What was life like before social media?

Lollipop95

if mods could edit thread title, meant to be "what was LIFE like"

This is a genuine question. By social media I mean facebook, twitter, I suppose even boards.ie falls into the category!

Reason I ask is that I'm 20 and I can't really remember a time when I didn't have a social media account! First was Bebo when I was 12, everyone in my school started using it around '07. Then it was onto Facebook aged around 13/14.

For people who were teens/early 20's in the 90s - what was life like before social media giants like Facebook and discussion forums came along?

In my spare time when I'm bored I always check boards or other discussion forums just to have a nose at threads and stuff like that. Or I check my facebook/twitter. Kind of difficult actually to envisage a world in which no form of social media exists! Facebook is of course great for keeping in touch and is cheaper than text messages. I rarely text anyone these days, it's usually just facebook messanger I use

diomed

Too many likes, like.

jjbrien

A easier life

You spent more time outside doing things and less time caring about other people's social lives.

Dozer Dave

Like was more likable.

Birneybau

Fame was earned for the most part.

Your Superior

We didn't have to worry about people posting photos of us on nights out. We actually took the time to see our friends in person. We didn't have mobile phones so would arrange to meet at a certain time, and then actually be there. We didn't seek likes or retweets to validate ourselves. We read books, listened to music, played and watched sport, went to the cinema, even watched TV believe it or not.

We honestly seemed a lot happier and more rounded than people in their teens and 20s today. Less concerned by what others thought of us, as other than your friends, you didn't really give a shït what anyone thought.

darkpagandeath

You could go out get pissed and not be shown what actually happened.

Instead of what's in your head "Deleted Scenes"

Lollipop95

How do you edit a thread title?

whiskeyman

asking your ma for money for stamps to write to your hot french penfriend...

Ken Shamrock

People knocked for eachother...I would turn up at a friends house uninvited his mother would open the door and i'd say is "john" coming out to play? You spent hours playing football in a field or on a road, when you met someone new you were actually interested in getting to know them, people actually had conversations with each other, a phone call was a magical thing and you made the most of it. That's all I can think of off the top of my head from my experience.

boobar

I'm an auld lad.

In my day we had no phones, and I'm not talking mobiles, no landline even.

Technology is great if you use it to keep in contact it's all the inane stuff that irks me.

You know "that face you make when..."

Who gives a sh1t about all that auld guff?

That said I love boards, and probably spend a fair amount of time on facebook so I'm not crying out for a return to the past.

ScumLord

You had stuff left to talk about when you met people face to face.

Fr_Dougal

It was all fields.

OldNotWIse

* When in a restaurant with the OH/friends, you didn't feel a rising irritation as they constantly checked their phones for facebook or whatsapp updates

* On nights out, people actually had fun instead of taking photos to prove to others that they had fun

* One could actually distinguish between females in their teens/twnenties because nobody had heard of that disease where they all make the "I couldn't care less and I'm so surprised" trout face every time a camera comes out

* people took photos of other people and scenes of nature and interesting things rather than just photos of themselves

* If you were sitting across from someone on public transport, your only two options for avoiding an awkward staring contest was a book or the window

* Babies had privacy for more than the first 17 minutes of their lives

* People actually ate their food without taking photos of it first

* You had to carry around a little printed bus timetable with you to know when the next one was due

* We survived without knowing who had just hit the gym/drank a smoothie/toilet trained their kid/groomed their dog etc

* We had to use real words to express how we felt rather than letting emoticons do the job for us

* People possessed an unfathomable skill of face to face communication involving speaking, hand gestures and facial expressions in real time

SEPT 23 1989

We had great music to listen to and the drugs were exceptional

the only bit of technology a kid needed was a good stereo

diomed

There was the Culchie Invasion, a bit like the Zombie Apocalypse, but with different accents.

MrWalsh

It was less stressful. You could go for a long walk and no one could contact you. We didnt even have a house phone when I was growing up so no one could contact me anyway unless they physically showed up at the door or wrote to me.

There was no rubbish constantly popping up in your life, people were not continuously obsessed by the whereabouts of Larry Murphy, 10 top tips to get rid of belly fat, there wasnt a constant stream of motivational memes (sometimes badly spelled) popping up in your face daily.

When you met someone you hadnt seen in a while you had a good catch up with them instead of saying to them that youd seen on FB that theyd climbed a mountain, had a baby, gotten drunk last weekend....

Those annoying people who over share their lives only annoyed you in person from time to time rather than daily.

It was peaceful.

c_man

Your Superior wrote: »

Less concerned by what others thought of us, as other than your friends, you didn't really give a shït what anyone thought.

Oh c'mon, that's not remotely true.

rossie1977

we have all become our parents/grandparents...

"things were so much better in my day"

valoren

People actually witnessed events with their own eyes instead of gawping through their phones camera.

libelula

If it's that bad, would ye not just turn yer phones off for a while?

Doctor DooM

Don't believe the hype.

We wasted crap tonnes of time waiting on your one friend who always showed up late because you couldn't text him telling him where you were heading.

Phoning people was expensive and you couldn't do anything else because you were stuck in your hallway.

It was harder to take photos and save memories of big events, and harder again to share them with others.

It was mad difficult to organise groups to do anything because you couldn't just create a facebook event and use that.

If you had a niche interest it was a lonely world as it was difficult to find others into your pass times (unless of course you liked football, which was the end all and be all).

The downsides are true too, but honestly, we'd have been the same if we'd access to social media. You grow confident as you mature, not because you have 1000 likes on FB.

5star02707

Most kids would be outside playing actual games and not on computers / phones / tablets.

Arsemageddon

We all went to the pub a lot more often during the week to meet up with people.

smash

Lollipop95 wrote: »

I'm 20 and I can't really remember a time when I didn't have a social media account!

It might sound like nostalgic bullshít but I kind of feel sad for your generation because of this. I can see it with some of my younger cousins at family events, they'll be sitting 15ft away from each other and text or snap chatting among themselves and I just don't get it.

cml387

When I was young I thought the future would have flying cars and colonies on Mars.
It seems we took a wrong turn somewhere and devoted our scientific resources to inventing better ways of sending pictures of cats to each other.

Generic Dreadhead

OldNotWIse wrote: »

* On nights out, people actually had fun instead of taking photos to prove to others that they had fun

This sums it up best really.

OldNotWIse

rossie1977 wrote: »

we have all become our parents/grandparents...

"things were so much better in my day"

Hah yes

r93kaey5p2izun

On balance I think we were better off. I think mobiles and the early internet (an information source/basic message boards) were a positive development but it's all gone too far with social media now ruling people's lives.

Ken Shamrock

Doctor DooM wrote: »

Don't believe the hype.

We wasted crap tonnes of time waiting on your one friend who always showed up late because you couldn't text him telling him where you were heading.

Phoning people was expensive and you couldn't do anything else because you were stuck in your hallway.

It was harder to take photos and save memories of big events, and harder again to share them with others.

It was mad difficult to organise groups to do anything because you couldn't just create a facebook event and use that.

If you had a niche interest it was a lonely world as it was difficult to find others into your pass times (unless of course you liked football, which was the end all and be all).

The downsides are true too, but honestly, we'd have been the same if we'd access to social media. You grow confident as you mature, not because you have 1000 likes on FB.

Ah come on dude, It wasn't the stone age.

Phoning people was very easy, most had landlines and some had mobiles

Nearly everyone had a camera, events were organised for niche interests all the time and they were much bigger better and better promoted than they are nowadays

Renegade Mechanic

libelula wrote: »

If it's that bad, would ye not just turn yer phones off for a while?

This. For me, personally, life is now, pretty much as it was. Boards was the first "social media" I got into and only because Adverts asked me for a "boards account" I didn't have one so I made my own ads account. I then looked at this "boards" and thought it was nice so signed up to it, too and you disabled notifications which was a nice touch. That's it really. Anything else I just see as an extra avenue through which to be tormented. I even turned my phone of in the cinema :eek: :eek:

People disliked that they actually had to text or find me to bother me but I quite liked it. Meant I wasn't interrupted by a tone because some bint thought her newborn child was slightly more adorable than she was half an hour ago.

DublinWriter

Lollipop95 wrote: »

For people who were teens/early 20's in the 90s - what was life like before social media giants like Facebook and discussion forums came along?

I've been using the Internet since the 80's. Generally, back then, there was much more of a community feel to it.

Now there's such a low signal to noise ratio. I think we've crossed the plateau though, people tend to be copping on and not taking selfies of their lunch anymore.

My general rule of thumb is the more perfect someone's life appears online is inversely proportional to how screwed up it actually is in reality.

Magico Gonzalez

I've often said to my friends that we were lucky we grew up in the pre youtube, pre facebook generation.

You could act the eejit all you wanted, no risk of someone posting a video of you under the influence and submitting you to public ridicule.

Stories were handed down word of mouth, people listened, questioned and got involved in a story over a pint.

Now someone whips out the phone, shows a video, everyone chuckles for 10 seconds and goes back to staring at the lump of plastic in their hands. Kids can't tell a tale these days, no room for a wee bit of artistic license. It's all immediate, gone in 6 seconds when the vine ends.

Bah humbug.

padd b1975

Less atheists.

Less people insisting on telling all in sundry that they're atheists.


People could be liberal and tolerant without feeling the need to be seen to be liberal and tolerant.


People were more inclined to mind their own business and didn't feel the need to latch onto some flavour of the month "cause".


Nobody sent "hugs" across cyberspace.


"Hun" was a xenophobic insult.

Sleepy

Arsemageddon wrote: »

We all went to the pub a lot more often during the week to meet up with people.

I think that's more down to the ever increasing price of a pint than social media tbh.

Junkyard Tom

Doctor DooM wrote: »

It was mad difficult to organise groups to do anything because you couldn't just create a facebook event and use that.

Social media is brilliant for that. Also targeted advertising on Facebucket is a fantastic way of reaching just the right people. I don't know how people did it in t'olden days.

I was chatting with an older gentleman about organising people for sports and he was telling me they used to arrange their local club rugby teams by sending out letters!

Mister Vain

You could go out and party like an animal and not have to worry about seeing photos of yourself on the internet doing something stupid. You could approach the wimmin without having to deal with that huge barrier called a smart phone.

On the downside though, it was probably more difficult to meet people outside of the bars/clubs. Sites like facebook, meetup etc are great for that.

ArtyM

Lots of people looking back with rose tinted specs.
Personally I think it sucked.
Used to take me f**kin ages to call round to all my friends houses just to show them the polaroids of the food I had whenever I went out.

twowheelsonly

The most important thing to bring to a concert was a lighter and you stuck that in the air, not your bloody phone/ipad or whatever.

whatismyname

I never did quite manage to find out that loads of famous people I'd never heard of had died.

diomed

Cats were cats, not media stars.

talla10

Back then all my friends were literally from my estate because if the time and effort it took to call around and get them all out.

Every summer we had a running battle wuth the next estate over for no reason at all.

Good times!

Spunge

pretty much the same for me as it is now. tried facebook for a month in 2008 and that was the end of that.

beks101

Narcissism was less of a thing.

You gave less of a shyte about how you looked or how you acted because there was no fear that it would turn up all over social media for several hundred people to see and judge instantly.

If you were going somewhere out of the ordinary, you might bring a little sh1tty Kodak disposable camera, get the pictures developed two months later and throw them into a dusty photo album to pull out once every couple of years and have a fond aul reminisce.

You wrote letters and had pen pals. You went to the post office to buy stamps.

You used the phonebook to find the number for the local takeaway or hair salon or plumber or xtravision or Mrs O'Dwyer up the road.

You rented VHS tapes from xtravision and were a member of the local library.

You called your friend's parents house - "Is Emma there?" and spent hours on the phone gossiping in the middle of the hallway because cordless phones were not a thing yet.

You knew all your friends' home numbers by heart.

You sat by the radio for HOURS waiting for your favourite song to come on so you could quickly press 'record' and catch it on a cassette. Most likely on your ghetto blaster. AND THE DJ ALWAYS FCUKED IT UP BY TALKING WAY BEFORE THE SONG ENDED.

You listened to pirate radio stations. ('I listen to Long Wave Radio Atlantic 252 now give me my money!')

Your childhood consisted of outdoor games like hopscotch, Tip the Can, Red Rover, jumping rope (Vote, vote, vote for De-Val-eeeerrrrrrr-aaaa), British Bulldog and tag.

You were less fat and lazy because you didn't spend all of your free time on your arse. In order to gather information, you had to leave the house.

You played cards. You were a boss at Spit.

You owned a walkman and an alarm clock. You also owned a gameboy and lost your sh1t when you fcuked up at Level 5 on Tetris.

You knew your neighbours and probably hung out with them.

Sittingpretty

Honestly it was bliss.

As was life prior to mobile phones.

I'm 38 this year and was 22 before I had my first mobile phone.

Sittingpretty

OldNotWIse wrote: »

* When in a restaurant with the OH/friends, you didn't feel a rising irritation as they constantly checked their phones for facebook or whatsapp updates

* On nights out, people actually had fun instead of taking photos to prove to others that they had fun

* One could actually distinguish between females in their teens/twnenties because nobody had heard of that disease where they all make the "I couldn't care less and I'm so surprised" trout face every time a camera comes out

* people took photos of other people and scenes of nature and interesting things rather than just photos of themselves

* If you were sitting across from someone on public transport, your only two options for avoiding an awkward staring contest was a book or the window

* Babies had privacy for more than the first 17 minutes of their lives

* People actually ate their food without taking photos of it first

* You had to carry around a little printed bus timetable with you to know when the next one was due

* We survived without knowing who had just hit the gym/drank a smoothie/toilet trained their kid/groomed their dog etc

* We had to use real words to express how we felt rather than letting emoticons do the job for us

* People possessed an unfathomable skill of face to face communication involving speaking, hand gestures and facial expressions in real time

This. All of it.

Currently enduring hourly photographic updates of a friend's holiday in States.

SO close to posting .... Would you ever just enjoy your effing holiday and put the phone AWAY!!!!!

People left the homeless alone. Instead of sitting down with them to hug them, play a guitar and show them how much they really care while getting someone to video this.

Anesthetize

I miss seeing actual physical photographs. I wholly embrace the digital era but photos are one thing which have lost meaning. Nearly all the old photos of my friends and I from the Bebo days are lost, as if they meant nothing.

Forums and chatrooms used to be so much more active and fun. They were the first places people would go online instead of Facebook or Twitter. People staring at their phones is no different than 10 or 15 years ago. Instead people were texting or playing Snake rather than Facebook or WhatsApp.

I joined MySpace in 2005 and that was my introduction to the whole concept of social networking. For me it was new and exciting. Now I groan at the thought of Facebook and avoid it as much as possible.

lertsnim

5star02707 wrote: »

Most kids would be outside playing actual games and not on computers / phones / tablets.

The Sega Megadrive and Sony Playstation were extremely popular long before social media.

beks101 wrote: »

You listened to pirate radio stations. ('I listen to Long Wave Radio Atlantic 252 now give me my money!')

Atlantic 252 wasn't a pirate radio station.

Saipanne

Lollipop95 wrote: »

if mods could edit thread title, meant to be "what was LIFE like"

This is a genuine question. By social media I mean facebook, twitter, I suppose even boards.ie falls into the category!

Reason I ask is that I'm 20 and I can't really remember a time when I didn't have a social media account! First was Bebo when I was 12, everyone in my school started using it around '07. Then it was onto Facebook aged around 13/14.

For people who were teens/early 20's in the 90s - what was life like before social media giants like Facebook and discussion forums came along?

In my spare time when I'm bored I always check boards or other discussion forums just to have a nose at threads and stuff like that. Or I check my facebook/twitter. Kind of difficult actually to envisage a world in which no form of social media exists! Facebook is of course great for keeping in touch and is cheaper than text messages. I rarely text anyone these days, it's usually just facebook messanger I use

You can't remember before you were 12?