Meat_Skeleton
Late-night Grocery Runs
"I think people have noticed now but at the time, nobody noticed it was happening: the closing of 24-hour stores. I live in a major city and we don’t have a single 24-hour grocery store ever since the pandemic."
- anxiousfamily
"In a World Where..."
"Movie trailers with that deep voice guy [Don LaFontaine] doing the voiceovers."
- jonathonkarate
SoBe Drinks
"SoBe. I think the last time I had one was at Quizno's."
"[cue 'X-Files' Music]"
- kooshipuff
Gizzard the Taco Bell Dog
"Taco Bell used to have a chihuahua as their mascot. Little dude just disappeared one day, and anyone born after 2000 probably doesn't even know what I am talking about."
- To_Fight_the_Night
Google+
"Google+ was the only social media our school forgot to block on our laptops, so I used it a lot. RIP."
- AgentBieber
Some of these really brought back some deeply-engrained memories for the '80s to '00s kids, and it's true that many of them blipped out of existence quietly.
But if this teaches us anything, it doesn't mean that "out of sight, out of mind" also has to mean "out of heart."
And let's have a moment of silence for the vocal stylings of Don LaFontaine and Gizzard the talking Taco Bell dog.
When scholars look back on our current time of excitement, upheaval, and chaos, I wonder how they will define the era that preceded theirs.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly what our era will be defined by–whether it was entirely good or a disaster–but perhaps a quote from a famous literary icon can still be of relevance.
In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens once wrote, in part:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity..."
Curious to hear the interpretations of the time we're living in, Redditor HeyArio asked:
"What will this era be known for?"
People discuss how the internet is both a blessing and a curse...but mostly, a curse.
It Took A Village
"If we're being eloquent, a period of social change and upheaval due to technology and social media."
"If we're being honest, a f'ked up period where social media enabled all the village idiots to communicate with all the other villages idiots to have one big idiot village."
– needsmorec*nts
Fact-Checking
"The Age of Misinformation."
– Remote-Principler543
Choosing Misery
"Using the Internet to make ourselves miserable. Let's face it, social media and divisive political content is seriously messing up our collective mental health."
– DeathSpiral321
Redditors noted how we have become numb to society.
Doing Nothing
"The Era of Missed Opportunities- when we could've done everything but chose nothing."
– Firm-Boysenberry
The "Ennui Engine"
"This will be known as the era when all of humanity joined together to make each other dumber and depressed."
"Low-effort content – media that's easy to both create and consume – doesn't actually entertain us; it just distracts us, ultimately leaving us listless and uninterested in anything that might actually add something to our lives. Think of how many times you've looked at your Netflix queue, glanced at your Steam library, or contemplated picking up a book, then gone right back to mindlessly scrolling."
"After all, higher-effort content would require time, attention, and energy to appreciate... and why would we bother with that when we have an endless array of memes?"
"Standards are considerably lower online, too, and they're only dropping further. People don't need to write well, provide accurate information, offer original content, or even behave like mature adults. Worse still, whenever someone suggests that maybe we should improve ourselves, we're more likely to ignore them (or downvote them) than we are to take the advice. We're all sending the tacit message that knowledge and effort are inferior to ignorance and apathy, and we're actively discouraging anyone who might think about doing better."
"Taken together, these two details highlight a chilling trend: Whenever we amplify or applaud low-effort content or poorly written misinformation, we end up muting and condemning anything higher-quality. We're actively depressing ourselves while we celebrate ignorance and apathy. This off-topic sentence about mutant lobsters is only here to amuse the rare few of you who aren't just skimming this comment. In short, we're harming ourselves (and each other) while making it harder and harder to recover."
"This is the Ennui Engine."
"The only way to escape it is to reserve our likes, upvotes, shares, and retweets for only those offerings which are exceptional... regardless of whether we personally enjoy them or not. If we're ever unable or unwilling to determine what 'exceptional' actually means, then we should hold back from interacting at all. We can't do away with social media – that ship has sailed – but we can insist that standards (for everything) be raised."
– RamsesThePigeon
People lost hope in humanity.
Remaining At Odds
"Extreme division, right vs left, vax vs anti vax, Rich vs poor."
"It will be remembered as a time when people just refused to work together."
– Canuck_dad
When Came A Virus
"Covid really showed how broken the US is."
– No_Junket_8139
Failing Our Environment
"This era will be known for us passing the climate change tipping point."
– Original_Musician103
Hot Commodity
"toilet paper hoarding."
– OldAsMoses
The past couple of years was heavily defined by the pandemic, which then brought out the absolute worst in people due to fear, isolation, and lots of misinformation as countless loved ones lost their lives all around us.
People were always divided, but with the help of various communities on social media pushing their respective causes, we are more divided than ever.
Dickens was on to something. To finish out his quote mentioned earlier, he said of the era before and during the French Revolution–which began in 1789–in his classic historical novel:
"In short, the period was so far like the present period that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
Sound familiar?
Want to "know" more?
Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.
Never miss another big, odd, funny or heartbreaking moment again.
What have we lived through? Millennials, one of the most controversial generations coming of age in the early part of the 2000s, have been through quite a bit. Two major financial crises, a pandemic, a race war, among several other major traumatic events have defined the lifetimes of the first 21st-century generation.
Every generation, though, lives through its traumas and its times for celebration. These things fully shape and define the generation, as they take the scars and the resources given to them by the times.
It becomes a part of their story personally, as well as on the world stage.
Redditor incrementaler asked:
"What is something your generation got to experience that no other generation will be able to experience?"
Here were some of those answers.
The Time Before Flight Danger
"Going up in the cockpit to meet the pilots. Thanks terrorist, ruined it for everyone." -faceeatingleopard
"When I was a child, I got to see the cockpit and meet the pilot. I inadvertently left my stuffed toy there. He got to go on a world tour in the cockpit before coming back here and being mailed back to us."
"I still have this world-travelled toy today, in a closet somewhere. It was such a different time..." -Astillius
Hiding In The Age Of Public Life
"I volunteered with the detectives at a police substation around the beginning of 2011 when many people still had public profiles and checking in to locations was still pretty new."
"I was able to find a number of suspects they had been searching for when those individuals checked in to different places."
"I get that criminals are dumb, but 'Hey everyone, I'm here,' was a special kind of dumb."- Xannin
We've Become Afraid
"80s kid here. Leaving the house at sunrise to wander around aimlessly wherever I pleased coming back for lunch, and then doing the same thing until it gets dark."
"That will never happen again in the United States, not on any large scale at least." -humorous_anecdote
"I'm really, really jealous of this. I wasn't allowed to wander at all growing up. I didn't learn to ride a bike till about 17. I'm confused about this though - is it truly that much more dangerous these days, or did people not shelter children as much?"
"As it is, I was pretty much raised on the internet (born early 2000s). I'm sad I never got to experience a time without social media and mobile phones and the expectation of being always contactable." -Ginngerly
It was a time that we will probably never see again--at least, not in the same ways.
90s Kids Only
"Growing up along with the internet evolving. When I was a kid there was no social media and basically no internet. Around my late middle school/early high school years AOL became a thing."
"So we experienced the anonymous internet. Everything was through user names. You connected with people on themed message boards."
"Then came the personal but still a little anonymous part. Programs that let you connect with people you know but still in a semi private way. Things like ICQ, AIM, Xanga, LiveJournal, etc."
"About halfway through high school came the first modern social media: MySpace. Learned a lot about connecting with people, music, etc. It was opening the door to the internet that was connected to your actual person. And all the top 8 drama that went with it."
"When I went to college my first semester I couldn't get on Facebook because my college had not registered with them yet. Spring semester they had. It was a great way to connect with others in my college and stay in touch with friends at other schools."
"Then we got to watch it all grow and become more sinister and become the influencer culture with Instagram and TikTok. Also all the data collection and lack of privacy that seems unimaginable when I think of the early days of anonymity."
"It seriously feels like I grew up along with the internet and got to go through all its phases too. It's been a unique perspective being on both sides of the internet revolution." -dont_blink_angels
Young & Carefree
"Coordinating whose house to hang out at after school over our short time at lunch, defining where you'll meet, how you'll let your parents know, and hoping they wait long enough for you when you get stuck doing something right after your last class."
"Also, living just far away enough from school that walking isn't feasible, yet your parents forgot to get you after your after school activity, but you don't want to head over to your friend's house in case your parent shows up in between the time you head out and when you're able to call."
"So you wait for 2 1/2 hours and then dad shows up and says, 'sorry, forgot.' That's how I got my first cell phone." -FlappyCervix
A Time Before Contact
"Having to schedule things with your friends that either A, was well planned out in advance with very agreed-upon meeting times, or B, waiting around the house to get a phone to call to set up the aforementioned plans."
"Also knowing all of your friends and family phone numbers in your head so you could call from payphones."--febreeze_it_away
Skin Mags At Random
"We were on a weekend Scouting trip and were hiking uphill on a paved road. We were fortunate that the Scoutmaster was up ahead and out of sight because I spotted something over the hill behind a tree."
"We went down to check it out and discovered porn and pints of Iron City beer. Some of us ended up having an especially fun time that weekend. I suppose that we violated several tenants of The Scout Law." -NagromTrebloc
Even though those times in our generation might be over, there are so many exciting new prospects on the horizon.
Odd & Disturbing Moments
"Being left to our own devices as kids. Generation x was weird. Previously there were stay-at-home moms and people in the neighborhood looking out for each other after it was helicopter parenting and play dates."
"For gen x it was like 'good luck doesn't die.' My ex came home when she was 7 and they'd been robbed, she called her mom at work to ask 'where the TV went.'" -friendlessboob
Fascinating To Watch
"Hi, I'm one of the first of Generation Z. I downloaded Minecraft before you could put torches on fences after I played the alpha-version browser demo."
"I was there when YouTube started gaining traction, watching the first viral videos go from a few thousand views to hundreds of thousands around 2009-2012."
"I was a sad kid, developing parasocial relationships to fill the void as I watched my favorite YouTubers go from Machinima to independent content creation."
"I got to see the rise of YouTube legends like Nigahiga, Markiplier, the Yogscast, TotalBiscuit, Jacksepticeye, Captain Sparklez, and SkyDoesMinecraft in real-time." -VergeThySinus
When You Aren't Straight This Never Happens
"Learning about what excites you sexually from books, movies, and actual face-to-face encounters rather than porn and social media."
"The fact that when people have sex now they immediately go to reenacting some emotionally detached pleasure-driven act witnessed in porn rather than exploring each other's bodies and minds and getting to know their sexual identities organically, without the influence of blatant perversion."
"The lack of connection between sexual partners now is sickening, people just use each other and brag about it. Romance died while the perverse thrived and it breaks my heart." -Alternative_Being255
Little relics of time gone by, all captured in the words of people who lived through them. Do you remember any of these times for yourself, or are you of a different generation completely?
On the other side of this, some things have changed for the better. Technology keeps us all connected more often these days, despite the negative side effects. We have a lot more resources at our disposal to keep ourselves and each other safe.
And though the future seems a little freaky, we will get through it together.
Want to "know" more?
Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.
Never miss another big, odd, funny, or heartbreaking moment again.