Young people have no idea …

[playthrough]

How to kill time on road trips. The license plate game, pocket versions of board games (which all sucked, with little pieces that would vanish in between seats), Mad Libs. My mom used to buy those invisible-ink books that would have all kinds of word games and stuff, those would hold me for hours.

 

[MTM]

I did that for a show - still had to pay ticket fees 15 years ago.

Have we mentioned watching a show when it was on? I mean, pre VCR, pre DVR if you wanted to find out Who Shot JR - you had to watch the show when it was on.

And you had to run to the kitchen or bathroom and back because there was no pause. And God forbid you got a phone call and missed part of the show.

 

[ChrisLong]

I did that for a show - still had to pay ticket fees 15 years ago.

Have we mentioned watching a show when it was on? I mean, pre VCR, pre DVR if you wanted to find out Who Shot JR - you had to watch the show when it was on.

Yeah, my friend was on "The Dating Game" in 1970. It aired when she and her family were on vacation. She never saw it.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

And you had to run to the kitchen or bathroom and back because there was no pause. And God forbid you got a phone call and missed part of the show.

"It's coming back on!!!"

 

[Just_An_SID]

In my early days in sports information, we had a score hotline that we had to update several times a day so that our fans could find out the scores. Saturday's were a pain in the ass because you'd have to listen to it first to find out what happened earlier in the day before updating it again.

Now we have a web page which is even worse.

Post-game used to be 45 minutes for interviews, etc. Now there is more to do post-game so it can take hours.

 

[qtlaw]

How exciting it was to see new upcoming movie posters at the theater, literally the only source of coming attractions.

 

[Huggy]

....or that seeing an ad in Rolling Stone was often your first idea that your favourite band was coming to town.

 

[micropolitan guy]

The joy of peeling the cellophane off an album and plopping it on the turntable.

Then flipping it over to hear what gems side 2 had.

 

[Roscablo]

So many things with phones, some of them not even that long ago.

I went to college 60 miles from my house but in another area code. Had to always plan for those best long distance rates. My dorm had a bank of payphones where if you called after 10 p.m. it was a buck for as long as you could talk. That was when my then-girlfriend and now wife talked a lot.

When cell phones had really started to become the norm and area codes and long distance didn't matter much anymore, think mid-2000s, my sister-in-law moved in with us when she was in college and often would watch our oldest. She had a cell phone with an area code that was not local to where we lived. I couldn't call her when I was at work, because long distance, and that was a problem at times since she was watching our kid. I actually tried to get her to change to a local number but she wouldn't budge. I think she thought I was nuts, and she definitely didn't know what long-distance calling was. It is crazy to think about now, but it was actually a hudge logistical problem.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

Damn kids!

Why Do All These 20-Somethings Have Closed Captions Turned On?

 

[wicked]

1. People actually talked to each other on the phone. I'm glad this is not a thing anymore, for the most part.
2. There were text message limits from your cell provider.
   • You paid for incoming texts, whether you asked for them or not.
3. Having to insert another roll of fax paper into the machine.
4. Having to put two books at the end of a received fax so the paper wouldn't curl up forever.

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

How to kill time on road trips. The license plate game, pocket versions of board games (which all sucked, with little pieces that would vanish in between seats), Mad Libs. My mom used to buy those invisible-ink books that would have all kinds of word games and stuff, those would hold me for hours.

My daughter was complaining about how bored she was on the road recently and I told her back in my day #OldManShakesFistsAtCloud we had to make do with Invisible Ink games. I explained the concept and then said my favorite/most amusing part about Invisible Ink was the taglines, which were something like "fun from 1 to 99." So then she started wondering why newborns and 100-year-olds can't have fun with these things and we started imitating babies and great-great grandparents being barred from playing Invisible Ink and that passed the time for a while and helped her forget she was bored.

tl;dr Invisible Ink games forking ruled and I loved them.